Schmutzie's Milkmoney Or Not, Here I Come Schmutzie's Milkmoney Or Not, Here I Come Schmutzie is the thirty-something writer, photographer, and designer of Milkmoney or Not, a personal weblog that has been running since August 2003. 
Articles
The Anniversary Of That First Dawn
2008-11-18 02:30:00 One year ago today was the Palinode's first day back at home after having back surgery for both a broken vertebrae and a herniated disc larger than any the surgeon had ever seen. There was still a 15% chance that he would be crippled forever, but as I watched the sun come up over pill bottles, a massage wand, and a walker on that first morning, I felt such hopeful relief. My cancer was gone, and he had finally had his surgery and could move without screaming. We were somewhere different than we were the day before.I looked forward to his being able to reach into the cupboard for a water glass again. I looked forward to not having to live like elderly shut-ins. There would hopefully be no more begging for larger doses of pain medication and doctors asking me whether he wet the bed at night yet. That first sunrise felt like the dawn of a new age to my weary spirit.Over the last few months, I have been struggling through an uphill battle against pretty heavy waves of anxiety and ... More About: Anniversary , Dawn
I Surf, You Click
2008-11-16 19:26:00 "First Person Plural" by Paul Bloom at The Atlantic: "An evolving approach to the science of pleasure suggests that each of us contains multiple selves?all with different desires, and all fighting for control."Rad Dudes is a weblog dedicated to only the raddest of dudes.Continuing with my ongoing fascination with morbid topics, here is a list of the last photos taken of people before their respective deaths.This brilliant interpretation of another's words was adapted by Clifton Burt from a haiku originally written by John Maeda.This collection on craft disasters at Craftastrophe makes me feel better about my gonzo crafting.I can't stop thinking about the words "meat analogue" since I came across them recently. I don't think that I will be eating mock duck any time soon.These are some damn cute Twitter buttons.Have you heard of Hot Chicks with Douchebags? Well, now you have. And I'm sorry.The Clothes Horse is a delightfully vain fashion weblog.Miriam Makeba, who passed away rec... More About: Surf , Click
My Home Is A Big, Fat Liar
2008-11-15 20:24:00 What Your Home Says About YouYou come across as very intellectual. People take your wisdom seriously.Your hygiene is passable, but you may be hiding some dirty secrets.You are a fairly domestic person. You can probably make a decent batch of home cooked cookies.You are a very nurturing person. You find meaning in taking care of others.You feel settled in your life. You have enough time to focus on little details.You are a somewhat self sufficient person. You can do fine on your own if you have to.Your friends see you as accommodating, peaceful, and forgiving.What Does Your Home Say About You?I, of course, like to agree with the intellectual and wise bit, but that thing about my hygiene? My bathroom is hiding some pretty heinous secrets. Also, my level of domestication is not up in that lofty realm of cookie-baking. The last time I used the oven, I filled the apartment with smoke and only managed to save our meal just short of it starting on fire. If you call seeing both a counsel... More About: Liar
My Stuff
2008-11-14 23:44:00 Five Star Friday: Edition #32 is up and full of the goodness."The Top Ten Reasons Why Kanye West Is a Douche" is my latest contribution to MamaPop.Why are you still here?I am a participant in NaBloPoMo 2008, a challenge to write 30 posts in 30 days during the month of November. "National Blog Posting Month is the epicenter of daily blogging!"Hey, you in the feedreader! Click on over to Schmutzie's main website. It keeps her in bacon. More About: Stuff , My Stuff
Yar! I Bite Your Everything.
2008-11-13 17:33:00 Onion likes to sit next to me all day every day. He sits next to me on the couch, takes naps with me, and even accompanies me to the bathroom. It was unnerving at first, because sometimes he just sits and stares unblinkingly at me. I used to obsessively brush imaginary crumbs and lint off my boobs, because I thought that maybe he was doing that thing that people do when you are talking to them, but you can tell that they are not listening, because they are looking slightly to the left and below your mouth, and you know that there is definitely some leftover spaghetti in your hair, only Onion is a cat, not a person, and cats do not care whatsoever about lint and crumbs and boogers, because they are basically walking lint ball crumb traps themselves. Now that I have figured that out, I just shout out WILL YOU FUCKING STOP STARING AT ME?! several times throughout the day. The neighbours swear that they can't hear anything strange coming from our apartment.To put it mildly, Onion ... More About: Bite
The Poppy
2008-11-13 03:11:00 I have always had a difficult relationship with November 11th.I was raised a pacifist in a Mennonite church. Sunday School stressed turning the other cheek and loving your enemies. My great uncles who ran away to fight in World War II were our family's black sheep. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was held up as a hero of pacificism. These were the things that rattled around in my brain every year when the teachers handed out those flimsy, plastic poppy pins in honour of Remembrance Day.I felt bad for all the soldiers who had fallen in foreign fields, and being a child in the nuclear reality of the 1980s with parents who had been children in the post-H-bomb 1950s, I could not forget the possibility of war. I lied awake nights staring into the sparkles embedded in my stippled bedroom ceiling, praying earnestly for men to do good things that would save all of our lives. The poppies, though, despite my solemn thoughts about the deaths of innocents and my visceral fear of war, were prob...
The Day Of The Great Pet Cobra
2008-11-12 02:00:00 Did you know that it is the Day of the Great Pet Cobra today?Because it so is.I am a participant in NaBloPoMo 2008, a challenge to write 30 posts in 30 days during the month of November. "National Blog Posting Month is the epicenter of daily blogging!"Hey, you in the feedreader! Click on over to Schmutzie's main website. It keeps her in bacon.
Even A Lack Of Doorbells Couldn't Keep Me Away
2008-11-11 06:42:00 On Saturday morning at 8:45, the Palinode and I walked to a building where I was to have my first ever appointment with a counsellor. I was warned that there would be no receptionist on a Saturday, so I would have to ring a bell in order to be let inside. We looked all around the two main doors, but there were no doorbells, so I went around to the delivery loading dock in the alley and found a doorbell there. I was incredibly nervous about the counselling appointment, so it was only after I had rung the bell three or four times and made sure to smile pretty into the video camera that I realized there was no way that a group of therapists would send anxious depressives into downtown alleyways. I had to be at the wrong address.I was in the mood to see everything as a portentous sign that morning. My brain is wired to weave narratives out of whatever is handy to jamb into my growing story, but when I am freaking out, I tend to move away from the normal stuff that peppers the storyli... More About: Lack
Mwah.
2008-11-09 15:35:00 I live!My first shot at therapy did not kill me.There will be more upon my return to the world of people who accept that they're in therapy.I am a participant in NaBloPoMo 2008, a challenge to write 30 posts in 30 days during the month of November. "National Blog Posting Month is the epicenter of daily blogging!"Hey, you in the feedreader! Click on over to Schmutzie's main website. It keeps her in bacon.
I Link To Things So You Don't Have To
2008-11-08 23:16:00 This baby pygmy hippopotamus is both disturbing and deeply snorgle-worthy.Indulge in all the Harper's Index you can handle.Darren Rowse's TwiTip has great tips for using Twitter, especially if you're a beginner."An Open Apology to Boomers Everywhere" made my heart swell, and I am not even an American.Have I mentioned this live webcam of a box of shiba inu puppies? They are the happy maker.I bet that there are at least 50 things you didn't know about Barack Obama.If you find psychopaths as fascinating as I do, you'll find that John Seabrook's article in The New Yorker, "Suffering Souls: The Search for the Roots of Psychopathy", is a good read.The poet Langston Hughes says it well with his poem "Let America Be America Again"."On the outskirts of creation, unknown, unseen 'structures' are tugging on our universe like cosmic magnets, a controversial new study says."Stu Rasmussen might be the first openly transgender mayor in the United States.A Swiss researcher may have figured... More About: Link , Things
One Scary Step Forward
2008-11-07 22:41:00 The next sentence is going to hold some information that will surprise you. I have not seen a psychiatrist since 1994, and I have never been in therapy.I know. Let that sink in for a moment. That seems preposterous even to me after all the writing I have done about living with anxiety and depression. I may be on medication right now for anxiety and depression, but this medication has been prescribed by doctors at community clinics for the last fourteen years after I had a run of bad experiences with three different psychiatrists in the early 1990s. This is not a route I would recommend. General practitioners are not trained to have expertise specific to mental illness, and although I have been able to remain somewhat even keel with their prescription help, they have done nothing beyond blindly fiddling with pharmaceuticals. Not only is this not the best alternative trained psychiatric treatment, but it is also not the safest, physically or mentally.At the beginning of August, ... More About: Scary , Step , Forward , Step Forward
Etsy Shops Run By People With Weblogs I've Read
2008-11-07 01:34:00 I have once again been trolling through the immense land of Etsy where everything is handmade, one-of-a-kind, and perfect for Christmas, so I decided to highlight a couple of my friends' shops there as well as some other fabulous finds that I think you all should take a look at.My friend with a website of a similar name has an Etsy shop called Abigail Road where she is selling her wares, including this checkered book bag.And then, there is the lovely Leahpeah who has this chain and beaded necklace over at Leahpeah's Stuff.Angelina does a bang-up job of vintage-looking aprons with this cocktail apron with a handkerchief hem at her shop, Dustpan Alley.Amy Turn Sharp and her family sell these maple wood triangle baby teethers at Little Alouette.This pink and blue striped sock zombie puppet comes to us via Underroos, which is stocked by Erin.Knuckle Toes Shop, which is run by Knuckle Toes, brings us these orange squiggle earrings.And I would be completely remiss if I did not mention m... More About: People , Read , Weblogs , Shops
California's Proposition 8 Obfuscates The Real Issue At Hand In North Ameri
2008-11-05 19:53:00 I do not live in California, or even the United States, for that matter, but I was so saddened to read this morning that Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment bill that would ban legal homosexual marriage in that state, was passed. The fact that enough Californians saw it as just to pass judgment on what happens in the bedrooms of strangers so much so that they would deem it appropriate to take away some of their constitutional, although short-lived, rights is outrageous.I understand that a lot of people voted in favour of this amendment based on a morality borne by religious beliefs. Some believe that homosexuality is sinful and a blight in the eyes of their Lord. They are entitled to believe that as a part of their religious code, and I will not deny it to them, but the present system that allows people to force that view into a secular, government arena is unconscionable. It is antithetical to the evangelism of their faith to nonbelievers, it does not speak to Jesus' doc... More About: North , Real , Hand , Issue
The Girl Who Came From Love
2008-11-05 01:54:00 I remember taking a bus between towns one summer. It was early in the season, so we were still in school, my cousin and I. This was in the late 1980s when the insides of long distance buses were still upholstered in brown instead of grey, and you could smoke on them as long as you sat in the back half of the vehicle. I remember that, because my cousin and I were sharing a pack of cigarettes made of red and white cardboard, and I can see her fingers stuffing a rectangle of tinfoil into one of those aluminum ashtrays that were mounted into the back of the seats. There were half-circles pressed into a strip of metal across the middle of the ashtray that you could squeeze your cigarette into if you needed both of your hands and didn't want the cigarette to roll onto the floor.A girl near the back of the bus smiled when we boarded. My cousin and I sat in the rearmost seat, and the girl popped up over the back of hers and asked if she could hang out with us. We said yes, because sh... More About: Love , Girl , The Girl
Links for November 3, 2008
2008-11-03 08:08:00 3D printers are amazing. The human race has yet to reach the pinnacle of awesomeness, as is evidenced by the fact that some people still think that 13-year-old gang-rape victims should be murdered for "adultery". Brendan Jamison uses sugarcubes to make sweet architectural sculptures. Jason Kottke stopped updating his ongoing report on the state of gender diversity at web conferences, because it became too depressing. Cursebird will keep you abreast of who's swearing on Twitter. Do they ever know how to build gorgeous metro stations in Russia! "From Silver Lake to Suicide: One Family's Secret History of the Jonestown Massacre" takes an intimate look through found letters at a tragedy that changed everything for one family. Cesar Vallejo's poem "Today I Like Life Much Less..." kicks butt. Say goodbye to Studs Terkel. Ever a fan of vintage movie stills, I love this collection of end titles from old movies. Meet the Abe Lincoln of someone else's dreams. It is ridiculous tha... More About: Links , November , 2008
Some Things Just Aren't Meant To Be
2008-11-02 23:50:00 I once had a boyfriend who thought that I might be poisoning his food. When he first confessed his fear, it was only after much prodding by me while I watched him push the beans and rice I had made around on his plate."What's up?" I asked him."You won't hate me if I tell you what I'm thinking, will you?" he said."It depends on what it is.""I sometimes think that you might be drugging my food. Or poisoning it."What was even stranger than this admission was that I didn't feel insulted or offended by it, but then I was sort of prepared for this kind of behaviour. I had been in that situation myself. When I was a child, I believed for a while that bay leaves were less about adding flavour to my mother's macaroni soup and more about her poisoning me slowly over time in order to avoid detection."You should give your friend Vino a call," I suggested. "Tell him what you think might be happening and what your symptoms are, if there are any. He'll be honest with you."Vino was a ref... More About: Things
Orphaned Titles
2008-11-02 02:14:00 I write most of my weblog posts using Google Docs. I find that it is the best way to create documents that I can pull up from any computer any time. It saves me from worrying about people finding the writing I do over lunch on a work computer or littering my mother-in-law's laptop in Cosmopolis with half-finished missives.I have a problem, though. I open up new documents and give them titles as reminders to myself about the things I want to write but do not presently have the time for. I always believe that the title will be enough to clue me in on what was so important that I did not want to forget, and I am often wrong. Here are ten titles that I am sure have what could have been scintillating tales behind them:I Once Went A-Bushwhacking: I must have, because I do not usually lie to myself when I leave mysef notes. I did not know that I was so woodsy. How to Keep One's Mitts About Them: I wish I knew now what I knew then, because my mittens, they have all left me.Green Be... More About: Titles
Accomplishments On This Lovely Friday Morning
2008-10-31 19:43:00 I have been at it again.Today, marks the 30th edition of Five Star Friday , which, if you are not familiar with it, is a weekly reader submitted list of links to great weblog entries they have found across this great big internet,and then I discussed on MamaPop how Dr. Phil fell down on the job on Wednesday afternoon in my article "I've Got a Bee in My Bonnet, And Its Name Is Dr. Phil".So, go read and comment to let me know you were there. Because our love is a mutual magnetism. You know that you know it, dirty bird.Hey, you in the feedreader! Click on over to Schmutzie's main website. It keeps her in bacon. More About: Morning , Lovely
This Wide, Wild World
2008-10-31 05:57:00 Today, I went for a walk along tree-lined streets in the late afternoon when everyone was either at work or at rest and let myself melt into the quiet experience of long, fall light shining through orange leaves and the last heat of a cooling season soaking into the black wool of my coat. It was stunning.Later, in a darkened theatre where I watched a one-man show, I sat next to a man who, every time he laughed, expelled the kind of breath that happens when you are sick and have been lying around with your mouth closed for too long, which I could not help but ingest every time I inhaled. He accompanied these outbursts with small fart puffs that smelled like foul babies. It was stunning.I thought to myself what a wide, wild world we live in that allows us to have such fundamentally disparate experiences separated by only a few hours.Hey, you in the feedreader! Click on over to Schmutzie's main website. It keeps her in bacon. More About: World , Wild , Wide
Buggering Crap Monkies
2008-10-31 00:17:00 I took a bold step today and met up for lunch with another blogger whom I had never before met. This is a hard thing for me to do, because, believe it or not, I am shy. People are terrifying, unpredictable freaks. Except for you, of course. You are totally approachable. And do you know who else I do not find terrifying anymore? May-B from Buggering Crap Monkies, that cute person pictured on the left.I was terrified beforehand, of course, because she was an Unknown Person. I don't know what it is that I think UPs are going to do to me, because I always meet them in well-lit, public venues where there are lots of witnesses, but I worry and breathe funny and break out in pimples like a hormone-imbalanced teenager anyway, which I did, especially the breaking out part. My chin usually has some sort festering pore on it, because I am a bad person, but several previously mostly unnoticeable zits blossomed into these red and purple babboon-butt-looking things this morning. I spack...
November NaBloPoMo 2008
2008-10-29 17:51:00 Have you signed up for November 's NaBloPoMo yet? Because I have."National Blog Posting Month is the epicenter of daily blogging! People who want to set the habit of blogging by doing it every day for a month, including weekends, can come here for moral support, inspiration, and the camaraderie that only marathon blogging can provide."I vow to write every day for the thirty days of November and exercise my blogging skills. Join me! It can be our last great hoorah of 2008 before December and the foofaraw of the Christmas season devours us whole.Hey, you in the feedreader! Click on over to Schmutzie's main website. It keeps her in bacon.
I Can Cook! Who Knew?
2008-10-28 22:41:00 In the past, I have stuck to three or four dishes that I managed to make repeatedly without somehow turning them into gastronomic catastrophes. I did attempt to branch out on several occasions, but for someone who has a hard time not burning toast, it came as no surprise that my eggplant turned into pudding and my vegetarian casserole had such a bizarre flavour that it met its end in the sewer system before the end of the night. Thanks to my much more culinarily talented spouse, the Palinode, my eyes have been opened to a previously hidden ability.He brought Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food into our home, and I am smitten with it. I have the old standby Joy of Cooking, but that cookbook has not made cooking as simple and enjoyable an experience as How to Cook Everything. Armed with this book, it turns out that I can not only cook but also that the food I create is actually edible and, on top of that, GOOD. My successes with the recipes from H... More About: Who Knew
A Wind In October
2008-10-26 20:48:00 I am trapped inside by wind, and it drives my irritability meter through the roof. I want to go for a walk, but this is the kind of wind that rushes up and steals your breath, and few things feel more ridiculous than gasping for air against more air. It makes me feel like a fish out of water, only I am on land, and it is the thing I breathe that is keeping me from breathing. Can fish drown? One day I will go down flopping in the wind like a fish hauled on board, only no one will have a fish bat handy to put me out of my misery.I hate wind. I prefer most other kinds of prairie weather over wind. I have had to flee golf ball-sized chunks of ice falling from the sky that could break car windows, and I preferred that to wind. One time, a car I was driving got hung up on slushy drifts on the highway in February, and even though I had to try to push it out by myself in a dress and heels with traffic whizzing by at 70 miles an hour, I remember thinking At least it's not windy out h... More About: Wind , October
Evil Genius
2008-10-26 05:44:00 I just woke up from a nap, and I had this dream that I invented this extremely inventive typed out face. You know the ones I'm talking about, the ones that look like lo-tech emoticons like this :)? Yeah, like that.In the dream, there was this evil genius who was threatening to consume me, and he told me that the only way I could save myself was if I invented a typed out face that looked just like him, so I thought very hard about it, and then I somehow managed to type it out in the air in glowing letters, and he was awfully impressed with it and let me live.This is what the typed out face I invented looked like: ':-|>>From left to right, it goes eyebrow, eyes, nose, mouth, pointy goatee, and two fingers stroking said pointy goatee. It completely sucks. It looks more like a really bored person with a double-chin who had one of his eyebrows shaved off while he was passed out at a frat party.I think that dreaming is kind of like being super drunk, because in both situations I usu... More About: Evil , Genius
I Can't Stop Making Stuff
2008-10-24 22:41:00 It's Five Star Friday: Five Star Friday: Edition #29I writed some stuff at MamaPop: "How the Republicans Did the World a Favor: Would YOU Have Voted for This Woman?"Hey, you in the feedreader! Click on over to Schmutzie's main website. It keeps her in bacon. More About: Stuff , Stop
50x365 #334: Cheli
2008-08-20 23:56:00 Will you be my lover? you asked.Have I told you about the time I ran into a bear?You looked at me quizzically.I read a book once called "The Bears and I".Bears, huh? you said.Afterward, every time there was an uncomfortable silence, someone brought up bears.I am a participant in x365 and Blog 365.
50x365 #333: Michael
2008-08-19 23:26:00 After nearly four years alone, I clung to you. I craved a sense of warmth and kinship that you were unable to offer, but rather than leave you, I waited for you across rooms and tables, looking for anything that felt like connection. My unreasonable heart folded in upon itself.I am a participant in x365 and Blog 365. More About: Michael
Help! I've Pooped Illegally!
2008-08-19 22:13:00 Oskar, showing off his case of Stink FootOskar ran into the room a little while ago, whining at high volume.Yeow! Mmm-yah! [Seriously, human,] Mow-ow-ow-ow!What is it, Oskar?Mow-ow-ow-ow! He lifted one foot and then the other, doing the Dance of the Great Emergency. He originally invented this song and dance number to express his distress about the first time he puked in my dirty underwear.Oh, crap, I thought. He's had another poop emergency. He has these occasional poop emergencies lately, because we fed him too much soft food last week, and it is taking his sensitive kitty digestive tract a while to calm down.I rose from my chair, and he turned 180 degrees to lead me down the hallway to the Palinode's office. The closer we got, the more awful the stench became.Christ, cat. What the hell did you do in here?I grabbed a bag and the poop scoop and set about cleaning out the litterboxes. He kept doing the Dance of the Great Emergency in the middle of the room, though, which ...
50x365 #332: Zeke
2008-08-19 07:01:00 I arrived home to find you sitting naked in my living roomWho's this? I asked my roommate.Zeke , she said.Please give me my pants, you pleaded, whining with your hands cupped over your penis.I don't think so, I said, walking away. Does your girlfriend know you're here?I am a participant in x365 and Blog 365.
Wah. Wah. Call Me A Wahmbulance.
More articles from this author:2008-08-19 04:07:00 I have been to see my family doctor about my current condition (anxiety and depression), and he prescribed me a higher dose of my present medication, put me on a waiting list to see a psychiatrist, and filled out a form that grants me a couple of weeks of stress leave from work.My adjustment to a higher dose of medication has left me dizzy and emotionally numb, it turns out that the psychiatrist will not be able to see me until October, and the two weeks of stress leave is slowly dwindling itself down to nothing while I get no better and may, in fact, be worse.There are good things happening, though. I have lost six pounds, which means that my inner thighs are not tossing themselves up against in each in great slapping waves as often as they used to. I have more colour in my cheeks than I have had in months. I feel physically healthier. I even sleep through the night now.Still, though, I am spending my days staring at the furniture and feeling completely impotent as far as accom... More About: Call 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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