Inspiration Junkie robayre.com

Inspired by Natasha’s post the other day where she criticized phony blogs, (the blogs where people present their lives as perfect in every way) I’ve decided to air some of my dirty laundry and share some things I might not otherwise want to share, in the sake of being a real person in the blog world.

-I probably haven’t vacuumed my living room rug in months. Months people! Some people vacuum daily, those people are called anal. Not to say that I recommend not vacuuming for months. I don’t have a cat or dog, but I am a spinner and do a lot of collage artwork, little bits of fiber and slivers of random paper are all over my apartment. If I’ve shown a picture that has carpeting at all on my blog, you better believe it has been photoshoped to remove bits of paper.
-I haven’t balanced my checkbook in years and years. I just try to make sure to keep a buffer zone. A while ago I bit the bullet and called up the bank to see if they had any advice on how to tackle this problem and the banker responded by just laughing and laughing at me for about 5 seconds. Five seconds may not seem that long, but believe me it is when you are being laughed at, go ahead, just count it out right now 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi…
-I eat microwave dinners a lot. A LOT. Sometimes my freezer is packed full of lean cuisines. A couple months ago a friend was over and for whatever reason popped his nosey face into my freezer and declared “Wow, someone likes lean cuisines”. I was embarrassed, but later when I looked in there, there were only 3 or 4 frozen dinners. His head probably would have exploded if he had seen it after I had gone grocery shopping and had about 4 times that many in there.
- Matt and I have been dating now since 2001 and I’m very much the boy in this relationship. He’s able to recall all these milestones of our relationship, certain dates and conversations we’ve had. I can’t even recall something he told me a few hours ago. As much as I consider myself a sentimental person and love me some romantic movies, I’m so not into the schmaltzy romantic stuff in real life. Think about that episode of Seinfeld with “Shmoopy”, makes me gag being around those types of people.
-I totally cried at work today. Not just a little tear either, I cried in front of all my coworkers, big tears. I’m not embarrassed to admit it either, it makes me real, and I have to say that my coworkers were all very sweet and supportive. Have I said how wonderful the people I work with are? Well, they are pretty great.
-I’ve already fell way behind on most of my new year’s resolutions. Dishes are piling up in the sink, pages are behind in my “page-a-day” book and I’ve barely made it the gym this year.
-A lot of other people see this as a flaw of my own, but whatever! I will declare it aloud: Chocolate, I’m not a big fan. I don’t hate it, but I don’t really like it, and I sure as heck wouldn’t stampede, climb or claw over a group of people just to get at it the way that most people react towards it. It’s chocolate, end of story. People think they get some natural high from it, or that it is good for you, but then again everyone thinks that their cat is the 1/2 of all cats that react to catnip. I’ve heard people even make outrageous statements that you can’t trust a person who claims to not LOVE chocolate, and to that I say “get a grip, chocolate is overrated”.
Okay, enough of that for now :)

Above, A story of a yarn: a merino yarn to be exact. Once upon a time there was a roving that had big dreams to one day become a skein of yarn. What will become of it next?

I’ve just posted this yarn to my etsy shop. It is really beautiful and I’d like to share a quote that I was thinking about a lot while spinning it. It’s from the new Lexi Boeger book, Intertwined, that just arrived last week. “Handspun yarn is more than simply yarn…Every Inch has been fed through the hand of the craftsperson…Each yarn is a reflection of the individual spinner who made it. It is this quality that makes handspun yarn so amazing to work with. As you work through a skein, you can see, inch by inch, the decisions that the spinner made. It passes before you just like a story.” Her book is beautiful, and it is all I can do to keep myself from ripping through it, instead I am digesting it as slowly as possible and savoring every page and beautiful yarn.

I feel guilty that I never posted a fifth movie for Beautiful Film Week. Even though it is already Wednesday of the following week I’m thinking “better late than never”, so without further ado, I present you with What Dreams May Come. We were recently talking about this movie at work. I recalled that my sister had informed me that this movie is based on the Novel by Richard Matheson, the author of I am Legend, which was also recently made into a movie. What Dreams May Come, is such a feast for the eyes. If you love Art, then you will love this movie, because it is filled with Art references, everything from scenes presented entirely in impressionistic style paint and gothic (if I remember correctly) architecture. The basic story is a love story, but it could be described as dramatic and surreal as well.

Here are a few more screen captures, please pardon the pics, I only have this on VHS so the quality is especially horrible. And here is the Netflix page so that you can add it. If you have already seen this movie, I recommend City of the Lost Children, it is another absolutey beautiful film, very stylized as well.

Oh, and I watched that History Channel special, Life After People. It was “eh”. I felt like they repeated a lot of stuff over and over, like yeah, we get it, wires are going to rust, bridges will fall. And, I didn’t understand why they thought we should care if our cell phones die and if bears roam the streets, we will all be gone. There were a few things that I thought were informative, such as the residential village near the chernobyl disaster that had been evacuated and left vacant, and how it has fallen apart since, without people there to continually keep it up. Also, quite a bit of interesting information about the hoover dam, like how the cement inside it is so thick that the center part is still curing and how it could possibly be the last source of harnessed energy on the planet.

This weekend matt and I are going to Minnesota. I’ve never been before and I’m pretty excited to see the land of 10,000 lakes. It is for his Oma’s 80th birthday and I have spun this yarn for her. This will be the first time I’ve met her.

This weekend we went to one of the area fiber shops, and I bought this, and other deliciously colored merino rovings. After we left, we stopped by a local gas station to get some drinks. Inside there was a female police officer chatting it up with some locals, police car running outside. I bought a small “cherry cola” flavored slushy and he bought an energy drink. As we left, the police officer came outside to chat with a truck driver who parked his tanker truck precariously in the parking lot, and stood right next to our car as we pulled out watching us like a hawk, even straining to see we pull out safely. Guess she had nothing better to do. It wasn’t until down the street a bit that I took my first sip of the slushy and immediately the taste was horrendous. It tasted like something rotten at first and then the aftertaste tasted  overwhelmingly like beer. I just made a horrible face and then handed it to matt without saying anything. He tasted it and immediately said “it tastes like beer, don’t drink anymore of that”. I was glad he said it, because I didn’t want to finish it and I didn’t want him to think I was wasting it. Further on down the road he goes to open his drink and it is nowhere to be found. We pull over and it is just gone, poof, vanished. It was the only thing he bought, how could he have left it on the counter? We had traveled far enough at this point that it wasn’t really worth it to return for a $2 drink and a bum slushy, but man, we were both a little weirded out by that experience. And I know matt too well, because as I told him “I don’t want that bizaro experience at the gas station to reflect badly on the perfectly wonderful fiber shop.” I can almost guarantee that next time I want to go to that fiber shop he is going to say “is that the one with beer slushy station?” 

When I go to sleep at night, my mind is always filled with artwork and ideas. Often I sleep with my sketchbook on or nearby the bed so that I can quickly get up and jot these ideas down. The other night I didn’t have my sketchbook with me so I had to get up and draw out my idea quickly on the dry erase board on the fridge. I was thinking of ideas for pages in my “page-a-day” book.

I loved the first one I made so much that I wanted to make more and more. I’ve listed these two in my etsy shop and I have several more done and that I am working on.

For Abby’s BFW: 

Another slow quiet movie: All the Real Girls. This movie takes place in North Carolina and it makes me want to go there. The whole film is heavy in these beautiful autumn colors that I adore. I think it has wonderful writing and at the same time a good portion of the acting seems unscripted and as if the actors were just left to their own accord. There is beauty, there is romance, there is sadness, there is geat music, what more can I ask for? That being said, this movie is not for everyone. People who like only happy endings need not apply. While trying to get some screen captures for this entry I was reminded that this movie contains one of my favorite quotes, something I think to myself almost weekly: “If anyone smiles at me ever again, I am gonna freak out”. Yeah, I’m kinda moody :) Oh yeah, and to top it all off, this movie introduced me to Paul Schneider, not too bad on the eyes.

Okay, so here are a few more stills. The netflix page. The soundtrack.
And yes, I have a lot of soundtracks, possibly around 100, more or less?

And here is a picture of some yarn I’m a’spinnin’ up.