Prologue: a couple of months ago my boy kitty acquired a hummingbird in a less-than-good-for-hummingbirds way. I freed it, put it in a box with water and waited the night. The next day I had a box of dead hummingbird. And atrocious, heart-crushing guilt. (and a boy kitty with bells hanging off his collar.)
Cut to Saturday: I’m sitting with kitties out in my yard, soaking up the sun and reading my guilty-pleasure graphic novel and just enjoying the lack of work I’m at. And no where near the big, shiny glass windows of my house, so neither I nor my kitties can be blamed for the hummingbird that cracked his head into the window and landed – thunk! – on the walk in front of the house.
At first both kitties and I just sat there watching the wee thing plop onto the ground and kind of roll around sloppy-like. We were all “blink, blink, blink… is that a bird?” And then it was ON! A MAD DASH between me and kitties racing for the hummer, with me crying out “NoNoNoNoNoNoNONONONONO KITTIES NOOOOO!!!” all the wailing was enough for girl kitty, who basically said “screw this” and detoured to the driveway. The boy kitty beat me to the bird, but as he’s still new to hunting and hasn’t had me take away that many conquests yet he didn’t know enough to grab it and run. So I got to them before he’d done much more than circle it all curious-like.
I sat down by the hummingbird, who was quite clearly stunned but otherwise look unscathed. EXCEPT that her wings were… wrong. They didn’t look broken per se, but they weren’t sleeked up along her body. They looked like they’d stuck in the “flap on” position when she smacked the window, only they weren’t flapping. They were more at the flap ready? Anyway, she was blinky and woosy and for a while she kept kind of lolling over to the side in a SUPER-DISCONCERTING way! Like she was swooning or maybe even about to plop over all a-faint! She never plopped, but it still freaked me out.
My whole job was basically to keep kitty boy on the other side of my graphic novel, which was now playing the part of “movable wall” between he and birdy. Birdy just sat there, looking so unlike a hummingbird. Kind of squat. And STILL. I sincerely hope to never see a hummingbird look that still again – creepy. But she neither flopped over succumby nor did she recover. She just coasted. For the LONGEST time.
And I’m sitting here thinking “last time this was a sad story. Plus also why do these things always do this as the sun is setting? They can’t hang out in my house overnight and I can’t let them go at night! Note to the rest of the hummers in the neighborhood: please do any future injuries or maladies in the morning or afternoon! No more evening traumas please!”
Finally hummer started to look like things were righting themselves. Less blinking and faster breathing (which for any other species would seem bad, but not for hummers) and I just really wanted her to put her wings away. Because they still looked SO WRONG. So here is me, gently coaxing her wings with the tippy-tip of my pinky finger (because I had apparently decided that was the safest way to move around things built of bones the size of dental floss), just sweet-talking them into laying more flat and wing-like.
And after about 10 minutes of sitting and 20 seconds of wing coaxing (which had resulted in a net wing movement of pretty much hardly nothing) Ms. Hummingbird looked me right in the eye and evaporated! POOF! Reappearing on the branch of my front tree. MIRACLE CURE! And HAPPY ENDING!* YAY!
*Note: Boy Kitty would like to dispute the “happy ending” ruling on this story, and is petitioning to have the final paragraph changed to read “tragic, heartbreaking and so completely unfair ending. Dammit.” Ruling is pending.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
where Wii Fit pulls down my pants and makes me cry.
I’m still a big fan of the Wii. In fact, of all the games things I’ve ever messed with, that’s the only one I’m sort of giddy and dreamy over. And people all around me have them, which means I hate people all around me. (sigh) The newest cool Wii thing is the Wii Fit. It’s a game! No, it’s an exercise device! WAIT, you’re both right! And it’s also the first sign of the apocolypse. (up next: Carrot Top for Senate.)
Right, so someone I know (and this time we’re protecting their innocence by using NO NAMES) just got a Wii fit, inviting me to check it out. If someone gives you this opportunity it will SEEM like a good idea. But it is really a trap and you should run away. And your friends who invited you are really just wanting to spread the abuse! And they don’t actually love you! (or they’re very skinny and don’t realize what they’re offering.)
Wii Fit is two things: extremely cool, and MEAN!! And you have to claw through the MEAN to get to the extremely cool. You set up one of those “mii” things, right? You’ll notice that those things aren’t particularly detailed; they’re innocent and simple. They don’t expect you to include your droopy eye or your slight limp or your secret incontenence – just hair color and eye color and maybe height or a kicky little hairdo! But when you take your innocent, helpless mii and run it through the registration of the Wii Fit bad things could happen. I’m just sayin’.
Here’s one thing I do like about the Wii Fit: though I’m sure the fancy pad thing that you stand on has the ability to determine your weight, it doesn’t tell you what it is. It does not bill itself as “most expensive scale ever” But it does ask you for your height and your age. And then the first bit of evil: it takes that precious little mii, all innocent and simple and not hurting anyone, and it throws it up next to a range of, oh lets call them body types. Ranging from something like “skinny” to “normal” to “overweight” to “obese” (yes, it uses the “O” word.) The arrow zooms up and down this range and then it lands somewhere. For instance, if you are ME, it lands on OBESE. According to that rat bastard the Wii Fit, I’m OBESE! And then, just to show you who’s boss the damn thing takes your mii and MAKES IT FAT! Like “First I call you names, fatty-fatty-fat-fat, and then I make your Mii my bitch! Next I’m going to have your Mii eat a bunch of Twinkies and drink an entire Big Gulp! You are FAAAAAAT!”
And does it stop there? Oh no! The festival of abuse is only half-through! (I’m telling you this so that you can weigh your options before you step on the magical pad. Sure, virtual hoola hoops SOUNDS fun, but is it worth the mind games and manipulation? IS IT???) Next the Wii Fit makes you do this balance test where you sway and lean and bend over and I KNOW that there are scores of robot cameras flying around the country filming people doing this in their living rooms for some robo-gag reel that our robot overlords will watch at the Christmas party after they take over the world! Once the balance thing is done if you didn’t balance just right it MOCKS YOU! “Do you find you trip when you walk?” DO YOU FIND MY FOOT UP YOUR WII ASS???
After all of this there’s still one more super-awesome part: your Wii Fit Age. In other words, “now that I’ve told you that you’re both fat and also clumsy, I’m gonna top it off by calling you old before your time. Also I’ll ask if you wore that shirt in public and make you spell endocrine.”
Get this: my friends are both in better shape than I am in real life, and neither of them were honored with the “obese” title, and yet their Wii Fit ages were OLDER than they were, while mine was YOUNGER. And the only thing with which I had more success was the balance test. The message I took from this was “young people have good balance.” Which I KNOW is not true, because the youngest person I know is Princess Long Toes and she is SUPER easy to knock over! Heck, just give her a tiny nudge and she’ll fall right on her ass! She can’t even WALK! So I fear I must call shenanigans on the Wii Fit for that.
Where was I? Oh yeah, fat but with fabulous balance. (by the way, a quality I’m sure most men are really looking for. I’ve already added it to my profile on the free man-attracting website: “not slim, but exceptional balance. Will consider yoga positions during sex!”)
After ALL of this you get to do the Wii Fit stuff, and this is the worst part of all: it’s super-cool! Seriously! There are BUNCHES of things and they’re challenging and fun and yet they really do seem like they’re fit-inducing! Not just aerobic stuff (which we all knew was coming once we worked up a major sweat boxing virtual-dude with the Wii Sports) but also balance stuff (let us all bow our head for a moment of silence for my friend who plummeted to her death off of the tight rope. Like 6 times…) and yoga stuff and strength stuff… Like I think this could make sit-ups actually fun. And I HATE sit-ups!
In the end, even though I felt like I was being hazed for the first 20 minutes, the Wii Fit is still something that I covet and envy and super-want. Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to go walk around the house with a book on my head to give me a feeling of superiority. Obese, well-balanced superiority.
Right, so someone I know (and this time we’re protecting their innocence by using NO NAMES) just got a Wii fit, inviting me to check it out. If someone gives you this opportunity it will SEEM like a good idea. But it is really a trap and you should run away. And your friends who invited you are really just wanting to spread the abuse! And they don’t actually love you! (or they’re very skinny and don’t realize what they’re offering.)
Wii Fit is two things: extremely cool, and MEAN!! And you have to claw through the MEAN to get to the extremely cool. You set up one of those “mii” things, right? You’ll notice that those things aren’t particularly detailed; they’re innocent and simple. They don’t expect you to include your droopy eye or your slight limp or your secret incontenence – just hair color and eye color and maybe height or a kicky little hairdo! But when you take your innocent, helpless mii and run it through the registration of the Wii Fit bad things could happen. I’m just sayin’.
Here’s one thing I do like about the Wii Fit: though I’m sure the fancy pad thing that you stand on has the ability to determine your weight, it doesn’t tell you what it is. It does not bill itself as “most expensive scale ever” But it does ask you for your height and your age. And then the first bit of evil: it takes that precious little mii, all innocent and simple and not hurting anyone, and it throws it up next to a range of, oh lets call them body types. Ranging from something like “skinny” to “normal” to “overweight” to “obese” (yes, it uses the “O” word.) The arrow zooms up and down this range and then it lands somewhere. For instance, if you are ME, it lands on OBESE. According to that rat bastard the Wii Fit, I’m OBESE! And then, just to show you who’s boss the damn thing takes your mii and MAKES IT FAT! Like “First I call you names, fatty-fatty-fat-fat, and then I make your Mii my bitch! Next I’m going to have your Mii eat a bunch of Twinkies and drink an entire Big Gulp! You are FAAAAAAT!”
And does it stop there? Oh no! The festival of abuse is only half-through! (I’m telling you this so that you can weigh your options before you step on the magical pad. Sure, virtual hoola hoops SOUNDS fun, but is it worth the mind games and manipulation? IS IT???) Next the Wii Fit makes you do this balance test where you sway and lean and bend over and I KNOW that there are scores of robot cameras flying around the country filming people doing this in their living rooms for some robo-gag reel that our robot overlords will watch at the Christmas party after they take over the world! Once the balance thing is done if you didn’t balance just right it MOCKS YOU! “Do you find you trip when you walk?” DO YOU FIND MY FOOT UP YOUR WII ASS???
After all of this there’s still one more super-awesome part: your Wii Fit Age. In other words, “now that I’ve told you that you’re both fat and also clumsy, I’m gonna top it off by calling you old before your time. Also I’ll ask if you wore that shirt in public and make you spell endocrine.”
Get this: my friends are both in better shape than I am in real life, and neither of them were honored with the “obese” title, and yet their Wii Fit ages were OLDER than they were, while mine was YOUNGER. And the only thing with which I had more success was the balance test. The message I took from this was “young people have good balance.” Which I KNOW is not true, because the youngest person I know is Princess Long Toes and she is SUPER easy to knock over! Heck, just give her a tiny nudge and she’ll fall right on her ass! She can’t even WALK! So I fear I must call shenanigans on the Wii Fit for that.
Where was I? Oh yeah, fat but with fabulous balance. (by the way, a quality I’m sure most men are really looking for. I’ve already added it to my profile on the free man-attracting website: “not slim, but exceptional balance. Will consider yoga positions during sex!”)
After ALL of this you get to do the Wii Fit stuff, and this is the worst part of all: it’s super-cool! Seriously! There are BUNCHES of things and they’re challenging and fun and yet they really do seem like they’re fit-inducing! Not just aerobic stuff (which we all knew was coming once we worked up a major sweat boxing virtual-dude with the Wii Sports) but also balance stuff (let us all bow our head for a moment of silence for my friend who plummeted to her death off of the tight rope. Like 6 times…) and yoga stuff and strength stuff… Like I think this could make sit-ups actually fun. And I HATE sit-ups!
In the end, even though I felt like I was being hazed for the first 20 minutes, the Wii Fit is still something that I covet and envy and super-want. Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to go walk around the house with a book on my head to give me a feeling of superiority. Obese, well-balanced superiority.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Anxiously awaiting my super powers
OK, so on Saturday I was overwhelmed by gardner guilt (the strong feeling that by simply putting seeds to dirt you sentenced some perfectly innocent flowers to a slow and terrible death) and went out in the God Awful Heat! (or GAH! As it shall be known henceforth) to dead-head my nasturtiums. This is my first act of tender gardening love to my flower bed since the flowers bloomed forth, and as such there were something like 11 flowers left and the rest of the greenery gave the impression that Nasturtiums are fruit-bearing plants, so plentiful (plantiful?) were the seeds on every single stalk. I drooped my head as I set to work, to best show my chagrin.
I’d grabbed my super-awesome gardening gloves (they’re so cool, and they’re probably the only reason that I keep trying to garden is to give me excuses to wear them) from the shelf in the shed and shoved my hands into the leafy but sadly flowerless expanse. And after a few seconds something poked me! Poked me at the base of my pinky and friend-to-pinky fingers, kind of between them. I assumed I had something pokey in my glove and lifted my hand out of the greens to check inside. Then I got pretty distracted by the spider that was hanging off of my glove. Distracted in that classic “Woah! Spider! On the hand! gittoffgittoffgittoffgittoffGITT OFF! (shake, shake, shake)” way which takes all of about .2 seconds.
I turned the glove inside and there was just nothing in there that could have poked me. Also, the spot where I was poked was already looking red and maybe a teeny bit puffy. And my Mom says “bee sting”, which would be very plausible except for the complete and total lack of bees in the area. (remember, the whole area was pretty much all seeds and no flowers, so nothing much to attract the buzzy ones.) And I just keep thinking about that spider. It was on my hand at some point, and maybe even inside the glove? Except how would I possibly have not felt it wiggling out around my fingers… But I still really think I was munched on by that spider.
Since Charlotte ran off the hand has done many fascinating things. I put the gloves back on (because the way of me is to go “Oh heck, I’m sure it will be fine…” and then ignore it for 2 hours) and when they came off hours later I couldn’t touch the two fingers together from all the puffiness. Also there was much stinging. And you’d think “hey, put some ice on it!” but you’d be wrong, unless you were thinking that the amazing pain from the application of ice might be somehow theraputic. Which it wasn’t. So you were still wrong.
Then the next day it was less generally puffy, but now there’s this big lump. And the pain has mostly gone away, but there is NON STOP itching. Not like a mosquito bite, but more like after bad, muscular, inside harm. The kind of itching where the second that you scratch it the spot stings and stings. (not that I’ve been scratching. I wouldn’t do that, because I know that’s bad. I’m just theorizing about the stinging that hypothetical scratching might hypothetically cause.)
OK, so I’m scratching! I can’t help it! And I figure that with each scratch one of two things are happening: either I’m pushing the special, magic, super-human, radioactive spider juices more and more into my blood stream, thereby speeding me toward my future career as a super-powered crime-fighter, righting wrongs and keeping the streets of Hippyville SAFE for my fellow geeks and youngbloods!
OR
I’m speeding the internal decay and destruction of my hand, fed by evil, vicious spider poisons that will rot my flesh and leave me deciding between “Lefty” or “The One-Armed Man” for a new nickname. It’s exciting times we live in, my people!
I’d grabbed my super-awesome gardening gloves (they’re so cool, and they’re probably the only reason that I keep trying to garden is to give me excuses to wear them) from the shelf in the shed and shoved my hands into the leafy but sadly flowerless expanse. And after a few seconds something poked me! Poked me at the base of my pinky and friend-to-pinky fingers, kind of between them. I assumed I had something pokey in my glove and lifted my hand out of the greens to check inside. Then I got pretty distracted by the spider that was hanging off of my glove. Distracted in that classic “Woah! Spider! On the hand! gittoffgittoffgittoffgittoffGITT OFF! (shake, shake, shake)” way which takes all of about .2 seconds.
I turned the glove inside and there was just nothing in there that could have poked me. Also, the spot where I was poked was already looking red and maybe a teeny bit puffy. And my Mom says “bee sting”, which would be very plausible except for the complete and total lack of bees in the area. (remember, the whole area was pretty much all seeds and no flowers, so nothing much to attract the buzzy ones.) And I just keep thinking about that spider. It was on my hand at some point, and maybe even inside the glove? Except how would I possibly have not felt it wiggling out around my fingers… But I still really think I was munched on by that spider.
Since Charlotte ran off the hand has done many fascinating things. I put the gloves back on (because the way of me is to go “Oh heck, I’m sure it will be fine…” and then ignore it for 2 hours) and when they came off hours later I couldn’t touch the two fingers together from all the puffiness. Also there was much stinging. And you’d think “hey, put some ice on it!” but you’d be wrong, unless you were thinking that the amazing pain from the application of ice might be somehow theraputic. Which it wasn’t. So you were still wrong.
Then the next day it was less generally puffy, but now there’s this big lump. And the pain has mostly gone away, but there is NON STOP itching. Not like a mosquito bite, but more like after bad, muscular, inside harm. The kind of itching where the second that you scratch it the spot stings and stings. (not that I’ve been scratching. I wouldn’t do that, because I know that’s bad. I’m just theorizing about the stinging that hypothetical scratching might hypothetically cause.)
OK, so I’m scratching! I can’t help it! And I figure that with each scratch one of two things are happening: either I’m pushing the special, magic, super-human, radioactive spider juices more and more into my blood stream, thereby speeding me toward my future career as a super-powered crime-fighter, righting wrongs and keeping the streets of Hippyville SAFE for my fellow geeks and youngbloods!
OR
I’m speeding the internal decay and destruction of my hand, fed by evil, vicious spider poisons that will rot my flesh and leave me deciding between “Lefty” or “The One-Armed Man” for a new nickname. It’s exciting times we live in, my people!
Friday, July 11, 2008
Amazon, eat my shipping!
OK, I’m very online-oriented. I love the web, and all things webby, and this is so very true of me as to be mentioned in business meetings! Here at work! In admiring tones! I answer questions and register for things and chat and research things all using my very, very good friend the Internets.
But I don’t so much buy things online.
This is NOT because I’m afraid someone will steal my credit card info or my identity or anything else, because I’m way too sure that nobody cares about me enough to take the time. (remember, I’m the super-genius that used the exact same username and password for practically every website I accessed for something like a decade. Security is apparently for the shiny and rich people, not me!) The main three reasons that I don’t buy things so much online are these:
1. Shipping
2. Stupid, stupid shipping
3. You want HOW MUCH for the shipping?
For this reason I’ve often been a big fan of Amazon.com, the online super-shopping-center-of-everythingness. Because you could get so many things there, and combine the shipping or sometimes not even pay shipping because you got SO MUCH STUFF! This for me was the perfect solution for buying things online.
Well not anymore! Now there are SO many other companies who ply their wares through Amazon, but send from their own wee warehouse somewhere in east Asswipe Nowhere, and so you can find the 6 things that you want to get, but because they’re all coming from different companies/places/zipcodes the shipping will be 50% of the cost! Thereby eliminating the entire benefit of the online purchase, which IS: lower cost!
Yesterday I spent over an hour trying to consolidate the various things I was purchasing so that the shipping wouldn’t exceed the total cost of the items. “Gosh, if I get all of these kinds of things from one place then it would be better, except that this place has absurd shipping costs (we charge you two bucks per shipment, and also six bucks per item, even if the item only costs three bucks and if it actually weighs 2 oz. and could be mailed to you on the head of a danged pin!, so if you buy something for $3 your total will be $11, but if you buy two things for $3 your total will be $20, and if you buy three things for $3 there will also be the “rule of threes” shipping charge, which fluctuates depending on the phases of the moon, so your total will be somewhere between $35 and two cars plus a baby monkey…) so maybe I’ll try to buy them all from this other place, except that this other place only carries two of these three things, and then this place carries all three but for super-high prices. Or maybe I’ll just give my aunt socks and be done with it!”
But I don’t so much buy things online.
This is NOT because I’m afraid someone will steal my credit card info or my identity or anything else, because I’m way too sure that nobody cares about me enough to take the time. (remember, I’m the super-genius that used the exact same username and password for practically every website I accessed for something like a decade. Security is apparently for the shiny and rich people, not me!) The main three reasons that I don’t buy things so much online are these:
1. Shipping
2. Stupid, stupid shipping
3. You want HOW MUCH for the shipping?
For this reason I’ve often been a big fan of Amazon.com, the online super-shopping-center-of-everythingness. Because you could get so many things there, and combine the shipping or sometimes not even pay shipping because you got SO MUCH STUFF! This for me was the perfect solution for buying things online.
Well not anymore! Now there are SO many other companies who ply their wares through Amazon, but send from their own wee warehouse somewhere in east Asswipe Nowhere, and so you can find the 6 things that you want to get, but because they’re all coming from different companies/places/zipcodes the shipping will be 50% of the cost! Thereby eliminating the entire benefit of the online purchase, which IS: lower cost!
Yesterday I spent over an hour trying to consolidate the various things I was purchasing so that the shipping wouldn’t exceed the total cost of the items. “Gosh, if I get all of these kinds of things from one place then it would be better, except that this place has absurd shipping costs (we charge you two bucks per shipment, and also six bucks per item, even if the item only costs three bucks and if it actually weighs 2 oz. and could be mailed to you on the head of a danged pin!, so if you buy something for $3 your total will be $11, but if you buy two things for $3 your total will be $20, and if you buy three things for $3 there will also be the “rule of threes” shipping charge, which fluctuates depending on the phases of the moon, so your total will be somewhere between $35 and two cars plus a baby monkey…) so maybe I’ll try to buy them all from this other place, except that this other place only carries two of these three things, and then this place carries all three but for super-high prices. Or maybe I’ll just give my aunt socks and be done with it!”
Dear my beloved aunt: I was going to get you excellent camera things that
will be fun and cool for you, and which you would have used a bunch. But
because nobody could sell me these cool things without making me scream from the
stupid-high shipping and also because I freaked out at Amazon and they e-asked
me to e-leave and never e-turn, instead you are getting these super-useful tube
socks, size 16. Enjoy.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
An open letter to the house on poo corner
Dear Mr. Organic Farmer Dude full to overflowing of pious, superior mojo:
I understand that you are for all things noble and good and non-chemical and non-corporate and non-republican. And that’s awesome. I have read your freaky anti-Bush, anti-red state, anti-capitalist signs with your unique spelling choices. Many of them I would probably agree with if they didn’t have this vague Uni-Bomber-esque thing going for them. But overall I get the mojo that you’re rockin’ – you’re counter culture. You’re alternative. You’re edgy. With all of this I am very cool.
However each day I peddle by your house, and your edgy, alternative, wild-and-crazy garden patches, and I’m about knocked off of my bike seat by the hardcore smell that floats from your place. The hardcore smell of poo. Dude, your place smells like poo. And that ain’t cool.
I didn’t really notice it until a few weeks ago. When it’s cold and wintery there’s not much gardening, and the smells mostly keep to themselves. But it’s been up in the 80’s and 90’s around here in the last few weeks, and nothing says “dry heaves dragging you off you squishy bicycle seat” like poo wafting on the 95 degree breeze! Not cool, dude! Not cool!
I’m no gardener, but surely there must be some other way to be Farmer Brown and not be The Man? Something that would keep folks from checking the bottoms of their shoes as they walk past your corner? (I’ve seen them do it. And yes, I’ve laughed. But that’s not the point.) Something all natural and earthy and homeo, as well as pathic, but not crappic?
If not, could I ask you to at least make a new sign to warn people of the air pollution issues around your home, so that they can choose to cross the street or hold their breath or something? Maybe something in a limerick or knock-knock joke? Or in iambic pentameter? What rhymes with “smells like ass?” I’m just sayin…
I understand that you are for all things noble and good and non-chemical and non-corporate and non-republican. And that’s awesome. I have read your freaky anti-Bush, anti-red state, anti-capitalist signs with your unique spelling choices. Many of them I would probably agree with if they didn’t have this vague Uni-Bomber-esque thing going for them. But overall I get the mojo that you’re rockin’ – you’re counter culture. You’re alternative. You’re edgy. With all of this I am very cool.
However each day I peddle by your house, and your edgy, alternative, wild-and-crazy garden patches, and I’m about knocked off of my bike seat by the hardcore smell that floats from your place. The hardcore smell of poo. Dude, your place smells like poo. And that ain’t cool.
I didn’t really notice it until a few weeks ago. When it’s cold and wintery there’s not much gardening, and the smells mostly keep to themselves. But it’s been up in the 80’s and 90’s around here in the last few weeks, and nothing says “dry heaves dragging you off you squishy bicycle seat” like poo wafting on the 95 degree breeze! Not cool, dude! Not cool!
I’m no gardener, but surely there must be some other way to be Farmer Brown and not be The Man? Something that would keep folks from checking the bottoms of their shoes as they walk past your corner? (I’ve seen them do it. And yes, I’ve laughed. But that’s not the point.) Something all natural and earthy and homeo, as well as pathic, but not crappic?
If not, could I ask you to at least make a new sign to warn people of the air pollution issues around your home, so that they can choose to cross the street or hold their breath or something? Maybe something in a limerick or knock-knock joke? Or in iambic pentameter? What rhymes with “smells like ass?” I’m just sayin…
Monday, July 07, 2008
Fabulosity!
Time to change the Desktop here at work! Below is the face that will be staring out (sorta) at me from my desktop for the rest of July. Few dogs can accessorize this confidently, or with this much flare, no?
(courtesy of Dooce.com)
(courtesy of Dooce.com)Sunday, July 06, 2008
No Expectation of Privacy
Best cell phone conversation overheard at a Hippy-Dippy Art Festival EVER:
"What? Why?! I could totally steal it! I could steal the sh*t out of any car!!"[listening...]
"So what do you want me to do, kill someone? Because that's what it's coming down to!"[listening...]
"Of COURSE I'm a good person, Dad! Do you think I don't think I'm a totally good person?!?! God!!"(and I thought there were no good men left out there.)
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Scooching towards healthiosity
OK, so don’t freak out, but this morning after my shower I moisturized. With actual moisturizer. On my actual skin-parts. Voluntarily. Oh, and not only was the moisturizer full of healthy-moist-goodness, but it also had sun tan lotion in it. Right IN it! They can apparently do that now! First a man on the moon, now tan lotion in moist stuff. AMAZING!
As shocking as this is, especially to those of you who know me, it’s just the healthy tip of a new and bizarre Healthy Iceburg. For instance, ever since The Queen showed me the ins and outs of home pedicurity I’ve been using the magical foot butter (which, by the way, is not just normal butter applied to your foot. Learn from my mistakes.) every couple of weeks. For the first time since I went from sticking the feet in my mouth to walking on them they no longer feel like alligator-skin bags full of foot bones! And I painted my very own toes myself with my own hands myself all by myself myself! (that may not be healthy, but it’s girly, and that’s just as bizarre.)
Also, I’ve been making dinners lately. And by “making dinners” I normally mean “one box Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, one package hot dogs, mix and enjoy”. Only now I’ve meant things like “one grilled sirloin steak, roasted green beans, spaghetti noodles w/ melted butter and herbs”. Notice the lack of mystery meat or processed cheese food? Not to mention that I made a meal of three different things and they were all done at very close to the same time and edible or even tasty and covered a cross section foods, should you arrange the foods in some kind of geometrical shape like a pyramid. Or a rhombus. The food rhombus.
What else? Oh yeah, I’m trying to stop sleeping on the couch all night long. And also to stop sleeping with the TV on all night long. Now the sleeping on the couch thing is tough, because I love to sleep on the couch. No idea why, exactly, but it tends to feel like more indulgent sleep. Like I’m getting away with something – ooh, aah, sleeping where you should only be lying around! Scandal!
On the other hand, the sleeping with my good friend Mr. Television has been a purposeful thing for years. I know the smartipants sleep experts (or Slexperts, as I like to call them) say “Mercy me and good googly-moogly, you should NEVER sleep with the TV on! Bad, bad sleeping! Badness!!” However those smartipants never had the insanely vivid dreams I started having. So vivid, in fact, that I would wake up more tired than when I went to sleep. I finally started sleeping with the TV on to provide my over-active brain with just enough distraction as to let the rest of the brain take the night off. And it worked! But all of that started a decade ago; these days I wake most mornings with tremendous bags under my eyes, no matter the number of hours of sleep. So it’s time to try some new things and see if it helps. Healthy, no?
Disclaimer: I reserve the right to go back to sleeping with a full bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and a hoagie in the other, with the TV, stereo and CB Radio all on, as well as dancing naked in sunny sand storms of radioactive evil at any time. You are not the boss of me.
As shocking as this is, especially to those of you who know me, it’s just the healthy tip of a new and bizarre Healthy Iceburg. For instance, ever since The Queen showed me the ins and outs of home pedicurity I’ve been using the magical foot butter (which, by the way, is not just normal butter applied to your foot. Learn from my mistakes.) every couple of weeks. For the first time since I went from sticking the feet in my mouth to walking on them they no longer feel like alligator-skin bags full of foot bones! And I painted my very own toes myself with my own hands myself all by myself myself! (that may not be healthy, but it’s girly, and that’s just as bizarre.)
Also, I’ve been making dinners lately. And by “making dinners” I normally mean “one box Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, one package hot dogs, mix and enjoy”. Only now I’ve meant things like “one grilled sirloin steak, roasted green beans, spaghetti noodles w/ melted butter and herbs”. Notice the lack of mystery meat or processed cheese food? Not to mention that I made a meal of three different things and they were all done at very close to the same time and edible or even tasty and covered a cross section foods, should you arrange the foods in some kind of geometrical shape like a pyramid. Or a rhombus. The food rhombus.
What else? Oh yeah, I’m trying to stop sleeping on the couch all night long. And also to stop sleeping with the TV on all night long. Now the sleeping on the couch thing is tough, because I love to sleep on the couch. No idea why, exactly, but it tends to feel like more indulgent sleep. Like I’m getting away with something – ooh, aah, sleeping where you should only be lying around! Scandal!
On the other hand, the sleeping with my good friend Mr. Television has been a purposeful thing for years. I know the smartipants sleep experts (or Slexperts, as I like to call them) say “Mercy me and good googly-moogly, you should NEVER sleep with the TV on! Bad, bad sleeping! Badness!!” However those smartipants never had the insanely vivid dreams I started having. So vivid, in fact, that I would wake up more tired than when I went to sleep. I finally started sleeping with the TV on to provide my over-active brain with just enough distraction as to let the rest of the brain take the night off. And it worked! But all of that started a decade ago; these days I wake most mornings with tremendous bags under my eyes, no matter the number of hours of sleep. So it’s time to try some new things and see if it helps. Healthy, no?
Disclaimer: I reserve the right to go back to sleeping with a full bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and a hoagie in the other, with the TV, stereo and CB Radio all on, as well as dancing naked in sunny sand storms of radioactive evil at any time. You are not the boss of me.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The dangers of wreaking excessive irony.
OK, the first thing I should stipulate here is that so far today my morning has SUCKED. I overslept by over 30 minutes, and of course on a morning where I have to be in super-early for this big, honkin’ meeting so I CANNOT be late and it’s overcast which may be why I can feel a migraine headache sneakily stalking me morning. (if you look over behind that lamp post you’ll see the migraine pretending to read an upside down girly magazine) The big, honkin’ meeting was rocky, to say the least, and it was one of those rare ones where I spent most of it having no idea what the hell the group was talking about. Which would be fine except I’m taking minutes, so I have to understand enough about what is being discussed to summarize it. Oh, and also correctly – did I mention that? That I have to summarize correctly? Yeah. So I know the rest of the day will be spent trying to make sense of 10 pages worth of “Wha?” Which I hate. And then two people nagged me about something which they were totally entitled to do except CRAPPY MORNING, so it made me even more cranky.
And the migraine just sat down in the bus seat behind me. sigh.
All of this to say that everything I’m about to cover is little and silly and petty. UNLESS you’ve had a crappy, crappy morning which has left you with no sense of humor and a dire need for yummy breakfast foodness.
I walk into the office kitchen to indulge in a little raspberry muffin, left-over from this morning’s meeting, because I goshdamn deserve it and because you can't translate "Wha?" on an empty stomach. Only here I find a co-worker. She’s on her cell phone, she’s barefoot (shudder) and she’s standing in front of the excess breakfast goodies. Is she gathering food and leaving? Oh no, because that would require her to be aware that there are other people. Anywhere. In the whole world. No, she’s standing in front of the food, chatting away and just nibbling at the muffins and bagels there. And chatting. And being all shoeless. And BLOCKING MY ACCESS TO MY MUFFINS! Trying to be a civilized member of society, I stand back and wait for her to get her food and leave.
She’s all:
“Oh I know! Can you believe that? I totally know. (nom, nom, nom) She just doesn’t think, right? Never thinks! (nom, nom, yummy bagel) It’s like she thinks she’s the only person on the whole planet, right? Totally! (nom, nom, top of muffin is best, nom, nom, leave muffin bottom behind, nom, nom) I totally know. It makes me so crazy, right? I know.”
At this point an irony-induced hysteria caused me to leap on her head and scoop out her very small brain with a plastic spoon. WOMAN, GET YOUR SHOES ON AND YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR NETHER REGION AND GET AWAY FROM MY TASTY BREAKFAST TREATS! MY PRECIOUS!! MY BREAKFAST FOODIES!!! Luckily blood and brain goo go ok on a savory bagel and muffin bottom.
And I totally see you, Mr. Migraine.
And the migraine just sat down in the bus seat behind me. sigh.
All of this to say that everything I’m about to cover is little and silly and petty. UNLESS you’ve had a crappy, crappy morning which has left you with no sense of humor and a dire need for yummy breakfast foodness.
I walk into the office kitchen to indulge in a little raspberry muffin, left-over from this morning’s meeting, because I goshdamn deserve it and because you can't translate "Wha?" on an empty stomach. Only here I find a co-worker. She’s on her cell phone, she’s barefoot (shudder) and she’s standing in front of the excess breakfast goodies. Is she gathering food and leaving? Oh no, because that would require her to be aware that there are other people. Anywhere. In the whole world. No, she’s standing in front of the food, chatting away and just nibbling at the muffins and bagels there. And chatting. And being all shoeless. And BLOCKING MY ACCESS TO MY MUFFINS! Trying to be a civilized member of society, I stand back and wait for her to get her food and leave.
She’s all:
“Oh I know! Can you believe that? I totally know. (nom, nom, nom) She just doesn’t think, right? Never thinks! (nom, nom, yummy bagel) It’s like she thinks she’s the only person on the whole planet, right? Totally! (nom, nom, top of muffin is best, nom, nom, leave muffin bottom behind, nom, nom) I totally know. It makes me so crazy, right? I know.”
At this point an irony-induced hysteria caused me to leap on her head and scoop out her very small brain with a plastic spoon. WOMAN, GET YOUR SHOES ON AND YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR NETHER REGION AND GET AWAY FROM MY TASTY BREAKFAST TREATS! MY PRECIOUS!! MY BREAKFAST FOODIES!!! Luckily blood and brain goo go ok on a savory bagel and muffin bottom.
And I totally see you, Mr. Migraine.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Motivational Slacking.
So one of my dream jobs/careers would be to write for a living. I’ve really idealized it into this existence where I would sleep until 9am each morning, and then I’d get up and sit in front of my computer, snuggled in some artful cardigan sweater, cradling my steaming coffee cup, tremendous and excellent words pouring out of my fingers into my next great novel. And I make big, fancy money and magical benefits, and I’m creative and inspired and get to travel to fabulous places to have fans tell me how much they loved my last book. And I would always feel fulfilled and sure of my place in the universe and I would love what I do for a living.
Now of course this dream is ridiculous and impossible. I hate coffee, and I bet authors never get dental, so clearly this is a fantasy. (and the first one of you that points out that you’ve been reading my words for some time now and have yet to be inspired or moved, or even particularly clear on what the hell I’m talking about, gets an e-sock on the side of your e-head!)
The other reason that this idea seems impossible is that it’s all that I can do to try to keep up here on this blog. I’m so embarrassed when I see that many days have passed and I have no new words. All the time I’m coming up with something that seems very post-worthy on the way home from work or standing in the shower, but I can’t actually compose the post on the bike or in the shower and making other times happen is hard! Or I’ll start a post, but when I come back to it much later I have no idea where the heck I thought I was going with that thought. OR I write down the initial thought, but can’t find any associated thoughts that want to come play with the initial thought. My creative thoughts apparently don’t play well with others.
Not that I’m willing to cut other bloggers any slack when they don’t post. I have blogs that I check every day and periodically there will be a day when NOBODY has done a new post. And do I say “oh gosh and golly, I’ll bet that he/she had a long day at work or had to go to tap class or was kidnapped by the Burmese Liberation Army (notorious for still connecting to the web via dial-up) and just couldn’t get a new post written. I understand completely.” Yeah, because I’m ever so reasonable and level-headed. You must be new…
I have a friend who blogs (blogged long before I did actually) and who will take these occasional long, big gaps in her blogging, which would be fine except for three things: 1) I love to read her blog and when she doesn’t update I have no new blog to read; 2) sometimes when bloggers you know update their blog they mention you and I seriously crave the attention!! and 3) due to her non-lovin’ of writing emails or chatting on the phone or living less than 90 minutes away from Hippyville the way I know what’s going on in her life is when she updates her blog! (and she knows who she are and she also knows that “where the heck does Femtastic get off telling me to hurry up and blog when she knows that I have 2 kids and a husband and a job and 2 Etsy stores and 47 hobbies I’m currently trying to do as well as another 236 that I’ve not yet found the time to do and when was the last time she mentioned ME in HER blog and YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!!!” Which are all excellent, fair and good points. Maybe she would like to blog about them?)
On those nights when I’m sitting on my couch, watching dreadful tv and falling asleep, while knowing that I should be in the office squeezing thoughts out of my tiny brain onto this page, I think this: if you are ever going to have a career instead of a job; if you’re ever going to do what you enjoy rather than feeling like you’re wasting your time; if you’re ever going to be able to sleep until 9am on a Tuesday without being unemployed you must GET OFF YOUR ASS AND WRITE SOMETHING.
Either that, or learn how to curve the bullet to become a super-cool rockstar assassin. Your choice.
Now of course this dream is ridiculous and impossible. I hate coffee, and I bet authors never get dental, so clearly this is a fantasy. (and the first one of you that points out that you’ve been reading my words for some time now and have yet to be inspired or moved, or even particularly clear on what the hell I’m talking about, gets an e-sock on the side of your e-head!)
The other reason that this idea seems impossible is that it’s all that I can do to try to keep up here on this blog. I’m so embarrassed when I see that many days have passed and I have no new words. All the time I’m coming up with something that seems very post-worthy on the way home from work or standing in the shower, but I can’t actually compose the post on the bike or in the shower and making other times happen is hard! Or I’ll start a post, but when I come back to it much later I have no idea where the heck I thought I was going with that thought. OR I write down the initial thought, but can’t find any associated thoughts that want to come play with the initial thought. My creative thoughts apparently don’t play well with others.
Not that I’m willing to cut other bloggers any slack when they don’t post. I have blogs that I check every day and periodically there will be a day when NOBODY has done a new post. And do I say “oh gosh and golly, I’ll bet that he/she had a long day at work or had to go to tap class or was kidnapped by the Burmese Liberation Army (notorious for still connecting to the web via dial-up) and just couldn’t get a new post written. I understand completely.” Yeah, because I’m ever so reasonable and level-headed. You must be new…
I have a friend who blogs (blogged long before I did actually) and who will take these occasional long, big gaps in her blogging, which would be fine except for three things: 1) I love to read her blog and when she doesn’t update I have no new blog to read; 2) sometimes when bloggers you know update their blog they mention you and I seriously crave the attention!! and 3) due to her non-lovin’ of writing emails or chatting on the phone or living less than 90 minutes away from Hippyville the way I know what’s going on in her life is when she updates her blog! (and she knows who she are and she also knows that “where the heck does Femtastic get off telling me to hurry up and blog when she knows that I have 2 kids and a husband and a job and 2 Etsy stores and 47 hobbies I’m currently trying to do as well as another 236 that I’ve not yet found the time to do and when was the last time she mentioned ME in HER blog and YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!!!” Which are all excellent, fair and good points. Maybe she would like to blog about them?)
On those nights when I’m sitting on my couch, watching dreadful tv and falling asleep, while knowing that I should be in the office squeezing thoughts out of my tiny brain onto this page, I think this: if you are ever going to have a career instead of a job; if you’re ever going to do what you enjoy rather than feeling like you’re wasting your time; if you’re ever going to be able to sleep until 9am on a Tuesday without being unemployed you must GET OFF YOUR ASS AND WRITE SOMETHING.
Either that, or learn how to curve the bullet to become a super-cool rockstar assassin. Your choice.
Baby's First Diva Tantrum
My 14-yr old nephew’s band asked me to take some pictures of them, which was good because I’d been BEGGING them to let me take their picture for like a year. I figured I’m a photographer (well ok, I’m photographeresque at least) and I’ve been all about rock and roll forever and I’m super-cool, so how would there be any problem with me playing Annie Leibovitz to their U2 or Rolling Stones or Guns & Butter?
So I ask the band to meet me at a local park at 9:30am one Saturday morning. Now before you say it, I KNOW that getting up early on a Saturday morning is not rock and roll! I know this! It should have been a midnight shoot in a back alley or the top of some abandoned building or a desert in Arizona! But cut me slack – there were summer vacations to be scheduled around. And curfews. In order to do my part to make it as rock and roll as possible, I stayed up all night the night before and showed up drunk and with a prostitute. I suffer for the art.
There are 6 little dudes in the band (and by “little” I mean “seriously, stop looking me in the eye, I changed your diapers, that’s enough being tall out of you. And that goes double for your little friends.”); of those six most of them were pretty easy to work with, one didn’t show up because he didn’t have a ride (yeah, because that is SO rock and roll) and then there was the Lead Singer. And like all Lead Singers, this kid was drama. D-R-A-M-A.
I’m thinking of simple shots, straight forward, and with really only one rule: no smiling. I’m doing shots like “up against the chain link fence” or “sitting on the picnic bench” or “under the tree” and I’m getting stuff that I think will work. Lead Singer is asking for things like “can you take a picture of our instruments and put it with a picture of fire and make it look like our instruments are on fire?”
Now I was so gonna let that go! But this was just the beginning.
LS: “Here’s what I want: we’re all standing on the grass and we’re pointing in the air. And they won’t know what we’re pointing at.”
FT: “…I’ll take that picture if you want. However you should know that in photography circles that’s called the ‘Sears Catalog Shot’. But I’ll take it if you really want me to.”
The Band: “NO!”
LS: “Here’s what I want: if you can just make sure that there are no cars coming down the road, and then we’ll all walk across the street like we’re just crossing the street.”
FT: “Are you talking about Abbey Road?”
LS: "Oh you know it?”
FT: “I’m not ripping off Abbey Road! What is WRONG with you?”
LS: “Here’s what I want, and I hope that nobody’s too religious but whatever: We do like the last supper picture (oh boy), but with our heads over the regular heads (ok, that’s not THAT bad I guess). And I’ll be Jesus.”
FT: “NO! And do you know why "No!"? Because “And I’ll be Jesus.”! That's why!"
While setting up the shot “standing on and around the 2 swings (an exploration of childhood, mirth and rock n’ roll)” Lead Singer is acting all hinky and I ask him what’s up. And he says to me this:
“nobody’s gonna want these pictures is all.”
“why, because they’re not cool enough?”
“they’re just not rock and roll.”
And sadly, at that moment, I killed him with the laser beams, ROCK AND ROLL laser beams, from my eyes. Had to be done.
OK, I didn’t kill him. I said to him this: “Dude (because that shows that I’m young and hip), I have been seeing rock and roll pictures and listening to rock and roll music and going to rock and roll concerts LIKE THESE GUYS (and I point at my chest, and my strategically selected Police t-shirt which I just got last summer because I am THAT COOL) since long before you were filling diapers. So if you could just give me half an ounce of trust that would be excellent.” (and then the rock and roll laser beam from the eyes.)
250 pictures. Very, very cool pictures. And even MORE important: no lives were lost. So I am a SAINT.
So I ask the band to meet me at a local park at 9:30am one Saturday morning. Now before you say it, I KNOW that getting up early on a Saturday morning is not rock and roll! I know this! It should have been a midnight shoot in a back alley or the top of some abandoned building or a desert in Arizona! But cut me slack – there were summer vacations to be scheduled around. And curfews. In order to do my part to make it as rock and roll as possible, I stayed up all night the night before and showed up drunk and with a prostitute. I suffer for the art.
There are 6 little dudes in the band (and by “little” I mean “seriously, stop looking me in the eye, I changed your diapers, that’s enough being tall out of you. And that goes double for your little friends.”); of those six most of them were pretty easy to work with, one didn’t show up because he didn’t have a ride (yeah, because that is SO rock and roll) and then there was the Lead Singer. And like all Lead Singers, this kid was drama. D-R-A-M-A.
I’m thinking of simple shots, straight forward, and with really only one rule: no smiling. I’m doing shots like “up against the chain link fence” or “sitting on the picnic bench” or “under the tree” and I’m getting stuff that I think will work. Lead Singer is asking for things like “can you take a picture of our instruments and put it with a picture of fire and make it look like our instruments are on fire?”
Now I was so gonna let that go! But this was just the beginning.
LS: “Here’s what I want: we’re all standing on the grass and we’re pointing in the air. And they won’t know what we’re pointing at.”
FT: “…I’ll take that picture if you want. However you should know that in photography circles that’s called the ‘Sears Catalog Shot’. But I’ll take it if you really want me to.”
The Band: “NO!”
LS: “Here’s what I want: if you can just make sure that there are no cars coming down the road, and then we’ll all walk across the street like we’re just crossing the street.”
FT: “Are you talking about Abbey Road?”
LS: "Oh you know it?”
FT: “I’m not ripping off Abbey Road! What is WRONG with you?”
LS: “Here’s what I want, and I hope that nobody’s too religious but whatever: We do like the last supper picture (oh boy), but with our heads over the regular heads (ok, that’s not THAT bad I guess). And I’ll be Jesus.”
FT: “NO! And do you know why "No!"? Because “And I’ll be Jesus.”! That's why!"
While setting up the shot “standing on and around the 2 swings (an exploration of childhood, mirth and rock n’ roll)” Lead Singer is acting all hinky and I ask him what’s up. And he says to me this:
“nobody’s gonna want these pictures is all.”
“why, because they’re not cool enough?”
“they’re just not rock and roll.”
And sadly, at that moment, I killed him with the laser beams, ROCK AND ROLL laser beams, from my eyes. Had to be done.
OK, I didn’t kill him. I said to him this: “Dude (because that shows that I’m young and hip), I have been seeing rock and roll pictures and listening to rock and roll music and going to rock and roll concerts LIKE THESE GUYS (and I point at my chest, and my strategically selected Police t-shirt which I just got last summer because I am THAT COOL) since long before you were filling diapers. So if you could just give me half an ounce of trust that would be excellent.” (and then the rock and roll laser beam from the eyes.)
250 pictures. Very, very cool pictures. And even MORE important: no lives were lost. So I am a SAINT.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Of course you realize that this means war...
It was one thing when you sent me, tra-la-la, down the scary, cement fire stairs. Tricky, but I survived. And I knew it was ON.
Then all those times when you tried to bring me down off my bike seat. You tried, OH YOU TRIED, but you missed. And you left all those big purple dents on the inside of my thigh. But still I survived.
But this time you go after my mother? A person’s MOTHER? Well this time you have gone too far, Gravity. This time it is WAR.
No kidding – my Mom was doing her daily walk of fitness and goodness and getting of the exercise last week, just like a good girl should (and this girl never, ever does), and she just caught the tippy tip of her toe on an uneven patch of pavement and went DOWN. Face FIRST down! And somehow she had left the house without both of her hands or something, because only one of them got out to break her fall. So. To recap: she broke her quick, forward, sidewalk-bound decent with her right hand and her left face.
This is something you are going to want to avoid. Think of this as a PSA or something: the more you know about not smashing your face into the sidewalk (and now the swirly gold star and it’s rainbow friends and the four piano chords of knowledge…) She looked SO BAD! And actually the badness came in waves of badness.
First night she just looked like somebody very much not her. Big, fat mouse under the eye, and big fat chin to go with it (a matched set – you get a much better price if you get them together) and the rarely-seen split lip both outside AND INSIDE the mouth. The amazing thing was how specific all the damage was located! I approached her from her right side and thought “wow, she doesn’t look bad at ALL! This isn’t such a- WOAH!!!!” and then she turned around and facial fatness all up and down her face. So not right!
All that first night the question was “get a stitch inside the lip or not? Yes? No? Still bleeding, still bleeding, STILL bleeding…” The thing was we knew that if she went to the ER for the fat, ever-bleeding lip they’d want X-rays and other stuff and she’d be there ALL night long, so she really needed to want that lip stitched up for this to be worth it. Instead we went old-school and stuck a tea bag in her mouth for a couple of hours. Luckily she likes tea – were it me there’d be that pesky gag reflex to keep having to deal with on top of the tummy full of my very own blood.
(hey, are you going to finish eating that?)
So then the next day her face went back to being really close to the right size and shape, but by then the color had arrived. Oh the array of reds and purples and almost-blacks! I told Dadtastic that he might want to avoid going out with Momtastic for a while because it did NOT make him look good! (but what can I say? Sometimes she just doesn’t LISTEN! [too soon for the domestic abuse jokes? Sorry. My bad.])
But wait, we're not done. A week goes by and the purples are starting to get green and yellow at the edges and the face it just about the right shape all the way around. Yay! So, to celebrate, Momtastic decided to go out to her alley garden, get her foot caught up in her bean trellis and GO DOWN AGAIN! FACE GODDAMN FIRST!!! So she comes to the Father’s Day bar-b-que with fabulous new purple on her already-purple, freshly fattened-up chin, plus a big, red gash all scabbed over. You know, it’s what all the cool kids are sporting these days.
I have told her that if anything else falling-down-related happens I’m going to get her a football helmet and insist she wears it from now on. I am SO not kidding about this. Oh, and Gravity?
Bring it, bitch.
Then all those times when you tried to bring me down off my bike seat. You tried, OH YOU TRIED, but you missed. And you left all those big purple dents on the inside of my thigh. But still I survived.
But this time you go after my mother? A person’s MOTHER? Well this time you have gone too far, Gravity. This time it is WAR.
No kidding – my Mom was doing her daily walk of fitness and goodness and getting of the exercise last week, just like a good girl should (and this girl never, ever does), and she just caught the tippy tip of her toe on an uneven patch of pavement and went DOWN. Face FIRST down! And somehow she had left the house without both of her hands or something, because only one of them got out to break her fall. So. To recap: she broke her quick, forward, sidewalk-bound decent with her right hand and her left face.
This is something you are going to want to avoid. Think of this as a PSA or something: the more you know about not smashing your face into the sidewalk (and now the swirly gold star and it’s rainbow friends and the four piano chords of knowledge…) She looked SO BAD! And actually the badness came in waves of badness.
First night she just looked like somebody very much not her. Big, fat mouse under the eye, and big fat chin to go with it (a matched set – you get a much better price if you get them together) and the rarely-seen split lip both outside AND INSIDE the mouth. The amazing thing was how specific all the damage was located! I approached her from her right side and thought “wow, she doesn’t look bad at ALL! This isn’t such a- WOAH!!!!” and then she turned around and facial fatness all up and down her face. So not right!
All that first night the question was “get a stitch inside the lip or not? Yes? No? Still bleeding, still bleeding, STILL bleeding…” The thing was we knew that if she went to the ER for the fat, ever-bleeding lip they’d want X-rays and other stuff and she’d be there ALL night long, so she really needed to want that lip stitched up for this to be worth it. Instead we went old-school and stuck a tea bag in her mouth for a couple of hours. Luckily she likes tea – were it me there’d be that pesky gag reflex to keep having to deal with on top of the tummy full of my very own blood.
(hey, are you going to finish eating that?)
So then the next day her face went back to being really close to the right size and shape, but by then the color had arrived. Oh the array of reds and purples and almost-blacks! I told Dadtastic that he might want to avoid going out with Momtastic for a while because it did NOT make him look good! (but what can I say? Sometimes she just doesn’t LISTEN! [too soon for the domestic abuse jokes? Sorry. My bad.])
But wait, we're not done. A week goes by and the purples are starting to get green and yellow at the edges and the face it just about the right shape all the way around. Yay! So, to celebrate, Momtastic decided to go out to her alley garden, get her foot caught up in her bean trellis and GO DOWN AGAIN! FACE GODDAMN FIRST!!! So she comes to the Father’s Day bar-b-que with fabulous new purple on her already-purple, freshly fattened-up chin, plus a big, red gash all scabbed over. You know, it’s what all the cool kids are sporting these days.
I have told her that if anything else falling-down-related happens I’m going to get her a football helmet and insist she wears it from now on. I am SO not kidding about this. Oh, and Gravity?
Bring it, bitch.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Big Finish, now with more JAZZ HANDS!
SO MANY THINGS! This weekend was chockoblock FULL of STUFF, to the point where I just couldn’t keep up with all the post-worthy items. There were monumental accomplishments like college graduations, and silly little things like photo-shoots for baby rock bands and suddenly it’s Tuesday night and MUST POST! So here I am, but it’s gonna take me a few days to catch up. Bare with me, my peoples.
Remember months ago when I was giddy-gleeful over my shiny, tappy tap shoes? And how excellent it was that I was taking a tap class? Well shine me up, my people, because I done did it! From September to June I tapped and tapped and TAPPED, all working towards the goal of last Saturday. Saturday night I pulled on the least flattering, spandex-and-silver-glitter costume ever made, along with my now-broken-in, soft-and-comfy tap shoes, and I ROCKED the KASBAH, peoples!
(an aside to the people who pick out the costumes: Please note the figures of your students in the future and avoid things that accentuate, nay HIGHLIGHT, tummies that could honestly be compared to semi-deflated soccer balls? Also, no silver glitter. In fact, let's just say no glitter period. No matter how snazzy it might look in the catalog, the costume owner lives in fear of freeing it from the sealed ziplock bag for fear that they will never get all the shedded glitter out of their house. Or car. Or driveway. Or anything ever good god it is EVERYWHERE.)
I wish I could say that the packed theater of about 300 or so audience members was there just to see me prance around for a solid 3 minutes, 21 seconds. Except that would be absurd and also that much pressure would lead to excessive wetting of my spandexy pants. See, here’s the deal: the dance school through which I mastered the art of the tap, the punch, the paddle, the shim-sham, well they teach a pile of classes! Tap, but also jazz and ballet and hip-hop and hip-hop and HIP-HOP-HIP-HOP-HIP-HOPHOPHOP! (no kidding, there were a whole lot of hip hop classes) And at the end of the 9 months of classes we all shake our trained booties in a big, fancy show on stage at the local performing arts center!
Not the local high school. Not the tiny repertory theater. This place has hosted rock bands and traveling broadway shows and Garrison-frigging-Keillor! The BIG TIME! And where Garrison stood and spoke folksy-but-eloquent wisdo-humor I scuffed and chugged and shuffle-box-stepped. Here are some things that I learned from this experience:
Remember months ago when I was giddy-gleeful over my shiny, tappy tap shoes? And how excellent it was that I was taking a tap class? Well shine me up, my people, because I done did it! From September to June I tapped and tapped and TAPPED, all working towards the goal of last Saturday. Saturday night I pulled on the least flattering, spandex-and-silver-glitter costume ever made, along with my now-broken-in, soft-and-comfy tap shoes, and I ROCKED the KASBAH, peoples!
(an aside to the people who pick out the costumes: Please note the figures of your students in the future and avoid things that accentuate, nay HIGHLIGHT, tummies that could honestly be compared to semi-deflated soccer balls? Also, no silver glitter. In fact, let's just say no glitter period. No matter how snazzy it might look in the catalog, the costume owner lives in fear of freeing it from the sealed ziplock bag for fear that they will never get all the shedded glitter out of their house. Or car. Or driveway. Or anything ever good god it is EVERYWHERE.)
I wish I could say that the packed theater of about 300 or so audience members was there just to see me prance around for a solid 3 minutes, 21 seconds. Except that would be absurd and also that much pressure would lead to excessive wetting of my spandexy pants. See, here’s the deal: the dance school through which I mastered the art of the tap, the punch, the paddle, the shim-sham, well they teach a pile of classes! Tap, but also jazz and ballet and hip-hop and hip-hop and HIP-HOP-HIP-HOP-HIP-HOPHOPHOP! (no kidding, there were a whole lot of hip hop classes) And at the end of the 9 months of classes we all shake our trained booties in a big, fancy show on stage at the local performing arts center!
Not the local high school. Not the tiny repertory theater. This place has hosted rock bands and traveling broadway shows and Garrison-frigging-Keillor! The BIG TIME! And where Garrison stood and spoke folksy-but-eloquent wisdo-humor I scuffed and chugged and shuffle-box-stepped. Here are some things that I learned from this experience:
- No matter when I last went #1, within 5 minutes of stepping on stage I will still have to pee.
- Making a mistake? Acceptable. Saying “Oh crap, I screwed up!” on stage? Not so much.
- If you’re 4 years old and wearing a dress that looks like it could also be a blue-and-yellow wedding cake you don’t need to take a single dance step; you’ll still bring down the house.
- As uncomfortable as “suck-everything-in” underwear are normally, they are an unholy experience once they’ve been wedged into normally sealed areas via dancy-dance movements.
- The ones who have all the fun are always more entertaining than the ones who think they’re hot shit. Even if they are actually hot shit.
- I don’t care HOW old I am! I performed, and now someone better take me to get ICE CREAM!
Thursday, June 12, 2008
What I should be when I grow up, chapter 1
The other day I came home from work to find a great, big box from one of my best buddies who doesn’t live in Hippyville. (she was my excellent boss when I lived in the big city, and she’s OBNOXIOUSLY smart, especially since I’m older than she is so in THEORY I should be smarter about something, SOMETHING, but no, she knows everything. And also she is always so danged on top of everything and prepared and organized and at a certain point I realized that I either had to choose to hate her INTENSELY with the fire that only a combination of envy and intimidation can provide, or to find her amazing and cool and follow in her footsteps whenever possible. I chose option B, but because of option A I’m going to call her Goofy (and also because she has mad love for all things Disney. But mostly its just the 'being perfect' thing. Revenge at last!)
I was not expecting a box, but the Goofster has been known to spontaneously send little awesome packages, so ‘YAY!’ When I opened it I found a great and excellent homage to French Canadian, spandex-clad, bendy-twisty fabulousness! (In other words: Cirque du Soleil stuff! Woo Hoo!) We're talking CDs and books and cool, cool stuff. And did I mention it was spontaneous?
Goofy and I discovered the magic and majesty of Cirque many years ago w/ Saltimbanco, and we’ve both been ape for them ever since. Like SUPER ape! We go see the shows, but we also wear the clothes and listen to the soundtracks and walk the walk and talk the talk and Cirque, Baby!!
(note: ok, we don’t really walk the walk, because I’m pretty sure that walking the Cirque walk would involve putting one’s legs behind one’s neck, and possibly one’s head up one’s rear-area. Which we just aren’t doing. And we also don’t actually talk the talk, because I believe the Cirque talk would be French. And I’m more likely to be able to put my head up my rear-area than be able to speak French.)
Anyway, I don’t know what this box means. I don’t know if she’s giving me all of her awesome Cirque bounty, mayhaps because she’s decided that she’s received all the magic that she can from our French-Canadian heroes of contortion and flying? Or did she hit the Ebay motherload on Cirque stuff, thereby totally completing the entire Cirque collection, and these are the things she already had? Or did she decide that she wouldn’t be able to be my friend anymore if I didn’t have just a bit more Cirque coolness? Or possibly this is pre-emptive willing, due to a premonition that her time is nigh? Picture me on my living room floor, surrounded by this jackpot of Cirque fabulousness, rolling around on soundtracks and programs but afraid to like it too much just in case it’s actually a portent of badness!
And then I thought this: maybe Goofy has sent this as a form of career guidance! Maybe she believes that she has found the right career path for me! And it involves juggling fire! Hanging myself from my earlobes! Hot Human Pretzel Action! And EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!
(the sane and rational among you have probably already started crafting your helpful emails suggesting that maybe I could just call or email Goofy and ask her the story behind the fabulous box of Cirque goodness. Emails I will ignore because sanity? Rational thinking? HAH!! Since when do I traffic in such goods?!?! DOUBLE-HAH!!) Now pardon me while I figure out how one limbers up one’s earlobes…
I was not expecting a box, but the Goofster has been known to spontaneously send little awesome packages, so ‘YAY!’ When I opened it I found a great and excellent homage to French Canadian, spandex-clad, bendy-twisty fabulousness! (In other words: Cirque du Soleil stuff! Woo Hoo!) We're talking CDs and books and cool, cool stuff. And did I mention it was spontaneous?
Goofy and I discovered the magic and majesty of Cirque many years ago w/ Saltimbanco, and we’ve both been ape for them ever since. Like SUPER ape! We go see the shows, but we also wear the clothes and listen to the soundtracks and walk the walk and talk the talk and Cirque, Baby!!
(note: ok, we don’t really walk the walk, because I’m pretty sure that walking the Cirque walk would involve putting one’s legs behind one’s neck, and possibly one’s head up one’s rear-area. Which we just aren’t doing. And we also don’t actually talk the talk, because I believe the Cirque talk would be French. And I’m more likely to be able to put my head up my rear-area than be able to speak French.)
Anyway, I don’t know what this box means. I don’t know if she’s giving me all of her awesome Cirque bounty, mayhaps because she’s decided that she’s received all the magic that she can from our French-Canadian heroes of contortion and flying? Or did she hit the Ebay motherload on Cirque stuff, thereby totally completing the entire Cirque collection, and these are the things she already had? Or did she decide that she wouldn’t be able to be my friend anymore if I didn’t have just a bit more Cirque coolness? Or possibly this is pre-emptive willing, due to a premonition that her time is nigh? Picture me on my living room floor, surrounded by this jackpot of Cirque fabulousness, rolling around on soundtracks and programs but afraid to like it too much just in case it’s actually a portent of badness!
And then I thought this: maybe Goofy has sent this as a form of career guidance! Maybe she believes that she has found the right career path for me! And it involves juggling fire! Hanging myself from my earlobes! Hot Human Pretzel Action! And EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!
(the sane and rational among you have probably already started crafting your helpful emails suggesting that maybe I could just call or email Goofy and ask her the story behind the fabulous box of Cirque goodness. Emails I will ignore because sanity? Rational thinking? HAH!! Since when do I traffic in such goods?!?! DOUBLE-HAH!!) Now pardon me while I figure out how one limbers up one’s earlobes…
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Policy planning at milepost 2.5...
(my favorite cousin and I are walking her cool dog on the newly-opened walking trail and pass a motorcycle cop chatting with one of the organizers of the walk/run/thing...)
Cool Cuz (CC): I think that cops should only be allowed to pull over people on the same mode of transportation that they’re on.
Femtastic (FT): You mean motorcycle cops should only be able to pull over people on motorcycles?
CC: right, but also bike cops should only pull over people on bikes.
FT: interesting...
CC: And mounted police should only pull over people on horseback. Of course I guess the bike cops are a self-limiting thing anyway. I guess they could also ticket people on foot.
FT: Oh no, I’d say only beat cops should be pulling over people on foot! I think you’re totally on to something here.
CC: well foot cops could ticket people. Not so much ‘pull them over’ You know, since they’re on foot.
FT: oh see, but I also think that all cops should be required to use lights and sirens when pulling someone over. If they’re not in a vehicle with gumballs then they should have to wear a helmet with a big flashing light on top…
CC: …and a siren!
FT: Man, we should SO run for public office…
Cool Cuz (CC): I think that cops should only be allowed to pull over people on the same mode of transportation that they’re on.
Femtastic (FT): You mean motorcycle cops should only be able to pull over people on motorcycles?
CC: right, but also bike cops should only pull over people on bikes.
FT: interesting...
CC: And mounted police should only pull over people on horseback. Of course I guess the bike cops are a self-limiting thing anyway. I guess they could also ticket people on foot.
FT: Oh no, I’d say only beat cops should be pulling over people on foot! I think you’re totally on to something here.
CC: well foot cops could ticket people. Not so much ‘pull them over’ You know, since they’re on foot.
FT: oh see, but I also think that all cops should be required to use lights and sirens when pulling someone over. If they’re not in a vehicle with gumballs then they should have to wear a helmet with a big flashing light on top…
CC: …and a siren!
FT: Man, we should SO run for public office…
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Walkies!
OK, I know this doesn’t sound like me, but there was this walk/run/thing on Saturday to commemorate the opening of this new trail that runs around our new, FUTURISTIC AND FABULOUS hospital. And I did it. And I did it VOLUNTARILY. No weapons of any kind were put to my head! It was kind of a work thing, in that the people that I did it with were pretty much work chums. Since it’s so not me to get up early on a Saturday at all, let alone to walk 5k, I’m not sure why I joined in. Whatever.
Now even though I, myself, started this by saying this doesn’t sound like me it was still super-annoying how many people acted like it was some kind of modern miracle that I was going to do it. And there were a bunch of people who offered to come get me in their cars on the path if I couldn’t finish it. (they were probably kidding. Still annoying!) Come on people, I do bike 30 miles to and from work each week! I tap dance for a couple of hours a week! I chase after my best friends kids whenever I can. And, most importantly, I RARELY use sound judgment when deciding what to do with my body! Case in point: right before the walk I’m surrounded by people eating healthy breakfasts and drinking out of their healthy water bottles, as I sit in my car finishing my ice-cold Pepsi and McDonalds hashbrown. So a spontaneous 3.1 mile stroll sounds JUST like something I would do.
Tangent: I stopped off at the McDonalds for my strategically planned breakfast food (because I already had the Pepsi perfectly chilled, but can’t just drink a Pepsi with nothing salty to go with it! That would be CRAZY!! And so OBVIOUSLY that meant McDonalds hashbrowns) and I’m perfectly on time and only a few blocks from the trail, right? But then I watch as the dude in front of me (who spent a LONG TIME giving his order, so I knew he was either getting a LOT of food or had asked for the nutritional breakdown on every single item on their breakfast menu) pull up and get handed a petite little bag. Much too small for all his ordering. But just the right size for one woman’s morning hashbrowns. And then I watched the interaction between this guy and the confused and fairly shellshocked (or still hung-over?) drive thru girl and it became clear that they’d somehow lost his whole order. But they had my hashbrowns! And the clock’s ticking and I’m now officially into the “running late” window and he’s STILL talking and she’s even more confused, and has tried to give him my hashbrowns a second time and I HAVE GOT TO GO!!! Finally I pulled out of line, pulled up next to lost-his-order guy and got out of my car. I walked around the nose of his car and started to knock on the now-closed window, completely freaking out everyone inside the place, who are clearly all discussing how people are just not supposed to walk up to the window and DEFINITELY aren’t supposed to knock on the window, and who has to go talk to the crazy, intense and hungry-looking crazy lady? At last they open the window and I ask for my paid-for and ready-to-go little bag of hashbrowns there on the counter right there, right next to the bigger bags, no not that one, no the little one, the one you keep trying to give to this guy (who starts to assure me that he never did anything to my hashbrowns, like I’m afraid he managed to lick them during one of the times they pushed them at him – not worried, buddy!) GIVE ME MY HASHBROWNS I HAVE TO GO!
Needless to say, I got my hashbrowns and arrived just barely in time. End of tangent.
I will have you know, my friends and scoffers alike, that I finished that 5k walk! And I did it in UNDER an hour! And that my feet didn’t even hurt and I didn’t fall down in a heap or come home and collapse or anything! That is right! Take that, people who may or may not have been kidding when they offered to come rescue from my ill-thought-out spontaneous exercise!
Now even though I, myself, started this by saying this doesn’t sound like me it was still super-annoying how many people acted like it was some kind of modern miracle that I was going to do it. And there were a bunch of people who offered to come get me in their cars on the path if I couldn’t finish it. (they were probably kidding. Still annoying!) Come on people, I do bike 30 miles to and from work each week! I tap dance for a couple of hours a week! I chase after my best friends kids whenever I can. And, most importantly, I RARELY use sound judgment when deciding what to do with my body! Case in point: right before the walk I’m surrounded by people eating healthy breakfasts and drinking out of their healthy water bottles, as I sit in my car finishing my ice-cold Pepsi and McDonalds hashbrown. So a spontaneous 3.1 mile stroll sounds JUST like something I would do.
Tangent: I stopped off at the McDonalds for my strategically planned breakfast food (because I already had the Pepsi perfectly chilled, but can’t just drink a Pepsi with nothing salty to go with it! That would be CRAZY!! And so OBVIOUSLY that meant McDonalds hashbrowns) and I’m perfectly on time and only a few blocks from the trail, right? But then I watch as the dude in front of me (who spent a LONG TIME giving his order, so I knew he was either getting a LOT of food or had asked for the nutritional breakdown on every single item on their breakfast menu) pull up and get handed a petite little bag. Much too small for all his ordering. But just the right size for one woman’s morning hashbrowns. And then I watched the interaction between this guy and the confused and fairly shellshocked (or still hung-over?) drive thru girl and it became clear that they’d somehow lost his whole order. But they had my hashbrowns! And the clock’s ticking and I’m now officially into the “running late” window and he’s STILL talking and she’s even more confused, and has tried to give him my hashbrowns a second time and I HAVE GOT TO GO!!! Finally I pulled out of line, pulled up next to lost-his-order guy and got out of my car. I walked around the nose of his car and started to knock on the now-closed window, completely freaking out everyone inside the place, who are clearly all discussing how people are just not supposed to walk up to the window and DEFINITELY aren’t supposed to knock on the window, and who has to go talk to the crazy, intense and hungry-looking crazy lady? At last they open the window and I ask for my paid-for and ready-to-go little bag of hashbrowns there on the counter right there, right next to the bigger bags, no not that one, no the little one, the one you keep trying to give to this guy (who starts to assure me that he never did anything to my hashbrowns, like I’m afraid he managed to lick them during one of the times they pushed them at him – not worried, buddy!) GIVE ME MY HASHBROWNS I HAVE TO GO!
Needless to say, I got my hashbrowns and arrived just barely in time. End of tangent.
I will have you know, my friends and scoffers alike, that I finished that 5k walk! And I did it in UNDER an hour! And that my feet didn’t even hurt and I didn’t fall down in a heap or come home and collapse or anything! That is right! Take that, people who may or may not have been kidding when they offered to come rescue from my ill-thought-out spontaneous exercise!
New, shiny white walking shoes: $45
Walk registration fee: $15
Official walk t-shirt: $5
McDonalds hasbrowns: $1
20-minute mile bragging rights: priceless.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
My recurring readers (and really, unless I know you personally I cannot FATHOM what keeps bringing you back! For that, and for so much more, I give you WOVE, WOVE, WOVE!!!) will remember that back in December I had some super trips to the dentist. (and by “super” I mean “G-A-A-A-A-A-A-H!!!”). After all the dental visits that I did tell you about I had one a few weeks later which I did NOT tell you about (or did and just can’t find the post anywhere, and how sad is that?) where I went back to my dentist, whom I love very much even though his is a dentist, and he put on my new, shiny, white crown where all the other stuff had happened. And everything after that was perfect, happily ever after THE END.
Except that the new crown (wow, having a major déjà vu that I’ve already told you guys about this. Maybe you beloved recurring readers should go get a soda or something?) didn’t fit right. There was a gap between it and it’s neighbor, which my dentist identified right as he seated the new crown. And he said to me “oh gosh and golly, there’s a gap here which just might collect food. If it DOES just let us know and we’ll have a new crown put on. We’ll keep the molds and we’ll just take this one off and put the new one on and it will be easy-peasy, eggs and cheesy, hip hooray and let’s have cake!!”
Of course what I heard was “this crown is golden and perfect, and if there IS a gap it’s no big deal and you could just buy a bunch of those flossy sword things and there’s no reason to come back at all, maybe ever, ever again amen and thanks for the money good bye.”
Sadly the gap WAS a food collector. I even found myself calling the dentist one day and begging him to SQUEEZE ME IN in order to remove some bit of apple-stuff that was so tightly wedged down into that gap as to be both unflossable and EXCRUTIATING! They took pity on me, got me into the chair that day and proceeded to remove the apple bit, plus endless other bits of food which my good dentist eventually described as “half of a box lunch” crammed in there. This was despite all my flossy good actions! Needless to say at that point the jig was up and I had to admit that there was food cramming issues with the gap and yes, I should just go ahead and schedule an appointment to come in and have the gappy crown replaced.
Oh my beloveds, I did the right thing! (eventually) I called and scheduled an appointment for my new crown! (several weeks later) I drew on my inner strength and my knowledge of what was right and wrong and made the call! (after my Dad called me at work and completely shamed me into calling. Which is the down side of having the same dentist as your parents. And who isn’t above tattling.) Today I trekked to my cheery, always smiling (of course, because his smile is obviously perfect, isn’t it!) dentist for the changing of the crown.
He had told me that it would be an easy deal, but I had my heart broken before, so I still brought my CD player, headphones and a new dental mix (track list below). AND I trimmed my nails so as to reduce the damage done to their armrests! They put back the chair, I plopped on the tunes and they started terrible things inside my mouth. Between songs I heard the phrase “cut it off” and tried very hard to swallow my tongue for a quick death (stupid suction hose thingie!!). Finally, though, they were done and I thought “whew!, it’s almost over!” They plopped on the new tooth, ran floss one either side of it and announced:
“now there’s a big gap on BOTH sides.”
SERIOUSLY?????
So apparently the artists, the geniuses, the miracle-workers who make dental crowns did the exact OPPOSITE of what they were supposed to do. I attempted to make the argument that maybe these larger gaps would be easier to floss and therefore I could just live with this new crown and please, PLEASE do not make me do this a third time!
I have to do it a third time.
Right now I have a temporary crown in there while they send the 2 wrongish ones back. You guys know about the excellence that is the temporary crown, right? Never bites quite right, feels lumpy in your mouth, tastes like chalk? Yeah, good times. And tomorrow I have to call and ONCE AGAIN voluntarily make an appointment to go back to the danged dentist for what is SUPPOSED to be the third time, and therefore the charm.
Femtastic’s 2008 Dentist Chair Mix:
“Wine Red” (by A Hush Sound)
“Keep me in your Pocket” (by Charlotte Martin)
“Heavy” (by Holly Brook)
“Spinning” (by Anne Heaton)
“Love on the Rocks” (by Sarah Bareilles)
“Headlock” (by Imogene Heap)
“A Dark Congregation” (by A Hush Sound)
“Pigeons” (by Genesis)
“Bruised” (by Ben Folds)
“Every Time it Rains” (by Charlotte Martin)
“Sunrise” (by Simply Red)
“Heal Over” (by KT Tunstall)
“Breakable” (by Ingrid Michaelson)
“When I Grow Up” (by Pussycat Dolls)
“Spinning” (by Zero 7)
“Waiting Under the Waves” (by Kris Delmhorst)
“So Sorry” (by Feist)
“Kalamazoo” (by Ben Folds)
Except that the new crown (wow, having a major déjà vu that I’ve already told you guys about this. Maybe you beloved recurring readers should go get a soda or something?) didn’t fit right. There was a gap between it and it’s neighbor, which my dentist identified right as he seated the new crown. And he said to me “oh gosh and golly, there’s a gap here which just might collect food. If it DOES just let us know and we’ll have a new crown put on. We’ll keep the molds and we’ll just take this one off and put the new one on and it will be easy-peasy, eggs and cheesy, hip hooray and let’s have cake!!”
Of course what I heard was “this crown is golden and perfect, and if there IS a gap it’s no big deal and you could just buy a bunch of those flossy sword things and there’s no reason to come back at all, maybe ever, ever again amen and thanks for the money good bye.”
Sadly the gap WAS a food collector. I even found myself calling the dentist one day and begging him to SQUEEZE ME IN in order to remove some bit of apple-stuff that was so tightly wedged down into that gap as to be both unflossable and EXCRUTIATING! They took pity on me, got me into the chair that day and proceeded to remove the apple bit, plus endless other bits of food which my good dentist eventually described as “half of a box lunch” crammed in there. This was despite all my flossy good actions! Needless to say at that point the jig was up and I had to admit that there was food cramming issues with the gap and yes, I should just go ahead and schedule an appointment to come in and have the gappy crown replaced.
Oh my beloveds, I did the right thing! (eventually) I called and scheduled an appointment for my new crown! (several weeks later) I drew on my inner strength and my knowledge of what was right and wrong and made the call! (after my Dad called me at work and completely shamed me into calling. Which is the down side of having the same dentist as your parents. And who isn’t above tattling.) Today I trekked to my cheery, always smiling (of course, because his smile is obviously perfect, isn’t it!) dentist for the changing of the crown.
He had told me that it would be an easy deal, but I had my heart broken before, so I still brought my CD player, headphones and a new dental mix (track list below). AND I trimmed my nails so as to reduce the damage done to their armrests! They put back the chair, I plopped on the tunes and they started terrible things inside my mouth. Between songs I heard the phrase “cut it off” and tried very hard to swallow my tongue for a quick death (stupid suction hose thingie!!). Finally, though, they were done and I thought “whew!, it’s almost over!” They plopped on the new tooth, ran floss one either side of it and announced:
“now there’s a big gap on BOTH sides.”
SERIOUSLY?????
So apparently the artists, the geniuses, the miracle-workers who make dental crowns did the exact OPPOSITE of what they were supposed to do. I attempted to make the argument that maybe these larger gaps would be easier to floss and therefore I could just live with this new crown and please, PLEASE do not make me do this a third time!
I have to do it a third time.
Right now I have a temporary crown in there while they send the 2 wrongish ones back. You guys know about the excellence that is the temporary crown, right? Never bites quite right, feels lumpy in your mouth, tastes like chalk? Yeah, good times. And tomorrow I have to call and ONCE AGAIN voluntarily make an appointment to go back to the danged dentist for what is SUPPOSED to be the third time, and therefore the charm.
Femtastic’s 2008 Dentist Chair Mix:
“Wine Red” (by A Hush Sound)
“Keep me in your Pocket” (by Charlotte Martin)
“Heavy” (by Holly Brook)
“Spinning” (by Anne Heaton)
“Love on the Rocks” (by Sarah Bareilles)
“Headlock” (by Imogene Heap)
“A Dark Congregation” (by A Hush Sound)
“Pigeons” (by Genesis)
“Bruised” (by Ben Folds)
“Every Time it Rains” (by Charlotte Martin)
“Sunrise” (by Simply Red)
“Heal Over” (by KT Tunstall)
“Breakable” (by Ingrid Michaelson)
“When I Grow Up” (by Pussycat Dolls)
“Spinning” (by Zero 7)
“Waiting Under the Waves” (by Kris Delmhorst)
“So Sorry” (by Feist)
“Kalamazoo” (by Ben Folds)
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Can't Touch This.
I bring you this month's fabulous desktop enjoyment, in the form of dancing catness. And we all know that this image was taken with some kind of sneaky nanny-cam. Kitties never get their groove on in front of people like this...
(courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger)
(courtesy of I Can Has Cheezburger)Sunday, June 01, 2008
Speed Dating Report Card
So the results are in, as they say, and the “interested parties” from all the dudes I speed-datified with are:
Dudes 2 and 3. Or, for those of you who really don’t feel like clicking the link and re-reading the previous, super-long, super-rambly post, “lawyer/politician, huge head, tiny teeth, maybe no eyes at all” and “Navy guy, has possible crush on Dude 2.” Winners. Really.
Someone asked me why I wondered if Dude 3 was smitten with Dude 2, and the answer was simple: that was all he talked about. Why was he doing speed dating? Because Dude 2 asked him to. What does he do? He’s a law student, just like Dude 2. Where has he lived? Here, and also in Washington state. Which, by the way did he happen to mention, is a place where Dude 2 had also lived? And didn’t I think that Dude 2 was dreamy? And couldn’t you just dive into the limpid pools of his blue eyes? Sigh… (wait, he has eyes? Are you sure?)
So I’m a little confused that those two opted to meet again. Here’s my conclusion: Dude 2 opted to talk again with ALL the women because that’s how he rolls (and because, with his squinty, possibly-non-eyed eyes and non-stop talking about the law and politics and SO DANGED INTERESTING, RIGHT?, he had no idea what any of the women looked like or said so best to paint a WIDE SWATH). And Dude 3 opted to talk to me again because he’s hoping it will be some crazy 3-way date. And I won’t show up. (know what I’m sayn?)
Really Very Extremely needless to say I’m not planning to connect w/ tiny teeth or his special man-friend. So thus endeth speed dating. Bleah.
Dudes 2 and 3. Or, for those of you who really don’t feel like clicking the link and re-reading the previous, super-long, super-rambly post, “lawyer/politician, huge head, tiny teeth, maybe no eyes at all” and “Navy guy, has possible crush on Dude 2.” Winners. Really.
Someone asked me why I wondered if Dude 3 was smitten with Dude 2, and the answer was simple: that was all he talked about. Why was he doing speed dating? Because Dude 2 asked him to. What does he do? He’s a law student, just like Dude 2. Where has he lived? Here, and also in Washington state. Which, by the way did he happen to mention, is a place where Dude 2 had also lived? And didn’t I think that Dude 2 was dreamy? And couldn’t you just dive into the limpid pools of his blue eyes? Sigh… (wait, he has eyes? Are you sure?)
So I’m a little confused that those two opted to meet again. Here’s my conclusion: Dude 2 opted to talk again with ALL the women because that’s how he rolls (and because, with his squinty, possibly-non-eyed eyes and non-stop talking about the law and politics and SO DANGED INTERESTING, RIGHT?, he had no idea what any of the women looked like or said so best to paint a WIDE SWATH). And Dude 3 opted to talk to me again because he’s hoping it will be some crazy 3-way date. And I won’t show up. (know what I’m sayn?)
Really Very Extremely needless to say I’m not planning to connect w/ tiny teeth or his special man-friend. So thus endeth speed dating. Bleah.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Tiny, bite-sized pockets of KILL ME.
For all you nay-sayers who think I’m not adventurous. Not brave. Not daring. Not “Putting myself out there!” I give you:
SPEED DATING!
Oh yes, yes, I totally did so! Last night I put on my fancy-pants clothes, popped a handful of mints into my mouth and braved the wacky world of 6-minute power-judging. Come, I will tell you about it!
Firstly I was able to find an age group this time into which I actually fit, and there was no obligation that I be able to touch my toes or climb Mt. Anything, so these were both good things. The location was one I’d been to before – a low-key jazzy bar attached to a nice restaurant, decorated in black and blue shades, all sorts of mellow and hip – so that seemed like a helpful atmosphere. I got to the restaurant part a little early (because that’s what they SAID to do! And I follow directions, people!) and registered there with the tremendously, fabulously, possibly radioactively bubbly host lady.
A note: I know I normally change names to protect the innocent, but I’m bending that rule this time for two reasons. One: the name is just too excellent to change and Two: No host of speed dating can be considered innocent.
Host lady’s name was Porsche, but she very specifically pronounced it “Por-Shay.” It was SO HARD not correct her every time she introduced herself. “you’re saying that wrong. I don’t care who’s name it is, you are saying it WRONG.” Porshay didn’t stop smiling the entire 2 hours we were there, and was about 4000% more excited about the idea of an evening of speed dating than any of we attendees. And let me tell you, she REALLY wanted to thank us for coming. Like 5 or 6 times. She was so very, very appreciative. (I really want to make a sexual joke here, but I’m resisting. For now.)
I hit the ladies room before things started and then went into the bar-part where the actual speed dating was to happen and oh hey, look at that! My nice, simple jazzy club is now a North African bar/club/place/thing/deal. And it’s also full of pillows, pillows, pillows! And there are gauzy curtain/drape things hanging everywhere, including places not so curtainy/drapey! And bar-ware with sequins and fancy colors, because apparently that’s how things are in North Africa? And it’s BRIGHT! With lights of COLORS! And there are THINGS EVERYWHERE.
No sooner had I made peace with the fabu new décor I noticed that the place was full of tables. And the tables each had a number. And each numbered table had a dude sitting there. Each one. Had a dude. One dude. That’s it.
Tables with dudes. Dudes all staring at me. Is it. Doooooooods.
THERE WERE NO WOMEN.
I wasn’t early anymore (what with the precautionary tinkle I took) and there were 7 tables full of guys and, counting me, there was a girl-total of ME. So I did the only reasonable thing.
I turned around and walked out.
And by the way, in the time it took me to count all the dude-heads and all the lack of dame-heads and make my classy escape I assure you that all the dudes noticed me too. And noticed my classy escape. So I’m off to a great start here, what with my entrance, panic and retreat. Yeah, right off the bat I was LOVING this speed-dating thing.
I walk back into the restaurant and I’m thinking “ok, so did I get this wrong? Is this maybe the all-dude gay speed dating night? Didn’t the registration lady notice that I’m not a dude? Maybe she couldn’t see me over the glare of her scary white toothy smile? What if I’m the only woman who signed up? What if they want me to go from table to table all night? Just me? What if I spontaneously explode from the hating of a single moment? THERE MUST BE OTHER WOMEN AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE!!”
Sure enough, when I went to the bar in the adjacent restaurant there were a whole BUNCH of women! Drinking and chatting and enjoying that last cigarette, and with Porshay begging them to haul their big butts into the room full of waiting men! I have no idea what the deal was with the various women, or why it is that it took another 10 minutes after I bit the bullet and returned to the little corner of Africa for any of them to wander in! But I can say that sitting there, at table number four, with Dude number four, and with an entire room of ladyless tables and ladyless other dudes staring at me, I developed a significant hatred for every single one of those women.
OK, moving on...
For those of you who have never done speed dating I first say GOOD CALL!!! And then I explain to you how it works:
Dude 1: “really shy, really nervous, may burst into flames before end of night.”
Dude 2: “lawyer/politician, huge head, tiny teeth, maybe no eyes at all?”
Dude 3: “Navy guy, has possible crush on Dude 2?”
Dude 4: “Network guy, has never been out of Hippyville, probably for the best.”
Dude 5: “real estate lobbyist, thinks this is a competition, VELOUR SHIRT? REALLY?”
Dude 6: “QA for Yahoo. Movie snob. Shiny, shiny, oh-so-shiny head.”
Dude 7: “sports fan, possibly CIA operative, super-cool dude. Just ask him.”
I started with Dude 4, and found it really hard to pay attention to him because over his shoulder, up on a decorative ledge, was a big, stuffed goat. Wearing a gauzy scarf. STARING AT ME. Like he was saying “I have to be here, it’s too late for me. What’s your excuse?” At least once I actually wondered what would happen if, while the guys were shuffling around between bell-rings, I just walked out and went home? But I stuck it out to the bitter (seriously, bitter) end!
It took me only a few minutes to realize the massive flaw in this whole concept, which is this: The worst part of a date, in my experience, is the beginning when you’re just figuring out what to say or how to sit or even if this person has a funny smell or maybe is actually a trained monkey. Speed dating takes that most uncomfortable first few minutes and makes you repeat those, and only those, over and over! You never get past the awkward beginning part to find out if the other person might be worthwhile at all! It’s pretty much “stiff, uncomfortable, awkward, yucky, am I sitting up straight?, wow at least he’s stopped tapping his toe, maybe I could ask him- DONE!” and repeat till crazy! What could there be to rave about in the 1 inch notes section?
When I came home I jumped onto the speed dating website and entered my scores (7 “No Thanks!”, 0 “Let’s Talk!”) and in the next few days I’m supposed to get an email telling me who, if anyone, thought I was awesome. I sure hope I can sleep in the meantime from the excitement. And just in case anybody is still wondering, I will NOT be doing another speed dating night. EEEEVVVVVEEERRR. But I totally get “putting myself out there” points for this one!
SPEED DATING!
Oh yes, yes, I totally did so! Last night I put on my fancy-pants clothes, popped a handful of mints into my mouth and braved the wacky world of 6-minute power-judging. Come, I will tell you about it!
Firstly I was able to find an age group this time into which I actually fit, and there was no obligation that I be able to touch my toes or climb Mt. Anything, so these were both good things. The location was one I’d been to before – a low-key jazzy bar attached to a nice restaurant, decorated in black and blue shades, all sorts of mellow and hip – so that seemed like a helpful atmosphere. I got to the restaurant part a little early (because that’s what they SAID to do! And I follow directions, people!) and registered there with the tremendously, fabulously, possibly radioactively bubbly host lady.
A note: I know I normally change names to protect the innocent, but I’m bending that rule this time for two reasons. One: the name is just too excellent to change and Two: No host of speed dating can be considered innocent.
Host lady’s name was Porsche, but she very specifically pronounced it “Por-Shay.” It was SO HARD not correct her every time she introduced herself. “you’re saying that wrong. I don’t care who’s name it is, you are saying it WRONG.” Porshay didn’t stop smiling the entire 2 hours we were there, and was about 4000% more excited about the idea of an evening of speed dating than any of we attendees. And let me tell you, she REALLY wanted to thank us for coming. Like 5 or 6 times. She was so very, very appreciative. (I really want to make a sexual joke here, but I’m resisting. For now.)
I hit the ladies room before things started and then went into the bar-part where the actual speed dating was to happen and oh hey, look at that! My nice, simple jazzy club is now a North African bar/club/place/thing/deal. And it’s also full of pillows, pillows, pillows! And there are gauzy curtain/drape things hanging everywhere, including places not so curtainy/drapey! And bar-ware with sequins and fancy colors, because apparently that’s how things are in North Africa? And it’s BRIGHT! With lights of COLORS! And there are THINGS EVERYWHERE.
No sooner had I made peace with the fabu new décor I noticed that the place was full of tables. And the tables each had a number. And each numbered table had a dude sitting there. Each one. Had a dude. One dude. That’s it.
Tables with dudes. Dudes all staring at me. Is it. Doooooooods.
THERE WERE NO WOMEN.
I wasn’t early anymore (what with the precautionary tinkle I took) and there were 7 tables full of guys and, counting me, there was a girl-total of ME. So I did the only reasonable thing.
I turned around and walked out.
And by the way, in the time it took me to count all the dude-heads and all the lack of dame-heads and make my classy escape I assure you that all the dudes noticed me too. And noticed my classy escape. So I’m off to a great start here, what with my entrance, panic and retreat. Yeah, right off the bat I was LOVING this speed-dating thing.
I walk back into the restaurant and I’m thinking “ok, so did I get this wrong? Is this maybe the all-dude gay speed dating night? Didn’t the registration lady notice that I’m not a dude? Maybe she couldn’t see me over the glare of her scary white toothy smile? What if I’m the only woman who signed up? What if they want me to go from table to table all night? Just me? What if I spontaneously explode from the hating of a single moment? THERE MUST BE OTHER WOMEN AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE!!”
Sure enough, when I went to the bar in the adjacent restaurant there were a whole BUNCH of women! Drinking and chatting and enjoying that last cigarette, and with Porshay begging them to haul their big butts into the room full of waiting men! I have no idea what the deal was with the various women, or why it is that it took another 10 minutes after I bit the bullet and returned to the little corner of Africa for any of them to wander in! But I can say that sitting there, at table number four, with Dude number four, and with an entire room of ladyless tables and ladyless other dudes staring at me, I developed a significant hatred for every single one of those women.
OK, moving on...
For those of you who have never done speed dating I first say GOOD CALL!!! And then I explain to you how it works:
- There are tables with numbers, and each dude gets a number, and each dame gets a number. Numbers are crucial in this system. You also get a scorecard where you keep track of the numbers and names of the people you meet, as well as any notes that can fit into a line about 3 inches long.
- Everyone starts at the table corresponding to their number.
- You chat or flirt or whatever with your table-mate for 6 minutes. At that point super-bubbly Porshay rings a bell and the dudes all move one table up the list. (so for example the dude at my table moved to table five, and I was joined at my table by dude number three. Get it?) The women don’t move, which is lucky given how DAMNED LONG it took to get these betches to move in from the other bar!!!
- When the dude moves on, and before the next one sits down, you’re supposed to circle one of two responses on your scorecard: “Let’s Talk!” or “No Thanks!” (or as I preferred to see them, “Seriously?” or “tag and release back into the wild for research”)
Dude 1: “really shy, really nervous, may burst into flames before end of night.”
Dude 2: “lawyer/politician, huge head, tiny teeth, maybe no eyes at all?”
Dude 3: “Navy guy, has possible crush on Dude 2?”
Dude 4: “Network guy, has never been out of Hippyville, probably for the best.”
Dude 5: “real estate lobbyist, thinks this is a competition, VELOUR SHIRT? REALLY?”
Dude 6: “QA for Yahoo. Movie snob. Shiny, shiny, oh-so-shiny head.”
Dude 7: “sports fan, possibly CIA operative, super-cool dude. Just ask him.”
I started with Dude 4, and found it really hard to pay attention to him because over his shoulder, up on a decorative ledge, was a big, stuffed goat. Wearing a gauzy scarf. STARING AT ME. Like he was saying “I have to be here, it’s too late for me. What’s your excuse?” At least once I actually wondered what would happen if, while the guys were shuffling around between bell-rings, I just walked out and went home? But I stuck it out to the bitter (seriously, bitter) end!
It took me only a few minutes to realize the massive flaw in this whole concept, which is this: The worst part of a date, in my experience, is the beginning when you’re just figuring out what to say or how to sit or even if this person has a funny smell or maybe is actually a trained monkey. Speed dating takes that most uncomfortable first few minutes and makes you repeat those, and only those, over and over! You never get past the awkward beginning part to find out if the other person might be worthwhile at all! It’s pretty much “stiff, uncomfortable, awkward, yucky, am I sitting up straight?, wow at least he’s stopped tapping his toe, maybe I could ask him- DONE!” and repeat till crazy! What could there be to rave about in the 1 inch notes section?
When I came home I jumped onto the speed dating website and entered my scores (7 “No Thanks!”, 0 “Let’s Talk!”) and in the next few days I’m supposed to get an email telling me who, if anyone, thought I was awesome. I sure hope I can sleep in the meantime from the excitement. And just in case anybody is still wondering, I will NOT be doing another speed dating night. EEEEVVVVVEEERRR. But I totally get “putting myself out there” points for this one!
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Girly Stuff 101
OK, so it occurred to me that if I’m looking for a guy I should probably do something to make me seem more like a non-guy. (dame, skirt, gal, chick, etc.) I ran through the various options (sewing, cooking, ovulating, pushing something the size of a basketball out of my cooch, did I mention cooking?) and picked “Painting my toenails” Then I needed to find someone who had done that EVER to help me out.
Yes, that’s right. I said it. I’ve never painted my toenails. Or at least in my memory I’ve never painted my toenails. (which frankly, with my memory, means I’ve not painted my toenails since last I slept. Memory is hard.)
So lucky me, I have The Queen to help me with all things girly. For she is knowledgable and experienced in the ways of the girl. She wears make-up and does things all a-fancy with her hair (colors and the like) and wears pretty shoes AND she paints toenails! Perfect! Plus, as an added bonus, she already knows that I was born without most of the girl stuff (To CLARIFY: Girl PARTS = yes. Girl STUFF = not so much.) and accepts me anyway and doesn’t judge me when I never use moisturizing goo on my face and instead let it get all chapped.
(Well, doesn’t judge me very much. It’s just a thing for her is all. But if I never wear earrings? No judgment! I’m pretty sure no judgment. Very little judgment.)
So I went to The Queen and told her that I thought that it would be a super idea if she painted my toenails. And amazingly enough, she AGREED! What’s more, she took the spirit of the event to the next level and combined it with a chick flick and a whole girls night thing and it was so danged girly that the room was thick with estrogen and smelled like perfume and lingerie and diet soda!
And can I just say thank GOD that she was there to walk me though this, because there was way more to this then I knew. I mostly figured if I went to her she’d help me with the three things I was not equipped to handle:
First we put fancy powders into big bowls of hot (sorry, meant that to be HOT!) water and put our feet into the big bowls of HOT! water. Which is not exactly the thing – for her it was “and put our feet into the big bowl of HOT! water.” For me it was “put my foot in, and then out, and then just the bottom, and then up to the middle and then back out and man, this is really HOT!, and then more foot into water and then foot ALL THE WAY IN THE WATER and then foot totally back out of the water (and should it be that red? Look how not red the other foot is? What does it look like when you give your foot third degree burns?) and finally the right foot all the way in, and then the left foot all the way in and SERIOUSLY, THAT IS SUPER HOT WATER!…” Once the feet were both in the water we left them there for 10 minutes. I believe this was either to clean the feet or to soften them up or season them to seal in all the juices for when we grilled them over an open flame. Either way it smelled nice.
Afterward her Highness had a tub of stuff that looked like diaper rash cream but smelled like sun tan lotion. It was a cocoa butter stuff, and we rubbed it into the feet. At first I was freaked out because no matter how much I rubbed and rubbed and RUBBED the feet still felt gooey. I have always had a problem with moisturizers because of the gooey feeling. But being experienced, she sensed my freak-out and calmed me and made me STOP WITH THE RUBBING. It will soak in. Yes it will. Trust me. Deep breathes. Seriously, could you show me your uterus just for a second?… just checking.
Then we had to pick a color and The Queen had several to chose from. At first I went straight for the exact color she, and I, and anybody who knows me, would have expected, which was this super-pale pink, almost not a color at all. But at the last second I went nuts! Went for a real pink! A Mauve, in fact! (I really was swayed by the name of the color, and I don’t remember anymore what the color was. It was “SOMETHING mauve”, like “Magical Mauve” or “Maniac Mauve” or “Make-Me-Seem-Girly Mauve” Hopefully The Queen will remember the name and put it in the comments. HINT!) Lookit me, and more specifically my toes: See? I’m a GIRL!
So the last part was, of course, the actual painting of the toes. She was an artist. Colored totally within the lines, and when she DID have a rebel blob of polish she had this whole trick with polish remover and a Q-Tip and everything… I watched, but I don’t think I could fly solo even with all the watching I did. So now I have to figure out something I can do for her periodically in return for the future fancy nail polishing I plan to ask her for. Maybe set the time on her VCR or open a jar of pickles. Manly stuff.
Yes, that’s right. I said it. I’ve never painted my toenails. Or at least in my memory I’ve never painted my toenails. (which frankly, with my memory, means I’ve not painted my toenails since last I slept. Memory is hard.)
So lucky me, I have The Queen to help me with all things girly. For she is knowledgable and experienced in the ways of the girl. She wears make-up and does things all a-fancy with her hair (colors and the like) and wears pretty shoes AND she paints toenails! Perfect! Plus, as an added bonus, she already knows that I was born without most of the girl stuff (To CLARIFY: Girl PARTS = yes. Girl STUFF = not so much.) and accepts me anyway and doesn’t judge me when I never use moisturizing goo on my face and instead let it get all chapped.
(Well, doesn’t judge me very much. It’s just a thing for her is all. But if I never wear earrings? No judgment! I’m pretty sure no judgment. Very little judgment.)
So I went to The Queen and told her that I thought that it would be a super idea if she painted my toenails. And amazingly enough, she AGREED! What’s more, she took the spirit of the event to the next level and combined it with a chick flick and a whole girls night thing and it was so danged girly that the room was thick with estrogen and smelled like perfume and lingerie and diet soda!
And can I just say thank GOD that she was there to walk me though this, because there was way more to this then I knew. I mostly figured if I went to her she’d help me with the three things I was not equipped to handle:
- Having nail polish (as I have none and she has more than none)
- Picking a color (does it have to match your socks? Do you change it for the outfits? Confusing!)
- Reaching my toes (I do NOT want to talk about it.)
First we put fancy powders into big bowls of hot (sorry, meant that to be HOT!) water and put our feet into the big bowls of HOT! water. Which is not exactly the thing – for her it was “and put our feet into the big bowl of HOT! water.” For me it was “put my foot in, and then out, and then just the bottom, and then up to the middle and then back out and man, this is really HOT!, and then more foot into water and then foot ALL THE WAY IN THE WATER and then foot totally back out of the water (and should it be that red? Look how not red the other foot is? What does it look like when you give your foot third degree burns?) and finally the right foot all the way in, and then the left foot all the way in and SERIOUSLY, THAT IS SUPER HOT WATER!…” Once the feet were both in the water we left them there for 10 minutes. I believe this was either to clean the feet or to soften them up or season them to seal in all the juices for when we grilled them over an open flame. Either way it smelled nice.
Afterward her Highness had a tub of stuff that looked like diaper rash cream but smelled like sun tan lotion. It was a cocoa butter stuff, and we rubbed it into the feet. At first I was freaked out because no matter how much I rubbed and rubbed and RUBBED the feet still felt gooey. I have always had a problem with moisturizers because of the gooey feeling. But being experienced, she sensed my freak-out and calmed me and made me STOP WITH THE RUBBING. It will soak in. Yes it will. Trust me. Deep breathes. Seriously, could you show me your uterus just for a second?… just checking.
Then we had to pick a color and The Queen had several to chose from. At first I went straight for the exact color she, and I, and anybody who knows me, would have expected, which was this super-pale pink, almost not a color at all. But at the last second I went nuts! Went for a real pink! A Mauve, in fact! (I really was swayed by the name of the color, and I don’t remember anymore what the color was. It was “SOMETHING mauve”, like “Magical Mauve” or “Maniac Mauve” or “Make-Me-Seem-Girly Mauve” Hopefully The Queen will remember the name and put it in the comments. HINT!) Lookit me, and more specifically my toes: See? I’m a GIRL!
So the last part was, of course, the actual painting of the toes. She was an artist. Colored totally within the lines, and when she DID have a rebel blob of polish she had this whole trick with polish remover and a Q-Tip and everything… I watched, but I don’t think I could fly solo even with all the watching I did. So now I have to figure out something I can do for her periodically in return for the future fancy nail polishing I plan to ask her for. Maybe set the time on her VCR or open a jar of pickles. Manly stuff.
Friday, May 23, 2008
I am Shiva, the Destroyer!
I have stories for you, my peoples. STORIES!
I am a RABBLE ROUSER!
I am an INSTIGATOR!
I am a HIRED ASSASIN!
(I am also pretty amped. Sorry about that.)
I am loathe to ever blog about my work (having learned at the knee of the wise and powerful Dooce/Heather Robinson) but so overflowy am I with energy I must, MUST share with you. So I’ll just be super vague.
Basically there was a problem here at the office with a boss-ish-type person who was wreaking havoc and being generally more of a problem than a solution, and I roused the rabbles into action! I said (in a dramatic and awe-inspiring tone, which should have had some reverb if there were any justice in the world) that we’d had enough and that something had to be done and that we were the ones to do it! That it was the right thing to do and no better time than TODAY!! That we had nothing to fear but fear itself (which I totally made up myself, but do plan to stitch onto a throw pillow)! That my uncle had a barn, and I had a box of costumes, and hey, let’s do the play right here!!
I should probably consider it a bad thing that I get very jazzed by these kinds of moments. Where others get nervous and flitty and sweaty-of-palm, I find these moments, when the goal seems righteous and the battle noble, to be so enervating! We went to the powers that be and had our smooth, clear, concise say and they listened and they praised our smoothness and our clarity and our concisity (or whatever) and I honestly think they’re going to follow our suggested solution!
I just really like being presented with a wrong and charging into battle to right it. I think I need a dragon and a great, big sword. Don’t you think I’d look completely right on a dragon? And also with a sword? And I need a noble crest with a lion on one side (signifying how I’m lion-hearted and fearless and ferocious!) and a big, flapping mouth on the other side (signifying how I have no idea when to shut up and think that I can say just about anything and sell it, no matter how TOTALLY WRONG a thing it is to say), and with the words “Bring it, Betches!!” in latin (except “betches” probably doesn’t need to be translated because it’s universal). The crest would be purple (stands for purity), red (stands for passion) and white (stands for the creamy filling in a Twinkie. Mmmmmm, pure, passionate twinkie…..) and have wings in the corners to show how free of fear I am AND a parachute or big net to show how afraid of heights I am and also POLAR BEARS BECAUSE THEY ARE SO COOL!
(if someone actually creates a crest for me with these things and sends me the image I will send them a prize. I honestly will. AND I’ll add the crest to the blog. AND THE PRIZE WILL BE COOL! POLAR BEAR COOL!)
Bottom line of all this is that who needs a partner when I’m so amazing and valiant and brave AND humble AND jazzy (my tap teacher even said so last night! I’m jazzy!) and any dude who might come along and think him my equal would have a MIGHTY BIG DRAGON to measure up to!
(also if you have someone who is messing with you? Call me, I’ll totally take ‘em down.)
(and if you, yourself, are a big old bully or such you should LOOK OUT, because I’m comin’ for you.)
(and finally, where do you go to get a super hero outfit? With no cape, of course – they make my butt look big.)
I am a RABBLE ROUSER!
I am an INSTIGATOR!
I am a HIRED ASSASIN!
(I am also pretty amped. Sorry about that.)
I am loathe to ever blog about my work (having learned at the knee of the wise and powerful Dooce/Heather Robinson) but so overflowy am I with energy I must, MUST share with you. So I’ll just be super vague.
Basically there was a problem here at the office with a boss-ish-type person who was wreaking havoc and being generally more of a problem than a solution, and I roused the rabbles into action! I said (in a dramatic and awe-inspiring tone, which should have had some reverb if there were any justice in the world) that we’d had enough and that something had to be done and that we were the ones to do it! That it was the right thing to do and no better time than TODAY!! That we had nothing to fear but fear itself (which I totally made up myself, but do plan to stitch onto a throw pillow)! That my uncle had a barn, and I had a box of costumes, and hey, let’s do the play right here!!
I should probably consider it a bad thing that I get very jazzed by these kinds of moments. Where others get nervous and flitty and sweaty-of-palm, I find these moments, when the goal seems righteous and the battle noble, to be so enervating! We went to the powers that be and had our smooth, clear, concise say and they listened and they praised our smoothness and our clarity and our concisity (or whatever) and I honestly think they’re going to follow our suggested solution!
I just really like being presented with a wrong and charging into battle to right it. I think I need a dragon and a great, big sword. Don’t you think I’d look completely right on a dragon? And also with a sword? And I need a noble crest with a lion on one side (signifying how I’m lion-hearted and fearless and ferocious!) and a big, flapping mouth on the other side (signifying how I have no idea when to shut up and think that I can say just about anything and sell it, no matter how TOTALLY WRONG a thing it is to say), and with the words “Bring it, Betches!!” in latin (except “betches” probably doesn’t need to be translated because it’s universal). The crest would be purple (stands for purity), red (stands for passion) and white (stands for the creamy filling in a Twinkie. Mmmmmm, pure, passionate twinkie…..) and have wings in the corners to show how free of fear I am AND a parachute or big net to show how afraid of heights I am and also POLAR BEARS BECAUSE THEY ARE SO COOL!
(if someone actually creates a crest for me with these things and sends me the image I will send them a prize. I honestly will. AND I’ll add the crest to the blog. AND THE PRIZE WILL BE COOL! POLAR BEAR COOL!)
Bottom line of all this is that who needs a partner when I’m so amazing and valiant and brave AND humble AND jazzy (my tap teacher even said so last night! I’m jazzy!) and any dude who might come along and think him my equal would have a MIGHTY BIG DRAGON to measure up to!
(also if you have someone who is messing with you? Call me, I’ll totally take ‘em down.)
(and if you, yourself, are a big old bully or such you should LOOK OUT, because I’m comin’ for you.)
(and finally, where do you go to get a super hero outfit? With no cape, of course – they make my butt look big.)
Monday, May 19, 2008
Act Five: The Family Tastic!
OK, so I know I started this last week and there were supposed to be 5 acts and there were only 4 and hey, what the heck happened to act 5 please? And I already knew what the fifth act was because oh look, I actually named it at the end of Act 4 so you’d really think that I knew what the hell I was doing!
But what you don’t know is that I started Act 5 several times. Bunches of times, in fact. I thought this would be the easiest one because it’s the one I know the best: my family! And yet SO HARD!
I started it and I’d write about fun things that happened with the family but they were already covered by games or food or WHALES! and I couldn’t figure out what the heck my point was. Which is dumb, because it’s only my point. It’s not like I’m being graded here – make your point, Femmie! Only when other blog posts began backing up behind this one, which refused to be written, could I really look at this question and see the problem. Which is this: it’s not about what I do with my family or stories of family fun times. It’s about the pure, magical excellence of just BEING with my family. Unfettered, uncomplicated, unobstructed family time.
OK, like this: I often take naps during the coast weekend. Naps right there amidst the fun and food and all, with people milling about and noise and singing STUFF. Because to me there is no better sleep in the world than sleeping in a room full of people. Your people. The weekend in the coast is like spending three days snuggled up on the bed of grown-up coats at a holiday party. Three days of just knowing that everything is ok and will be until you have to re-pack the car and go back to the real world.
I know to enjoy one’s own family so much is lunacy akin to naked power-walking over broken glass for most people. This lunacy has been my whole life and I’m super-jazzed that I get to watch the next couple of generations growing up being the same odd ducks with their friends. Forever will the family Tastic be those crazy people who enthusiastically spend days hanging out with their family members and hooray for us!
And thus endeth, AT LAST, Act 5! Back to our regularly, un-schmaltzy, even acerbic blog posts. Pardon the gush, y’all!
{OK, I know that this didn't actually hit the web until Wednesday, but I wrote it on Monday, but then there was this thing and also some other stuff and I THOUGHT it was all up and posted and "yay! done!" and then here I was looking at this post calling itself Act 5 but being a draft and ummmmmm... what? So I don't know what happened, but I'm still posting this on Monday. Hmph!}
But what you don’t know is that I started Act 5 several times. Bunches of times, in fact. I thought this would be the easiest one because it’s the one I know the best: my family! And yet SO HARD!
I started it and I’d write about fun things that happened with the family but they were already covered by games or food or WHALES! and I couldn’t figure out what the heck my point was. Which is dumb, because it’s only my point. It’s not like I’m being graded here – make your point, Femmie! Only when other blog posts began backing up behind this one, which refused to be written, could I really look at this question and see the problem. Which is this: it’s not about what I do with my family or stories of family fun times. It’s about the pure, magical excellence of just BEING with my family. Unfettered, uncomplicated, unobstructed family time.
OK, like this: I often take naps during the coast weekend. Naps right there amidst the fun and food and all, with people milling about and noise and singing STUFF. Because to me there is no better sleep in the world than sleeping in a room full of people. Your people. The weekend in the coast is like spending three days snuggled up on the bed of grown-up coats at a holiday party. Three days of just knowing that everything is ok and will be until you have to re-pack the car and go back to the real world.
I know to enjoy one’s own family so much is lunacy akin to naked power-walking over broken glass for most people. This lunacy has been my whole life and I’m super-jazzed that I get to watch the next couple of generations growing up being the same odd ducks with their friends. Forever will the family Tastic be those crazy people who enthusiastically spend days hanging out with their family members and hooray for us!
And thus endeth, AT LAST, Act 5! Back to our regularly, un-schmaltzy, even acerbic blog posts. Pardon the gush, y’all!
{OK, I know that this didn't actually hit the web until Wednesday, but I wrote it on Monday, but then there was this thing and also some other stuff and I THOUGHT it was all up and posted and "yay! done!" and then here I was looking at this post calling itself Act 5 but being a draft and ummmmmm... what? So I don't know what happened, but I'm still posting this on Monday. Hmph!}
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Act Four: Call Me Ishmael…
One of the things I most love about the beach by our beach house (and therefore I call it “OUR beach” because really it is) is that it often has whales. Honest to goodness whales. For those of you not recognizing the term, whales are hugely-huge water beasties which are largely considered to be both some of the most awesome things ever earth-invented and also sweet and amazing and everybody who knows whales love whales. And I know whales, and I REALLY love that each year we have excellent whale potentials at our beach! This year we had hints of whale here and there, but nothing to compare to the great whale extravaganza of ought-five. Oh such whales did we see that year! They were not just spouting, but also tail slapping and breaching and waving “howdy peoples in the beach house!” with their shiny little fins! (and by “little” I mean probably as long as me. And by fins I mean… well gosh, I sure hope it was a fin…) There is no better family for such whale shows as my family, because we respond like a circus crowd! We just lose our shtuff! Here is the normal process for whale-siting amongst the Tastic clan:
- One eagle-eyed family members sees something on the horizon and shouts the traditional ‘I’ve seen a whale’ call, of “Spout!”, accompanied by spastically pointing out to the ocean. In case any of the group thought that maybe the spouting whale was on the beach, or maybe sitting on the deck or doing the dishes.
- There’s a mad dash for the various pairs of binoculars all over the dining room table (or for me, I grab my camera and trusty zoom lens. Taking a moment now to reflect on how much I love my camera. And trusty zoom lens. …) and everyone starts scanning the ocean for plumes. And the one who saw it initially starts trying to explain where we should be looking. It normally sounds something like this:
- “OK, so you see on the dune out there, where it points up? No, right there, where there’s the point-up, kind of like a look pointy point? No, to the right of that. More,… more,… ok, so now look right over that pointy point and to the right, and maybe ½-way to the horizon… see it? See it? Anyone see it? Well no, it’s not spouting right now, but if it were you’d totally see it!”
- Eventually there’s a new spout and cheers of “FLOOOM!!!!” and now the hunt is ON!
- With each new spout there’s new cheering. Better yet, when there are multiple whales we go CRAZY! We’re better than free-beer and liquid cheese night at the small-town ballpark! Clapping, hooting, happy-spouting-whale dances… good times!
This year, with the general lack of verified whale sitings we tried to recreate our enthusiasm with a pair of brown bunnies who would pop their heads up somewhere on the dunes between house and beach. And so desperate were we for wildlife adventures we’d all lose our minds with “Bunny! Bunny! Brown bunny, there on the grass! There! There! THEEERRREEEE!!!!” We even chased one poor bunny from the back deck to the carport in front and back around. (although you can’t really say we chased it because it got away from us almost immediately, was never actually seen in the carport (and probably never even came to the front of the house) and we were mostly just ‘chasing’ phantom bunnies. Wishing secretly in our heart of hearts that they were whales. But anyway.)
...tomorrow: The Family Tastic...
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Act Three: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM…
What to do when Mamala Nature takes mother’s day weekend off and leaves you with wet-blanket and terminal killjoy aunt Rainy Pants? I already mentioned games, and also puzzles, and for some there was great joy to be found in the foozball table in the back family room. But when all else fails: FOOOOOD.
But allow me to back-peddle to the weekend before our coast trip, to the entire family sitting around planning the “who brings what” portion of the trip so as to make sure that we do not repeat the ‘weekend of being smothered to deathly death by pile upon pile of TP Rolls while simultaneously having no dish soap or garbage bags (with which we could have fought off the hordes of TP rolls I’m sure!)’ of 2005. And in that conversation we assigned snacks. ASSIGNED SNACKS. Because somebody actually decided that there was some kind of badness to fear from having not one but MANY bags of Lays thick cut potato chips or a MULTITUDE of cookie-foods or some possibility that our weekend would eat up all of the peanuts in the peanut-eating free world.
I understand the planning for the necessities, but let snacks be free, people, chosen of the whim of the shopper as they wander down the aisles of movie candy or crackers or even snacky fruit! One man’s trail mix is another man’s “Thank God I brought a one gallon carton of cheddar cheese goldfish!”
And so, despite our attempts to control and limit and impose our will on the snacks when the weekend arrived the balance of the munchie-consuming world was returned with each non-sanctioned additional back of cheese-powder-covered pretzels and cheap, generic, but still scrumptious bags of “orange slices” candy that was pulled from various bags and bundles!
All these snacks were in ADDITION to the fabulous meals already planned for the weekend. We attack both dinners (Friday and Saturday nights) with small, united forces of family clumps. “you guys are making a burrito bar with nachos and big, mexi salad on Friday while WE make chicken picata, with extra many and extra HOOGE capers and bread and veggies and pasta and CAPERS on Saturday” and hey, pass me that bag of grapes and the dark chocolate M&Ms please!
And lest we forget the culinary star of the weekend/show: the mother’s day breakfast/brunch, which is planned out by all the non-moms (or really is SUPPOSED to be planned out by the non-moms, but it’s just super hard for moms to not get involved! I believe it will be necessary to strap our various moms down in chairs in order to let the kids, dads and assorted non-mothers to do their things completely w/out help.) This year much was made of the need to reel things in a little bit, on account of this thing we were gonna do on the way home and which would require our bugging out early. AND YET still the mother’s day morning feast was eggs made ON DEMAND (as in “I’d like 2 eggs over easy and my friend here will have like scrambled with cheese and these seven dwarves will have seven petite omelets!”) PLUS fresh-baked pecan rolls and croissants and fruit salad and home-baked bread toast and fancy breakfast meat! Never ending, non-stop breakfast foods of good and glorious and WANTON abandon. And a happy mother’s day to you mothers you! And a non nom nom NOMMY NOMMY NOM!
And then maybe? Chocolate-covered orange slice pretzels dipped in cheese-powder and ranch dressing as a post-brunch SNACK!
May 15, 10:47am, edited to add: ALL HAIL THE FANCY BREAKFAST MEATS! I have pined for their bacony, brown-sugary majesty ever since writing this last night. Now I nom, nom, nom my own hand and wish it were fancy breakfast meat. I'll never make it to next May...
…tomorrow: Call Me Ishmael…
But allow me to back-peddle to the weekend before our coast trip, to the entire family sitting around planning the “who brings what” portion of the trip so as to make sure that we do not repeat the ‘weekend of being smothered to deathly death by pile upon pile of TP Rolls while simultaneously having no dish soap or garbage bags (with which we could have fought off the hordes of TP rolls I’m sure!)’ of 2005. And in that conversation we assigned snacks. ASSIGNED SNACKS. Because somebody actually decided that there was some kind of badness to fear from having not one but MANY bags of Lays thick cut potato chips or a MULTITUDE of cookie-foods or some possibility that our weekend would eat up all of the peanuts in the peanut-eating free world.
I understand the planning for the necessities, but let snacks be free, people, chosen of the whim of the shopper as they wander down the aisles of movie candy or crackers or even snacky fruit! One man’s trail mix is another man’s “Thank God I brought a one gallon carton of cheddar cheese goldfish!”
And so, despite our attempts to control and limit and impose our will on the snacks when the weekend arrived the balance of the munchie-consuming world was returned with each non-sanctioned additional back of cheese-powder-covered pretzels and cheap, generic, but still scrumptious bags of “orange slices” candy that was pulled from various bags and bundles!
All these snacks were in ADDITION to the fabulous meals already planned for the weekend. We attack both dinners (Friday and Saturday nights) with small, united forces of family clumps. “you guys are making a burrito bar with nachos and big, mexi salad on Friday while WE make chicken picata, with extra many and extra HOOGE capers and bread and veggies and pasta and CAPERS on Saturday” and hey, pass me that bag of grapes and the dark chocolate M&Ms please!
And lest we forget the culinary star of the weekend/show: the mother’s day breakfast/brunch, which is planned out by all the non-moms (or really is SUPPOSED to be planned out by the non-moms, but it’s just super hard for moms to not get involved! I believe it will be necessary to strap our various moms down in chairs in order to let the kids, dads and assorted non-mothers to do their things completely w/out help.) This year much was made of the need to reel things in a little bit, on account of this thing we were gonna do on the way home and which would require our bugging out early. AND YET still the mother’s day morning feast was eggs made ON DEMAND (as in “I’d like 2 eggs over easy and my friend here will have like scrambled with cheese and these seven dwarves will have seven petite omelets!”) PLUS fresh-baked pecan rolls and croissants and fruit salad and home-baked bread toast and fancy breakfast meat! Never ending, non-stop breakfast foods of good and glorious and WANTON abandon. And a happy mother’s day to you mothers you! And a non nom nom NOMMY NOMMY NOM!
And then maybe? Chocolate-covered orange slice pretzels dipped in cheese-powder and ranch dressing as a post-brunch SNACK!
May 15, 10:47am, edited to add: ALL HAIL THE FANCY BREAKFAST MEATS! I have pined for their bacony, brown-sugary majesty ever since writing this last night. Now I nom, nom, nom my own hand and wish it were fancy breakfast meat. I'll never make it to next May...
…tomorrow: Call Me Ishmael…
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Act Two: The Games Beach People Play...
OK, so once you get past all the “Wow, we’re at the coast and look there, that’s just a BUNCH of ocean right there is what all that is!” you come to “we gotta do SOMETHIN’ in our faboo beach house!” and also we are a people who love games. We love “you sunk my battleship!” games or “Gin!” games but we also love “super-complex-takes-30-minutes-just-to-comprehend-the-rules-but-SO-MUCH-FUN” games. And right now my special games-loving place has a massive thing-crush for this new concept: collaborative games.
These would be games where instead of it being me against you and you against him and us against them, it’s the players against the game. It’s good against evil. It’s humanity versus evil plagues of deathly-bad-pustulishy-boils and fatal hiccups and gas of death. Which are things you’d want to be against, right? And so finally when I and my favorite people all sit down to play something we get to be nice and friendly and collegial while playing the game the way it’s intended to be played! Genius!
Many games were played during our coast trip, as is always the way. But the two big events were both collaborative games of excellence: Pandemic (which is way more fun than you’d normally expect a pandemic to be!) and Shadows Over Camelot, where my Dad got to REALLY EXPLORE his inner King Arthur! Long story short, all of humanity was wiped out by three nasty plagues (sorry about that – our bad.) but the next night we found the Holy Grail, pulled Excalibur from that bitch in the water and just generally reminded the universe that though Might does not make Right, Knights make KICK ASS, BEOTCHES!!! As a bonus, we got to justifiably use phrases like ‘forsooth!” and “what ho!” and “my liege!” and if I’d had a jerken or cod piece to sport that night I totally would have!
Those that weren’t up for battling Black Nights and speedily-reproducing viruses jumped all over the puzzling portion of the weekend. We laid waste to not one but TWO 1000-piece puzzles because THAT IS HOW WE DO, MY PEOPLE! We are puzzling fiends, and I’m about to tell you the secret: (are you ready? Here it comes!) box lids. Lots and lots of box lids. We horde them in my family – not a single Omaha Steaks box or Avery labels box lid ever goes to waste around here, I assure you – but if you have to you go ahead and steal the tops of every other games box you own because what you want is a different box for every section of the puzzle!
You’re going through the pieces looking for those yellow/orange pieces of dirt road and rice crispies but you sure are finding a lot of the pieces from the giant mouse butt, as well as all that fuzzy, green border that looks like that sweater you hate, so you might as well throw those into their own box as you come across them, right? And that way when someone new comes up to help you can say to them “gosh, you could work on the giant mouse butt. It’s in that box right there.” (because you’ve got dibs on green sweater border, of course.) Sure, there’s a certain amount of turf disputes in our puzzling sometimes, but it’s not a game, people! (those are in the living room, with the people wearing the hazmat suits with built-in cod pieces. And also and by the way, HUZZAH!)
…tomorrow: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM…
These would be games where instead of it being me against you and you against him and us against them, it’s the players against the game. It’s good against evil. It’s humanity versus evil plagues of deathly-bad-pustulishy-boils and fatal hiccups and gas of death. Which are things you’d want to be against, right? And so finally when I and my favorite people all sit down to play something we get to be nice and friendly and collegial while playing the game the way it’s intended to be played! Genius!
Many games were played during our coast trip, as is always the way. But the two big events were both collaborative games of excellence: Pandemic (which is way more fun than you’d normally expect a pandemic to be!) and Shadows Over Camelot, where my Dad got to REALLY EXPLORE his inner King Arthur! Long story short, all of humanity was wiped out by three nasty plagues (sorry about that – our bad.) but the next night we found the Holy Grail, pulled Excalibur from that bitch in the water and just generally reminded the universe that though Might does not make Right, Knights make KICK ASS, BEOTCHES!!! As a bonus, we got to justifiably use phrases like ‘forsooth!” and “what ho!” and “my liege!” and if I’d had a jerken or cod piece to sport that night I totally would have!
Those that weren’t up for battling Black Nights and speedily-reproducing viruses jumped all over the puzzling portion of the weekend. We laid waste to not one but TWO 1000-piece puzzles because THAT IS HOW WE DO, MY PEOPLE! We are puzzling fiends, and I’m about to tell you the secret: (are you ready? Here it comes!) box lids. Lots and lots of box lids. We horde them in my family – not a single Omaha Steaks box or Avery labels box lid ever goes to waste around here, I assure you – but if you have to you go ahead and steal the tops of every other games box you own because what you want is a different box for every section of the puzzle!
You’re going through the pieces looking for those yellow/orange pieces of dirt road and rice crispies but you sure are finding a lot of the pieces from the giant mouse butt, as well as all that fuzzy, green border that looks like that sweater you hate, so you might as well throw those into their own box as you come across them, right? And that way when someone new comes up to help you can say to them “gosh, you could work on the giant mouse butt. It’s in that box right there.” (because you’ve got dibs on green sweater border, of course.) Sure, there’s a certain amount of turf disputes in our puzzling sometimes, but it’s not a game, people! (those are in the living room, with the people wearing the hazmat suits with built-in cod pieces. And also and by the way, HUZZAH!)…tomorrow: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM…
Monday, May 12, 2008
Mother's Day at the Coast: A Play in 5 Acts...
Prologue
OK, so every year my family cruises over to this rental beach house for Mother’s Day Weekend and we stay there through Friday and Saturday and most of Sunday. There are roughly 16 to 18 of us, give or take, and we have some specific goals each year:
Act One: Photo Phun with the Cool Cousin
I drove over to the beach house (a drive of about 2 hours) with my super-cool cousin. She’s more like a niece, in that she’s almost 20 years younger than I am, but then there’s that pesky fact that her parents are my aunt and uncle, thereby demanding that she be my cousin. There are rules, people.
Anyway, cool cousin (we’ll call her Pepe. She knows why) got into photography after the gifting of a grandparent’s very nice film camera when she graduated from high school and ever since she and I occasionally run off for fun-camera-artsy-adventure-stuff-day-things. Friday afternoon we hit the road and when we reached ocean views we started hunting for cool photo opps. We wanted tide pools, which we found, but we discovered that there were pretty much all under many, many feet of ocean. Some crazy thing about a “high Tide” which I’m pretty sure is environmentalist propaganda to keep nature all to themselves.
Eventually we found some excellent tide pool action amidst all this dramatic lava rock and we climbed hither and flan looking for “that magic shot”. (I never found magic – mostly the photo equivalent of pulling a quarter out of nature’s ear or a ninja smoke bomb) At one moment I was suddenly struck with the COMPLETE STUPIDITY of my clambering over these rocks, my most beloved camera (which I love and have GREAT love for and also wove-wove-wove and would marry if they’d let me) hanging around my neck, just asking for that moment where I trip and HULK SMASH on my precious big lens. Not to MENTION the constant threat of huge ocean waves crashing all over these rocks every 30 seconds, waiting for me to look the other way so that they could sneak up on me and swallow me up WITH THE MOST BELOVED CAMERA. If
I’d ever found photo magic I know it would have been worth it, but since I didn’t it was just temporary insanity.
But it was fun, and I did pull that photo-quarter from nature’s ear, and nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
…tomorrow: the games beach people play…
OK, so every year my family cruises over to this rental beach house for Mother’s Day Weekend and we stay there through Friday and Saturday and most of Sunday. There are roughly 16 to 18 of us, give or take, and we have some specific goals each year:
- eat
- play games with gamey abandon
- seriously, eat
- puzzles, puzzles, puzzles, PUZZLES, puzzles!
- inhale junk food like it’s about to become prohibitive
- optimistically hope for the view of a whale, any whale, out at sea
- hey, are you going to eat that? (yeah, me too)
Act One: Photo Phun with the Cool Cousin
I drove over to the beach house (a drive of about 2 hours) with my super-cool cousin. She’s more like a niece, in that she’s almost 20 years younger than I am, but then there’s that pesky fact that her parents are my aunt and uncle, thereby demanding that she be my cousin. There are rules, people.
Anyway, cool cousin (we’ll call her Pepe. She knows why) got into photography after the gifting of a grandparent’s very nice film camera when she graduated from high school and ever since she and I occasionally run off for fun-camera-artsy-adventure-stuff-day-things. Friday afternoon we hit the road and when we reached ocean views we started hunting for cool photo opps. We wanted tide pools, which we found, but we discovered that there were pretty much all under many, many feet of ocean. Some crazy thing about a “high Tide” which I’m pretty sure is environmentalist propaganda to keep nature all to themselves.
Eventually we found some excellent tide pool action amidst all this dramatic lava rock and we climbed hither and flan looking for “that magic shot”. (I never found magic – mostly the photo equivalent of pulling a quarter out of nature’s ear or a ninja smoke bomb) At one moment I was suddenly struck with the COMPLETE STUPIDITY of my clambering over these rocks, my most beloved camera (which I love and have GREAT love for and also wove-wove-wove and would marry if they’d let me) hanging around my neck, just asking for that moment where I trip and HULK SMASH on my precious big lens. Not to MENTION the constant threat of huge ocean waves crashing all over these rocks every 30 seconds, waiting for me to look the other way so that they could sneak up on me and swallow me up WITH THE MOST BELOVED CAMERA. If
I’d ever found photo magic I know it would have been worth it, but since I didn’t it was just temporary insanity.But it was fun, and I did pull that photo-quarter from nature’s ear, and nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?
…tomorrow: the games beach people play…
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Perspective A-New
So there’s this one chick here at work who I think is super-cool. I mean SOOOOOPER COOL. I have a bit of a girl crush on her, and whenever she comes to my office (from her cool office in another building which is cooler than this building if only because she’s rocking that building regularly) everybody around here gets some second-hand cool too. She’s cool like that. I will call her Joette Cool.
She’s cool also because she’s single, like me, and that is rare around here. The only other single people within cat-whacking distance of me in this place are the 16-yr old student intern and a bitter divorcee who wears make-up like Madonna from the 80’s, is almost 10 months into her “change of life” and normally goes to bed at 8:30pm. So I love having at least one other single grown-up with coolness to spare around sometimes. Like we’re the first two members of some single-girl book club, only with less books and more being cool. The "Being Cool and not Really Reading Much in the Way of Books" Club.
Anyway, JC (Joette Cool) came in the other day with an iceberg on her finger like that what sank the Titanic! A rock like that what is forever being pushed by Sisyphus! A new, shiny, FABULOUS best friend riding around on her hand! Some smart dude snatched her up forever and ever, amen, and I couldn’t be happier for her (although I guess I won’t be confessing on my girl crush now!). She was telling the story of how he proposed (took her out to the restaurant where they had their first date, popped the question at the end of the meal, even got down on one knee, no report on whether they still had dessert or not, I’ll keep you posted) and how they took a trip to Denmark, from which he comes, so that she could meet the ‘rents and how there’s now talk of house buying and everything.
Somebody asked how they met, and guess what? ONLINE DATING/MATING/MEET YOUR SPECIAL SOMEONE WEBSITE! I won’t say the name, since someone there might be innocent, so instead we’ll call it E-Melody. (Get it? Get it? How amused am I with my own self? SO AMUSED!) Now I think I’m going to have to come up with a feasible excuse for she and I to go have lunch one of these days (which is only weird because we’ve NEVER, EVER DONE THAT and I’m mostly the admin girl with whom she banters so hiply in this office and who knows, she might not think I’m cool at ALL! AWKWARD…) so I can prick her brain on how someone as cool as she went through E-BunchOfPeopleSingingSimilarNotes and met someone and didn’t feel dorky or desperate and even found a marriable fellow.
Oh, and one more thing? Bitter Divorce says she could never, EVER do an online datey-matey website. She's too precious to do that. So Uber-Cool chick get engaged via online datey-matey and worst possible version of single me is too good for them.
I think I might have to re-evaluate things just a little...
She’s cool also because she’s single, like me, and that is rare around here. The only other single people within cat-whacking distance of me in this place are the 16-yr old student intern and a bitter divorcee who wears make-up like Madonna from the 80’s, is almost 10 months into her “change of life” and normally goes to bed at 8:30pm. So I love having at least one other single grown-up with coolness to spare around sometimes. Like we’re the first two members of some single-girl book club, only with less books and more being cool. The "Being Cool and not Really Reading Much in the Way of Books" Club.
Anyway, JC (Joette Cool) came in the other day with an iceberg on her finger like that what sank the Titanic! A rock like that what is forever being pushed by Sisyphus! A new, shiny, FABULOUS best friend riding around on her hand! Some smart dude snatched her up forever and ever, amen, and I couldn’t be happier for her (although I guess I won’t be confessing on my girl crush now!). She was telling the story of how he proposed (took her out to the restaurant where they had their first date, popped the question at the end of the meal, even got down on one knee, no report on whether they still had dessert or not, I’ll keep you posted) and how they took a trip to Denmark, from which he comes, so that she could meet the ‘rents and how there’s now talk of house buying and everything.
Somebody asked how they met, and guess what? ONLINE DATING/MATING/MEET YOUR SPECIAL SOMEONE WEBSITE! I won’t say the name, since someone there might be innocent, so instead we’ll call it E-Melody. (Get it? Get it? How amused am I with my own self? SO AMUSED!) Now I think I’m going to have to come up with a feasible excuse for she and I to go have lunch one of these days (which is only weird because we’ve NEVER, EVER DONE THAT and I’m mostly the admin girl with whom she banters so hiply in this office and who knows, she might not think I’m cool at ALL! AWKWARD…) so I can prick her brain on how someone as cool as she went through E-BunchOfPeopleSingingSimilarNotes and met someone and didn’t feel dorky or desperate and even found a marriable fellow.
Oh, and one more thing? Bitter Divorce says she could never, EVER do an online datey-matey website. She's too precious to do that. So Uber-Cool chick get engaged via online datey-matey and worst possible version of single me is too good for them.
I think I might have to re-evaluate things just a little...
Monday, May 05, 2008
V-V-V-Vacation
Hey, know where I was? I was on VACATION! WOO HOO!!! And that’s the main reason that I’ve been so quiet. I was off somewhere doing relaxing things and I have no portable computerness. My only computer is plugged into my office and doesn’t travel, so while I was away the blog was quiet. (Right, because it’s been SO very vocal before that. Man, I suck so terribly that Dyson is trying to use me as the prototype for his next fancy Vacuum. Vooooooooommm.)
I've started to explain the vacation, but really it's the kind of thing that was cool for me (and the parents – they came too) but simply boring to anyone but me. In a nutshell, here are the highlights of my few days off:
-fairies in sculpted tu-tus and combat boots who were FEEE-RCE!
-masseuse turned gambler turned thief turned Buddhist monk
-the best basement cuisine west of the rockies
-floppy beach hats and shoes that were on sale, SALE for $80.
-a quick primer on “good luck!” and other things you DON’T say in a theater.
There was this one shop that we visited, which was a classic example of a place stocked by the world’s most excellent catalog shoppers. Pinecone Christmas ornaments hanging side-by-side with fancy art-puppets next to Asian scarves and bags and purses piled up with carved camels and spooky cat gargoyles and this amazingly lifelike sleeping dog, who it turned out was a real and soft and fluffy and super, SUPER mellow sleeping dog. Or possibly dead dog. But I’m rooting for super mellow and sleeping. This place also had these cool singing and dancing bowls. You fill them with water and rub the handles and they moan and groan, and the water dances and it’s just cool! It’s probably the closest I'll ever get to being Zen is with these dancing water bowls. Of course as is the case with all things Zen, it’s Zpendy. (couldn’t resist.)
Anyway, I’m back and all refreshed and springy and light on my feet and my fingers and it’s with this energy that I will rededicate myself to this blog at which I have tremendously sucked recently. Watch this space! SEE how I let you down once again! Watch as I faceplant all over my promises to be better! Or maybe? Maybe I’ll actually be all that I can be? I don’t even know what’s gonna happen next. Let’s watch and see...
I've started to explain the vacation, but really it's the kind of thing that was cool for me (and the parents – they came too) but simply boring to anyone but me. In a nutshell, here are the highlights of my few days off:
-fairies in sculpted tu-tus and combat boots who were FEEE-RCE!
-masseuse turned gambler turned thief turned Buddhist monk
-the best basement cuisine west of the rockies
-floppy beach hats and shoes that were on sale, SALE for $80.
-a quick primer on “good luck!” and other things you DON’T say in a theater.
There was this one shop that we visited, which was a classic example of a place stocked by the world’s most excellent catalog shoppers. Pinecone Christmas ornaments hanging side-by-side with fancy art-puppets next to Asian scarves and bags and purses piled up with carved camels and spooky cat gargoyles and this amazingly lifelike sleeping dog, who it turned out was a real and soft and fluffy and super, SUPER mellow sleeping dog. Or possibly dead dog. But I’m rooting for super mellow and sleeping. This place also had these cool singing and dancing bowls. You fill them with water and rub the handles and they moan and groan, and the water dances and it’s just cool! It’s probably the closest I'll ever get to being Zen is with these dancing water bowls. Of course as is the case with all things Zen, it’s Zpendy. (couldn’t resist.)
Anyway, I’m back and all refreshed and springy and light on my feet and my fingers and it’s with this energy that I will rededicate myself to this blog at which I have tremendously sucked recently. Watch this space! SEE how I let you down once again! Watch as I faceplant all over my promises to be better! Or maybe? Maybe I’ll actually be all that I can be? I don’t even know what’s gonna happen next. Let’s watch and see...
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