Selling point
It’s the phone that seals the deal.
Oh, God—er—I mean, Joy
Yes, these are hangers. And no, this is not a post about women’s rights or abortions or what will happen when the right wingers squash Roe vs. Wade like the poisonous creepy crawly they think it is. I’m not starting off my re-entry into blogging by smashing you over the head just yet. I simply want to talk about these hangers. Did you look at them?
These are no bendable back alley instruments. These hangers are sturdy. These hangers are sublime. They are velvetish and sexy and will do nearly-unspeakable things to your space-challenged, 1952-era closet. And by unspeakable things, I do not mean they will let your cherished Laundry by Shelli Segal dress accidentally slip into the hamper and make it’s way to the Fancy Dress Graveyard via the washing machine.
Reader, these lovers are to the elementary-school-volunteering, lunch-packing, middle-aged mother, what The Rabbit Habit is to the mini-skirt clad, club-hopping co-ed, whose boyfriend doesn’t know how to spell clitoris, let alone know where such a gadget might be located. Which is fairly insightful commentary on the sex lives of both groups of women, linking them in a way that transcends age.
Okay, so I exaggerate a tad. Even if the rumbling sound of the UPS delivery truck makes your breath catch, you’ll still want to keep a few good sex toys on hand because, let’s be real: There is no substitute for orgasm. But Joy Mangano hangers will change your life. Trust me. You’ll want to have a cigarette after you’ve swapped out your current mélange for these beauties.
Pre-resolution inventory
I was going to take photos of my gym socks for y’all to see how well I’ve been doing on un-resolution number 5, but my husband has already washed, folded and stacked on my dresser the four pairs I dirtied in pursuit of my un-resolution number 4. He’s such a mensch! I totally should have included weekly blow jobs on my list, and I thought about it at the time, honest! I mean, how hard could four fellatios in four weeks be, right? It’s not like I’m married with a kid or anything hurdle-ish and daunting like that.
No, the goals I set were wholly do-able. So it’s surprising to note that I’ve ganked nearly all of them as spectacularly as Brett Favre’s spiraling career. Let’s take a look:
1.This past week, my fastest Sudoku time was longer than all my days on earth. Maybe because I fell asleep while playing?
2. Not only did I not say no to spearheading, I am now spearheading the communications for my kid’s kindergarten class, exactly the opposite of no spearheading. Never mind that I still have to write and send the first communiqué and am suffering angst over not having done it yet and worrying about it hanging over my head and oh! that’s the damned reason I said NO! SPEARHEADING! in the first place! What is wrong with me?
3. About that daily writing… I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.
4. I’m coming in this close [] on the 5-workouts-a-week thing and though I could seal the deal by going to Pilates tomorrow night, I have to go to the day job first, where I’ll come face-to-face with the insane supervisor who I hung up on today. Later, I’ll race out of there to meet with a principal, then rush across a few blocks to confront a school board heavy, and pay lots of devoted attention to my child. Pilates or cocktails with friends is my choice for the evening hours and…well, look. This one isn’t my fault: There are goals and then there are methods of maintaining sanity that do not in anyway align with keeping goals.
5. I covered this one in the intro but let’s celebrate properly: HUGE SUCCESS! GYM SOCKS! RIGHT! SIDE! IN! HUSBAND HAPPY!*
6. I’m swearing like a woman who’s school board is going to eliminate all the janitorial staff, nurses, counselors, office personel, librarians and busing at her school, and I’m paying twenty-five cents to the child every single time she hears me. She may be illiterate—save for a few choice expletives—when she pops out the other end of this California Public School/How To Fill Our Prisons For Years To Come Experiment. But she’ll have herself a nice little community college nest egg. And anyway, who really needs fucking librarians?
7. That whole two-spaces-after-each-sentence thing is for the nerds. I never did want a doctorate anyway.
As for The Rejectionist? Well. She’s failed in more than one area too, which made me feel less alone. But she’s held fast against the Maker’s Mark and written all up and down and sideways about it. I have to congratulate her on a fine success with a formidable goal. Go forth, I say to her, and spread lovingkindness if you must. But, Madame, if you start parroting SARK and asking policemen to arrest your inner critics? Do NOT blame the Internet when we restrain you and pour bourbon down your throat. It will be for your own good.
*But not as happy as he could be.
He literally has no pulse
I saw this picture last week:
…and it got me to thinking.
The man has access—for the rest of his life—to the best health care in the world (evident by the fact that he is still alive (assuming there’s been no Weekend At Bernie’s tomfoolery going on these past 10 years)). And not that he shouldn’t, of course, since Being Fundamentally Evil And Covertly Murderous isn’t a reason for an insurance company to deny you coverage.
The real issue is why shouldn’t the rest of us have access to even the most basic health care, too?
Preresolution Uncontest: Who’s with me?
The Rejectionist, that’s who.
Oh, hell-in-a-colostomy-bag! Who am I kidding? The Rejectionist isn’t with me. I’m with The Rejectionist. Or, rather, I’m playing along with her pre-New Year Resolution thing-a-ma-gig, the rules of which are vagueish but, generally speaking, involve making a few resolutions now to take the sting out of those that come later.
But here’s the thing: Like heaven, RepublicanismTeaBaggery and reading materials in the bathroom, I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions! Therefore, ergo, etc., i.e., failure is an impossibility.
Still. The Rejectionist is so loveable, I couldn’t help but throw up a few goals for the month. Bourbon and coffee will both remain a steady part of my December regimen, because—despite all appearances—I’m not a crazy bitch. I know my limits.
So here they are, my Preresolutions:
1. Win a game of iPhone Suduko in less than 9 minutes and 23 seconds without mistakes and in a bout that isn’t part of procrastinating a deadline.
2. Say NO to organizing or spearheading any event at Ruby’s school. Participate in already planned activity? Sign me up. Create a “spring cleaning” from scratch? Uh…sorry…I’m competing in a Sudoku contest that day.
3. Write for at least 30 minutes each day, blahblahblah, writers writing about writing is borzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……. But yes. I will. I WILL DAMNIT! (Blogging counts but work on that children’s book would be even better.)
4. Get to the gym five (5) days a week, even if it is only to complain to the droopy-eyed college kid at the front desk about the televisions in the entryway being always tuned to FOX News before stomping right back out the door in a righteous huff. Shoot. Now that I think about it, giving up bourbon might be a safer route to Preresolution Uncontest success.
5. Turn my gym socks right-side-in before putting them in the laundry hamper. Sam hates when I forget to do that, and now that he’ll be washing 10 sweat-soaked gym socks each week, it’s the least I can do to appease him, no?
6. No longer refuse to pay my daughter 25-cents for swear words I use when quoting other people. Fuck that shit. If I say it, I’ll pay. But it’s fair game if I’m quoting. The child does need to learn context, after all.
Anyone else want to play???
OH! And, amended to add:
7. From this post on, I’m going to put two spaces between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next. It looks so much better. Don’t you think? See? That was two spaces. That was one. Two. One. Two. One. Two….I could do this all day. (Anyway, two spaces makes me feel more scholarly which partially compensates for 8 years of college and one measly bachelor’s degree. I mean, Jesus Christ. They give honorary doctorates to celebrities. Why not me?)
What’s wrong with this picture?
You know what’s wrong with it?
It was taken at the mall ON NOVEMBER 6TH! We’ve not even arrived at Thanksgiving yet. We’re not even in the month that contains the holiday that warrants this man’s services yet. This should be illegal. Or at least, this should warrant a fine like the one I think should be imposed on anyone who keeps their Christmas lights up after January 1st. One holiday at a time, people. One damn holiday at a time.
Here’s another one. Can you guess what these are?
These are pants displayed at The Gap. But they’re not just any pants. They’re stirrup pants. Methinks the buyers have some sort of amnesia. That or they are playing a seriously mean joke on women who weren’t alive in the 80s. You see, we’ve been here before and the legs-look-like-sausages outcome is the same all these years later. Stirrup pants do favors for no one. A few decades is not going to free the stirrup-wearer of cankles.
Now guess what these are:
These are cocktails. Or more specifically, these are The Most Ridiculously Over Priced Cocktails Known To Man. Or, if not known to man, at least known to me and my man. That’s my very dry, very dirty martini on the right and that’s his Stranahan’s up with one ice cube on the left. We purchased them at The W Hotel where we attended a rather swanky CityBeat party last night, thinking we were being all stealth and whatnot by avoiding the extravagantly long line for the free drinks. $33 dollars later, we understood the reason for the long queue. You can imagine my dismay when someone bumped my elbow and a tiny drop spilled from my glass and splashed to the floor. In slow motion. Add the cost of babysitting and a quick bite to eat and we were out five times that amount. For a 3.5 hour date.
It’s hot dogs and Ramen around these parts from now on and guaranTEED, no Christmas tree until December 1st.
About my skillz in the kitchen
For the last two months or so, we’ve been getting a “box” of vegetables from Suzy’s Organic Farm every-other-week. We pick up our veggies at the elementary school Ruby will be attending come September—excuse me for a minute while I get a tissue…
Oh Jesus. Hold another second, please…
Ah, that’s better. Off to school you go, wee one!
Anyway, I feel pretty great about taking part in Community Supported Agriculture because we walk down the block to pick up our veggies. And, too, because I can say, Hey y’all! I’m participating in Community Supported Agriculture! as I pat myself on the back for being this much [] closer to the source of my food.
But I gotta be honest: Beyond that? Not so wowed. I find, as much as I fight it, I’m becoming ever-less enchanted with my every-other-Wednesday loot. This week, we got four tomatoes. Four. And they tasted just as much like wet cardboard as those from my grocery store. We didn’t get any lettuce but got enough arugla to feed everyone within a three block radius of our home. For a month. That is, if the arugula weren’t more bitter than Betty Draper chewing coffee grounds in between cigarettes.
Of course, we did get 3 eggplants, two gnarled and pocked squashes (is that a word? squashes?), a bag of emaciated Romanian green beans and about 60 peppers. 60 very useful Cherry Bomb, Serrano and Hungarian Hot Wax chili peppers. As much as I like supporting my local farmers, bitter arugula and flaming peppers are not helping my family meal planning. Not that I would know since I don’t normally cook, but nothing is normal around here these days. My period shows up whenever it feels like it, forty is the new 32 and last night, I baked a chicken. I touched giblets and a neck. I made a paste with olive oil and oregano leftover from the last CSA box and smeared it around under the skin. Take that store bought rotisserie chickens!
And since procrastination is an art form of the most highly disciplined avoider, I embraced this new-found talent and skipped writing in lieu of cooking again today. (Of course, here I sit writing, so it’s all getting done as it should.) And what did I do with all the weird and useless veggies from last night’s CSA box? I went shopping and got all the necessary ingredients to make this gazpacho right here.
It only took me an hour and the kitchen was a wall-splattered Jackson-Pollack-meets-Frida-Kahlo masterpiece. My gazpacho was red and not at all green, like the pretty picture on the No More Dirty Looks website, probably because I didn’t follow the directions and removed the cucumber skin, resulting in a final product that looked more closely related to the vomit of a frat boy on a bender than it did an Ayurvedic delicacy. But whew! I did it. I’m just lucky I didn’t lose a toe when the blade from my miniature food processor went flying to the ground, a credit to my natural athletical inclinations.
Like a mad scientist on a roll, I made some grilled trout for dinner.
Okay, that’s a total lie. Sam prepped and cooked the trout. But I bought it and took a photo of it just before I dealt with those pesky peppers. What to do about those peppers, right?
Even I know, when in doubt, add bacon. And cream cheese.
I sliced and cleaned 15 of these babies without getting any spice-juice in my eyes, smeared them full of cream cheese, wrapped them in bacon, slid them into the oven and then forgot to take any pictures of the end product because they were as eye-wateringly scrumptious as the gazpacho was not. And it turns out, a few of them weren’t spicy at all. Her entire face may have puckered at the flavor of the gazpacho, but one guess as to who asked for a bacon wrapped, cream cheese stuffed pepper for dessert?
I gotta say, failure be damned—and to Ruby’s teacher, I honestly thought it was a nice gesture bringing you a bowl of chilled upchuck—the effort to fun ratio was, for once, pretty inspiring.
Passages
I was writing a post tonight about my recent trip to Southern Utah to celebrate my grandfather’s 90th birthday and about how it exceeded my low expectations by approximately the same distance between Ruby’s hands and the end of the rainbow kite she flew against a cloudless blue sky in the hot desert wind last Wednesday afternoon. I was writing about how we settled easily into vacation mode, taking slow walks to and from the pool where my daughter shared lemonade slushies with her cousins and her uncle and then finally put together all of the things (monkeys! airplanes! rockets!) she’s been learning in her years of on-again/off-again swim lessons.
I was writing about the three generations of women who went into town for pedicures and had the greatest time they’ve ever had together. Ever. I was writing about how cousins and aunts and uncles moved around one another in spirographic circles, moving in and out of conversations, getting familiar with each other after many years apart. I was writing about the heat of 90 birthday candles, about how they make a sheet cake sag, about how they lit up my grandfather’s face as he bent to blow them out.
I was going to write about the belly dancers and my grandfather’s face as he bent to give them money, about his very sweet, very funny speech, about how sometimes things are better in retrospect than they were in the moment, and how I felt a tinge of melancholy at wishing the rosier view had been the reality.
And with my stories, I’d planned to include some pictures. But WordPress—damn-hell Wordpress!—won’t let me upload them and it reminded me of the re-design I keep putting off.
I got frustrated, hit command+A and then DE-LETE! So that’s all I got for you. I’m quitting Wordpress. Soon. I’m ready for a change anyway. Who’s with me?
BP obviously began by consulting pre-schoolers
“Aw, shit,” I said to the car radio today, forgetting all about my impressionable roommate in the back seat.
“What, mama?” Ruby asked. So I explained to her that there was a big accident that had caused oil to pour out from a broken pipe deep in the sea and that it’s hurting a lot of animals and grasslands and sanctuaries and people. I told her that nobody knows how to stop the gushing and that I’m really, really sad about it.
Then the child who offered to loan me gas money from her piggy bank on Wednesday said to me, “Why don’t the sea divers go way, way, very deep down and put a bucket on it?”