Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

In Which I Am Squelched

I had a post for you today. In fact I had 6 (six!) all ready to go. It was a series. And, as it turns out, I have been gagged. Gagged for a good reason, but still gagged.

So now I feel I must make up for this semi-self-censorship by telling you number Seven in a series of Weird Things You Don't Know About Me. How do spies cope with secrets? I can't keep one thing secret without blurting out another secret to restore cosmic balance. I have exceeded my secret out-of-pocket maximum, so I must tell you...

...I wear pajamas whenever possible. I get home, oh, six-thirty. At six thirty-one, even before I pet the dog, I'm in my pajamas. People come to the door. "Are you sick?" they ask, greatly concerned. "No, I am a pig," I answer.

Big deal, you think. Let me state these are not elegant lounging pajamas. My favorite pajamas are cotton, worn lingerie-thin. There is a hole in the seam of each shoulder. There is an enormous gaping hole across the right knee, in fact, really the left leg is more Bermuda short than pajama leg.

Okay, that's not the secret. I'm stalling. The real secret is that as much as I love ratty well-worn pajamas, I love smelly pajamas more. I only wash my pajamas if they just reek. If my eyes water, I think, "Well, if I wash them at least they'll get more worn out. That's an upside." I suppose it might be that the more my pajamas smell, then at least I've accomplished one little thing as I was lolling about in my pajamas -- I contributed to my pajama odor.

There. Now my secret to confession ratio has been balanced, and I can keep this other topic secret.

In Which I Seriously Consider a New Career

I'm checking out my site visitors.

First, it appears the semester has started and many students are dipping their toes into J. D. Salinger, based on the Google searches. Seymour's a PEDOPHILE, children. There you go. A-pluses all around.

Who searched for pudenda photo? Watch that onanism. Too much onanism will make you go blind.

Speaking of both toes and onanism: just in the last few hours my toes have been viewed eight times, far outpacing any other Google search. It's all "toes, toes, toes" from google.uk and ia and fr and de. I see I've been neglecting my International Toe Fans. 

You know how there's often a stripper character in a movie, but it's okay because she's saving up to go to college? What if she was paying for her very expensive medication? What could I charge if I opened a Toe Porn site? Checking ... damn, ToePorn.com is taken.

See, this is where I intended to post a photo of my toes kinkily wrapped up in the heavy chain we have in the basement. And can I? CAN I? No. And who do we have to blame for that? Whoever cruelly found my darling Canon Powershot and did not return it. Or suspicious New Guy at work.  OR the guy who used up all the batteries so I cannot use even one of the cameras sitting in my house. I'm sorry, toe porn fans, I have let you down.

Grrrr

First, my Starbucks card went missing. Sometime...oh....Monday. Specifically, Monday morning.

Then, my cute little purse camera went missing. (new guy) Sometime....Monday.

At no time did my purse fall over. Sigh. I'm trying to think of when I might have left my purse (new guy) unattended. You know, like at work. (new guy)

Cooking Slump

I have a genetic disorder I inherited from the Queen Mother. You might call it bi-polar cooking ability affliction. In my youth, I would wake up at nine and find Mom had been cooking since six. There was black walnut coffee cake next to stacks of cookies and pancakes and popovers.

This madness would afflict Mom until at some point she would inevitably hit the wall and nothing she made turned out. The meringues would flop, puff pastry wouldn't puff, everything was a disaster. Nothing was ever "Hmm, you've made better coffee cake, but this isn't bad." It was either "Mmmm wis ish du bess evah" (chew chew) or "Did you follow the recipe?"

So, two days ago I went to the grocery for the first time in months, because I needed to do some competitive cooking. New Guy at work brought in some Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, and while they were fine, I knew my Oatmeal Raisin Cookies could kick his cookies' ass. I wasn't going to bring them in, I just wanted to make them for Gary. And myself.

Well, I made them, and the first batch did not turn out right. We ate the first batch trying to diagnose the problem. Gary decided maybe they were just undercooked. So I, of course, burnt the second.

Instead of recognizing that I was in the Cooking Slump phase of the familial cooking disorder, I thought, "I can do this right." This time I measured all the ingredients carefully. When I got to the shortening I looked at it carefully ... and touched it to my tongue...and checked the expiration date. 10/01/06. "Thump" goes the shortening into the trash.  Fine, I thought, instead of half shortening and half butter, I'll use all butter. Melted, not creamed, because the shortening was supposed to be melted. Rookie mistake.

That batch looked like this:

Mmmm. Grease cookies. But did I stop there? No, my hubris was so great I thought "Oh, just cook the dough that's left, but cook them faster! So they don't have time to spread!" Yes! I know! And you think, "Moron, she's going to burn the cookies!"

So, after I put the last batch of cookies in and took a little nap I swear to God, I leapt out of bed screaming "Cookies!" Cookies were not burnt. I had somehow turned off the oven after the previous batch. Cookies were just melted into a puddle on the bottom of the sheet. "I can save them!" I thought heroically, not considering a DNR for the cookies because I am God. So of course, I turned the oven on and calculated that with preheating and cooking they would require 15 minutes. Resulting in:

(That would have been a more impressive photo of a burnt skating rink of charred cookie batter, but Gary got into them last night and picked out the edible parts.)

The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? No cooking for me for a few weeks until the slump lifts.

I Do Hope Tomorrow is Like Today

Thanks to all of you who said I could go to a concert at 44. I thought of you when I got into line and Gary asked the woman ahead, "You're in line for Guster, right?" She turned around and said, "Yes, but there's an over twenty-one line on the other side of the building and it's much shorter." Liar, I thought, but we found the Guster Geezer Line and it was indeed much shorter. And staffed by people on the lookout for "Unders." And, well, populated by gorgeous twenty-one-and-a-day year olds.

Highlights of the concert:

1) The third song in was a cover of "Brazil," a fine song from BEFORE MY DAY. It is also featured as the title song in one of my five favorite movies. And of course, it is the name of my favorite pubic hairstyle which I recommend to everyone.

2) As they sang "Fa Fa" the drummer was beating the hell out of the congas, and I was mentally rearranging my guest room to accommodate the additional congas and cymbals Gary is going to want now. I am resigned. Well, actually, I am excited, because he could really go to town if he had more than two congas and two bongos.

It's remarkable how much better they sound live: not at all whiny. However, I've been spoiled. They only have one front man. Is the rest of the band unable to speak? Or dance? Or make references to pop culture and Eastern philosophy?

Even though we got there early (Geezer Line, I recommend it) we perched at the top of the balcony. (This on the advice of one of Gary's female co-workers, who said "I used to stand in the pit on the floor, but I can't do that anymore since I'm over thirty." Yeah, that gave me a good belly laugh.) We were struck by the amount of crowd socializing that floated up to us during the actual concert. Gary was trying to put it into words and was torn between "Alien Locusts" and "House of Commons Questions Time," if either were attending a rock concert.   

On a related note, at one point I noticed Gary was perched on his seat and the perky twenty something next to him was chatting him up, and by chatting I mean cupping her hand and screaming intimately into his ear. When the house lights came on I promptly body slammed him against the wall and demanded to know what Perky had said to him.

He sighed, "Oh, it's the same thing all the young girls say to me at concerts. Their eyes get big and they say, 'You must have been to lots of concerts. How does this band compare to other bands, like, say, the Beatles?'"

I Walk the Line

I have stuffed my ever-spreading Midwestern ass into my Levis, pulled on my concert-goin' sweater, and my fabulously well-matched concert-going shoes. I encouraged my hair to curl. I put on foundation and lipstick.

I am going to the Guster concert. I plan to have fun. Screw you, music marketers, you and all  your demographics.

On the other hand, I am in effect going with my Dad (that would be Gary), and he won't let me drink or scream like a girl.

How long can I do this? Seventy? Eighty?

Haikurama

Pop culture? We got your pop culture right here. To begin, two Anna Nicole haiku:

Celeb Lesbian
Dyes her purple head red, then
Comes clean on ET

Why don't they do what
We did with Dad? Ashes split
Right down the middle

Followed by two TV haiku:

Pray for Colbert! I
Did (for a moment). It seems
I can't help myself.

You are right, Ellis
Your child bores me. Izzie's chin
Will drop at forty.

What a Bargain

A little math for you:

A one month supply of my anti-MS drug, full price:
$1,600.00 (Or One THOUSAND six hundred dollars and 00 cents, to be exact.)
(Per shot, thats $106.666666666666666666666666666666666667, to be exact)
My insurance pays 75%! Woo hooo! Cutting the price down to a mere:
$400.00 a month.
Of course, I always listen to my Mom, so I am on Gary's insurance, which pays 60% of prescription co-insurance. That knocks it down to:
$240.00 a month! Awesome!
And since we'll be using Gary's FSA to reimburse us that $240.00, we effectively get 30% back at tax time, since the FSA is taken out before taxes! I don't understand this at all! But it sounds good, and it brings the total down to a paltry:
$168.00 a month! That's ninety percent off, people!

But wait! There's more! When I had to take the big upfront hit of a three month supply at $400.00 a month yesterday, I of course bitched to Gary. To be exact (because I'm all up in my own face with the exactitude today), I bitched to Gary after the three month supply was FedExed to the office today. I've haven't had the meds while I've been working out these new insurance details, so I promptly coaxed a roll of fat up over my pants and shot myself up right there in the cube. (And that'll teach the new guy to ask me what's in the FedEx box.)

Gary emailed me back:

$168/month is only $5.60 a day.  I think that you are worth $5.60/day.  We can make that up easy by tipping 15% instead of 20% at restaurants.  Currently, I tip 20% because I am bad at math not because I am generous.  From now on, I will use the calculator built into my Blackberry to calculate 15%.  There, your drugs will now cost us nothing.

Because I know healthcare costs are always described as "spiraling," and because Spiraling Healthcare Cost is a hot topic, I just want to alleviate your concerns:

A) I paid for the FedEx myself.
B) Oh, just imagine what I would cost in wheelchairs and private nurse/companions.
C)  Socialized medicine doesn't seem to be the answer. As I understand it, Canada and England have elected to wait to see if the drug is effective before it will be put on their program. (Because ten years worth of data is inconclusive?) Both countries have an even higher incidence of MS.

So, hey, fellow Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield members, thanks for the big cost savings! I'll pay you back when your kids get the croup.

Okay, I Have No More Secrets Now

It appears that Becs, not satisfied with this list beginning with 10 (ten! TEN!) things you don't know about me,  is looking for six weird things.

1. I had a very bad sunburn in high school, and as it healed I peeled off a 6x10 section of skin. I tacked it up on my bulletin board for at least a year.

2. Not only did I lop off Barbie's hair and dunk her upside down in red food coloring for a quickie dye job, I cut off her feet so she could stand. My Barbies did not require the silly plastic heels. My girls could stand comfortably barefoot. Except they had no feet. But they could at least stand on their own two ankles and converse naturally about Ken and Skipper.

3. I really like giving myself shots now. Not so much the first few years, but now it makes me feel competent.

4.  When I was 15 or so, I began ovulating. I had no idea I was ovulating; I thought I'd been doing that the whole time I'd had my period (at least 4 years by then).   I won't go into the details, but ovulating seemed to strongly resemble what I remembered happening during my first few periods (and believe me, I am sparing you from some powerful imagery here). Since it seemed I was having a whole new set of periods in addition to the regular ones, naturally I assumed that I had an extra uterus. (Don't judge. Not such a stretch considering I'd been born with an extra thumb.) At any rate, instead of asking Mom, I took it upon myself to hike down the street to the neighborhood Planned Parenthood and ask them to confirm my diagnosis. They tried to set me straight, but I was still pretty convinced my extra uterus hypothesis was more feasible than this weird "ovulation" theory of theirs. (As a coda, Mom, the County Supervisor for the government Unwed Mothers program advised me that I might not want to pop in and out of the Planned Parenthood office down the street anymore.)

5. When I make grilled cheese sandwiches, I don't butter the bread, but instead melt the butter in the pan and lay the bread on top of it.

(I know. Boring, you complain? Well, that's because Number Six is so perverted I want to give you a little boredom as a buffer.)

6. I could draw. And like, my heroine, Jane Eyre, I could draw from my imagination. About the age of ten or 11 the subject of my art was what I imagined people looked like having sex. I'm sure this is normal. I can imagine there have always been childish sketches of a man with an unnaturally long penis that bent like a Crazy Straw to get between the crotch of the naked woman standing at his side. Except, for some reason, I progressed from imagining sexual positions into thinking of the backstory, you know, how did those people get into those positions? So, I sketched out the machinery that must have been required for two people to get together. They were quite the Rube Goldberg devices, with giant wheels and sliding trays and ramps and such. Because God knows two people couldn't just be expected to walk up to each other and connect their body parts in that way without special assistance of some kind. Sadly for the sake of human sexuality, my inventions were always torn into the trash. I don't think my parents ever got their hands on any of my artwork, and if they did I do NOT want to know.

A Shout-Out to Our Friends the Illuminati

When I was Baptist, voluntarily trundling off to church several times a week, one of the church activities was a weekly Youth Bible Study.

(Don't be thrown by TTIH (That Tone I Have). I recommend church immersion for any young girl who is scrabbling to find some way she can control her life. It beats, oh, getting tattoos and shaving one's head BALD.)

At any rate, one day the Bible study featured a tape of some minister ranting about - and I may have this wrong - how the Illuminati have been plotting for ages, they became the FreeMasons and now the Masons, their mark is the pyramid on our dollar bill, and somehow they control Proctor and Gamble because the P&G logo looks like a satanic moon with 13 stars. (We Youth immediately put the tape on pause so we could scramble to find a tube of Crest. And it was trrruuuuueee.)

Most importantly, the tape claimed that Richard Nixon, a Mason, may have been the Antichrist because he sought to change dates and times with the institution of Daylight Saving Time. (I don't know what exactly what verse in Revelation pegs the Antichrist with seeking to change dates and times, and I can't find it anywhere. I have lost my mad concordance skillz.)

Even though I was attracted to the Weekly World News view of the End Times,  the thesis of the tape seemed like a stretch for me. They were Illuminati. They read books. How bad could they be?

Well, in my attempt tonight to track down the DST/Revelation connection, I found the motherlode, the startling account of  what the Illuminati have been up to for the last thirty years or so. Go. Enjoy. I'll just stay here.

One thing does kind of jump out at you. They planned to set the planet Jupiter on fire in 2000. I know! I was skeptical too. I don't know what they thought this would accomplish.

Freakin' Illuminati.

Huh. I Don't Get Men.

The theme for the most recent GNO was "Hot Men." You try making a Hot Men mix CD sometime.

Songs By Women Who Think Men Are Hot? Yes. And thank you, Liz Phair.
Songs By Women Who Think They Themselves Are Hot? Thanks again, Liz.
Songs by Men Singing About Hotness as an Abstract Concept? Sure.
Songs By Gay Men from Europe Proclaiming Their Individual Hotness? Reportedly. It appears this is Robin's favorite music.

But Songs By Men Who Think They Themselves Are Hot? Surprisingly few.

The closest I could come was "I'm Your Man" by Leonard Cohen, "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward and the Dominoes, and finally "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred. I can only suppose "I'm Too Sexy" was a novelty song because of the novelty of hearing a man brag about his sexuality.

I had to fill out the rest of the list with tenuous men/sex connections such as "Policeman's Xmas Party" because Policemen are hot.

So here's the list:

Meeting the Remarkable Men -Harvey Danger
Supernova -Liz Phair
Rock Me -Liz Phair
I'm Your Man -Leonard Cohen
Sharp Dressed Man  -ZZ Top
Millennium Man -Betty
Memories -Leonard Cohen
Glory -Liz Phair
It's Raining Men  -The Weather Girls
Smooth -Santana 
The Hardest Part -Blondie
Flower -Liz Phair
Samson -Regina Spektor
Big Tall Man -Liz Phair
Policeman's Xmas Party -Five For Fighting
H.W.C. -Liz Phair
I'm Too Sexy -Right Said Fred 
20th Century Boy -Def Leppard
Sixty Minute Man -Billy Ward & The Dominoes
I Got The Six -ZZ Top
Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On -Leonard Cohen

I played a short sample of that recent Justin Timberlake song on it seemed to say "Sure, I'm hot, but mainly because you're insecure and mistreated." And don't even mention that Rod Stewart song to me.

So, what did I miss? Isn't there a self-confident straight man genre?

Look On My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair

I got the latest BNL CD, Barenaked Ladies are Men, and found two surprises on the enhanced CD. First, it contains a feature that lets you re-mix a few of the songs, including a lovely pop-up box that contains the lyrics:

Sure, it looks obvious to YOU, but if you had flown through the installation of mysterious software and did not, well, read the screen, you too may have thought the Do Ba virus had infected your PC.

The second surprise is devastating. It might rival Catherine's NPH discovery.

The enhanced CD had two songs I hadn't heard before, so of course, time to study up on the lyrics. Here, verbatim, is the fourth line of  What A Letdown:

Maybe if I jiggle it a little it'll open on it's own

No, I thought. No. Perhaps that's how they punctuate the pronoun "its" in Canada. I'd already forgiven "May some lightening strike me dead" as a clever pun.

I just went right to bed. Now it's the next day (I just double-checked that in my head three times: Now it-is the next day, yes, that's right), and I'm devastated.

Still a good song, though.

You Had To be There

Okay, I'm about to attempt the impossible: writing an account of an evening you had to be there to appreciate.

I was at Catherine the Red's last night, with her friend "Lisa." Lisa is a natural mimic. I shrieked, "Do me! Do me!" Lisa immediately messed up her hair.

Lisa relieves the stress of her job by talking to the "Pebble People." She has an assortment of pebbles on her desk with faces drawn on them, and at random moments she'll bring two pebbles up to her ears. She lends her voice to the pebbles. The Pebble People sound like Butters from South Park.

(For those of you, MOM, who haven't heard Butters, click the play arrow: )

She demonstrated the ways of the Pebble People using bottlecaps, because their appeal is in what they say, not how they look.  Imagine Butters muttering a relentless stream of abuse. So Lisa evidently sits at work with pebbles at her ears, muttering sweetly, "you're so %$#*-ing stupid you're so fat and you complain about being fat and you just eat and eat and get fatter and no one lissens to you cause you think you're so $%#*-ing smart mebbe if you'd stop talking once in a while someone would say 'hey, stoopid, shaddup you moron' and then you'd stop talking and people could lissen to you, 'scept you wouldn't, cause you're a big dummy. And you're fat."

Oh, did I mention this woman works with the mentally ill?

So Catherine and I were laughing by the end of this, and then Lisa came over to me with the bottlecaps and repeated to me everything I'd said during the "serious" part of the evening, about work, and Gary, and health insurance, such as "you're so stupid, and no wonder your husband doesn't want you on his insurance you stoopid cripple, cuz you're gonna die, and you're gonna weigh 300 pounds and he can't carry you around the house you fat pig" and by then I wet my pants JUST a LITTLE. I suppose the look on my face gave it away because the bottle cap said "oh, and you just wet yourself, cause you're gross, that's what you are, you stoopid cripple."

That's when I heard Catherine start wheezing because she was laughing so hard. I was about to ask if she needed her asthma inhaler, but I was choking. I didn't ask, even though Catherine could have died (cuz she's a stoopid asthmatic and is too stoopid to &^#% breathe). About then I began wheezing too, like a little old man, you stoopid ^%$#-ing cow.

Yeah. So. Laughing? Wheezing? No? Guess you did have to be there.

Gary's Big House O'Fun

I suppose Valentine's Day inspired Gary to have another of the freaky Big House dreams. He was once again the owner of a Big House, and again strangers were milling around.

Gary reported this house was even larger than most houses in the Big House series of dreams. (Coming soon on DVD!)  So large he hadn't been in every room. One room he did visit was decorated like the inside of a pinball game. I asked if people were being run down by giant silver balls. Gary said no, but that there were targets that would pop up and we could shoot at them.

And oh, he mentioned, I left him for another couple.

"Couple?" I giggled, "Hey, thank you!"
"You just took off with them."
"Well sure. What did they look like?"
"The guy was kind of baby-faced with blond hair. The woman was young and brunette."
"Were you sad?"
"I punched the guy in the face."

Now, I confess the other Big House dreams have me perplexed, but this one is as clear as my conscience. Gary must be a little concerned that youth will lure me away from his fifty-three year-old self. Awwwww. I must make it a point to do something codgeresque this weekend. Well, after I go to another Girl's Night Out.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Damn creepy UPDATE:
I just checked. Last year on Valentine's Day? He had a big house dream. A dream in which our dog Doug (who in truth was not long for this world) was dead. A premonition? And this dream coming at the same time, on Feb. 15th. Spooky.

A Gift of Love

A few days ago, I said to Gary, "It's so great! They took away the tree and all we have left is tree detrius. " (pronounced "Deh-tree-us")

His eyes widened. He gasped, and crowed, "Do you mean "DeTRITus?"
I scoffed, "There is no such word."

Yeah, well, shut up. He was right and I was wrong. And I love him so much that on this Valentine's Day I won't even bother to cover my ass by saying I was making a pun ("de-TREE-us," get it?)

Happy Valentine's Day, dude.

Three Stories Down, Six to Go

Well, while waiting for Middlesex (snicker - I just capitalized it MiddleSex) to be pitched on my doorstep as does not befit a Pulitzer-prize-winning novel, I looked for another book. I read the prologue to The Time Traveler's Wife. And then the first few pages of a chapter.

"Well, this didn't win a Pulitzer," I sniffed, with that tone I have.

Then I remembered that Gary bought a copy of Nine Stories nine months ago.

Then I remembered the conversation we had when he started reading it. He appeared in the doorway and announced:

"This Nine Stories book is really good!"
"Well, duh," I said, in that tone I have.
"You should read it!"
"I read it years ago, darling," I drawled as I languorously painted my toenails. With great care I daubed the tiny lacquer brush into the corners of my big toe,  taking pains to distribute the red polish evenly across the nail. "I read it in college. It was during that semester I took all survey courses and read sixty books."
"Are you sure? I can't believe you didn't keep a copy."
"Of course I'm sure. That's the  one where Seymour Glass makes friends with the girl on the beach and she keeps saying 'Can you see more glass?'"
"That's the first story! The one about the pedophile."
"Pedophile?" I asked sharply, suspending the lacquer brush above my toe. I looked at Gary, my face expressing both bemusement and contempt. "He isn't a pedophile. There's no pedophilia in Nine Stories."
"Yuh-huh."
I sighed dramatically. "He's just friends with the little girl."
Gary clutched his head and left.

I forgot our exchange until I rooted up Nine Stories to fill in the gap before Middlesex arrived.The suggestion that Seymour Glass might be a pedophile came back to me as I read the first story, 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish.' Here is a quote:

'A bananafish,' he said, and undid the belt of his robe. He folded the robe, first lengthwise, then in thirds. He unrolled the towel he had used over his eyes, spread it out on the sand, peeled off the t-shirt that read 'I'm a Pedophile!' and draped it over his narrow shoulders.

Well, it doesn't say that exactly but my God I am a moron. (She said languidly, raising her glass of Scotch to view the computer screen through its golden contents. That is, if Scotch is indeed golden; I have no idea.)

I was shaken that I remembered the first story so distinctly. I even remember my reaction at the end of the story: shock. "Huh! Why would Seymour shoot himself in the head? Well, his wife was vacuous. Next story. Eight more to go!"

Though my confidence was shaken, I decided I should read the next story, 'Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut,' which contains no pedophilia. I also looked closely for lesbianism or something else I would have missed in college. Straightforward. Whew.

Encouraged, I (languidly) moved on to "Just Before the War with the Eskimos." And now, I am truly screwed up. What? The Hell? I can't believe my thin interpretation is accurate: the main female character leaves her friend's house with a new point of view about the friend's home life, or a crush on the brother, or that special kind of crush young girls get on homosexuals such as the brother's friend. There were no adults, so no pedophilia. Still, I have the strong feeling there's something I'm missing.

Seriously, I'm pretty shaken up. I don't know if I can read Middlesex after this.

Best Day Ever!

The day started with blessings raining down on my snoring slumbering form. The phone rang at 7 in the morning. The dentist. The dentist CALLING TO CANCEL that day's 8 a.m. tooth-cleaning appointment. "BWAHAHahahaha!" I said after I hung up. Then I relaxed my body so much that it absorbed into it the sheets and the top part of the mattress, and fell back asleep...

..until 9:30, when I heard a grinding outside my house. My sales tax was hard at work clearing the tree debris from the ice storm. And this, after they had said they would stop tree disposal on the fifth! And not only that, the tree truck blocked my driveway so I couldn't have gotten out even if I had been on time, so a built-in excuse for my daily tardiness. Eventually I arrived at work, where I found...

...Robin, working away like a squirrel on a nut, like a dog on a bone, like a knob-polisher on a knob. She's been out with stress the flu.  Now she has returned and the cube is filled with her grunting, "Unh. Unh. Weird. Unh." as she programs away. I happily ignored her until five-thirty, when I got a call from...

...Gary, who had the revolutionary idea of celebrating Valentine's Day by eating steak. In my adventures with the Wine-Drinking Sophisticates, I have been searching hard for the Mythical Steak of My Youth. The Steak of My Youth had flavor, and crispy fat on the sides, and tasted like steak, as opposed to tasting like watery sashimi. And it exists at Outback, this the Steak of My Youth, and it is known as "The Melbourne."  Evidently I had forgotten the rule of the kitchen that if you want food to taste like something you must leave the bone in.

Oh! And Middlesex was here at home when I arrived. All in all, a fine day.

Red Hot Who?

So! I forgot that one time I bought the Red Hot Chili Peppers album. Gary disliked it so much on the first hearing he tore it out of the car CD player and winged it out into the street.

I'm sure that is why Red Hot Chili Peppers won rock album of the year. And it was worth it to see them skid to a halt in front of vice President Al Gore.

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday I Was Cool and Sophisticated

Yesterday I went out to dinner at Yai Yai's with Catherine the Red (Friend #1), Marcia (Friend #3), Another, "Brandon" (not his real name, as someone mentioned after I used it incorrectly all night), and He Whose Name Shall Not Be Repeated (this is his own joke, and it is particularly funny when you know he has a name like my schoolmate Leonard Leonard).

I had some trout (fair), some goat cheese fondue (seems like I could melt goat cheese and cream cheese), bread pudding, and chocolate souffle - oh! Wait! I did not have chocolate souffle, and none was offered to me. True. Even though I pushed forkfuls of chocolate hazelnut cake in people's faces.

I do like going out to eat with this crowd, because they all drink wine and know about wine. Vicarious wine tasting makes me feel quite sophisticated.

Whereas Today I Am Uncool and Unsophisticated

Tonight is the Grammy Awards. I missed both the SAG Awards and the Golden Globes this year, so I need an awards show. I just looked over every song. I own virtually NONE of these songs, and I've been buying a CD a week this year. This is the closest I come:

Record of the Year - Nope. Haven't heard of them. Wait, the Starbuck's near work sells that Corrine Bailey Ray CD.

Album of the Year - I don't have Continuum, but I do have the John Mayer Trio CD. But that's as close as I come.

Song of the Year - Okay, I was not dead, blind, or deaf this year, so I was forced to watch James Blunt disrobe and belt out whine out "You're Beautiful" a million times. That's it.

Best Female Pop Vocal Performance - Hey! I do have that Natasha Bedingfield song on my iPod. I like that song! This is either the kiss of death; or proof she is popular enough she will win. Oh wait - I also have "Stupid Girls" and "Black Horse and Cherry Tree" as well, and I even went to see K.D. Tunstall at Blueberry Hill! Well, K.D. has crept not only onto my iPod but I bought tickets and the CD. She must be HUGE. She will win.

Best Male Pop Vocal Performance - I OWN Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. I only listened to it twice before I relegated Sir Paul to the "CDs We Don't Like" folder. I'm sure if I heard it five times I'd love it, so I imagine "Jenny Wren" will win this category. If James Blunt wins I will make a parody video in which I sit cross-legged on a beach and strip naked before plunging off a cliff.

Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal - "My Humps" will win, again based on the fact it made it into my consciousness. Fine, and on my iPod. "Judge not, lest ye be judged yourself." Don't argue with Jesus. He likes "My Humps" too.

Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals - I have heard of "Promiscuous" and "Hips Don't Lie" but I've never actually heard either.

Let's summarize: based on the "I own the CD" criterion, John Mayer and K.D. Tunstall will dominate every category they are in. The song from Chaos and Creation in the Backyard will win in its category. The rest are a crapshoot. Place your bets.

Foods in Disguise

Gary usually adopts the Tea Spirit after it is over, making helpful suggestions that all start with "You know, what you should have done..."

But this year, since the Tea was delayed so I could get over Crouping my lungs up, Gary's suggestions can be implemented.

This is why I need recipes for foods that are in disguise. All I can think of is Pigs in Blankets. And that Dirt Cake recipe where you stick Gummi bears in to ground Oreos.

This is on my mind, evidently, because last night I had a dream in which I was wandering the toy aisles at Wal-Mart and discovered a wooden duck on a handle that was wrapped in sheets of roll-out Pillsbury Dough crust. I woke up wondering how you could really implement this so it would work. How could you cook the pie crust in the shape of a duck , extract the wooden mold, yet still leave the duck-shaped hollow pie crust intact?

Or, I could wrap little sausages in croissant rolls to make pigs in blankets. I could make a souffle in a fish mold, if I had a souffle fish mold. I do have molds that look like corn cakes. For decades Mom had a cast iron cake mold that looked like a lamb.

Oh! I could bake this!

A Haiku

I don't usually write Haikus, but what do you do when someone dies wearing a five-syllable name? Gary just watched the entire hour of MSNBC coverage.

What of Sugar Pie?
And Purple-haired Lesbian?
Gary wants to know.

You Go, Girl

Everyone is in such a giggly schoolgirl state about the astronaut who traveled 900 miles in a diaper so she wouldn't have to stop.

I think this is genius. This is practical. She had a deadline, you know, she had to meet the Other Woman at the airport parking garage. And, frankly, I don't know that Road Trip diapers are such a bad idea. She was probably drinking a lot of coffee to stay awake. I'm looking to my future, and I can see a few adult diapers on the long road ahead. I say good for her.

Besides, compare diapers in a car to the elimination process on the space shuttle.

I Think Too Much

On the way out this morning, I heard the CNN anchor try to tease me past a commercial with "What would you think of a someone disciplining a child ... with a stun gun? What if it was his own child? An eighteen month old child?"

They way the anchor kept cranking up the drama made me get all analytical. "Well," I thought, "What if it was a dog? Would that be okay? A small dog? How about a Great Dane? Someone else's dog? Is that acceptable?"

And THAT'S where I always get in trouble. After years of negative feedback, I have finally learned the one and only correct response is to reel back, gasp, and say "How awful!"

And just so it's understood, yes, I know, it is awful. Awful awful awful. It is so universally awful I don't see why we need to dwell on it and I would prefer to break it down and dissect exactly where the awful comes from. So, I had to fight the urge to have this conversation today at work:

Me: Caroline, Libby, did you hear about the guy who used a stun gun on his baby?
Caroline: Yes! It's just awful!
Libby: Unbelievably awful!
Me: Yeah, yeah, awful. But how old does a kid have to be before it's acceptable to hit him with a stun gun? Like, a teenager?
Caroline: It's awful to hit children with anything!
Libby: You understand tasering a child is child abuse, don't you, Ellen?
Me: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what if it was somebody else's kid? Maybe a fifty-four year old kid? Can I taser Gary?

To be fair, this conversation didn't happen. And shut up, I KNOW it's awful to taser children. I. Know. But does it then follow that we cannot even discuss wherein the awfulness lies? Can our only conversation on the topic be and endless loop of  "How awful!" "Yes, it is awful!" "Just so awful" "Tsk. Awful" ... ad infinitum?

But now I have learned the correct response. It isn't often I find other people who haven't learned this lesson. It had been only four days since 9/11/01 when I was listening to NPR and I heard this exchange:

Caller: I don't know if we should go in to Afghanistan so hastily -
Talk Show Host: Are you out of your mind?

I felt for the caller, because when the host of a National Public Radio show says, "It's awful! We cannot think! We cannot discuss!" then you might as well hang it up.

I learned my lesson with the "Real-Life Home Alone" child news story years back: parents go to Vegas and a leave 10-year-old at home alone. If I had only known at the time the only acceptable response was "AWWWWful," then I wouldn't have opened my mouth. But my first question was "Is eleven okay? What about fifteen? How old do you have to be? What does the law say?" Horror stared back at me and responded slowly, "They left a ten-year-old at home aloooonnnnneee."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, awful. But when is it allowed? Can't we think about these things?

All About MEEEEE

I see one of my favorite blogs has decided to give me my due attention (click to get the full effect):

Nature to Advantage Dressed

I just finished watching the first 3/4ths of 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice. Quite presentable. It gives me hope someone, someday, can make a two-hour version of Jane Eyre that presents the book as a three-part epic of morality instead of a love story.

One odd thing struck me. For at least an hour I tried to think of why the actor who played Darcy was so familiar. And then it struck me, without ever having met the gentleman, he was doing a dead-on impression of a co-worker. [Co-workers name withheld. -Ed. *] Uncanny how a British actor an ocean away could mimic every gesture and glance of a computer programmer in Saint Louis. This is not to say the programmer in question is proud, or prejudiced, or less than "amiable," just that by some coincidence a stranger has managed to impersonate him.

Then, I recalled this isn't the first time I've seen this happen. Remember my college boyfriend, Michael D______? Want to get to know him? Rent Reds and pay careful attention to Jack Nicholson's portrayal of Eugene O'Neill. Spooky.

This is on my mind because I have heard, on two entirely independent occasions, that there is something about Meryl  Streep in The Devil Wears Prada that reminds viewers of me. Now, in my twenties and thirties I heard I physically resembled Meryl Streep, at least in the opinion of drunk men in dark bars. It was only when I laughed, evidently, and when she appeared dowdy and brunette in the Dingo Ate My Baby movie, which I am sure has a name but I already have enough IMDB links in this post. At any rate, everyone now protests I don't look at all like Meryl (ah, I age, she doesn't) but there's just something about her mannerisms in The Devil Wears Prada that remind them of me.

I doubt this is a good thing. I may have to dismiss these people with a wave of my hand.

*Snort of wild self-amusement.

A Good Joke

I was walking past a radio today and caught one of the jokes from A Prarie Home Companiom:

"How many Catholics does it take to change a light bulb?"
(in a voice of panic:) "Change? CHANGE?'

Thoughts From the Bathroom at 11-11 Mississippi

Also titled: In Which we Move Our Bowels for an Inordinate Length of Time

- Owwww.
- What did I eat?
- Was it the Key Lime Martini followed by the glass of wine? What was that white wine? It didn't taste like stomach acid.
- This bathroom floor is dirty.
- Was it the butternut squash soup followed by the gratin potatoes and half a steak?
- Did I eat any raw egg whites?
- Owwww.
- Why did I order fat soup followed by fat with a side of fat?
- How long have I been in here so far? People will talk.
- Catherine's eaten out with me before. She'll cover me.
- I wish I had Tammi's hair.
- I wish I had Damon's apartment.
- I hate my shoes.
- Crap! How many people just walked in? Four shoes. Cool no pressure. Just stay quiet and wait them out.
- [courtesy flush]
- I am now eliminating food I had as a child.
- It must have been forty minutes by now.
- I bet my dessert's here.
- I hope they aren't waiting on me to start dessert.
- I bet they ate my dessert.
- Okay, I'm done.
[washes hands]
-Okay, I'm not done.
- How stupid did I sound tonight? Where did I hear that rumor about blood in wine?
- More women! Get out of my bathroom!
- Really, I need to find some slides that don't look like Crocs.
- Okay. Now I'm done.

And, except for a stop on Highway Forty on the way home, I was done. They had started dessert, they had discussed my absence, Catherine had covered me, they were chowing down on my dessert when I got out but they had left me bites of their desserts on the corners of the plate.

Broken Social Scene

Do most men have friends?

My Dad had friends. When I was 11 or so he lost his job and I noticed a lot of his friends were no longer calling him to go play golf or just to chat. When I asked why, my Dad the purchasing agent explained, "No, they weren't friends, they were salespeople. It was their job." Still, he had genuine friends as well: the other attendees of Normandy High School (where young lads evidently swam naked), his Friday friends at the local bar, his golfing friends he made through Mom.

I expressed to Mom my concern that Gary didn't have as many friends as Dad. In fact, Gary has no friends. We had to drum up virtual strangers to stand up for him at our wedding. I don't know why, he had friends in high school. Mom assured me that Dad was a freak and almost none of the men she knows have friends.

Gary is very friendly, don't get me wrong. He can talk to strangers as if they are family. He's the gracious host when I have people over. The people he works with persist in inviting him to weddings and poker parties and visits to strip clubs. But he always says no, no matter how close he is to the co-worker or how inviting the strip club. He just doesn't want to spend free time with anyone. "You're my friend," he insists when I call him out on this topic. I am his only friend, a little glowing friend, and this troubles me. He's born to be a friend and he cuts himself off from everyone.

Now, granted, I loves me the distance when I'm with strangers, but at some point I metaphorically tear off my clothes and roll on the floor naked with my friends. I'm going to dinner tonight with Friend #1 and some of her friends, and my guess is by the end of the evening we'll all be metaphorically naked and discussing our warts and scars. (I'm sure Catherine's friends are terrified just reading this.) If I have a problem, all my friends hear about it, some of them even hear the version unvarnished with humor.

I'm thinking about this today because both social events taking place this weekend do not involve Gary. Dinner at 11-11 Mississippi, which he loves, with Catherine and her friends? Nope. Superbowl Party at his sister's house? Nope. 11-11 Mississippi is our restaurant. Superbowl in our house is private togetherness time.

It's not a problem, because I accept the invitations and go without Gary (except for the Superbowl, which is our private experience). How do I develop Gary into a social butterfly? Or is it okay for a man to stay a caterpillar?

In Which We Search for a Good Book

I've just finished I Feel Bad About My Neck. There is a fine chapter on our necks, and a particularly fine chapter on reading. She describes the satiety of finishing a good book, and the sense of elation and wonder that makes you put a book down to absorb a a great passage.  I remembered feeling that way when I finished The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I turned Nora Ephron's page and found that Kavalier & Clay was the very book she had just finished and was rhapsodizing on.

It's made me pine for a great book. The majority of what I read is crap: entirely my own fault. I intend to read good fiction, but I just never do, because frankly it seems like a waste of time when I could be reading non-fiction instead. Non-fiction, which is more honorable because it's less fun. Oh. And US Magazine.

Okay. Only those who have read Kavalier & Clay can vote: what is another non-fiction book I can read that is as entertaining and memorable and still educational as that one?  One that makes me sad it's over and makes we wish the characters were truly alive?

I swear I'll read it. Hey, I've seen Spinal Tap and Office Space so far.  I may have to give up on TiVO and rent Chinatown and Godfather 2. But better yet, tell me about a really good book.

Life Imitates ... TV

I just struggled through a particularly annoying episode of House. Usually, I love this show. A show about a doctor who actually does his job and doesn't try to steal the jobs of my family members? You know, "caring?" That family responsibility? It's like a Doctor Porno to me. A doctor who doesn't pretend to care. Mmmmm, where are the batteries, that's what I say.

BUT, tonight the whole episode was all about patients trying to connect with their doctors. Why? If you want to connect, find a nurse. I've had them pray for me and write me poems. Geh. (Of course, I kept the poem. I'd go find it, if I cared.)

Oddly, this episode of House capped off a day that simultaneously included the denouement of a real-life epic illness. A few months ago, I mentioned a friend of a friend who had been told of her eminent demise from brain swelling. I've been checking with my friend intermittently to see how her friend with swollen brain is faring. Because every day Swollen Brain Girl (let's call her Beth) is sick, that's another day I feel well.  And, I am also in a small way entertained.

Since Christmas, my inquiries have run the gamut from "How's Beth" (accompanied by The Sad Face) to a cheery "Beth dead yet?" Because strangely, Generalissimo Beth is Still Not Dead.

My friend began answering, "It's bizarre! I went over to feed her and found she'd gone off dialysis. TWO WEEKS AGO. I thought you only lived a few days off dialysis."

"It's a miracle?" I suggested, because I think this friend has the special hot line to God my mother-in-law has, and I know she's been praying hard for Beth.

"I dunno," my friend said, shaking her head.

"Munchhausen's?" I joked, because I watch a lot of doctor shows, and there's no better drama than a rare psychiatric disorder that makes people fake illnesses.  My friend said, "Something's fishy, that's for sure."

Oh! Did I give it AWAY? Did you SEE it COMING? Yes! Yesterday Beth's house of lies collapsed and it seems she is Baroness Beth Von Munchhausen's!  This delights me because a) Beth? So not going to die! and b) Beth? So much more screwed up than I!

(Of course, speaking for all my mentally-ill compadres, I don't know if I buy the Wikipedia explanation of Munchhausen's. These people just want the attention and nurturing they get when they are supposedly sick? It smacks of the old explanations of anorexia, which was that these teenage girls were just vain, before doctors found how helpful it can be to attend to the neurological factors. Is Beth any more messed up than those with delusional parasitosis? There are medications that help with that.)

Plus, if you ask me, a hospital is the last place I would go for nurturing and attention.