Wanna See my Birthday Presents?

After all, a girl's gonna need a little bling if we're going to the Grammy Awards next year...

My Ten Favorite Things about New York City

10. My sister-in-law's loft on the upper East side
9. La Maison du Chocolat
8. Walking everywhere
7. Manhattan Theater Club
6. Seven floors of women's clothing at Macy's midtown
5. Bouchon Bakery
4. Losing 82 lbs of water weight*
3. Corner bodegas that are open all night
2. Chelsea Market

And my most favorite thing about New York City:

1. Going braless in a tank top with no shred of self-consciousness!


* This figure is an estimate

Spitfire Designs

I was at a fundraiser this weekend for our venerable neighborhood community theatre and was smitten by some pieces donated by a local jeweler for auction. Unfortunately, I lost the piece I was bidding on; fortunately, she has a website.

I'd love to post a few pictures of her work here but can't figure out how to get around the flash animation on her site. Just click through -- you won't be sorry.

(Michael, you have my permission to bookmark her site. Just sayin'.)

Public Service Announcement the Third

Don't drive your car when it is leaking gasoline from the gas tank. Have it towed. Apparently, a spark from the engine could cause an explosion.

I was too busy cursing at the $53 worth of gas that was dripping out onto the pavement to worry about such things, and my mechanic was only about 100 yards away, so I drove. Luckily, I did not combust.

No verdict on the car yet this morning......

Garrick Learned a New Word Last Night

In an effort to curb the compulsive channel-surfing that I am wont to do, Michael and popped "Charlie Wilson's War" into the DVD player after the kids were tucked in last night.

(It is here worth mentioning that the kids almost never re-emerge from their rooms after tuck-in, so we were reasonable in our assumption that we were "safe.")

We were only about 15 minutes into the movie -- the middle of Philip Seymour Hoffman's argument with his boss -- when Garrick poked his head into our bedroom. The dialogue at the time was running thusly:

"Fuck you!"
"Fuck me? Whaddaya mean fuck me? Fuck YOU!"
"Who is this fucking guy? I don't even know what he's fucking doing here!"

and so forth.

It was beyond the laws of physics to grab the mute button in time.

Luckily, Garrick was so intent on asking me what happened to the bathroom nightlight (the bulb burnt out a few nights ago and I haven't replaced it yet) that I don't think he even noticed that strange word eminating from the Oscar-winning actor's mouth.

Asperger's has it's small compensations.

Shards

I have a feeling that the person who Googled "my husband is hard to live with" was not expecting the second link to be this.

Sorry, dude. Unless your husband is hard to live with because he's so damn funny or because he keeps putting the number 5 plastics in the recycle bin no matter how many times I tell him we can only recycle 1s and 2s, I can't help you.

You may want to get together with the person who searched for "marriage after 18 years," though, and trade notes.

***********

I'm turning older this weekend, so I'm going to New York. Alone, with no kids or hubbies. I'll be hooking up one day with a couple of college buds (including my maid of honor), but am otherwise footloose and fancy-free. I'm either going to buy a lot of shoes, drink a lot of mojitos, or sleep 23 hours a day. Y'all get one guess.

***********

Tomorrow is my last day of physical therapy, and I'm slightly panic-stricken. I've been very good at keeping my twice-weekly appointments, but I'm worried about keeping up with the program when left to my own devises. I've been battling deep fatigue (again, still) for the last few weeks, and when I get home, I pretty much just want to take off my bra and lie down until bedtime (you're welcome). We have all the bands and balls and mats and ankle weights, so there's really no reason for me not to continue the program at home -- I even have some old, trashy TV on DVD from Netflix to play in the background. If only I weren't so frocking tired.

***********

So, naturally, I'm taking on projects and planning our PKD fundraising juggernaut and thinking about having dinner parties. (What?) I've got some really nifty ideas about fundraising this year, and I'll post about them all soon. Soon-ish. Eventually. Just after I get a nap or six.

Look, I Made a Hat!

So the folks who won the raffle back in April wanted a cake for a graduation party this weekend. I went a little overboard (I know you're shocked) and gave them a two-layered half-sheet cake (12" x 18" x 3"). A cake this size should easily serve 54 people.

I spent more advance time futzing with design than I usually do, and came up with a drawing that I felt good about:



What was even more surprising is that the finished cake actually looked somewhat like the design:



Uneven icing aside, I was pretty happy with the way it turned out. Nom nom.

The End Is Nigh

The most depressing part isn't that an Olive Garden has opened in the strip mall office complex where I work.

The most depressing part isn't that Olive Garden does not list full nutritional information for their menu on their website -- only for their so-called "Garden Fare" selections (cappellini pomodoro for 840 calories and 17 grams of fat, anyone?).

The most depressing part isn't that, even for the "Garden Fare" selections, the sodium counts are conspicuously omitted from the nutrition guide.

The most depressing part is that customers are waiting up to 2 1/2 hours for a table. At OLIVE FROKING GARDEN.

Kill me now.

Flashback

I saw the most beautiful girl at the mall this week. I had nicked over during my lunch hour to buy a much-needed belt, and while standing at the checkout, I noticed this stunning 14-year-old hanging around the periphery. It was clear that she was waiting for her mother -- who was working the cash register -- to be done with her task so that she could engage her in conversation.

I'm guessing at her age, of course. She could have been 13; she might have just turned 15. Her dark hair was long and lustrous, her bone structure -- still kissed by a touch of baby-fat roundness -- was flawless (think a young Brooke Shields), and her mouth was a shapely rosebud. She was perfectly groomed and poised, yet not in any way flaunting her beauty.

What struck me about this girl was how closed off to the world she was. My gaze kept stealing over toward her -- we were about 8 feet apart -- and not once did she meet my eyes, give the social half-smile that people often share while waiting together, or acknowledge the presence of any of the customers who were coming and going.

And I wondered: was I seeing stereotypical teenage sullenness? Or has this girl, at her young age, already internalized the message that in order to protect herself, she needs to shut the world out? Has she already been the target of unwanted attention?

This thought made me incredibly sad, and I didn't get a damn thing done the rest of the day.

Lust

I told Garrick that lust is when you really want something a lot.

"Like blood lust? If someone wants to fight?"

"Yeah, baby. Like blood lust."

God help me.

**********

Things I'd be blogging about if I had time and energy to blog this week:

• the idea I'm going to filch from The New Girl
• the stunningly beautiful girl I saw in the mall this week and how sad she made me
• the trip Michael's taking this weekend
• the trip I'm taking next weekend
  
• the cake I'm making this week for the raffle back in April
• how much I love buttercream
  
• the PKD fundraising ideas kicking around in my head
• the now-ended visit from my brother who lives in Singapore
  
• how I'm starting to really miss doing live theatre and how conflicted I feel about that
• that next week is my last week of physical therapy and how nervous I am about that
• the pain in my breast (it's cysts, don't get excited)
• my garden
• my kids
  
• how tired I am

Lists, how I love them. Happy Friday!

Is It a Bad Thing....

... that when Garrick (age 10) asked me last night what "lust" was, my first thought was "Oh good! Blog material!"?

Just wondering.

Help

If you've been anywhere near a TV, newspaper or computer in the last week, you know how dire the flooding situation is in Iowa. The ramifications of this disaster are horrific, on both personal and national levels. Thousands of uninsured families will be starting over with nothing, and the entire farming industry has been dealt a crippling blow that will affect us all.

Today, the Associated Press is reporting that 27 levees along the Mississippi River are once again threatened, inspite of a massive sandbagging effort. Not only that, the American Red Cross is reporting that their Disaster Relief Fund is out of money, and the agency is actually borrowing money to keep the relief efforts going. Can you help? Every little bit counts. Click through and make a donation of any size to the Disaster Relief Fund, and leave a message in the comments -- anonymously, if you like -- so I can tell whether this worked at all...

I also urge my fellow bloggers (you know, those of you who have more than 6 readers) to put up a similar post on your own blog. Maybe it's the decaf this morning, but I am Fired Up. Let's make it happen; let's make a difference.

Be Vewy Vewy Quiet

The Universe is listening to my thoughts, and it's smacking me around but good.

Late yesterday morning, I had my desk almost cleared and was getting ready to tackle projects that have been sitting and languishing for longer than I will admit. "Phew," I thought to myself, "with this Mexico thing almost under control (knock on wood and spit), I think I'm on the brink of being able to breathe more easily and get more done and sleep better at night and be a less cranky person in general."

Not ten minutes later, I had received panic calls from our investors and our Mexico accountants, each needing about 5 hours worth of work from me (on unrelated but equally urgent topics) as soon as possible. Those old projects? Still languishing. Smackdown!

You'd think that that woulda learned me, but no. As I was driving home from physical therapy at the end of a verrrrrry long day (and facing an evening of baking cookies as last-day-of-school gifts and a "goodbye" cake for Michael's boss, who's leaving), I realized that we had still not heard back from the very nice lady who won the cake raffle at the Charity Fun Fair. She had been very diffident when we phoned her, and at the time I had the impression that she'd probably forget about the whole thing and I'd not have to make a cake. So as I was driving home yesterday, my thoughts ran thusly: "Gee, we never heard from her. I guess that's good -- I don't have to make a cake. Though, if she wasn't planning on using it, perhaps we should have drawn another name?... No! It's fine! I don't have to make cake! Tralala!"

Three guesses who called me on my cell phone this afternoon? Extra points if you guessed that her granddaughter is graduating high school and the party is a mere week from Saturday. Her son and daughter-in-law are hosting the party, so she couldn't even give me particulars yet. Ka-pow!

Score: Universe 2, Ruth 0.

Now, you don't have to beat me over the head. I'm not thinking anything to myself, anymore. No more thoughts, ever. Clearly, no good can come of it.

Television Intervention

We have a strange television situation in my house. I can't stand paying any superfluous money to our local monopoly cable provider (the name of which rhymes with..... um.... bombast), so we decided a couple of years ago to only pay for the most basic cable service (just to get a signal), and to subscribe to Netflix instead. We thereby both Stick it to the Man and also get to watch what we really want to watch, instead of hundreds of channels of drivel. Aren't we clever (and cheap frugal)?

(It's probably worthwhile to point out that I grew up with no television in the house AT ALL, and Michael grew up eating frozen dinners on trays in front of the TV most nights. And, of course, I am now the one who needs an hour or more of TV before bedtime in order to fall asleep, while Michael stoically struggles to read the latest Thomas Pynchon opus with reruns of "Scrubs" as background noise. Dudes, marriage is all about compromise.)

The It's-Not-TV-It's-Netflix thing worked pretty well, for a while. We watched "Sex and the City" and "24" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "Six Feet Under" and "The Sopranos." After the kids went to bed, we watched an episode (or two) or a movie (or a portion thereof) and then hit the hay. It was very civilized, I got to bed sort-of mostly on time, and best of all, there were no commercials.

Then we got a new TV.

About 18 months ago, we succumbed to the high-definition flat-screen hype and got a relatively modest set for the master bedroom (the only room in the house with a TV). It's pretty and shiny and you can see the razor-sharp picture without squinting. I may have made out with it a little.

Then Michael got hold of the remote control and the owner's manual and he pushed a few buttons and ALL OF A SUDDEN, there were a gazillion times twenty channels showing up. And some of them were playing cool movies, like "Sense and Sensibility" and "King Kong"! We kept channel-surfing into movies-in-progress, surfing away, and then trying to come back and find said movies and not being able to. It was very very weird, and I suggested that we'd fallen into a "Twilight Zone" episode akin to the classic episode of "Friends" where the guys are suddenly getting free porn on their TV, and refuse to turn it off for fear of offending the TV Porn Gods and losing their free porn.

You know where this is going, right?

After making this comment, I went downstairs for a glass of water, came back up, and found our TV set to porn (bad porn) and Michael cackling gleefully. Thus convinced we had entered an alternate TV dimension, we kept channel surfing and trying (and failing) to get a handle on which channels were showing the good movies (and not the bad porn). Because

Fake Boobs: Iz not the sexay.

It wasn't until a few days later when we surfed into a showing of the awful Nicholas Cage movie "World Trade Center" that the light bulb clicked on. The movie skips around a bit and there are (mercifully) story lines without Nicholas Cage, and we entered at one of those points. When the story segued back to the Nicholas Cage story line, ALL OF A SUDDEN the movie began to fast forward. On our TV screen. Without any intervention from us.

Not only did we have serious TV gremlins, they had taste! I instantly forgave them for the bad porn -- gremlins who blip over Nicholas Cage are welcome in my TV set any old time.

It took only a few minutes for us to realize what was really happening (because we are smart like that): our fancy-pants new TV was picking up the signals from all of our neighbors' On Demand selections. Whatever they are watching, we can watch. From bad porn to Jane Austen to Nicholas Cage movies, man, it's all in there. You just have to be willing to channel surf and catch it in a timely manner. (And also try not to dwell too much on WHICH neighbors are watching WHAT, 'cause, Dudes. Really. Bad. Porn.)

As you might have guessed, this is a double-edged sword. Because the grass might always be greener on another channel, and someone down the street might be watching the episode of "The Tudors" that I missed, my channel surfing has gotten OUT OF HAND, as I'm sure Michael would agree. The Netflix account lies languishing and neglected, good only for episodes of "24" that Michael watches while riding the stationary bike. An intervention is clearly needed. "Top Chef" ends this week, and then I'm going to fall off the cliff For Realz.

With the exception of a few semi-decent movies on the Universal HD Channel (more about which tomorrow), my TV watching is clearly in need of an intervention. I end up staying up much too late, chasing that ever-elusive show or movie fragment that will provide sufficient distraction for my brain to turn itself off so I can go to sleep. For the love of all that's holy, make me some Netflix suggestions in the comments. One-hour episodics would be best. Big fat smoochy thanks in advance.

One Tiny Flash of Clarity in an Ocean of Fog

Amongst the laundry folding and closet cleaning, I had a single moment of clarity this weekend.

Recently, Michael has been exposing the kids to Monty Python classics, such as the Dead Parrot and Cheese Shop sketches and the Argument Lesson. (THANK YOU, Michael.) I learned all of these skits from audio recordings (remember LPs?) as a kid, and though most of the time we had NO IDEA why they were funny, my brothers and I howled uncontrollably at them. Much as my kids are now doing. Except, my kids are also memorizing them and acting them out NON-STOP.

(Would it be foolhardy to tell them that Uncle Jason once went trick-or-treating as a Cheesy Comestible? Yeah, probably.)

So, you remember how the guy looking for an argument accidentally wanders into Abuse? Yeah, my kids spent the weekend flinging around phrases like "you snotty-nosed heap of parrot droppings" and "you malodorous pervert" (I explained "malodorous," but not "pervert." There are limits.)

My moment of clarity involves Abuse. At one point, the Abuser tells our hapless hero to "shut your festering gobutit!" At least, that's how I heard it when I was 11, and that's how it's been imprinted in my brain for the last 30 years, nonsensical as it may be. It is with some regret that I realized this weekend that the line is actually "Shut your festering gob [mouth], you tit!".

I'll take my epiphanies where I can, these days.

But I still don't understand this one. Please don't try to explain it to me, as that's the way I like it.

Housekeeping

I've FINALLY updated Ye Olde Blog Roll, adding lots of wonderful bloggers, and breaking it into categories for those who like that sort of thing. As I am one of those people, I also created category tags for the posts, and there is a handy-dandy directory of said categories (Blogger calls 'em "labels") to your right, over there.

Knock yourselves out!

I Am Going Straight to Hell.

I should be sad for Sarah Larson, but my initial reaction was unfettered glee.

The Clooney is back on the market, and all is right with the world.