One Good Thing

How Long Will My New Year's Resolution Last?

2011-01-03T09:19:00.000-08:00

I call it "Stop Being Such a Fucking Pig."

I should have chosen something with a more positive spirit, I suppose. Maybe next year my resolution will be "Don't Be So Hard on Yourself," but that's been my resolution for the past 12 years and look where it's gotten me.

I've become the kind of person who sits and listens to the sound of a cat's stomach picking up this morning's breakfast and hurling it right back out the mouth, then listening to the sound of the dog eagerly running to check out what snacks are now available, and choosing instead to sit and type away at the keyboard rather than getting out the carpet cleaner. I really have to stop being such a fucking pig. I'll get right on that, in a minute. But first, I'm curious to see how long I can keep up this diet I started that I found on the internet.

It's called a "food-lover's cleanse," and it was on Bon Appetit's website, and I thought, why the hell not? I haven't been to Weight Watchers in months, and I haven't exercised in even longer, and I'm all about a good cliché, so let's change everything all at once on New Year's and see how it goes.

Today is the first day. I would have started it on the first, but I didn't feel like it.

So: today.

Day One

20 minutes of Yoga. I have never done yoga before. It kind of hurt, and I fell over once. The Wii Fit robot trainer pretended not to judge me, but I know she kind of did.

Breakfast: 2 egg omelet with mushrooms and onions.

I made omelets for everybody this morning. My usual morning routine is to scowl at everyone from the depths of a cup of coffee and point them in the direction of the kitchen, so Steve nearly fell over dead when I offered him one. He then asked me to explain what was so cleansing about an omelet, and would not accept my answer of "I don't know. Shut up."

Seriously, do you ever want your wife to make you breakfast in the morning ever again? Breakfast that has to be heated up instead of unwrapped and eaten raw or poured into a bowl? Then shut up.

I took no photographic evidence of this because we're all adults here. We've seen omelets before.

Lunch: Avocado Tartine with Winter Vegetable Crudités

Avocado Tartine is a fancy description of ½ an avocado, mashed and sprinkled with a little lemon juice, red pepper flakes, and salt, smeared over a slice of whole wheat toast. Why gussy it up by calling it "tartine?" I do not know.

The Winter Vegetable Crudités part is essentially a salad with citrus-shallot vinaigrette, comme ça:

It is curly endive, carrots, and cauliflower. The citrus-shallot vinaigrette is

4 T minced shallots
2 T white wine or champagne vinegar
2 T lemon juice

Mix in a jar with a lid and let sit for 15 minutes so the shallots won't be so bitey. Then add

10 T high quality olive oil. Cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil. Do yourself this favor, buy olive oil you won't mind eating raw.

1/2 t sea salt.

Then shake it and mix it up. If this was the army, I would remind you to put the lid on the jar first, but it isn't, so I won't. Steve told me once, when he was in basic training, they were teaching him how to throw a grenade, and took great care to make sure he was aware that once you pull the pin from the grenade, remember to throw it in a direction that leads away from your body. Otherwise, you might either forget to throw it or, if you do throw it, you might throw it straight down onto the ground at your feet. This is good information to impart. Grenades: Away. Lid: On Jar.

This is what lunch ended up looking like:

Looks nice. Was nice, too, except for that I understand the purpose of the omelette in the cleanse now. Lunch is a little on the light side. Do you know what would help? Ice cream!

I still have three more meals to go for today, though, and I'll either come back and talk about it, or I won't, and if I don't, we all know I've left 2011 and moved right onto 2012, and decided to Not Be So Hard On Myself.

Happy New Year! I should probably go find that cat vomit now.

HELL FUCKING YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2010-12-01T16:38:00.000-08:00

Illinois Senate approves civil unions.

Feel the homomentum*, people! It's on the move.

********************************
*nicked from Shakesville

The Shadow of Death Hanging Over My Head Has My Husband's Shape.

2010-11-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

Steve and I are in the office, both sitting in front of our respective computers, drinking coffee.

Steve: We should take a vacation to the World of Warcraft headquarters someday.

Me: How would that be fun for anybody else but you?

Steve: For Christopher! We could take him, and he could meet some staff members and see what it's like to make video games.

Me: Okay.

Steve: Where are their headquarters?

Me: I would not know that.

Steve: Google it!

Me: You Google it.

Steve: Google it!

Me: You're sitting in front of your computer. You're the one that wants to know. You Google it.

Steve: GOOGLE IT. GOOGLE IT. GOOGLE IT. GOOGLE IT. GOO-

Me: Okay! *I Google it* It's in Irvine.

Steve: Where's that?

Me: South of Los Angeles.

Steve: He could go work for World of Warcraft when he grows up! We could go visit him a lot. On the way we could take a detour into Tijuana.

Me: Tijuana? You want to swing by Tijuana on the way to visit our son at his nice job in California?

Steve: Yes! We could buy prescription medication there for cheap!

Me: That's why you want to go to Tijuana? To buy medication? How old are you, Grandpa?

Steve: Well, by the time he gets a job there, that's all we'll be interested in. Our medication.

Me: *in my old lady voice* I WANT TO SEE A DONKEY SHOW!

Steve: *performs actual spit take.*

In The Beginning.

2010-10-28T06:43:00.000-07:00

At the moment I've been reading two books - The Necronomicon, a giant book of H.P. Lovecraft stories that Steve gave me for Mother's Day that I still haven't finished, mostly because I only read it in the car at red lights and in the few minutes in the basement of the local Methodist church before Fat Camp* starts.

This book seems to scare the living shit out of certain people who are 1.) religious, 2.) have a knee-jerk reaction to things that are black and look scary, 3.) quite literally judge books by their covers, and 4.) will not, for whatever reason, ask me what I'm reading.

If this describes you, we both know that if I were reading a Stephen King book you would have absolutely no problem with it whatsoever. Please also know that without H.P. Lovecraft Stephen King would have spent his life as an English teacher at Bangor High School. Which is a perfectly admirable thing to be, of course, but you know what I mean. The force of the Necronomicon, it runs strong through young Jedi King.

That being said, I have 7 stories left to go and I would really like to quit toting the book around. It's quite large.

The other book I'm reading is the Book of Genesis, which should soothe the same people who give me the stinkeye for reading Lovecraft, but won't, because it's this version:

It's the entire, unedited Book of Genesis, illustrated by R. Crumb, the 60's cartoonist who dropped acid one day, tripped for two straight years before coming down, and discovering during his extended period of mind alteration that he had created Mr. Natural, one of his most famous recurring characters in the world of subversive comix.**

While reading the two side by side, as I'm doing, I've found that while The Necronomicon wins for drawing out the tension and the fluidity of the prose, the plot lines in their stories are equally implausible and horrible.

Lovecraft did have humans breeding with aliens who looked like a combination of fish and frogs, but at least that happened in the context of a mutually agreed-upon business arrangement. This is not nearly as bad as Lot offering up his daughters to the men of Sodom to be gang raped. Sheesh. I do not know what life lessons that is supposed to teach us, and quite frankly, I don't want to discuss the possibilities.

Luckily for me, I am not a Biblical literalist, so I don't have the burden of believing any of this actually happened. I mean, I know Lot's behavior vis à vis his female children plays out in very real ways every day in the world, but Western Culture typically doesn't consider these kinds of men as being blessed by God.

I'm now half way through the book, and Crumb has illustrated every single verse, including the awful "begets" verses (Abraham begets Isaac, Isaac begets Esau, Esau begets whoever, and so on for about twenty more times. Bless his twisted heart, that must have been crazy-making.)

And speaking of Esau, I made it through the 6-day creation story without blinking an eye, I made it through the Noah story, I made it through the Methuselah-lived-927-years stories, I made it through the horrible Lot story, I made it through the graphic incest scenes, but you know what really hung me up?

Esau trading his birthright to Jacob for a cup of lentil soup.

He traded. His birthright. For lentil soup.

Lentil soup.

LENTIL SOUP.

Have you ever had lentil soup? It's good and all; I mean, it's a hippie dietary staple, and I respect that, but I'm sorry, this just didn't happen. Esau wasn't crawling through the desert with a swollen stomach and vultures circling overhead, he was just hungry after working all day. And Jacob's pot wasn't the only pot in town. Couldn't he have asked his mom for some soup if Jacob was being bitchy and wouldn't share?

This is the stupidest plot point I've ever read.

If it sounds like I'm stomping all over the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths, I'm sorry. I really am sorry, but I just have to get this out of my system. And just as a preemptive strike, let me assure you that God is not responsible for Esau making such a ridiculous decision.

God was all over the place demanding crazy shit from everybody during this time, but at no point did God ever shine down out of the clouds and tell Esau THOU SHOULDST GOEST FOR THE SOUP. Don't try to pin this one on God. This is all on Esau.

NOBODY IS GOING TO TRADE THEIR ENTIRE INHERITANCE FOR A CUP OF SOUP.

Babies, I'm sorry, but it just didn't happen.

______________________
*It's my weekly Weight Watchers meeting. I prefer calling it Fat Camp, because I don't want to admit that it actually works, so I pretend I'm too cool for it by belittling it. 37 pounds and counting!

**Two years!! I tripped for 18 hours once, and I'm telling you, that was way too long. By the end I was literally just sitting around with my fellow day-tripper Molly, waiting for it to be over. "I'm tired of being fascinated by watching ants chew on a piece of used bubble gum! When will this end?"

I can't imagine it lasting for 2 years.

What I Did Last Summer, by Alex Wilson

2010-09-15T05:32:00.000-07:00

The end of summer was really fun because 3 days out of my 2-week summer break (ed. note: ?) I went to the Dells for the first time.

Then after my last 3 days of day camp I went to South Carolina and I went to one of my favorite places: Richardson's Lake. It's a mini water park in a real lake.

And I went to the Fermata Club.

It's a swimming pool with lap lanes and a kitty pool with chlorine in it and a diving board and the swimming pool is filled with salt water and I saw a salamander and a frog. I felt the frog, too. It was cool.

The Recontinuing Cycle Story, by Alex Wilson

2010-09-02T05:12:00.000-07:00

The sun had just come over the horizon. Then, in the middle of the river, the fishies started swimming out from their night spot and, as usual, they went down the waterfall, into the plastic bowl, down the large black tube, and into the pond specially reserved for them. Then, when the sun had set, beyond the horizon they swam up the creek to their reserved night pond. The next morning, they would repeat the cycle over again.

Also to repeat day after day.

Then, a robbery took place. The robbers got away but the police saw where the robbers went, so they installed some hidden security cameras that saw the robbers go to their hideout. Then the police snuck over to the robber hideout and into the room where the robbers were. They arrested the robbers, returned the robbed items to their rightful place, and then day by peaceful day the cycle repeated once more.

The End.

*****************************************

As far as I know, this is the first story Alex has ever written. Although the connection with the robbers and fishies is somewhat mysterious, I like his description of the daily fish routine and in general, his story arc is pretty good. I really love this kid.

May This Thought Never, Ever Enter Your Head.

2010-04-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Christopher's bike got stolen at school. He had forgotten his bike lock, and when he came out of the building, it was gone. It's a hard lesson to learn at any time, but especially when you're only in first grade. He cried a little bit, and he's sad, but I must say he's taking it remarkably well.

I called the school and let the vice principal know a bike was stolen on school property so he can remind the kids how important it is to lock up their bikes and to prevent another child from such a bummer of a loss.

The vice principal suggested I file a police report, so this morning I called the non-emergency number of the county Sheriff's department, and the officer taking the calls said they would send someone out.

When I hung up the phone, the first thought that went through my head was, "Better put on a bra. The police are coming over again."

Oh god. I've turned into a female Ronnie Dobbs.

Snow Day.

2010-02-23T12:52:00.000-08:00

My neighbors' old school snow man. I saw him on my way to a doctor's appointment this morning, and when I came back, someone had taken his carrot nose.

Puppy Post, or, The First of Ten Million Puppy Posts.

2010-02-20T07:39:00.001-08:00

Okay, I need help with this deceptively adorable puppy.

Eddie* is 2½ months old, and chews everything. Christopher and I have chew marks all over our hands because he bites down with those sharp little milk teeth and goes to town. He chews toilet paper, trampolines, wicker baskets, legos, shoes, you name it. He tried to chew on himself and discovered hey, that hurts. Better chew on someone else. And so he does. This needs to stop before we all bleed out and lie dead in a pile of saliva-coated wreckage.

Here is a sideways picture of him begging for a cookie. I have not had time to figure out how to rotate this picture. Sorry. Also, here is a bonus picture of Belt.

___________________________
Eddie is named after a client of Steve's whose name is, I swear, Edison Nibbleburger.

Meet Eddie.

2010-02-19T16:09:00.001-08:00

Just look at that face, would you?

Lolita.

2010-01-19T14:37:00.001-08:00

The last time I read Lolita I was sixteen and a senior in high school. It was probably Sting's fault I read it in the first place - I was a huge Police fan in high school, a fact that was driven solidly home to me last summer when my mother sent me my high school scrapbook. It was filled with four years of photographs of the band. Not friends, not artwork, not stories, just hundreds of pages yanked out of whatever flavor of Tiger Beat I could get my hands on and pressed lovingly in my memory book, the ridiculousness of which would then be saved for over twenty five years. Sting wrote the song; ergo, I will read the book. I still love the band, really, really love the band, but I am forever grateful that I am 1.) too young to have been attending their concerts when they were in their heyday, because it is a fact I would have slept with all three of them (too much information? Surely not.) and 2.) too old to have followed Sting into the world of Tantric Sex, because for god's sake who has the time?

So: Lolita. I was impressed enough with the book to have had it inspire me to base an AP English assignment on it. We were supposed to write a poem in a certain format, and I wrote about Lolita in the form of Humbert Humbert. The copy of the poem itself is long gone, but I still remember the first two lines of it:

Lovely Lolita, light of my life
Barefoot, you tango with Pan.*

Anyway, I worked for hours on that poem, followed the assignment perfectly, and received a Peppermint Patty-esque D minus for my efforts, because my Jesus-y English teacher apparently did not like the subject material.

Even back in 1986 Lolita was considered one of the best novels ever written, so with all due respect, Jesus-y English teacher, suck it.

Too many years have passed, and I remembered the injustice of the D minus more than I remembered the novel that inspired it, so I took the book off my shelf, the same book I had in high school, the second run of a Crest paperback from 1959 (fifty cents new!) and read it again.

Yep, it's still pretty much perfect, from the gorgeousness of the language, starting with the very first sentence, whose spirit I brazenly stole and put in my stupid little poem, to the wit which makes you feel like a creep for laughing out loud (when, for example, Humbert jealously describes two high school boys flirting with 14-year-old Dolly as being "all muscles and gonorrhea.")

Lolita is such a straightforward narrative with such a stomach-turning subject matter: A pedophile kidnaps and rapes a little girl for two whole years. It was unnerving me to see how "Lolita" is now synonymous with an underage, savvy, your-honor-I-swear-I-thought-she-was-18 Siren, cruelly luring men to dash helplessly up against the jagged rocks of our legal system. I thought I had remembered Humbert as being the classic Unreliable Narrator. Had I been misinterpreting Nabokov all these years?

Nope. Nabokov, through Humbert's twisted prism of reality, makes it very clear that Dolly Haze is a little girl. While Lolita's mother, Charlotte, described by Humbert as a grotesque, blowsy, overripe piece of the female gender, a monster who has swallowed whole the nymphet she once was, chats with him on the porch, Humbert is trying to jockey himself in position to surreptitiously molest Lolita while she sits and plays with dolls. She doesn't like baths and runs around with dirty fingernails and tangled hair, she is obsessed with whoever passed for the 1940's version of the cast of Twilight, and she is prone to temper tantrums. He admits to imagining scenarios with her in which she responds in a way that doesn't correspond with reality, and he openly muses about how he's going to get rid of her when she begins menstruating, despite his exaggerated expressions of "love."

He's a clear psychopath, in other words, a rapist, a kidnapper, a torturer, and just, you know, a real shit head. What happened to Lolita wasn't her fault. She wasn't asking for it, she didn't want it, and when all is said and done she flat out tells him "I was a daisy-fresh girl, and look what you've done to me." So, yech, please quit calling her and other underaged girls "temptresses." It doesn't speak well of you, and it's not what Nabokov would have wanted.

And all that being said, I would give a kidney to have written this book myself, word for word.

_______________________________
*Here I have to note that I once wrote a blog post about walking down Clark Street in Wrigleyville to my old store, the Honeysuckle Shop, with half a dozen buttplugs under one arm and a twelve-pack of toilet paper in the other. I couldn't care less about being seen with the butt plugs, but was slightly embarrassed about the toilet paper. Similarly, I don't care at all about confessing that given the opportunity I would have slept with an entire band, but horrified by my confession that I actually wrote the above two lines of juvenalia. Such is the horror of teenage poetry.

Emailbag: It Really Is the Thought That Counts. Actually, the Thought Itself Is Way Too Much.

2010-01-09T22:56:00.000-08:00

I've been blogging, or not, if the cobwebs around here are any indication, for almost six years. And in those six years I have received an awful lot of email. A lot.

Of all those emails, I think this may be the best.

I almost won the lottery the other day. I was just a few numbers off probably and while waiting for that special phonecall when they tell you that it is true, you are in fact a millionaire (or is it billionaire?), I was speculating on how to spend the money. Financial speculation is of course good (we know that because Gordon Gekko told us and nobody has proved him wrong!) and after a lot of speculating I thought of you. Yes you. And I thought how it would be wonderful to buy you an original Thomas Kinkade painting, signed and all, and have it framed nicely and sent to your house and see to that the delivery men would hang it on your wall, using bolts so that it wouldn't fall down when you'd start jumping up and down with joy. And I thought that it would be the best christmas gift ever.

But I didn't win the lottery after all and after some brooding and kicking furniture I did in fact find you a Kinkade. See, I still think of you even after you being such a big part of my disappointment.

Anyway, for richer or poorer: Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

2010-01-04T06:23:00.001-08:00

I took this photo of a tree in my neighbor's yard.

Have a happy new year, and don't blow all your resolutions first thing January 1, like I did.

Monkey!

2009-12-15T07:41:00.000-08:00

This made me laugh until I cried. I'm not sure why.

Gon Out. Backson. Bisy Backson.

2009-12-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

Happy Halloween.

2009-10-31T14:10:00.000-07:00

It's 4:09, and we have not bought any candy yet. Steve has sprinted to the store to do some last minute Standing in Line at the Checkout Counter-ing, and just called to tell me that he saw two little goblins heading toward the house.

Quickly, now:

I have about six blueberry cereal bars from Trader Joe's, and 16 rolls of paper towels from my last trip to Target. Should I give them the bars, the towels, or one of each?

We've Got the Flu!

2009-10-30T09:55:00.000-07:00

Hurray!

Alex has been out of school for three days so far, Chris for two. Steve, who cannot bear to be left out of an illness of any kind, has been dragging around making the sad boo-boo kitty face for a few days, and I am so far the last one standing. I am quite tired. It is up to me and my domestic partner, Belt, to keep things under control, and wouldn't you know, I found that shirker curled up at the foot of Christopher's bed this morning, sleeping in?

Life is so unfair.

Summer, 1976, Part 1.

2009-10-27T07:09:00.000-07:00

I peeked through the curtains at Amy sitting on the steps of our front porch. The scowl had left her face for the most part, but her eyebrows were still furrowed. Give her a couple more minutes, I thought, and she'll be bored. And then I can go out at sit with her, and then we'll be friends again. They we can play until her mother comes to pick her up.

Our fights didn't always have time constraints. She used to live right next door to us, and spent most of her time running in and out of our house, eating sandwiches at our kitchen table, and sitting in our oversized sink in the laundry room, having the mud hosed off her by my mother. In those days, Amy rarely went home in the same clothes she came over with. But now things were different. Amy's parents had gotten a divorce, and Amy had moved away. She was living in a large, 3 story condo downtown with her mother and her stepfather, Lolly. Instead of wandering home whenever she felt like it, we now knew exactly how long we had to kiss and make up before Amy's mother would pull into the driveway. Our conflicts had a timetable now, and it was a new kind of pressure we weren't yet accustomed to.

I knew we had plenty of time. Her mother wasn't going to be there for another 4 1/2 hours. Amy couldn't possibly sit there that long, and I couldn't possibly sit in the window watching her sit there for that long. This was getting boring. I had no choice but to go outside and sit down next to her on the cool, mossy brick stairs. That was step one towards reconciliation. Step two was to be ignored for a few minutes. Step three was for me to suggest playing some sort of game, which would be rejected, as would Steps four and five, which were both variations on Step three. Step six was for me to beg, and Step seven was for her to relent. Step eight was to begin playing and Step nine was to forget why we had been fighting in the first place. Step nine would last for several hours until Step ten, which was when Amy's mother would pull into the driveway and Amy would begin to cry, not wanting to go home.

We had barely gotten past Step Three when a little girl walked out of the house that used to be Amy's and shyly approach us. Her name, she said, was Lisa, and her family was just moving in, and she would like to play with us, if that was all right.

Amy said nothing, because playing we still had at least six steps to go before the playing could begin, but I must have seen an opportunity to cut to the chase, even if it was with someone else, and the next thing I remember was Lisa and I wrestling on the grass and giggling manically, while Amy sulked on the porch, alone and forgotten, until my mother came out to check on us, surveyed the scene, and insisted that we not leave Amy out.

I rolled my eyes, because Amy had been acting like a pill long before Lisa arrived on the scene, but whatever. Amy could play with us, if she wanted to, I offered, and Amy, although this was in a clear violation of the rules, had no choice but to grudgingly join us.

As a parent, I hate groups of three, and I know a lot of other parents do, too, because someone always gets singled out.* And as it came to pass, that's what Lisa and I did to Amy. I wasn't cruel to Amy; I could never be cruel to a girl who was basically raised as a family member for most of my life, but I definitely made it clear that Lisa was the more entertaining guest by far.

Later that afternoon, Amy's mother pulled up in her wood paneled green station wagon, and Amy, with no tears shed this time, went home. Lisa and I continued to play until dusk.

_____________________________
*One of my exasperated coworkers was telling me about her first grader nobly sticking up for a little girl who was being picked on because she was Mexican, telling the little girl who was doing the bullying that it wasn't fair to mistreat someone because of their race, and because she was black she ought to know that. The next day the bully decided to befriend the Mexican girl and both the bully and the Mexican girl excluded my friend's daughter. This is the thanks one gets for being the Martin Luther King of the playground.

Books Are Pretty.

2009-10-24T07:50:00.001-07:00

I've cranked it up again. I took some time off from my beloved book review blog to deal with unemployment issues and rambunctious child issues, but now school is back in session, Steve has another job, and Books Are Pretty is open for business again. As an added bonus, my friend FanTam has agreed to join me, so she will now be a regular contributor. She has a new review up today. Please visit her and welcome her to our corner of the internet!

Guten Morgen, Mein Overlord!

2009-10-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

Big Machine's German overlords came to visit yesterday, and our supervisors were all aflutter over it, and had been for weeks. We were repeatedly reminded to dress like they paid us enough to buy nice clothes for ourselves, and several emails shot out informing us to clean our desks because THEY'RE COMING! MEIN GOTT, THEY'RE COMING!!

51% of Big Machine is owned by an enormous German retail conglomeration that owns several catalog stores. They don't oversee the day to day operations, but their presence allowed the founder to open a franchise in Dubai, so we're very Continental now. Yesterday was the first day since the takeover that a member of the Executive Board had flown all the way from Germany to visit the call center at Big Machine and take a whirlwind tour of cubicles and warehouse rows. How exciting! I bet he couldn't sleep the night before the trip. Book your honeymoon vacations now, Germans!

On the morning of the (MEIN GOTT!!) visit, I put on the nicest clothes I own: a brown button down shirt from Old Navy, dark brown pinstriped pants from Overstock.com, and a pair of 3" Michael Kors shoes I bought from Bluefly:

Aren't they gorgeous? Boy, did they hurt! I got to work right before 9:30 and hobbled approximately a quarter of a mile from the parking lot to the front door, only to find five people standing in front of the reception desk, hands folded in front of them, strained smiles on their faces.

"Waiting for our German Overlords?" I asked.

"Yes," they said.

"When are they coming?" I said, prying for news I could take upstairs and spread around the office, because I'm a team player like that.

One of the women looked at her watch. "Between now and this afternoon," she said.

"You mean you all have to stand here and wait until they get here?" I asked, floored.

"Oh, no..." she said, "No." And then she dropped her eyes and sort of shuffled around, and Jesus, they're totally going to stand there all fucking day waiting for these people. Honestly, no offense to my readers who are wildly rich and powerful, but oftentimes you guys really suck. This was one of those times.

I teetered upstairs and over to my desk, which is at the far end of the call center. I sat down and started cleaning it off, while the supervisors whirled around taking everyone's coat off the back of her chair and I don't know, probably burning them so the sight of them wouldn't offend.*

Thirty minutes later, the Overlords appeared, were salaamed in by the people from Human Resources, walked upstairs, stood at the top of the stairs to the call center for two seconds, then left.

Everyone was really indignant that the Overlords didn't bother walking through the call center, since we'd all been forced to give a damn about it, but I think they've lost perspective on how dreary call centers actually are. If I was a German Overlord, I wouldn't have spent more than two seconds there, either.

On the plus side, a parade was thrown in honor of my shoes, and all day long, everywhere I limped there was an awful lot of OMG Shoez!ing. My shoes were the most exciting thing that happened to everyone all day.

They really are quite nice.

_____________________________
*Seriously, what is it with employers and their hatred of coats? I can't tell you how many crappy jobs I've had where I've slogged though several feet of snow, only to arrive at work and have the manager be pissy because I needed a place to put a coat.

Zombie Attack.

2009-10-20T06:45:00.000-07:00

I think a lot of the problem with me and blogging recently has been this issue with the zombies. I'm like this in real life, too. When I have something that I need to get off my chest, but also know it may be in my best interest to keep it to myself, I find myself paralyzed by it. I can't choke it back, but I can't move forward unless that big lump in my throat is gone.

This isn't one of my favorite things about myself, and as I'm rapidly approaching the Great Cliffs of Forty and getting ready to hurtle over into middle age, I suspect this is something I may be stuck with. I love the idea of myself as Clint Eastwood, all flinty-eyed and reserved, but instead I'm just a gigantic emotional mess.

So what to do?

Tell you all about our wretched relationship with some of our neighbors, I suppose. Clint would never do it, but I notice that he doesn't have a blog, either. Therein lies the fundamental difference.

I'll tell you the story of my summer, then, but as Dave Pilken, author of the Captain Underpants series says, "before I can tell you that story, I have to tell you this story."

I sent an email to Alex's teacher this morning telling him that we're working with his psychiatrist to make sure the medication he is taking has as little an impact on his appetite as possible. Alex is a small kid. He's 4'4" and weighs less than 70 pounds. How much of it is genetic and how much is due to the medication tempering his appetite I don't know, but I constantly worry about it, and for 3 years we've tried to walk the line of giving him as little medication as possible and still have him be able to maintain throughout the school day. So the email I sent to her stated that because snack time is at 10:30, his medication time is 11:30, and his lunch is at 1:00, I would like him to be able to eat a heartier snack with more protein in it, and to please give him time to eat the snack. Unless he's deliberately dawdling, then feel free to lay down the smake on his ass.

I exchange emails with his teacher every single day, just like I did last year. We have a yearly IEP meeting as well as monthly meetings with his teachers. He sees a psychiatrist twice a month. He has personal aides in both school and summer camp. We put him in swimming classes and have a meeting with whatever teenager is teaching his class that year about his special requirements. We have daily discussions with the two college dudes that supervise him at the YMCA program after school. We have a strict bedtime regimen that we don't deviate from.

But when he goes outside to play, well, that's our Waterloo.

Here's what I wanted: I wanted him to be able to go outside and ride his bike and play like a normal kid, and as it turns out, I can't. I can't because he goes outside and acts weird. He can't interact with people very well. He either doesn't make sense, or he addresses everyone with that loud, atonal bossy sound that people with social issues sometimes have that other people find off-putting. He has poor impulse control coupled with a need to have everything stay the same. This isn't a good combination for people who go outside, because everything is always changing, and you can't control any of it. When Alex was three, he was obsessed with opening people's car doors. That habit was curtailed when he opened the car door of a car that had an alarm. What a great deterrent that was! It scared the pants off him, and he cried and cried and never did it again.

Unfortunately, the lesson he learned was not "Don't mess with other people's stuff," but rather "don't mess with other people's cars." He simply transferred his curiosity to their garages.

My stubborn wishful thinking led me to believe that I could give him parameters of where he could go when he's outside (parameters he's largely obeyed, to give credit where credit is due), and check on him every 10-15 minutes.

But after this summer, okay. I get it. I finally get it. To keep him safe, I have to stand out there every single second and stare at him. And even then, it's still not going to be good enough, because sometimes I have to go to the bathroom, or take a shower, and he's been known to leave the house when I'm doing that. And, as you will see in the following posts, going to the bathroom has consequences for Steve and me that it doesn't have for other parents.

What's going to happen to him when he grows up and has never had the opportunity to take care of himself? What's going to happen to him when I die and can't stand over him every single second anymore? These are the things I asked myself when he'd go outside to play, and I always decided to let him try some independence with occasional checking. My neighbors, however, had other ideas. Lots of other ideas, actually, and none of them included letting Alex out to play by himself. You know, like their kids do.

The opinion of the neighborhood, or at least some of the neighborhood, is that we're the family with the out of control kid we never watch. And being that I am actually micromanaging his snack and coordinating snack-eating with both his teacher and a psychiatrist, I have to say that really stings.

I've written myself into tears now, so I'm going to stop here. I'll get into neighbor specifics in a later post.

Hold On A Second.

2009-10-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

Update: There! That's better.

Unfortunately, all my followers were eaten, and I have no idea how to put them back.
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As you can see, I'm trying to get my blog back to normal. I figured out how to put my pictures back, but I'm having a horrible time trying to put up a blogroll and my BlogHer ads in the sidebar. The old template was written in HTML, and the new one is in XML, so when I try to cut and paste it tells me my code is "badly written" and I need to gobbledygook flibberty gibbet in order to fix it. I've tinkered around so much I've run out of time to write anything.

Instead, today I must offer you some gifts that people sent me when requesting the new URL.

First, one of my Icelandic readers, a cruel, cruel group of people in general, gave me two housewarming gifts: prints by Thomas Kinkaide, along with moving descriptions of each masterpiece.

In his garden scenes, Thom combines a plethora of color and light that is vintage Kinkade. Roses that look and smell like heaven. Orchids that absorb the sunlight and almost seem to shimmer. The sweet scent of fruit trees in the late afternoon. The light in Thom's painting's represents God's presence and influences." It also "illuminates and guides."

In these tranquil bridge scenes, Thom uses all his skills as an artist to show us that bridges are so much more than structures. They span the chasms and obstacles of life and help to deliver us safely to where we're going. Bridges symbolism is crossing over from dark to light.

Thank you ever so much. As soon as I figure out how to write in XML, I'm going to hang one of these in the sidebar, and serves you right.

Also, I was sent this footage of an alarming baby panda:

and also, this excellent zombie song:

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Update

Krupskaya adds:

An Open Letter to Barack Obama, From the Rest of the World.

2009-10-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr. President,

We're sorry for dissing your hometown over the Olympics. Here, have a Nobel Peace Prize.

ps - We hate Bush.

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Seriously, you all know I voted for the man, but let's think about this for a minute. He hasn't rescinded the illegal wiretapping or any of the laws violating the Constitution that Bush awarded himself, he hasn't closed Guantanamo like he said he would, he hasn't pulled out of Iraq like he said he would, he's trying to escalate the war in Afghanistan, which is going to be ultimately pointless, and he's trying to keep any more photos of U.S. troops torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib from being released. And they gave him the Nobel Peace Prize? Won't they feel silly when he goes on a 15 state killing spree in his lame duck year.

Or maybe I'm not looking at this from a global perspective. His presidency throws into stark relief the sheer ghastliness of the Bush years. Perhaps this has united the rest of the world like nothing else ever has, thus promoting global peace. There. I knew I'd figure it out eventually.

Why Prosecuting Polanski Matters.

2009-10-07T06:28:00.001-07:00

I know, another Polanski post, and so soon after we've eaten! I'm not waiting the hour before jumping in again, so too bad.

This is exactly why we shouldn't let it go.

When people are lining up to defend Poor Roman, to say "it happened a long time ago," that he "had sex with" a teenage girl, that we should "move on," what this does is cause a trickle-down effect that causes harm to people we care about. Suddenly, their obvious victimization becomes just "sex they had a long time ago," and the victim should remember the rapist had a hard life, and boo fucking hoo.

Reagan's trickle down theory may not have worked when applied to economics, but it sure as hell works when applied to how the public views rape.

Begin the Beguine.

2009-10-06T06:44:00.000-07:00

I have to start this dance off slowly and work my way into it, if you don't mind. Some of the stuff I put up, if I feel it's too personal, I'll take back down again. That's just going to be the way it is, unfortunately. The good news is, since that's my plan I may feel more free to give details about the summer that I ordinarily wouldn't.

So if you check back in on a post to read the comments and the entire post is gone, that's what happened. The comments will stay up for further discussion, but the post is going to be hidden over on the Blog Formerly Known As ~~Prince~~ One Good Thing.

Now, you may remember a certain young man's sporadic blog where he posted about getting a new kitty.

Yes. About that cat. Let me tell you more about that cat.

Back in June, Alex, Chris, and I were at Wal-Green's picking up a prescription, and we noticed the pharmacy was all in a tizzy.

"What's going on?" I asked, because I am nosy.

"Someone left a kitten in our bathroom!" gushed one of the techs. "A kitten, with half a bag of food and some toys!"

"A kitten!" I gushed back, because I am a sucker.

"Would you like to see her?" said the pharmacist, because he was an opportunist.

Cutting to the chase - because we got home and I walked through the door with a terrified kitten digging her claws into my skull, I wound up in the dog house for awhile. For about an hour, actually, until Steve petted her and she purred. Because he is a sucker, too, even though he won't admit it.

We named her Wally, because we found her in Walgreen's. We should have named her "Dell," because the money I had set aside to replace our old, buggy computer went instead to a hands-down adorable vet named Lisa McIntyre and her steadfast assistant, Sue.

Dr. McIntyre, god bless her, makes housecalls. She and Sue came over, used our office as an examining room, and checked out Wally and the other three cats, too.*

Wally turned out to have worms, fleas, and ovaries, all of which had to be removed, so everybody else had to be treated for worms and fleas as well.**

The cat integration was somewhat rocky at first. Wally hid underneath the file cabinet for days, hissing and spitting at any cat who came within ten yards of her. Bobby and Cindy accepted her with their usual Whatever, Dude, but Belt felt the need to teach her to show him the proper respect.

Eventually they all got used to each other, but Belt and I never did succeed in teaching her manners.

This cat is such an asshole, you guys.

This is a photo I took of her about fifteen minutes ago. It was the 8th or 9th attempt, because she never sits still. She is devoted to the art of attacking our feet, and she lies in wait for us until we walk by, then she shreds the shit out of us. And she bites. And she shits in my guest room if there is any poo in the litter box. And she is oblivious to the Spray Bottle of Death, deciding that she actually likes having her head soaked, thanks. She ate my fake plant in the office and threw it back up in the dining room. She convinced Alex there was a monster under his bed, because she hid under there and made rustling noises until he got out of bed, afraid, then she attacked his feet and scared the bejesus out of him. She jumps up on the kitchen counter right in front of me and tries to drag raw chicken off the counter to god knows where.

She is ungrateful, people. Ungrateful.

I tried to return her to Walgreen's, but the same pharmacist who suckered me into taking her told me I couldn't return her unless I had a receipt, and he would not give me store credit.

But every night, when I'm watching TV alone downstairs, she creeps over and curls up next to my head to keep me company. She doesn't bite. She doesn't scratch. She just purrs, and purrs nicely.

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*Everybody held up very well through the exams and shots, except for Bobby. Bobby now weighs about 25 pounds, most of it fur but the rest of it muscle and claws, and he wasn't picking up what Dr. McIntyre was putting down. At all. The three of us, Dr. McIntyre, Sue, and I, tried to give him a thorough exam, but actually had to give up trying to weigh him because he abruptly turned into a whirling, screaming panther and sliced us to bits. Then he ran and hid upstairs and I couldn't find him. I had badly misjudged the personalities of my own cats. I really thought Cindy would be the worst, because she is the most skittish, and Bobby would be the best, because he is typically the sweetest, but not so. Cindy was great. Bobby, not so much. Belt handled the exam with his usual cerebral dignity, then went and peed in the downstairs toilet, just in case we were not aware who the best cat was.

**Dr. McIntyre did not use our office as an operating room. I took Wally to a nearby vet's office and had her girly bits zapped out with lasers.

This Gave Me the Shivers.

2009-10-04T18:01:00.000-07:00

The Anne Frank House recently uploaded onto You Tube the only known footage of Anne Frank, leaning out her window as she watched a bride and groom on their wedding day. After Anne's diary was published in the fifties, the couple recognized Anne in their wedding video and gave a copy of it to her father, Otto Frank.

Anne appears in the window at the nine second mark. I watched it repeatedly, because it's sort of like seeing a unicorn - almost impossible to believe what you're seeing is real.

Once upon a time, a little girl with a big talent lived and loved, then was murdered in a place as close to Hell as has ever been on Earth, but her courage lived on to inspire the world.

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via Crooks and Liars

Chris Rock, You Are Awesome.

2009-10-02T16:44:00.000-07:00

After spending a few days watching in disbelief as Hollywood star after Hollywood star after FOUNDER OF THE FUCKING FEMINIST MAJORITY FOUNDATION lined up to defend Poor Roman, I felt like I was losing my mind a little bit.

Roman Polanski drugged and anally raped a child.

He drugged and anally raped a child who kept saying "no."

This isn't in question. He pled guilty. Then he fled the country to avoid sentencing. He is an escaped child rapist. And not only are Hollywood stars defending him, such as Whoopi Goldberg's "it's not rape rape" - Jesus, Whoopi, what does rape look like in your world? Does he have to cut her arms off too? - But they all signed a petition about it. Woody Allen, sure, you'd expect him to be first in line with his Mont Blanc out, but Debra Winger? Tilda Swinton? Sob. Kate Winselt's husband signed it and Kate let him live? How'd that happen?

Finally, somebody said something. Chris Rock said something: Yeah, it IS rape rape.

Thanks, Chris.

Happy Boy.

2009-10-02T06:18:00.000-07:00

Last night while I was answering your emails, Christopher was sitting on the loveseat in the room with me, playing his DS and radiating so much contentment I had to take a photo of it.

His happy vibe was so strong I asked him if he was feeling good right now.

"I am," he said. "I'm very comfy here on the couch. This is a very nice night."

And it was.

Dear Yoplait: Big Machine Questions Your Advertising Choices.

2009-10-01T05:57:00.001-07:00

One of the many, many great adventures I had while I was away was taking a trip to the doctor's office to have my blood taken and probed. About a week later I received a startling phone call from the doctor: I had been diagnosed as having a serious medical condition known as "being fat." I was shocked. I had no idea! Evidently, my cholesterol level was what tipped him off, because you'd never know by looking at me:

Where do I keep it, right? Usually in my head, I say.

Rather than giving me a magic pill, the doctor recommended a bizarre, alternative treatment known as "eat less fat, more fiber, and exercise."

Fine. I've been doing okay with the first two, not so good with the third, but I'm getting there. One of the things I bought, using a buttload of coupons (that's an industry term) I wrangled several 4 packs of Yoplait's Fiber One.

I brought one of the 4 packs to keep at work, and around mid-morning broke the box open to eat some. Before I did that, I noticed that on the box is the Fiber One mascot, a cartoon woman named "Hungry Girl."

No doubt this Fiber One will keep me filled up, then. Because clearly if Yoplait recognizes that women get hungry, and need something filling to eat to get them through the workday, then Fiber One will be an excellent choice. Despite what most of us know about the effects of eating a cup of yogurt. This yogurt will be different. Substantial. Ready to take on the appetite of the women of North America, as represented by Hungry Girl.

I took the cup out of the container, then immediately handed it to one of my coworkers, along with a dollar for size comparison:

We then went all over the office, showing people the Hungry Girl box, then the actual cup. Everyone was equally derisive, almost offended by the idiocy of the ad.

Hungry Girl. Yeah. That oughta do it.

Good thinking, Yoplait.

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*An aside here, added purely for the purpose of science: Fiber One has 5 grams of fiber in each 4 oz cup. Therefore, if you are actually hungry, and eat, say, three of them, you will poop. A lot. With a certain sense of urgency. With fear, almost, if the bathroom is on the opposite side of the office from your cubicle. I say this only to help.

Because We Are Givers.

2009-09-30T19:51:00.000-07:00

Here's something to soothe our troubled hearts while we wait for the new blog to get up and rolling.

Steve drove past this church this morning in Lemont, Illinois:

and saw this:

Pet blessings. Bring your pet in at 11:00am this Saturday, and they will bless it.

And for my sister, who has two dogs and two kids and helped me answer emails this week and is currently looking for a new church: You're welcome.

Take Two.

2009-09-29T09:33:00.001-07:00

Let's start from here and see what happens.