Monday, January 3, 2011

How Long Will My New Year's Resolution Last?

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.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

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

Illinois Senate approves civil unions.

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


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

Thursday, November 4, 2010

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




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.*

Thursday, October 28, 2010

In The Beginning.

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.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

What I Did Last Summer, by Alex Wilson

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.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

The Recontinuing Cycle Story, by Alex Wilson


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.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

May This Thought Never, Ever Enter Your Head.


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.