It seems to come earlier every year, doesn't it? We're only in mid-July, but this week I got to indulge in one of my most favorite and hallowed annual traditions: perusing the current Bed Bath & Beyond flier, College Prep edition.
I've been analyzing my deep fondness for this publication all week, trying to sort out why--twenty years past outfitting a dorm room--I remain hypnotized by the exhaustive matchy-matchiness. The matching! Everything coordinated with everything else! Stuff bundled together in thematic sets: the towels that go with the duvet that complements the desk lamp, shower caddy, and collapsible laundry hamper. Plus two reversible accent pillows!
Maybe it's because we didn't do that, when I went off to college. Do people do that, now, collect the entire striped or polka-dotted Dorm Room in a Box and ship it off? (Did they do then?) I trundled off to Sarah Lawrence with a particle-board footlocker and the Laura Ashley knockoff comforter my mother gave me when I was 13. I hadn't chosen it: she and my grandmother had gotten a wild hair, I guess, and redid Sis's and my rooms with new linens one random afternoon. I remember that I found the cornflower-blue quilt with its teensy garlands of flowers a little twee; I was jealous of Sis's set, which had grids and squares in different grays, with deep burgundy accents, very modern, Totally 80s.
Everything else, I amassed piecemeal: milk crates, the obligatory Indian bedspread, a wooden rack from the Village Tower Records (!) to hold my cassette tapes (!!). That very first night in the dorm, I realized that I hadn't even packed a pillow. I bought one during a tour of SoHo the next day, and managed to get it shut in the doors of the 6 local on the way home. Stand clear of the closing doors. Yeah, honey, that means you. Yes, it's a wonder I survived.
At any rate, I didn't (and don't) really need a pink chrome wastebasket, let alone one that matched my blowdryer. I was perfectly content developing my own sense of style, instead of buying it in a kit. So why do I find the damn catalog so compelling?
Maybe it's the idea of starting completely fresh, acquiring a room and a life and a personality ready-made for your convenience...like a Witness Protection program of housewares. I occasionally dream about college, still, and in most of these dreams I'm not even taking classes or racing to some forgotten final; I'm moving in. I'm putting my books on the shelves, finding a sunny corner for the Venus flytrap I bought at the Woolworth's. It's all about the anticipation, nesting while I wait for My Future to begin on Monday.
Although...now that I've said that, I realize: a Venus flytrap? (Yes, I had one!) Strands of Christmas lights, a carved incense burner? Even in dreams, my stuff, my self, deliberately doesn't match. It might be easy to purchase a coordinated fantasy to inhabit, an identity in a color scheme...but even in my deepest subconscious, I'm not actually doing it. Better, after all, to keep fiddling with it all through the decades, building myself brick by brick by red sofa by thrift-store picture frame.
Where can I get a Venus flytrap, these days?
Showing posts with label Sis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sis. Show all posts
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Mama don't allow
What you need to know: my father has mastered the Internet, by which I mean that he has figured out how to buy and (finally, eventually) to sell things on eBay and Craigslist. (The balance skews way, way more to the former, and so I am expecting to inherit a veritable sea of officially sanctioned Collectibles, one day.) Anyway. Dad's selections from the wide wide world of Web goodies, however, remain...inscrutable.
Sis says:
I talked to Dad this morning, and he had picked up a stand-up BASS on Craigslist for a steal ($695) and thinks I should learn to play.
Kim says:
ha!!! well, yeah, since you're not doing anything, right?
Sis says:
isn't that odd??
Kim says:
da-dum dum dum dum DUM dum dum dum...
Sis says:
that's EXACTLY what he did over the phone
Yes, this is entirely as random as this snippet would suggest. Neither of us plays any instrument; I muddled through two years of flute in elementary school and retained nothing, while Sis had something like a semester of Electric Piano as a freshman elective. Is Dad entertaining visions of finally launching that family jug band? Regardless, he didn't call me. I... don't know. Maybe I should start boning up on the comb-and-tissue-paper kazoo, from sheer jealousy.
Sis says:
I talked to Dad this morning, and he had picked up a stand-up BASS on Craigslist for a steal ($695) and thinks I should learn to play.
Kim says:
ha!!! well, yeah, since you're not doing anything, right?
Sis says:
isn't that odd??
Kim says:
da-dum dum dum dum DUM dum dum dum...
Sis says:
that's EXACTLY what he did over the phone
Yes, this is entirely as random as this snippet would suggest. Neither of us plays any instrument; I muddled through two years of flute in elementary school and retained nothing, while Sis had something like a semester of Electric Piano as a freshman elective. Is Dad entertaining visions of finally launching that family jug band? Regardless, he didn't call me. I... don't know. Maybe I should start boning up on the comb-and-tissue-paper kazoo, from sheer jealousy.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Three little words
Sis and Mr. Sis are going to a local casting call, this week, for the next edition of The Amazing Race--with their love of world travel, it's something we've long encouraged them to try. What the hell, right? Project Runway and TAR are pretty much the only competitive reality shows I bother to watch, the latter precisely because there are no weird manufactured conflicts or elaborate backstabbing alliances to be had. They take teams of two people with a preexisting relationship--couples, siblings, parent/child--and simply observe what happens with that dynamic when they send people out on a high-speed global trek. The primary objective is to get there, fastest; the fascination comes in watching people thrown into utterly alien environments and cultures, given vaguely culture-relevant tasks, and just trying to cope with it.
There is, unfortunately, always a lot of Ugly Americanism on display. There's also virtually always a team of blonde ladies who vow to get ahead in their round-the-world journey by relying on their sex appeal. Flirting! Flirting and bikinis will ease their every path! Each season, someone voices this intent, and each season these interchangeable hardbodies run into the inevitable wall when they discover that, for example, the camel you're trying to milk doesn't give two shits if you're a smoking hot blonde. That's entertainment! Of course, the people you actually root for are the ones who Get It: the teams who are appropriately awestruck and humbled and thrilled by the opportunity. They're polite in the face of exhaustion; they bother to engage with merchants and musicians and schoolchildren; they look at little kids emerging from a trash-built shack in some devastated corner of the Third World, and are affected--you can see them visibly respond, see them thinking "there but for the grace of God," see them realize that, in the long run, a million-dollar cash prize and a jetski or whatever are not, exactly, the point. Then, too, the best competitors have a pretty good sense of this before they embark, and recognize the race for the extraordinary gift that it is. In that way, I think Sis and Mr. Sis have as good a shot as anyone. Plus they're thinking that her shattered, rebuilt, bionic ankle could be their "hook."
Anyway. So they're filling out their applications in advance, and Sis was running some of the questions past me. One asked what three words you'd use to describe yourself, and then your partner. "Maybe not use 'litigious,' in this particular capacity," I teased her. But we spent a while trying to come up with something. We both independently said "determined," for Sis, and "loyal" for Mr., which seems significant, doesn't it? One I thought of, later, was "competitive." Sis, if you're reading this, you gotta put that down, girl. You have never in your life been able to walk away from a Scrabble board or a $5 bet, admit it!
"Okay, do me," I said, genuinely curious. "What three words describe me?" Sis stood at the edge of the abyss for a while, thinking.
MENSA intelligent, she started with. And I feel an obligation, dear reader, to point out that that is two words, there, because as a component of my brilliance, I can count!
Sarcastic. Okay. Not gonna argue with that one, either.
But then she hit me with the kicker: Intimidating. And all I could say was, really? You sincerely find me intimidating, in the slightest? Because I don't know what I'm conveying, I honestly don't...but still 99.4% of my time I am purely convinced that just below the surface of my skin, I'm a hugely insecure terrified giant baby, virtually every minute of every day. I am round and soft and awkward. I laugh often and too loudly. I have a penchant for lurid, inappropriate red shoes. I spent a significant portion of this week's therapy session debating the nuances between "childish" and "childlike," both terms I readily apply to my overall demeanor. Intimidating?
Sis is one of the bravest people I know. She punched a mugger in the face. I am...utterly flabbergasted, frankly, at her choice of words for me...because it has not ever, does not ever occur to me in any moment that I am remotely intimidating, to her or anyone. It sure as hell isn't conscious.
Intimidating. Actually, this isn't the first time I've been told this. Poor Holly, getting dragged into this again: we were teens, and I was lamenting my single dorkitude. Oh, how I longed for a shaggy-haired, marble-mouthed high school boyfriend of my very own! And I remember her telling me that I was so...smart, so something, that maybe guys found me intimidating. Well. I...despaired, then, I guess. Because, again: quailing in internal terror, 24/7. Smart, I couldn't help; intimidating, I apparently couldn't turn off, no matter how I willed it.
Twenty years later. Intimidating. And, for the record, single--not for the intervening two decades, thank God for small favors...but for damn long enough, I'm sure. I...do not know what to say, in the face of that. All out of words, tonight.
There is, unfortunately, always a lot of Ugly Americanism on display. There's also virtually always a team of blonde ladies who vow to get ahead in their round-the-world journey by relying on their sex appeal. Flirting! Flirting and bikinis will ease their every path! Each season, someone voices this intent, and each season these interchangeable hardbodies run into the inevitable wall when they discover that, for example, the camel you're trying to milk doesn't give two shits if you're a smoking hot blonde. That's entertainment! Of course, the people you actually root for are the ones who Get It: the teams who are appropriately awestruck and humbled and thrilled by the opportunity. They're polite in the face of exhaustion; they bother to engage with merchants and musicians and schoolchildren; they look at little kids emerging from a trash-built shack in some devastated corner of the Third World, and are affected--you can see them visibly respond, see them thinking "there but for the grace of God," see them realize that, in the long run, a million-dollar cash prize and a jetski or whatever are not, exactly, the point. Then, too, the best competitors have a pretty good sense of this before they embark, and recognize the race for the extraordinary gift that it is. In that way, I think Sis and Mr. Sis have as good a shot as anyone. Plus they're thinking that her shattered, rebuilt, bionic ankle could be their "hook."
Anyway. So they're filling out their applications in advance, and Sis was running some of the questions past me. One asked what three words you'd use to describe yourself, and then your partner. "Maybe not use 'litigious,' in this particular capacity," I teased her. But we spent a while trying to come up with something. We both independently said "determined," for Sis, and "loyal" for Mr., which seems significant, doesn't it? One I thought of, later, was "competitive." Sis, if you're reading this, you gotta put that down, girl. You have never in your life been able to walk away from a Scrabble board or a $5 bet, admit it!
"Okay, do me," I said, genuinely curious. "What three words describe me?" Sis stood at the edge of the abyss for a while, thinking.
MENSA intelligent, she started with. And I feel an obligation, dear reader, to point out that that is two words, there, because as a component of my brilliance, I can count!
Sarcastic. Okay. Not gonna argue with that one, either.
But then she hit me with the kicker: Intimidating. And all I could say was, really? You sincerely find me intimidating, in the slightest? Because I don't know what I'm conveying, I honestly don't...but still 99.4% of my time I am purely convinced that just below the surface of my skin, I'm a hugely insecure terrified giant baby, virtually every minute of every day. I am round and soft and awkward. I laugh often and too loudly. I have a penchant for lurid, inappropriate red shoes. I spent a significant portion of this week's therapy session debating the nuances between "childish" and "childlike," both terms I readily apply to my overall demeanor. Intimidating?
Sis is one of the bravest people I know. She punched a mugger in the face. I am...utterly flabbergasted, frankly, at her choice of words for me...because it has not ever, does not ever occur to me in any moment that I am remotely intimidating, to her or anyone. It sure as hell isn't conscious.
Intimidating. Actually, this isn't the first time I've been told this. Poor Holly, getting dragged into this again: we were teens, and I was lamenting my single dorkitude. Oh, how I longed for a shaggy-haired, marble-mouthed high school boyfriend of my very own! And I remember her telling me that I was so...smart, so something, that maybe guys found me intimidating. Well. I...despaired, then, I guess. Because, again: quailing in internal terror, 24/7. Smart, I couldn't help; intimidating, I apparently couldn't turn off, no matter how I willed it.
Twenty years later. Intimidating. And, for the record, single--not for the intervening two decades, thank God for small favors...but for damn long enough, I'm sure. I...do not know what to say, in the face of that. All out of words, tonight.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Son, she's no lady, she's your wife
So, it's true: Sis and the now official Mr. Sis are no longer living in sin, having been sanctioned in the chambers of a polite, bored judge in mid-May. Yes, it's been nearly a month. I was a little bit busy, Internets, what with wedding prep and post-wedding recovery and trying to keep various branches of the extended family tree from open fisticuffs in the streets. Because weddings first and foremost are a JOYOUS FUCKING OCCASION GODDAMN IT so let's all try to ACT LIKE ADULTS THANK YOU.
Sis and Mr. Sis had planned for several months to have only a simple courthouse ceremony, followed by a nice party for family and friends. They'd scheduled their reception and honeymoon for August. Then they applied for a court date, and got...May 12. This led to some of the most strenuous, extreme dress-shopping I've yet experienced, and culminated in my steering a nearly catatonic Sis around the Nordstrom's shoe department by the elbow, as she murmured sotto voce, "I'mgonnafreakoutI'mgonnafreakoutI'mgonnafreakout." Strappy silver sandals were thankfully applied in the nick of time.
The morning of the wedding dawned gray and cool. Sis and I had arranged beforehand to be professionally tarted up at Habitude in Ballard, with mani/pedis, makeup, and what the spa cards they handed us referred to as "up doos."
Yeah, yeah, it's My Day--just bring me My Goddamn Coffee.
I was a little worried about the makeup application: first, that they would have the gun set on "Whore"; second, because I watch far too many makeover shows, that I would look magnificently fabulous...but would henceforth require a team of trained cosmetologists to follow me around 24 hours a day to maintain my high gloss. The end result, I think, fell somewhere in the middle. It was nice, but with a lot of shimmering shimmery-stuff layers going on. To me, they emphasized the roundness of my face, so that my head looked a bit like an enormous Gala apple. I didn't care for any of the photos of me, so y'all are SOL.
Oh, for God's sake. All RIGHT.
See? Apple. Also, melons, Jesus.
Photos I wish I had: me and Sis at the salon, our hair ratted out like a Phil Spector act (or, simply, like PHIL SPECTOR); Sis on the front walk in jeans and a cowboy shirt, furiously doing the Twist to scuff the soles of her shoes so that she wouldn't wipe out on the marble courthouse floors; Sis and Mr. Sis, getting a first look at each other All Dressed Up...in the confines of their kitchen. Parking is difficult downtown; bride and groom carpooled together.
Anyway. I did like my hair--sleek in the front, with this incredibly elaborate Celtic knot woven together in the back. This was secured with 45(!) hairpins--I counted, after the fact--which might explain why my head set off the metal detector at the courthouse. My family laughed and pointed while a bored security guard wanded my Up-Doo.
We spent more time horsing around outside the courtroom (taking faux mug shots, tapping out the Judge Wapner bongo theme) than we did at the actual ceremony, which took approximately eight minutes, paperwork included.
Look at her. You're a lucky man, Mr. Sis.
After a leisurely round of appetizers and multiple exotic cocktails (I believe Mr. Sis had a Blue Hawaii; you go, Mr. Sis!), we returned the happy couple to their humble abode--which their neighbors had festooned with balloons and a Congrats sign that led the rest of the block to believe that Sis was pregnant.
Mr. Sis, Sis, and my nephew Willis.
Other friends brought them a white-trash wedding cake, constructed of tiers of Ding-Dongs and Twinkies. As Mr. Sis noted, this gave their cake an expiration date of 2010.
Ring-a-ding-ding, baby!
So. Reader, she married him. And I can honestly say that I am so happy that these two lovely, beautiful people found and deserve each other...and that I'm lucky enough that now I'm related to both of them. Congratulations, kids. I wish you the happiest rest-of-your-lives.
Seriously, how pretty are they? Mr. and Mrs. Sis, everybody!
Sis and Mr. Sis had planned for several months to have only a simple courthouse ceremony, followed by a nice party for family and friends. They'd scheduled their reception and honeymoon for August. Then they applied for a court date, and got...May 12. This led to some of the most strenuous, extreme dress-shopping I've yet experienced, and culminated in my steering a nearly catatonic Sis around the Nordstrom's shoe department by the elbow, as she murmured sotto voce, "I'mgonnafreakoutI'mgonnafreakoutI'mgonnafreakout." Strappy silver sandals were thankfully applied in the nick of time.
The morning of the wedding dawned gray and cool. Sis and I had arranged beforehand to be professionally tarted up at Habitude in Ballard, with mani/pedis, makeup, and what the spa cards they handed us referred to as "up doos."
Yeah, yeah, it's My Day--just bring me My Goddamn Coffee.
I was a little worried about the makeup application: first, that they would have the gun set on "Whore"; second, because I watch far too many makeover shows, that I would look magnificently fabulous...but would henceforth require a team of trained cosmetologists to follow me around 24 hours a day to maintain my high gloss. The end result, I think, fell somewhere in the middle. It was nice, but with a lot of shimmering shimmery-stuff layers going on. To me, they emphasized the roundness of my face, so that my head looked a bit like an enormous Gala apple. I didn't care for any of the photos of me, so y'all are SOL.
Oh, for God's sake. All RIGHT.
See? Apple. Also, melons, Jesus.
Photos I wish I had: me and Sis at the salon, our hair ratted out like a Phil Spector act (or, simply, like PHIL SPECTOR); Sis on the front walk in jeans and a cowboy shirt, furiously doing the Twist to scuff the soles of her shoes so that she wouldn't wipe out on the marble courthouse floors; Sis and Mr. Sis, getting a first look at each other All Dressed Up...in the confines of their kitchen. Parking is difficult downtown; bride and groom carpooled together.
Anyway. I did like my hair--sleek in the front, with this incredibly elaborate Celtic knot woven together in the back. This was secured with 45(!) hairpins--I counted, after the fact--which might explain why my head set off the metal detector at the courthouse. My family laughed and pointed while a bored security guard wanded my Up-Doo.
We spent more time horsing around outside the courtroom (taking faux mug shots, tapping out the Judge Wapner bongo theme) than we did at the actual ceremony, which took approximately eight minutes, paperwork included.
Look at her. You're a lucky man, Mr. Sis.
After a leisurely round of appetizers and multiple exotic cocktails (I believe Mr. Sis had a Blue Hawaii; you go, Mr. Sis!), we returned the happy couple to their humble abode--which their neighbors had festooned with balloons and a Congrats sign that led the rest of the block to believe that Sis was pregnant.
Mr. Sis, Sis, and my nephew Willis.
Other friends brought them a white-trash wedding cake, constructed of tiers of Ding-Dongs and Twinkies. As Mr. Sis noted, this gave their cake an expiration date of 2010.
Ring-a-ding-ding, baby!
So. Reader, she married him. And I can honestly say that I am so happy that these two lovely, beautiful people found and deserve each other...and that I'm lucky enough that now I'm related to both of them. Congratulations, kids. I wish you the happiest rest-of-your-lives.
Seriously, how pretty are they? Mr. and Mrs. Sis, everybody!
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
June Cleaver is dead
(Actually, after I composed that title, I had to run over to IMDB and check. I'm delighted to report that the lovely Barbara Billingsley, perfectly coiffed and fluent in jive, is very much alive and well, and was working as recently as 2003, bless her heart. Jus' hang loose, blood!)
My mom is a capable but largely indifferent cook. I mean no disrespect; she kept us adequately fed and everything, but Sis and I have no explanation for our own competitive culinary excesses and kitchen gadgetry...it's some genetic quirk that may have skipped multiple generations, we think. Mom was given detention in junior high for throwing lemons around like softballs in Home Ec, so maybe she missed something that day? At any rate, she was fun, but not at all a cake-baking sort of mom...more the "smuggle contraband candy into the movies" kind of mom, which has its own merits.
This is a lengthy prelude to saying that I can remember my mother baking only two cakes in my entire lifetime. One was for my twelfth birthday: a round layer cake frosted to resemble a giant hamburger, with real sesame seeds sprinkled over the top "bun." I had begged and pleaded and cajoled for this cake, which I'd found in a kids' cookbook, and I'm not sure what aspect of my whining finally propelled Mom to forgo the Albertson's bakery and approach the oven. She entered the kitchen with the grim focus of a Los Alamos physicist; I wasn't invited to participate in the endeavor, girlish bake-bonding be damned. But at the appointed birthday hour she emerged dazed but triumphant, burger cake in hand. She could, it seems, follow an existing template. I was ecstatic, as this was the coolest preteen hipster cake I could imagine. For a brief afternoon, I ruled the sixth grade.
Five or six years ago, Mom endeavored to bake a lemon cake for Sis's birthday. I think there were intimations that she could not do this, and she took umbrage. Over the years, Mom's limited-to-begin-with selection of decent cookware had continued to deteriorate, but the fact that she possessed one round and one square cake pan did not deter her. Maybe I should mention here that in her spare time, Mom is a collage artist? So. Sis received a square bottom layer of cake, with a vaguely starburst-y bunch of irregular cake cutouts arranged on top. Mom had covered this all with a Jackson Pollock motif of different-colored icings, some of which contained alcohol. "Is this the cake from MacArthur Park?" I asked, which made Mom mad. (You can tell when she is mad, because she says "I'm not mad!!" and smiles very very hard.) Anyway, the cake was delicious, if terrifying in appearance.
Last Saturday, we celebrated Sis's 33rd birthday with a plethora of curries at Bombay Grill. I don't know what prompted Mom to attempt another cake...but several hours before the meal, she called me in a state of some agitation.
It was quite the litany of woes. Again armed with a single round cake pan, she'd elected to pour the boxed mix into a sheet pan rather than baking three separate layers in shifts. The oven in her new house is somewhat overzealous, and so the edges and bottom of the resulting cake were...kind of charred. Mom decided to turn it out onto a cutting board, trim off the offending blackened bits, and then cut it down the middle and plop one half atop the other: layers! Sadly, the cake was not as architecturally sound as she had hoped. Increasingly frantic applications of cream-cheese frosting to spackle it all together were, likewise, temporary solutions at best. Martha should avert her eyes here, because Mom is not so much having the revolving cake pedestal, or the offset spatula, or the skillful crumb-coating. At some point in the decorative process, her frustration got the best of her.
Here is the cake Mom presented to Sis, to honor her birth:
Note the shoring up of the foundation, here (and that Mom had run out of the cream-cheese frosting at this point). It appears to be proceeding apace with the NOLA levee reconstruction as performed by the Army Corps of Engineers:
I wish I had photos of us all completely falling out in the kitchen. Alas, these were taken once we'd had time to calm down and catch our breath. We were too curry-stuffed to partake, but Sis brought the cake to her office the next day and it was a smashing success.
"As God is my witness, I am never baking a fucking cake again. I want you all to hear me," Mom announced formally over this production. Which in my mind is a real shame, actually. I am closer to 40 than 30...I kind of want all of my birthday cakes to make this same rousing declaration, for the forseeable future.
My mom is a capable but largely indifferent cook. I mean no disrespect; she kept us adequately fed and everything, but Sis and I have no explanation for our own competitive culinary excesses and kitchen gadgetry...it's some genetic quirk that may have skipped multiple generations, we think. Mom was given detention in junior high for throwing lemons around like softballs in Home Ec, so maybe she missed something that day? At any rate, she was fun, but not at all a cake-baking sort of mom...more the "smuggle contraband candy into the movies" kind of mom, which has its own merits.
This is a lengthy prelude to saying that I can remember my mother baking only two cakes in my entire lifetime. One was for my twelfth birthday: a round layer cake frosted to resemble a giant hamburger, with real sesame seeds sprinkled over the top "bun." I had begged and pleaded and cajoled for this cake, which I'd found in a kids' cookbook, and I'm not sure what aspect of my whining finally propelled Mom to forgo the Albertson's bakery and approach the oven. She entered the kitchen with the grim focus of a Los Alamos physicist; I wasn't invited to participate in the endeavor, girlish bake-bonding be damned. But at the appointed birthday hour she emerged dazed but triumphant, burger cake in hand. She could, it seems, follow an existing template. I was ecstatic, as this was the coolest preteen hipster cake I could imagine. For a brief afternoon, I ruled the sixth grade.
Five or six years ago, Mom endeavored to bake a lemon cake for Sis's birthday. I think there were intimations that she could not do this, and she took umbrage. Over the years, Mom's limited-to-begin-with selection of decent cookware had continued to deteriorate, but the fact that she possessed one round and one square cake pan did not deter her. Maybe I should mention here that in her spare time, Mom is a collage artist? So. Sis received a square bottom layer of cake, with a vaguely starburst-y bunch of irregular cake cutouts arranged on top. Mom had covered this all with a Jackson Pollock motif of different-colored icings, some of which contained alcohol. "Is this the cake from MacArthur Park?" I asked, which made Mom mad. (You can tell when she is mad, because she says "I'm not mad!!" and smiles very very hard.) Anyway, the cake was delicious, if terrifying in appearance.
Last Saturday, we celebrated Sis's 33rd birthday with a plethora of curries at Bombay Grill. I don't know what prompted Mom to attempt another cake...but several hours before the meal, she called me in a state of some agitation.
It was quite the litany of woes. Again armed with a single round cake pan, she'd elected to pour the boxed mix into a sheet pan rather than baking three separate layers in shifts. The oven in her new house is somewhat overzealous, and so the edges and bottom of the resulting cake were...kind of charred. Mom decided to turn it out onto a cutting board, trim off the offending blackened bits, and then cut it down the middle and plop one half atop the other: layers! Sadly, the cake was not as architecturally sound as she had hoped. Increasingly frantic applications of cream-cheese frosting to spackle it all together were, likewise, temporary solutions at best. Martha should avert her eyes here, because Mom is not so much having the revolving cake pedestal, or the offset spatula, or the skillful crumb-coating. At some point in the decorative process, her frustration got the best of her.
Here is the cake Mom presented to Sis, to honor her birth:
Note the shoring up of the foundation, here (and that Mom had run out of the cream-cheese frosting at this point). It appears to be proceeding apace with the NOLA levee reconstruction as performed by the Army Corps of Engineers:
I wish I had photos of us all completely falling out in the kitchen. Alas, these were taken once we'd had time to calm down and catch our breath. We were too curry-stuffed to partake, but Sis brought the cake to her office the next day and it was a smashing success.
"As God is my witness, I am never baking a fucking cake again. I want you all to hear me," Mom announced formally over this production. Which in my mind is a real shame, actually. I am closer to 40 than 30...I kind of want all of my birthday cakes to make this same rousing declaration, for the forseeable future.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Where is Grandpa's automobile?
Last Saturday was the 13th annual Greenwood Car Show, one of my favorite combinations of cornball civic event and red-blooded 'Murrican passion for any damn thing on wheels. I've been attending for close to a decade, now, and the show has gone from a handful of hobbyists to an astonishing 15-block stretch of street rods, classic cars, and virtually any mode of transport that can be considered antique, unique, or some degree of both.
The best thing about this show, actually, is that it's open to all comers; while many car shows are exclusive, limited to British classics or muscle cars or whatever, Greenwood takes anybody that has the $20 for the registration and the commemorative t-shirt. Got a cherry '65 Mustang convertible or an outrageously customized, pearl-pink '49 Chev? C'mon down. Vespa? Sure. Colossal Mercedes UNIMOG? You're in. One year I saw a lovingly restored General Lee of "Dukes of Hazzard" fame, one of the dozen or so Dodge Chargers the show had had for alternate takes on the gully-jumpin', still-crashin', hood-slidin' antics of the Duke boys. The owner had driven the car cross-country, and provided a photo album of snapshots of the General, posed in front of various landmarks: the General Lee at the Grand Coulee Dam, the General Lee welcomes you to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada.
Sis has been showing her vintage MINI at Greenwood for three or four years, now. She has a 1963 Riley Elf; it's one of several models built on the MINI chassis, and in the Riley's case features a trunk about the right size to put a croquet set in. It's a deep turquoise with a white top, so it looks like the Pyrex casserole dishes of the same era. It also features right-hand drive; she taught herself to manage the stick shift lefty style. Whenever I ride with her, I always feel vaguely fretful, as if I ought to be doing SOMETHING over there on the left to help, with all that naked dashboard in front of me.
I live a few blocks from Greenwood Avenue, so Friday night we had a Thirty-Something Slumber Party, which involved going out for Indian food and then smearing on our respective wrinkle goops and conking out by 10:30. Girls gone wild! Of course, we had to get up at holy shit o'clock to convoy to the site with the rest of the local MINI club. The processional was pretty awesome, I have to say: fifteen wee British automobiles creeping down the block in a row, the air thick with diesel fumes and Krispy Kremes. I could feel individual brain cells fizzling out in all the exhaust, but nonetheless it was cool. In the other lane, Model A Fords and tricked-out GTOs trundled past us. One guy joined our group in a tiny two-cylinder Mazda hatchback, the only one in the U.S. according to him. It looked like a cross between a Honda Civic and something that Fisher-Price people would tool around in. "What the hell IS that?" hollered a knot of tattooed greasers who'd already chosen a spot, with their deeply-cuffed jeans and their matte black hot rods.
And then...it's eight hours of sitting in camp chairs behind your parked car, getting sunburned, eating chicken wings, shooting the shit with approximately 7,000 clones of My Dad, and everyone's dad. It's a little ridiculous, and a little boring, and a lot of the straight-up evident love love LOVE Americans have for their cars. Does this translate to other cultures, I wonder? Holly, are there classic car meets like this in Munich? It is so dorky and tacky, and somehow I adore it so. There is musical entertainment: good, like the Dixieland jazz combo that set up across the street from us, and...less good, like the pudgy bar band down the block, laboring through the "Grease" soundtrack with gusto if not so much talent. Enterprising little kids come out to hawk lemonade or Tollhouse cookies sealed in individual sandwich baggies, 25 cents. ("Do you want change?" the cookie girl asked me politely when I handed her a dollar, and whoever taught her to say that was a genius because what stingy bastard is going to demand 75 cents back from a third-grader? The kid was raking in bills.) The Masonic Lodge grills weenies, which you can get with chips and a pop for an amazing $2, and they'll give you the most-burnt one if you ask nicely. The boys down at Fire Station 21 have hot dogs, too, and hold an open house for neighborhood kids to climb on the truck and stagger around in giant fire helmets, or take turns aiming the hose down 73rd Street. (Every year, I tell myself this is the year I ask, "Hey, can I play with your hose?" and every year I wimp out and slink past, gawping and trying not to run into anything. Hot firefighters! Damn! Can't form sentences!)
We were chillin' with the MINI club when we noticed a woman gently running her hands over Sis's car. This is a pretty strict no-no for 98% of the show, what with the untold hours most owners spend on blood, sweat, tears, and buffing. I know from experience to peer daintily through windows and under hoods with my hands clasped behind my back and my purse secured in an armpit. But then we noticed the woman's companion, fingerspelling into her hand: she was deaf and blind.
Mom's an interpreter for the deaf. She went over and introduced herself, and took the woman's hands in her own, began telling her about the car. Sis joined them and opened the driver's door; Mom translated between them, as the lady traced the Riley's little cartoon shape, slipped into the seat, gleefully turned the wheel like a toddler would. Her face, Mom's face, Sis's face...all lit up. There was a guy across the street with a 30s Caddy; he'd refused to let her touch it, the man with her said. But she'd really wanted to "see" the MINIs. She beamed, sitting in my sister's bubble-sized toy car. They went to the car show every year, they told us.
That was cool.
The best thing about this show, actually, is that it's open to all comers; while many car shows are exclusive, limited to British classics or muscle cars or whatever, Greenwood takes anybody that has the $20 for the registration and the commemorative t-shirt. Got a cherry '65 Mustang convertible or an outrageously customized, pearl-pink '49 Chev? C'mon down. Vespa? Sure. Colossal Mercedes UNIMOG? You're in. One year I saw a lovingly restored General Lee of "Dukes of Hazzard" fame, one of the dozen or so Dodge Chargers the show had had for alternate takes on the gully-jumpin', still-crashin', hood-slidin' antics of the Duke boys. The owner had driven the car cross-country, and provided a photo album of snapshots of the General, posed in front of various landmarks: the General Lee at the Grand Coulee Dam, the General Lee welcomes you to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada.
Sis has been showing her vintage MINI at Greenwood for three or four years, now. She has a 1963 Riley Elf; it's one of several models built on the MINI chassis, and in the Riley's case features a trunk about the right size to put a croquet set in. It's a deep turquoise with a white top, so it looks like the Pyrex casserole dishes of the same era. It also features right-hand drive; she taught herself to manage the stick shift lefty style. Whenever I ride with her, I always feel vaguely fretful, as if I ought to be doing SOMETHING over there on the left to help, with all that naked dashboard in front of me.
I live a few blocks from Greenwood Avenue, so Friday night we had a Thirty-Something Slumber Party, which involved going out for Indian food and then smearing on our respective wrinkle goops and conking out by 10:30. Girls gone wild! Of course, we had to get up at holy shit o'clock to convoy to the site with the rest of the local MINI club. The processional was pretty awesome, I have to say: fifteen wee British automobiles creeping down the block in a row, the air thick with diesel fumes and Krispy Kremes. I could feel individual brain cells fizzling out in all the exhaust, but nonetheless it was cool. In the other lane, Model A Fords and tricked-out GTOs trundled past us. One guy joined our group in a tiny two-cylinder Mazda hatchback, the only one in the U.S. according to him. It looked like a cross between a Honda Civic and something that Fisher-Price people would tool around in. "What the hell IS that?" hollered a knot of tattooed greasers who'd already chosen a spot, with their deeply-cuffed jeans and their matte black hot rods.
And then...it's eight hours of sitting in camp chairs behind your parked car, getting sunburned, eating chicken wings, shooting the shit with approximately 7,000 clones of My Dad, and everyone's dad. It's a little ridiculous, and a little boring, and a lot of the straight-up evident love love LOVE Americans have for their cars. Does this translate to other cultures, I wonder? Holly, are there classic car meets like this in Munich? It is so dorky and tacky, and somehow I adore it so. There is musical entertainment: good, like the Dixieland jazz combo that set up across the street from us, and...less good, like the pudgy bar band down the block, laboring through the "Grease" soundtrack with gusto if not so much talent. Enterprising little kids come out to hawk lemonade or Tollhouse cookies sealed in individual sandwich baggies, 25 cents. ("Do you want change?" the cookie girl asked me politely when I handed her a dollar, and whoever taught her to say that was a genius because what stingy bastard is going to demand 75 cents back from a third-grader? The kid was raking in bills.) The Masonic Lodge grills weenies, which you can get with chips and a pop for an amazing $2, and they'll give you the most-burnt one if you ask nicely. The boys down at Fire Station 21 have hot dogs, too, and hold an open house for neighborhood kids to climb on the truck and stagger around in giant fire helmets, or take turns aiming the hose down 73rd Street. (Every year, I tell myself this is the year I ask, "Hey, can I play with your hose?" and every year I wimp out and slink past, gawping and trying not to run into anything. Hot firefighters! Damn! Can't form sentences!)
We were chillin' with the MINI club when we noticed a woman gently running her hands over Sis's car. This is a pretty strict no-no for 98% of the show, what with the untold hours most owners spend on blood, sweat, tears, and buffing. I know from experience to peer daintily through windows and under hoods with my hands clasped behind my back and my purse secured in an armpit. But then we noticed the woman's companion, fingerspelling into her hand: she was deaf and blind.
Mom's an interpreter for the deaf. She went over and introduced herself, and took the woman's hands in her own, began telling her about the car. Sis joined them and opened the driver's door; Mom translated between them, as the lady traced the Riley's little cartoon shape, slipped into the seat, gleefully turned the wheel like a toddler would. Her face, Mom's face, Sis's face...all lit up. There was a guy across the street with a 30s Caddy; he'd refused to let her touch it, the man with her said. But she'd really wanted to "see" the MINIs. She beamed, sitting in my sister's bubble-sized toy car. They went to the car show every year, they told us.
That was cool.
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
If I was Mayor McCheese, I'd have the Hamburglar put to death!
According to the local news, several of the folks who helped collar Seattle's Lamest Mugger were given an audience with the mayor and little certificates of good citizenship or whatever. (Check the video links for "Citizen Heroes Capture Would-Be Robber," if you're so inclined.)
Sis must be feeling better, because she's pissed off: where is her commemorative plaque for administering the beat-down? Not to mention, the opportunity to sound off ON TELEVISION...dang! Plus, of course, the opportunity to, you know, thank all those other folks. Apparently she remains unidentified due to being CARTED AWAY IN AN AMBULANCE as intrepid reporters arrived. The cops did call and leave a message at her home, but too late for her to attend the ceremony. "Maybe Mayor Hoss Cartwright will give you your Special Award later," I said.
I am dying to know, however, what the certificates say exactly. What do they Hereby Proclaim?--that you are a member of the community in good standing? An ass-kicking , crime-fighting mutha? What? I hope it at least comes with a couple of Dick's gift certificates or something. That would be awesome. Thank you, Seattle Citizen Hero! Have a cheeseburger, on us!
Sis must be feeling better, because she's pissed off: where is her commemorative plaque for administering the beat-down? Not to mention, the opportunity to sound off ON TELEVISION...dang! Plus, of course, the opportunity to, you know, thank all those other folks. Apparently she remains unidentified due to being CARTED AWAY IN AN AMBULANCE as intrepid reporters arrived. The cops did call and leave a message at her home, but too late for her to attend the ceremony. "Maybe Mayor Hoss Cartwright will give you your Special Award later," I said.
I am dying to know, however, what the certificates say exactly. What do they Hereby Proclaim?--that you are a member of the community in good standing? An ass-kicking , crime-fighting mutha? What? I hope it at least comes with a couple of Dick's gift certificates or something. That would be awesome. Thank you, Seattle Citizen Hero! Have a cheeseburger, on us!
Saturday, October 23, 2004
You should see the other guy
The karmic dump truck continues to unload on my sister: Thursday, she managed to get herself violently mugged, at 9:00 in the freaking morning, at a cash machine on Broadway (a neighborhood renowned for its hipster squalor--junkies and students and street kids, oh my!).
Some background: A year ago last August, Sis was injured in a random freak accident that's an entire Whole Nother Story, so I won't get into it here; suffice to say she's had three surgeries so far on a badly crushed ankle. She's mobile, but not 100% recovered yet; she was in this particular neighborhood for the express purpose of consulting a new orthopedic specialist for a second opinion.
So. Some doubtless crack-addled fuckwit jumped out of his truck at the curb, and just grabbed her around the neck from behind. Had the shithead seen her limping? I don't know. But he chose her, got her in a headlock, demanded her money. It was so sudden, broad daylight, that at first she thought it must be a friend, someone she knew, goofing around. She said "No!" He tightened his grip around her throat, jerking her backward.
And she turned, twisting around in the circle of his arm, and punched the fucker twice, dead in the face.
Ladies and gents, let me introduce my baby sister, one bad. assed. bitch.
Because next, she hooked her foot--the bad one!--back around his ankle, and when he tried to knock her down, he fell too: she dragged the hapless dumbass down with her, punching and screaming and hanging onto her purse all the while. When her mugger (at the end, wailing "Okay! OKAY!" ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha) tried to get away, Sis actually had the presence of mind to wrap her legs around his and hang on, as other people fought to grab him. He did get loose, scooping up the cash dropped in the struggle, and ran...but a pack of concerned citizens gave chase, and by the time the cops arrived, a crowd had the guy pinned under a car, several blocks away. Boy did this guy make a bad, bad choice. "You did a good job today," one officer told Sis.
She was hurt in the fall, jamming her back and tailbone hard on the concrete, wrenching one finger back...whether in the fall or the fight she's not sure. Her boyfriend called me from the hospital; "Her Irene came out," he said of the battle--referring to our late maternal grandmother, a woman who slept with a nine-iron beside the bed and carried an ice pick in her purse, just in case someone was fool enough to mess with her...sort of the Bad, Bad Leroy Brown of the under-five-feet-tall senior citizen set. Anyway, Sis's injuries will heal...though she's pretty shaken up.
I don't know. I keep vacillating between seeing her actions as insane, over $30, in the please-don't-EVER-do-that-again-are-you-CRAZY? vein...and seeing them as heroic, because: girl is BAD. ASS. It got a write-up in the local paper; I was reading the article to her over the phone yesterday and she broke down, sobbing "Why did this happen to meeeeeeee?" And I can't blame her, of course. It's scary, it hurts, she's had a shit-shellacked 14 months already. Why did it happen to her? But I tried to impress upon her the complete bad-assedness of what she'd done, encourage her to see the good in it: look what you accomplished, look how pissed-off and tough and strong you are, in spite of your injury, in spite of feeling still "fragile" from the accident.
I mean, what would I have done? I'm a wimp. I imagine I'd have gladly surrendered my purse, my car keys, and my latte, if I'd had one--and did you need anything else, Mr. Mugger? Could I give you a ride, help you pick out some other weak-lookin' victims, maybe? Sis said that, had he shown or implied a weapon, she'd have reacted differently. ("No she wouldn't," chuckled Holly, later, when I related the tale. She's known Sis since she was nine.) But I don't know; who can tell how they'll respond, in the feverish swamp of adrenaline?
Thankfully, Sis later called me back, yesterday: she'd fielded about 20 "d'ja know you're in the paper?" phone calls, given her official statement to police, received flowers from work, and had at last consumed some sweet, delicious Percocet and was engrossed in an episode of Little House on the Prairie.
All's well that ends well, ain't it?
And I gotta say, I love her, the ferocious little shit.
Some background: A year ago last August, Sis was injured in a random freak accident that's an entire Whole Nother Story, so I won't get into it here; suffice to say she's had three surgeries so far on a badly crushed ankle. She's mobile, but not 100% recovered yet; she was in this particular neighborhood for the express purpose of consulting a new orthopedic specialist for a second opinion.
So. Some doubtless crack-addled fuckwit jumped out of his truck at the curb, and just grabbed her around the neck from behind. Had the shithead seen her limping? I don't know. But he chose her, got her in a headlock, demanded her money. It was so sudden, broad daylight, that at first she thought it must be a friend, someone she knew, goofing around. She said "No!" He tightened his grip around her throat, jerking her backward.
And she turned, twisting around in the circle of his arm, and punched the fucker twice, dead in the face.
Ladies and gents, let me introduce my baby sister, one bad. assed. bitch.
Because next, she hooked her foot--the bad one!--back around his ankle, and when he tried to knock her down, he fell too: she dragged the hapless dumbass down with her, punching and screaming and hanging onto her purse all the while. When her mugger (at the end, wailing "Okay! OKAY!" ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha) tried to get away, Sis actually had the presence of mind to wrap her legs around his and hang on, as other people fought to grab him. He did get loose, scooping up the cash dropped in the struggle, and ran...but a pack of concerned citizens gave chase, and by the time the cops arrived, a crowd had the guy pinned under a car, several blocks away. Boy did this guy make a bad, bad choice. "You did a good job today," one officer told Sis.
She was hurt in the fall, jamming her back and tailbone hard on the concrete, wrenching one finger back...whether in the fall or the fight she's not sure. Her boyfriend called me from the hospital; "Her Irene came out," he said of the battle--referring to our late maternal grandmother, a woman who slept with a nine-iron beside the bed and carried an ice pick in her purse, just in case someone was fool enough to mess with her...sort of the Bad, Bad Leroy Brown of the under-five-feet-tall senior citizen set. Anyway, Sis's injuries will heal...though she's pretty shaken up.
I don't know. I keep vacillating between seeing her actions as insane, over $30, in the please-don't-EVER-do-that-again-are-you-CRAZY? vein...and seeing them as heroic, because: girl is BAD. ASS. It got a write-up in the local paper; I was reading the article to her over the phone yesterday and she broke down, sobbing "Why did this happen to meeeeeeee?" And I can't blame her, of course. It's scary, it hurts, she's had a shit-shellacked 14 months already. Why did it happen to her? But I tried to impress upon her the complete bad-assedness of what she'd done, encourage her to see the good in it: look what you accomplished, look how pissed-off and tough and strong you are, in spite of your injury, in spite of feeling still "fragile" from the accident.
I mean, what would I have done? I'm a wimp. I imagine I'd have gladly surrendered my purse, my car keys, and my latte, if I'd had one--and did you need anything else, Mr. Mugger? Could I give you a ride, help you pick out some other weak-lookin' victims, maybe? Sis said that, had he shown or implied a weapon, she'd have reacted differently. ("No she wouldn't," chuckled Holly, later, when I related the tale. She's known Sis since she was nine.) But I don't know; who can tell how they'll respond, in the feverish swamp of adrenaline?
Thankfully, Sis later called me back, yesterday: she'd fielded about 20 "d'ja know you're in the paper?" phone calls, given her official statement to police, received flowers from work, and had at last consumed some sweet, delicious Percocet and was engrossed in an episode of Little House on the Prairie.
All's well that ends well, ain't it?
And I gotta say, I love her, the ferocious little shit.
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