What's the calorie burn on administering a bitch-slap?

This isn't a weight-loss blog. There are plenty of other ladies who write with fierce funny brilliance about that topic, some of whom have even parlayed it into a book tour, and to them I say right on! with envious admiration.

That said, I think I can speak with some authority on the issue. To wit: I am kinda fat. This is a known fact, despite my occasional psychological contortions to keep this matter somehow on the down-low. I realize that if someone sees me coming out of the Lane Bryant, or gritting it out on the elliptical trainer, or eating a candy bar, or conversely eating a heap of baby carrots...it's not like my secret will be suddenly exposed: holy shit! Kim's FAT! I knew there was something about her that I just couldn't put my finger on...

It's been a thought, and sometimes a struggle, for virtually all my life. I can remember the first time I thought "oooh, FAT" about myself, spurred by a photograph. In it, I'm six, standing with that swaybacked posture all little kids have, wearing a halter top, tummy out. I'm holding a bouquet of sweetpeas. Not a fat kid. I know that, now. But at the time, all I could see was the soft flesh around my navel.

Dieting was one of my primary bonding activities with my mother, growing up. She wasn't particularly interested in shopping, or makeup, but this was something girly that we could do together. It made me feel adult. We did absurd, ridiculous things, like subsisting on frozen grapes or cabbage soup, or a diet purportedly from the Heart Association that prescribed certain foods for specific days of the week: Thursday, we reeled around light-headed on nothing but bananas and skim milk, and thought ourselves virtuous. We drank Canfield's diet chocolate-flavored sodas and watched Richard Simmons. We "jogged" by sprinting wildly room-to-room in our tiny apartment to the "Fame" soundtrack, howling with laughter. We did some insane workout with Cookie's crazy sister that involved drills with broomstick dowels. We took up figure skating. We went to the drive-in movie with hoagies and Baby Ruths from the little deli up the street. Sometimes we were chubby. Sometimes we weren't.

It gets harder as you get older, another fact that surprises no one. In college, I mixed up SlimFast shakes from powder, but I could never stop supplementing them with buttered salt bagels from Zaro's. I have been on NutriSystem, Jenny Craig (twice), DietPower, Sound Health Solutions, and what Sis calls the "dump diet," where you wither away after an ugly breakup. (I looked fabulous.) I've belonged to three gyms, two yoga studios, and three therapists. For four years, I dated a professional chef; during that time, I put on 50 pounds. And I am here to tell you...it was a fucking BLAST! The entire time! Renee Zellweger gets PAID to have that kind of fun! Since then, I've meandered up and down that 50-pound spectrum. Sometimes, I am slim and active and magnificent, and some days (for example, when repairs cost NINETEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS on a nine-year-old Hyundai, let that be a lesson to all on The Perils of Deferred Maintenance), I comfort myself with a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk and baby, I use the big spoon, right out of the carton.

My point: I know. I know everything I need to about weight loss, and it all comes down to four words: eat less, exercise more. When I do those two things, I lose weight. When I don't, I put some on. I get it. I don't need to drink potions or abide by Dr. Phil or spend any more thousands and thousands of dollars to learn this again; I get it. I know that I'm the only person who can do this for myself, and I know that I am the only one who can motivate me. And every day is different.

My second point: don't tell me. I GET IT. Don't volunteer the information unsolicited, as if it is some new fact. It ain't. And for God's sake, ESPECIALLY don't POINT at my chosen MEAL and exclaim with cheerful HORROR how many, many CALORIES it has, because I. GET. IT. And also, SHUT THE FUCK UP. Jesus.

I'ma come over there and slap some sense into you my damn self. Soon's I can get my ass out of this chair. Beeyotch.

Way more charming than that Arnold on "Green Acres"

My car needed some work. So, after carefully soliciting friends' mechanic recommendations and researching my choices, I selected the one that most recently sent me a Val-Pak coupon and trundled in. I knew I needed the brakes done, and there were some shrieks and squeals and belt-y noises that demanded investigation.

"Are you the Hyundai?" asked the genial Manager Boy behind the counter. "Yeah, I think I heard you, coming in." Ha ha. So we discussed my automotive needs. I explained that I might not be able to pick up the car that evening, as I was going to the Mariners' home opener.

"Well, bite me then!" exclaimed Manager Boy enviously.

I have to admit, I prefer this approach to being "ma'am"ed to death at the Jiffy Lube, by well-intentioned grease monkeys 18 months younger than I am. It also helped that Manager Boy was cute, enough so that I didn't burst into tears when he called later with the incredible laundry list of things that were wrong with my vehicle, including everything its previous mechanic had botched at the 60,000-mile service. So what if this week's investment doubles the value of the car? I'll put it on my air miles card and be halfway to Paris.

The fam and I clawed our way out of post-game traffic, yesterday, and I actually made it to the shop with minutes to spare. Inside the bay I could see my car up on the lift, significantly lacking in wheels, from which I correctly discerned it was not ready.

So. Two buses to work today. At 3:30, I called the shop to check in and Manager Boy assured me it would be ready for me tonight--"But how was the GAME? I hear we kicked ASS," he said. At least he is sincerely working to CHARM me out of my hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
I left work an hour early, took two more different buses through pre-game traffic, hustled six blocks in the rain to the shop...

...where I noted my car, up on the lift, SIGNIFICANTLY LACKING IN WHEELS, which again implied a state of NOT-DONENESS.

Correct! said Non-Managerial Lackey, who was trying to lock up. A bolt broke off and a part didn't show, they tried to call me at 5:30, so sorry, too bad you don't have a cell phone, could you exit through the bay since we're trying to get out of here, don't slip, seeyoutomorrowbye.

I went back to the bus stop and worked to determine in just how many parts of speech one can deploy the F-word (some you might not have tried: "fucky," "fuckily"). The express #15, by the way, does not stop on 57th, though it does stop on 55th so you can see everyone piling on before it goes roaring past. Also, the morale-boosting, rain-proof company jacket my employer gave me? Is neither. I'm just saying. Adding insult to injury, the Erratic Business Hours Donut Shop at the bus stop closest to my house, on which I had pinned my entire will to live...was closed.

Manager Boy, you had better charm me right out to goddamn candlelight dinner if my Hyundai is still some-assembly-required, tomorrow.

Going to hell in an Easter basket

I miss kid-Easter. We were heathen children, growing up--not even part of the lily-and-poinsettia crowd of twice-yearly churchgoers--but we loved dyeing eggs. Nowadays you can marbleize them, or do Victorian decoupage, or have Martha come over and hand-gild a few when she gets her anklet off...but in the 70s, we just had the Paas tablets, dissolving too slowly in Grandma's most chipped and stained coffee cups. We loved the vinegary reek of it, and tolerated the flimsy bent copper wire that was supposed to serve as an egg-dipping tool but inevitably caused your egg to KONK to the bottom of the cup or slip free and roll off the table. Our post-Easter egg salads were always veined with purple and blue from assorted crunchy mishaps.

When I was ten, my dad claimed me and Sis for the Easter holiday and took us to his sister's, a one-time event that may be self-explanatory, shortly. Dad had remarried a few months before, to a young, pretty waitress almost exactly between he and I in age. She could drink legally, but not by more than a year or two. This was before terms like "blended family" were invented or kids were entitled to opinions: you were introduced to your new Step-Something and then you relinquished the shotgun seat and zipped it, thanks. So...metaphorical elbows were still being thrown as we all jockeyed for position and adjusted to one another.

My aunt had remarried, herself, so that for this holiday there were at least six kids present, half- and step- and regular cousins all jammed into the kitchen and tasked with coloring eggs to grace the dinner table. Maybe it's significant that I can't remember which of us had the idea, only that we all thought it was an excellent one. Someone took the translucent white crayon that came with the dye kit and inscribed one of the eggs:

TURD

We kept it out for last and dunked it haphazardly in every color. It came out sort of an olive-drab shade, not the brown we were hoping for but still highly unappealing, candidly declaring TURD in childish, high-contrast printing. TURD!

Each place setting at the table had a ruffled paper cupcake panty filled with cellophane Easter grass, a few jellybeans, and a festive dyed egg. By silent consensus, we set the TURD egg at my stepmom's place.

Twenty-five years later, Step and I have reached a cordial peace. This allows me to imagine, a little, what that moment must have felt like, gathered at the table with her considerable new extended family, the kids all snuffling and snorting with barely suppressed hilarity. Saying grace over a glistening ham, a cake molded in the shape of a lamb and iced with shredded coconut...and a grimy green ovoid next to her plate hollering TURD! Bless this mess, Christ is risen, a dozen pretty pastel eggs with stripes and bunny decals and you get TURD TURD TURD. You are TURD, child-bride stepmom. You are Other.

I'd like to see Julia Roberts make a movie out of that.

Badfinger

Californian Finds Finger In Bowl of Fast Food Chili

This is the part I like: “This individual apparently did take a spoonful, did have a finger in their mouth and then, you know, spit it out and recognized it,” said Ben Gale, director of the department of environmental health for Santa Clara County. “Then they had some kind of emotional reaction and vomited.”

I imagine that the emotional-reaction spectrum is necessarily very broad, as it would need to be to accommodate my reaction to NEARLY EATING A FINGER.

Welcome wagon

We shuffle offices periodically here at The Corporation That Dare Not Speak Its Name, Or At Least I Don't Lest I Get Dooced: it's an elaborate dance of reorgs and seniority and proportional space and which teams they want to smoosh together and force to be civil to each other at any given time. It's kind of goofy; in our most recent move, a couple weeks ago, one of the editors was made to move just two doors down. He could have lugged his belongings the 20 feet himself in less time than it took to pack them in boxes for the professionals to wheel around on a dolly. I myself lost my window office and am now on the interior side of the hallway; the space is larger but I'm still disgruntled because LIGHT! I NEED LIGHT! I AM COLD-BLOODED, LIKE A LIZARD! This too shall pass...sooner provided I can bump off a couple senior personnel ahead of me, she cackled.

So. New office. I leaned waaay back in my chair, absently stretching...and spotted something affixed to one of the acoustic ceiling tiles. It's one of those "Hello, My Name Is" stickers. It says, HELLO my name is DILL HOLE.

Specsnackular

Gael is searching for Seattle's perfect burger, which has fueled quite the debate.

Different burgers serve different purposes, I think; I was born and raised on Dick's classic little gut-bomb beef pucks, and so I'll always have a soft spot for peeling melted American cheese off the sunny yellow-orange waxed paper wrappers. I kind of love them just by virtue of the fact that they basically make five things. The restaurants each feature a lurid painting of a massive, benign steer...there are no illusions about what you're getting. No, you can't have it your way. No, there are no salad tumblers or character-shaped cookies or any sort of protein-fingers. Next! I think a city ordinance requires that you have at least two Dick's napkins in your glove compartment at any time; god knows they've saved me from many a fogged mirror, wayward beverage, or traffic-induced blubbering jag. One of my earliest memories is of standing in line at the Wallingford drive-in, too short even to see over the counter, hypnotized by the orange, white, and brown mosaic tiles. (Full disclosure: Mom was one of the grand-prize winners in the 50th Anniversary Memory Book contest; she grew up a block away. Hee hee hee!)

Meanwhile I miss a classic New York diner burger, and made sure to have one while I was there: hand-formed patty, cooked to order, an onion ring on top if you're lucky. Have it rare! Melt your brain! They don't give a rip, it's your life!

Anyway. So people are coming out of the woodwork praising the late, lamented Baby Moons at the Triple-X Drive-In in Issaquah: cheese AND jalapeno-stuffed (thanks, Sis!) tater tots. Gael seems...aghast, but I'm telling you, these were one of the two perfect foods in the world. They covered four categories: spicy, starchy, fried, and cheeeeeese. All in one compact, bite-sized unit. God, I miss them still.

Would it be excessive, to try and hand-craft one's own tater tots?

The other perfect food: chocolate-covered pretzels, naturally. Again, four quadrants of snack coverage: salty, crunchy, fatty, chocolate. These are truly the only PMS snack, better than Midol and, thank goodness, readily available.

Hello, again, hello

Just got an e-mail from my mom; the district office at her work "audited" her voice mail account because she was saving too many messages. It turns out that her mailbox was full because she never accessed it, having forgotten her password. THREE YEARS AGO.

Aw, my mum. Guess I'll keep her. And, you know, try to communicate mostly face-to-face.

Idling at the curb in front of Death's house

No longer at Death's door, but.

I was all set to blog my trip to New York, and be all effusive and ebullient about bagels and turnstiles and chocolates on my pillow in The Greatest City in the World...but halfway through, I got sick. Dog-sick, want-your-mommy sick, as sick as I've been since I was a little kid. I crawled under the schmancy bajillion-thread-count comforter fully clothed and shivered. I ordered a $28 hamburger from room service and ended up thrusting it back into the hallway. I forced myself on a death march through art museums, where, hopped up on enough cold medicine, Kandinsky makes all kinds of sense and everything strongly resembles Van Gogh's Starry Night. And I am sorry, fellow travelers, for being That Person on the plane home: the woman slugging back Duane Reade-brand cherry Nyte-Tyme straight from the bottle and collecting the furious glares of other passengers. As we descended over Seattle, I thought the plates of my skull might separate from the pressure. Crashing, I thought, might not be so bad; at least I would no longer feel like this.

Here's how sick I was: every year for nearly a decade now, I've hosted an Oscar party replete with junk food and howling at the television. I did it last year, when my guests all had to sit on moving boxes. This year, I canceled it. And WENT TO BED. I did not even WATCH. I was too sick even to be sad about it.

Here's how sick I was: I went to the DOCTOR. I'm part of an endless line of hardy prairie stock, staunch women known for sucking on kerosene-soaked sugar lumps for a sore throat, for birthing babies in under five hours, for saying "oh, it's just a cracked rib, put some tape on it." I went to the doctor and had to describe the color and quality of my mucus in detail for my file. (At one point, I had crap coming out of MY EYES, virtually every hole in my head engaged in the battle.) The doctor ruled out strep, advised me "Rest. Tylenol. Gargle. Hot compresses," which I hope was not the high point of her twelve years of schooling.

I am better. I am not at 100%, but I'm better. Well enough to work, alas. I'm a bit snuffly, and my ears are still stopped up; my head feels sort of like a half-full novelty mug. When I lean over I can feel everything gloomp and sloosh around in there.

But, like I said, half-full. Ever the optimist.

New York stories are forthcoming, I promise.

Call the rescue squad, part 2

After conceding a point to the yard, yesterday, I turned indoors to tackle a few minor cleaning tasks; I don't want the cat-sitter to see the conditions I actually live in while I'm on vacation.

My little house originally had central oil heat, since replaced by electric baseboards or forced-air units in each room. The hardwood floors have been lovingly restored, but the metal grate for the old furnace still remains in the geographical center of the house, between living room and hallway. Beneath the grate is a flat black surface; I figured it was boarded over once it had outlived its usefulness. Meanwhile, crumbs and pine needles and pennies and cat fur drop through the grate and collect on the surface, the holes in the grate just small enough to thwart my fingers or the skinniest vacuum attachment.

So I decided to pry up the grate--it lifts up easily, not bolted down--and do some serious vacuuming yesterday. Turns out that that black-painted surface isn't a solid board, but an extremely thin sheet of metal. This, I discovered when, while wrestling with the kinked-up vacuum hose...I accidentally stepped on the panel. And dropped straight through, up to my thigh in...well, the FLOOR.

(I don't know what my other leg was doing, frankly; it stayed up on the main level and I ended up sort of sitting on the edge of the furnace hole with the roaring vacuum in my half-lap. Let's just say I was grateful for having recently resumed yoga practice.)

So, hey...hi there, old furnace, as I straddle you. I dropped the grate, fought off the Hoover, and managed to wrestle my leg back out; this was harder than expected because the metal sheet had bent down, as I went past, and sort of pinned me; I had to bend it back in the OTHER wrong direction to pull free. It made a noise like when stagehands whap a metal sheet backstage to simulate rolling thunder. I am not sure the cats will ever recover from me, rolling around on the floor and bashing metal objects around, WHILE still running the Vacuum Monster of Terror.

Incredibly, I did not tear my pants into one-legged Daisy Dukes. I have an impressive wraparound welt of scrape and bruise, though...it looks sort of like I'm wearing a festive purple garter.

This is yet another rationalization of my deeply indifferent housekeeping; obviously such tasks are FRAUGHT WITH PERIL. People with spotless houses are taking their lives in their hands every day, tragedy in the making. Let this be a lesson to you all.

Bramble rambling

If you've got a gorgeous winter afternoon to spend, allow me to NOT recommend deciding to cut back the blackberry vines by the garage while wearing a simple knit sweater--not one of the best ideas I've ever had. I have an Arthur Rackham-illustrated edition of Sleeping Beauty that shows the rag-clad, skeletal corpses of failed suitors snarled in the thorny hedges around the slumbering castle (for kids! nice!); I did have my moments of panic, but luckily did not need to be cut free by the fire department.

I'm gaining an ever-greater appreciation for my late grandmother's yard of ornamental gravel.

Biscuits and gravy and sympathy

Wow. Didja read Dave's post about the jilted Vegas bride he attempted to console at the airport?Go ahead, I'll wait here.

It's like him, really, to walk right into a Richard Russo story somewhere, while my fiction skills atrophy behind a corporate desk. But what really struck me about it is how much it speaks to an absolute core element of Dave, one that I really admire: his ability to trust people. He really has an innate faith in human nature, believes effortlessly that most folks want to do the right thing, and he tries to live that way himself. Occasionally, this philosophy has bitten him in the ass...but for the most part, it's allowed him to travel around the world as he does, making friends on practically every continent, confident that in a crisis, the universe will provide--be it a couch to crash on, or a malaria ward in a Pakistan hospital, or a three-dollar diner breakfast. Whatever it is, you know he'd do the same for you, if he could.

I don't know if Dave would call it karma, or call it anything, this cycle of goodwill he operates in. It's the thing I respect most about him, though. I'm nowhere near as trusting, and it's something I really must work at: to be less timid, to look up from my book on the bus or at the coffee house, to talk to strangers once in a while. I'm glad he reminded me.

Dumpy

I've been kind of in a mood lately, down in the dumps. (What's the origin of that phrase, I wonder and am too lazy to look up? It sounds like a vicious cycle; not only are you feeling sad, but you're moping around amongst the municipal trash heaps, and THAT'S not going to improve your outlook.) Some of it is work stress, as we're wildly busy right now; some is surely post-holiday letdown--it's gray, it's cold, there are no presents to look forward to, but all the seasonal indulgences are straining your elastics. And there's been a little holdover for me from the Valentine's Day business.

I dunno. I know that the Marketing Forces Of Evil have pretty much commandeered Valentine's Day, and that if you're not out there contributing to the global economy by plying your sweetheart with candies and flowers and designer fragrances and whimsical underpants, it's probably just because you are a REPULSIVE HIDEOUS SINGLE FREAK! GET BACK IN THE BASEMENT! Oho, I am on to their commercial scheme. I'm not intimidated by dining out or traveling alone; I can buy my own florid boxes of truffles, and I do. (Though I might prefer to consume them avidly, while lolling about in front of Project Runway, unobserved.)

But...circumstantially, it has been...a long time since I've had a valentine for the occasion. A looooong time. Measured in years, there. And...I miss it. When even the weekly Safeway flier is advertising lobster tails and long-stemmed red roses, well...there's some pressure.

I think I'm a pretty easy valentine. I don't even like roses. I don't want a moonlit carriage ride, or a champagne flute with a big honkin' diamond ring at the bottom of it. Hell, carriage rides just make me think of the Beefareeno episode of Seinfeld anyway. I'm just saying, a double order of potstickers from Snappy Dragon and a stack of DVDs would be groovy to share. With someone. Who am I even writing this to?

Maybe I should link a personal-ad profile over there in the sidebar, like people do with their Amazon wish lists. Date Me! Buy Me Presents!

Ahem.

Okay. I will comfort myself by remembering the crappiest Valentine's Day I ever had as an attached lady. I was dating this guy in college who'd taken a semester off to find himself, so he was home in Virginia while I was in New York. He mailed me my Valentine present...which was the knock-off, grocery-store-brand, heart-shaped box of chocolates. Which he placed in a plain manila envelope. Which went through all the automatic stamping and sorting machines of the U.S. Postal Service. So, what I got was this flattened...wad...of chocolates, with different-flavored...areas, therein...and the occasional ruffled paper thingie, sticking through.

Then he realized he was gay. Overall, I'd rate that relationship...disappointing.

What was my best Valentine's Day? Telling the preceding story made me think about it; I have to say it was probably 1978. My dad had a custody weekend, and took us to see Star Wars at the long-demolished Cinema 150, downtown. (Yes, it came out the preceding summer; we were somehow behind the curve.) It predictably blew our little minds...and THEN, depositing us at home, my father whipped out a pair of identical Russell Stover candy boxes, hearts wrapped in red cellophane, that he'd somehow hidden in the truck all day. Star Wars AND candy! It was a rare shining moment for the Old Man, that.

Would still make a pretty decent Valentine's Day, actually.

Your worst friend ever

I have been so very neglectful of my InterWeb friends. I suck a little bit. Linkery, commence!

Many moons ago, Omega referred to me as "fucking awesomely funny," which still causes a little glowing coal of pride to perk up in my heart. You should visit her diner.

Alyssa's Big Red Blog is already over there in the link list thingy, but last week Mike pointed her out to me like he'd discovered her himself, or something. So, click again!

I knew Erin from college; she was one of the funniest people I've ever met, and I was sad when post-graduate drift made me lose track of her. (Cue calendar pages flipping, a decade whizzing past here.) I figure I laughed at the Fitziechicks' analyses of For Better Or For Worse for probably a month before I recognized her sister's name and cleverly, if not quickly, deduced her identity.

I don't actually know Gael of Pop Culture Junk Mail, but she's how I found the Fitziechicks, so I owe her. Also, I think we are fellow Ballardinavians.

If you're likewise consumed by the jive-talkin' wonder that is FBOFW, I am sure you will enjoy the recently rebranded Comics Curmudgeon, the latest random discovery that nearly got me fired for guffawing inappropriately at my desk. Josh mentions his fiancee frequently, lest I dispatch myself to his home in a bubble envelope.

For more pants-wetting hilarity, of course you can't go wrong with those Fug Girls.

Jesus would HONK, that's what

How I do love the press-on letter readerboards you see outside of schools and businesses and, in this case, a church in my neighborhood:

WALKING IN THE WAY OF CHRIST

Yes, yes...and actually, He'd appreciate it if you would MOVE IT ALONG, there, or at least keep to the right; He's got places to be.

How terribly strange to be seventy...well, added together...give or take a few months

I had dinner last night with David, who's back in our hometown for a few weeks during a break from his studies in China. We went out for sushi, and then enormous slabs of cake and pie at Zoka, and ended up hanging around at my house and talking for four solid hours, catching up.

It occurs to me now that, technically speaking, Dave's my oldest friend; we met in the second grade, and were classmates off-and-on throughout our educational lives. It's interesting, just to look at someone you've known basically since he was socialized and integrated into the wider world. Dave and I both are the sort of people whose basic appearance has changed little since childhood, so it's funny to see his seven-year-old self's features, modified but still utterly recognizable, working across his face; I imagine he sees similar things in me.

We had grade-school crushes on each other; we attended our senior prom together as a sort of in-joke in that regard. I was the straight-A goody-goody, he was...sort of the Ferris Bueller of our high school class. After a mutually inept attempt at dancing, we retreated to the hotel lobby, where we sat mocking the other couples attempting to make out amongst the atrium's potted plants. At the after-party, we stayed up talking until dawn...and ended up dating for several years. Our First Love...and, eventually, Our First Breakup, with all its attendant misery and recriminations. We were 20, 21 maybe. Who hasn't made a few clumsy, hurtful moves at that age, fraught with drama?

Oddly enough, our paths continued to cross. Not often--every two or five or seven years we'd exchange a card, or an e-mail, or I'd bump into him or one of his siblings on the street. Not quite a year ago, I found his website, and we've probably communicated more through this medium, in the intervening months, than we have in over a decade. He suggested meeting, during this visit, and it was so very...pleasant, to talk face-to-face with someone who's known me most of my life, when we're at a stage of our lives where we've dispensed with our teenage baggage.

We're both older and more settled. Rounder. Less agile, feeling the tug of gravity a bit more. He has less hair; I have plenty of gray going on up top. We talked about our parents: not old, but aging, more delicate, collectively stymied by computers (uhhh...hi, Mom!); the days when our parents will be our responsibility are visible. We talked about family and friends, who's got kids, who's passed away, how hard it is to sort through and discard the comet-trail of stuffed animals and albums and Christmas cards that plague you after thirty-odd years. Our lives are wildly divergent, at this point: Dave's elected to travel the world, studying language and culture, caligraphy, music, while he has the means and the youth still to do it. I suppose I've taken a more traditional path, with a 401(k) and a mortgage, a couch, a couple of cats. But we're both really happy with our current paths, a mutual truth we discussed with more than a few grains of wonder, I think.

It's so satisfying, to reconnect with someone who's surfaced throughout your life, a milestone unto himself. I admire his choices; I'm so glad to see him content and doing well. I'm glad to see me content and doing well, too. Life's pretty generous. Good on yer, mate.

My Adidas

There are no limits to my love of KEXP (which broadcasts online--check it out). As I was navigating my carpool into the parking garage at about 8:00 this morning, my devotion was rewarded when John-in-the-Morning slapped on Run-DMC, of all things: "It's Tricky."

Me: Oh my God! (cranking it to 11; busting moves wildly behind the steering wheel)
Darcy: ...
Me: I MET A LITTLE GIRLIE! HER HAIR WAS KINDA CURLY!
Darcy: ...
Me: What, are you not a fan?

What can I say...at those figure-skating events in the mid-80s that I mentioned? Sis and I sometimes frightened the other children. Or their stage mothers, for certain.

Same old, same old

Near the freeway exit I take for my office is a mattress store housed in a former bank. Their outdoor sign still includes one of those date/time/temperature clocks, half its bulbs burnt out. But this one has read "January 13" since...January 12, now (heh). It gives the daily commute an uneasy "Groundhog Day" vibe, certainly.

And gives rise to a question, actually...why are those clocks the domain of banks? I'm thinking of all the local ones I know, now, and I can't recall a single one that isn't outside a bank, or outside something that was originally a bank. What's up with that?

Ornate, elegant clocks-with-hands go outside jewelry stores, this I know--maybe to encourage people to buy watches? (Which...why would you, if the clock's right on the...huh...) But "digital" readout clocks = banks. Come on, Internet, I bet you know this.

The Robertson

So said the sign at the end of their driveway. One of Barb's sons had made it--poorly--in wood shop, the letters slumped and crowding each other off the end of the board, no room for the plural. Whichever kid it was convinced the shop teacher that the singular was in fact the correct Scottish clan designation, no "S" required, and got a decent grade.

My family met Barb Robertson when I was about 13, the first year we were completely consumed with figure skating. So was Barb: in her early 60s, she'd decided she needed a new hobby. She signed up for private lessons and shared the ice with us, turning stately circles in her sweatshirt and knit tam o'shanter while little girls in lycra dresses hurled themselves aloft all around her.

Off ice, Barb was a doctor, and in her spare time had raised five grown children. She was accustomed to a crowded life, and welcomed us indiscriminately into it--kids, coaches, parents, champions and junior- hockey thugs, others who'd drifted into the sport out of love. She volunteered her services at local competitions, ministering to wrenched knees and bonked heads or the occasional nervous puker. On Saturdays after practice, she'd load us into one or another of her never, never, EVER-washed cars and make a pizza run.

We were always celebrating something with Barb: birthdays and graduations, exam results, pregnancies, promotions. Some time in the late 1970s she'd strung Christmas lights around the ceiling beams in her dining room...and then just never bothered to take them down. Flip a switch: instant party. Barb made enormous chocolate-chip sheet cakes and never ran out of ice. We camped out on her living room floor to watch Tentacles on the late-night movie. I had my first alcoholic beverage in Barb's presence, a closely-supervised glass of raspberry champagne...though I no longer remember what achievement had occasioned the event. Barb introduced my family to mu shu pork; she made a noble effort to teach me to drive a stick shift. At a certain point in my adolescence, I was entirely comfortable rummaging through her refrigerator for the soda or snack of my choice. As an adult, I think that's one of the highest compliments I can pay someone, really: I am at home in your home.

When you did open the fridge, you'd find at least a dozen little notes taped to the shelves inside the door, proclaiming "Happy Birthday Mom!" in crayon or marker. Her kids had started this one year and Barb never took them down.


The first check arrived in September of my freshman year in college. One hundred dollars, and a note from Barb, reminding me that I was minutes from the greatest city in the world and I ought to take advantage it. "Don't tell your mother," she said; this was between us; I didn't have to tell anyone what I spent it on, Barb included...though I think, I hope, that I did. I bought a full-length black wool coat with that $100, at Macy's no less, and thought myself hot snot on china. Barb sent me another $100 each month, for my entire freshman year...kept me in bagels and incense and cheap silver jewelry and MoMA posters that, properly framed, now hang in my home and my office. When I graduated, I got another check: $2700. The other three academic years, in a lump sum. "I thought you might need a nest egg, starting out," Barb said, and I did. I secured and furnished my first apartment with that check, bought a bookcase and a futon and the desk I'm typing at, tonight.

When she was diagnosed with lung cancer, Barb was philosophical: "I won't ever have to Christmas shop or go to the dentist again." But radical surgery, performed by an old colleague, spared her to endure those and other jolly annual irritants time and again: this was fifteen years ago. Her hair grew back, mysteriously chemo-altered into poodle-pouf curls; she shrugged and went back to the rink, even though her lung capacity was not what it had been. She lived to see a passel of grandchildren.

And I grew up, all the rink kids did...ended up with cars, careers, spouses or houses. In recent years, Barb and I had become primarily Christmas-card friends, though we'd still sometimes surprise each other at potlucks or restaurants--find time to catch up even as it seemed like mere minutes had passed. She came to one of my Christmas parties. When my grandmother lay dying in the hospital, I called Barb, for consultation and consolation.

When Barb's cancer improbably resurfaced this year, maybe autumn, after more than a decade of remission, she told no one but her husband. In her eighties, she didn't want to endure the rigors of fresh treatment, or wither tragically for months. She kept skating up until the first week in December, when her illness had devoured too much of her muscle tone for her to continue. She waved off worry, implied that a new medication was affecting her badly. She spent Christmas with her family...and stopped taking her meds on December 26th. On December 31st, the world grieved by candlelight for all those who suffer, and then faced forward, with fireworks and confetti cannons...and Barb slipped quietly out with the last of 2004.

* * * * *

When someone we love dies, someone who's been a touchstone and a role model and a savior, a one-woman charitable organization, a friend...I think it's our responsibility, our obligation, to smooth over that void with ourselves. To live for that person, and to play a part in the lives of others, as he or she did for you. In some way I can't well-enough describe, I'm glad I was at Darcy's when Barb died--another place where I feel confident enough to rummage through the fridge, surrounded by another family I've come to think of as mostly my own. We ate cheese fondue and chocolate-chip brownies and drank champagne; the Christmas lights flashed hectically and the kids staged epic, shrieking board games, wired and laughing and up too late. The calendar rolled over, with smooches and bottle rockets, and everything is possible and new.

Happy New Year. Come on over. There are pretzels, and cookies, and I've got plenty of ice.

Joy

Driving home from Darcy's around the lake, this afternoon, I saw at least four little kids, wobbling along the path ecstatically on shiny, shiny, dazzling new bicycles as their parents strolled beatifically along beside.

Aw, Santa, you old coot...you still know just how to get me.

NotMe and Ida Know

Julius is demonstrably my Bad Cat. He eats the plants, he tips over his water dish, he torments his sister daily. He goes knickknack fishing when he tires of the vast array of designated kitty toys; I'm forever stepping on something unexpected in the dark of the night on the way to the bathroom. He surfs on the throw rugs and hysterically trash-talks the benign neighbor cat through the windows.

Tulip, on the other hand, is essentially an affectionate decorative throw pillow. With appalling cat fud breath.

So far, the cats have been largely indifferent to the Christmas tree. But among my decorations are little garlands of paper Scandinavian flags...and for about a week I've been coming home to find here a flag, there a flag, everywhere a slightly soggy chewed-off flag, all around the living room. Naughty, naughty Julius, I thought. I've been lightly scolding him for days.

You can imagine my surprise when, last night, Tulip (fresh from a nap) sidled up to the tree, snagged a flag and started tugging. SHOCKED, I tell you. "Hey! No no no," I told her. And she looked right at me, with huge glowing dilated crazy!pupils, and chomped down on the poor little candy-cane bear ornament, dangling adjacent. (He's already got only one eye--cut him some slack!)

Those who say that pets are not like people, let alone backstabbing, sibling-rivalrous children, obviously have none.

I should be relieved, though: check out the Very Bad Cats indeed Iris and Fern, decorating their own tree.

It's not Christmas until Poppy cries

I got to participate in another long-held holiday tradition Sunday morning, actually, when I attended a St. Lucia brunch. My mom's friend Cookie has been doing this as long as I can remember, hosting hordes of people for coffee and pastry to celebrate "the Swedish Christmas." When we were little, Cookie's daughter, DerDer, would play the role of the Lucia Bride, leading us into the dining room with the crown of candles on her head--tipped with gold foil, when we were very small, and thrillingly, fearsomely lit, when she was older. (Apparently battery-operated ones are now de rigeur.) DerDer married, last year, so the celebration has moved to her home.

There were a lot of new attendees this year, neighbors who didn't know the story, so DerDer and Cookie gave a little presentation. I didn't know much about the actual legend, either, it turns out. Lucia was an Italian saint, and it's not clear why the Swedes so fell in love with her. One story has Lucia, a devout Christian, refusing to marry a Pagan husband and putting out her own eyes. Another has her bringing bread to starving, persecuted Christians hiding in tunnels and caves; she wore candles on her head to free her hands and light the way. Yet another has her arriving in a harbor on a ship, bringing light, bringing food to the hungry.

When I was a kid, the processional part of the celebration seemed interminable--though I envied DerDer the attention, and her gripping role, fraught with danger. We'd gather around the table and listen to the traditional hymn--originally on a record, later copied onto cassette--a choir of children warbled verse after verse in Swedish or Latin or whatever, and some of the grownups would fumble along tunelessly, and all I wanted was to get it over with and get to the food. I was eager to line the pockets of my corduroy jumper with gingersnaps and start running up and down the stairs with DerDer and her three brothers, my sister and all the neighbor kids and cousins, shrieking and slamming each other's fingers in doors while the adults drank gallons of coffee and didn't notice when we kept slinking back to the table, keeping our blood sugar levels just on the frenzied side of a diabetic coma.

I don't know when it changed. I think it's partly Poppy's fault. DerDer's stepdad is legendarily, hilariously sentimental; he weeps at the proverbial drop of a hat, at Hallmark commercials and Notre Dame championships. When DerDer announced her engagement, Poppy cried for an entire year at the mere thought of walking her down the aisle. We mock poor Poppy, with great love...but even as we laugh, he has the power to get everyone else going too. (During the father/bride dance at the actual reception, my particular table of friends and family sobbed so hard the d.j. had to crank it to eleven to drown us out.)

So. This year, DerDer and her husband had actually burned the Sankta Lucia hymn onto a CD for her folks. This is close, but not quite the same version; you have to imagine it dubbed and redubbed off the original vinyl, with the pops and scratches, the needle hissing in the groove. DerDer pressed "Play." The introductory measures wavered across the living room. And...

...Poppy let out an audible, gulping sob and abruptly swiveled his Barcalounger to face the wall.

So. Yeah, we all giggled tenderly at Poppy. But it's a long hymn, and you have a lot of time to look at the tree, and the candles glowing, and the faces of family and friends and the babies they have now. You think about being kids, all in a sugared-up Christmas lather; you think of your Grammy, and DerDer's grandma KittyCoat, neither of whom are with us any more. And let me tell you, you harrumph and sniffle and blinkblinkblink HARD at the ceiling to keep from getting mascara face...

...and finally, thank God, it's time to eat. To laugh at yourself, and blot your eyes with an IKEA napkin printed with a little blonde girl in a fiery crown, and hug your own mom and your extra one, Cookie, and Poppy and DerDer, and then hit the smorgasbord. Cardamom bread, generously slathered with butter. Buttered lefse, rolled up with cinnamon and sugar or with summer sausage. Almond ring. "Spritz" butter cookies. Gingersnaps and coffee with cream and soft yeast rolls with butter. Did I mention butter?

It was so lovely. I really feel like the holidays can now get underway. Of course, I consumed nothing but pastry and coffee and red wine for the entire day, so I could possibly be just addled by my nutritional deficiencies.

I did realize that I was fully in a new demographic, staring down the barrel of 35, when I spent a considerable portion of the brunch in DerDer's kitchen, admiring her retro-look electric percolator from Target. It combines classic style with modern convenience!

It's not Christmas until the little baby angels cry

So saith Jacki, one of the regulars at the fifth (!) annual Ugly Christmas Cookie party, which I happily attended at the home of instigator Megan, yesterday afternoon. I'm sure she'll write about it eventually, but I'll tide you over.

I believe that the first Ugly Cookie Day was inadvertent, owing more to the artistic deficiencies of the participants. It was her college boyfriend's particular genius to make unattractive, disquieting, or downright offensive cookies the thematic intent. So every year now Megan and co-conspirator Erica spend a couple days cranking out dozens and dozens and DOZENS of sugar and gingerbread cookies, shaped like everything from trees and snowmen to cowboys and pumpkins. Megan hauls out her array of every food coloring and candy sprinkle known to mankind, and then a handful of us spend four or five hours drinking to excess and obsessively poking frosting around with toothpicks.

We CAN make pretty cookies, and we usually do--in fact, Megan brought a sampling of those that "met the HR bar" to the office today. But there's just something in our sick, sad minds that makes the little frosted horrors so, SO much more fun. Past alcohol-fueled inspiration has produced cookies iced to look like cat barf, eyeballs, poo (both Mr. Hankey and generic), little "ginger whores," cold-sore-spotted lips, far too many "yellow snow" jokes, and a "snowminatrix" in studded leather harness. (Those little silver "inedible"--heh--dragees really come in handy.) A rocket-shaped cookie cutter gets wildly misrepresented each year... ahem. We have made cookies in the likeness of Michael Jackson, Dame Edna, the Green River Killer (God help us all) and the complete GingerVillage People.

Yesterday did not disappoint. We had a tasteful diorama of the effects of mad cow disease. Ginger Martha-in-Prison made an appearance. (Martha, honey--you know we're just kidding. Stay strong, sister-friend!) I frosted a particularly bloated Jason Giambi, and the devil, complete with chocolate jimmies for his vertical pupils. There were Ginger Calendar Firefighters, with big yellow pants and carefully iced abs. This year's winner, in the category of "makes you gag a little even though you know it's just a cookie"? Loreal, the cosmetic-testing laboratory rabbit.

We are nice girls, really we are.

Anyway, I drank three glasses of wine and consumed enough of my "mistakes" to realize, as I do annually, that Ugly Cookie Day is its own punishment. It was 8:30 before I bundled up and started tottering the four blocks home with my own saran-wrapped plate of obscene baked goods. At the end of the block I passed a house blazing like NORAD with holiday lights; if you listened carefully you could hear the dial on their electric meter whizzing around. I glanced through the living-room window and saw...two trees? Crap, how much cabernet had I had? "Wow," I said aloud.

There was a guy having a cigarette in the driveway. "Hey," he said.

"Are there really two trees in there?" I asked. He rolled his eyes toward the house.

"Not even close," he said. "My mother-in-law loves Christmas. Guess."

I shrugged.

"There are FIVE," he told me. "One's in the basement. And they're THEMED!"

"Oh my GOD," I said. "Well...Merry Christmas!"

"YEAH Merry Christmas," he said, and grinned and stomped out his smoke. And I went on, armored against the cold by my flowered wool hat and fleece mittens, smiling, never wanting to see another cookie as long as I lived. Until about four this afternoon, when I slunk down to Megan's office and snagged an innocuous brown bear off the tray.

Dude, it's all about traditions!

Am I getting enough sleep?

I just arrived at the office and blearily waved my coffee in front of the key-card reader. Hellooo? Let me in, you stupid--oh.

Better turn back and get one for each hand, I guess.

It's beginning to look a lot like OH FOR CHRISSAKE GOD DAMN IT!

Yeah, yeah, I know. That last post just hangs there, piteously comic, doesn't it? And I was gonna write about it; I had some prime material all lined up, me driving home despondent through the neighborhood streets of shattered pumpkins and dead leaves and waterlogged Kerry signs. I spun the needle on the Stages-of-Grief-Ometer more than once, with the denial and the rage and the what the HELL is the MATTER with half of you people? I fretted. I ate far more than my allotment of frozen yogurt. I wondered, what are we gonna do? What are we possibly gonna do for four more years?

Well, if you need a cause, as usual the writers I dream of emulating have done it better. I shall direct you to This Is Not Over.com. Okay then. Get busy. Moving on.

So. Those who know me well understand that I'm something of a Christmas dork. My birthday is December 22; my parents brought me home from the hospital on Christmas Day, and for many years I labored under the delusion that the holiday hoopla had something to do with me: I got ornaments AND t.v. specials AND cake AND presents AND carols AND pretty lights for, like, a solid month. A rented Santa from the Heart Association once came to my birthday party. You can maybe forgive my childhood assumptions.

I outgrew most of the megalomania (she blathered, on the Internet), and I eventually discerned some of the crap parts of having a birthday that close to Christmas, too, such as a) the "combo" present, and b) it's something like gloves. These days, I am typically too damn busy to celebrate the anniversary of my own earthly arrival. That said, I've still never quite gotten over the giddy glee of it all. I love to haul out the decorations. I love the memories triggered by each ornament. Here is the polar bear seated on an outsize candy cane, one of his eyes now drawn on with a pen, from when my parents were still married; here is the glitter-smudged styrofoam ball Sis crafted in Brownies; here is the brass partridge-in-a-pear-tree my friend Gwyn left on my document stand in first-period Typing I in the 10th grade; here is the tiny snowman from Holly's first year in Germany. Everything gets a spot on the tree--the heirlooms and the ugly ones. Hell, I've been known to purchase an ugly ornament on purpose, just because I think it's funny.

I love to feed people. I like to bust out the Johnny Mathis album, and whip up gingersnaps and peppermint bark and my grandma's ass-kicking rum balls. Okay, actually I don't like making the rum balls, with the Karo syrup and the stickiness and the rolling and rolling and rolling up those little bastards in a fog of rum-stink everywhere. By the time I'm done, I can't stand it. I can't eat 'em, myself. But I like to watch the faces of the people who do.

I love the tree. How it makes the house smell, when you open the door after a long day, darkness to darkness, at the office. How the cats are all "the HELL?" every year when you haul an enormous piece of Outside into the living room. How each tree is more beautiful than the last, when you finally get it trimmed to your liking.

Which is best done when you have managed to get the motherfucking tree crammed into the cheap-ass, worthless, catastrophically useless plastic stand from the goddamn Fred Meyer, and get it fixed in a reasonably upright position without tying it to the WALL, because the four flimsy bolts ROCK back and FORTH in the crummy plastic slots and the tree favors a jaunty 75-degree ANGLE, pointing accusatorily at the COUCH, and your hands are raw from cranking those screws with fucking PLIERS while your NEIGHBOR held the trunk, to no avail.

We used to tease my mother, for approaching Hulk-like rages while putting up the tree when we were kids. I remember her threatening to throw tree, stand, and lights off the balcony of our apartment; I remember her dragging us to that same Fred Meyer, incredibly enough, to purchase a completely new set of lights at about 9:30 p.m. one year. Good old Mommy--she came to the rescue last night, with a monstrous eight-pronged tree stand suitable for Rockefeller Center. That baby isn't going ANYWHERE from now to January 1. I think I could climb it.

"How did you do this as a single parent?" I asked her. "I mean, I know you used to get frustrated, sure...but how did you ever manage to put up a tree without help?"Our Broken Home trees were smaller, granted, but still .

"I don't know," she admitted. "But when we were still married, your father used to do it. And he would about lose his mind, and I wondered why."

So. Christmas made my parents get a divorce! Well...perhaps not entirely. But it was a contributing factor. I haven't even gotten to the story about their 3 a.m. toy assembly crisis, yet...or the one about the Nat King Cole Suicide Christmas album. Heh. I love the holidays, but they sure weren't kind to my folks' marriage, now that I think about it.

Home on the range

All right, y'all, I know I don't have to tell you what to do. But I will: get your asses to the polls and send that raisin-eyed, simian, chuckling dimwit bastard back to the ranch in Crawford. I mean it. Move. Let's go.

Sarah Bunting says it better than I can; so does Cary Tennis. So, even if we don't win, take heart. Stick around for the fight.

But we'll win.

Come on, get excited! Democracy, woooooooo!

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!

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.

Ba-dum bum

Found this while looking up assorted Yiddishisms. So timely!

Four friends are sitting in a restaurant. For a long time, nobody says anything. Then, one man groans, "Oy."

"Oy vey," says a second man.

"Nu," says the third.

At this, the fourth man gets up from his chair and says, "If you guys don't stop talking politics, I'm leaving!"

Nu, an entry

When I was a little girl, we used to go with my mom's friend Cookie and her kids to Matzoh Momma's, a deli in the funky post-hippie liberal enclave that the Capitol Hill neighborhood was in those mid-70s days. At first, the joint was hole-in-the-wall tiny, a space narrow as a bowling lane lined with deli cases and two or three rickety tables. The food, though...man, the food. Toasted bagels slathered in real butter--could you get a genuine, decent bagel, anywhre else in Seattle at the time? (You barely can, now; round bread with a hole in the middle doth not a bagel make.) Kosher dogs on poppy-seed rolls. A perfectly golden chicken broth, glowing as if lit from within, afloat with the namesake matzoh balls. Dr. Brown's Black Cherry soda, in bottles...I don't think it yet came in cans. I didn't know from "kosher"; my entire concept of Jewishness came from the All of a Kind Family books (and, thus, I also had a vague notion that New York City was still trapped in the early 1900s, with streetcars and tinkers' wagons). I remember puzzling over some of the Yiddishisms sprinkled through the menu: "Nu, a Sandwich" declared one section. But the food was classic comfort food, suited to a kid's palate, straightforward and pure without messing around. You could get the chicken soup with matzoh balls, or with pieces of chicken, or just a bowl of the plain, luminous broth...aw, man. Excuse me while I get a little verklempt and drool on the keyboard. The proprietor of the place was a big guy named Pip, with a huge, wildly curly black Jewfro. He knew us all by name, at the time. Cookie would call him up, when one of her kids was sick, and he'd deliver, actually appearing at the door bearing soup. I thought of Pip like a superhero.

Matzoh Momma's expanded into a full-fledged restaurant, later, with a full bar and live music. I remember sitting there with friends from high school, still eating that translucent soup and listening to someone navigate "Imagine" on the acoustic guitar, pining madly for the sweet stoner boy I loooooooved who sat beside me but had a girlfriend, not me. (Amusing: a little Googling reveals that Pip Meyerson was a Garfield alum, 1967. Not as amusing: further Googling indicates sweet stoner boy is a strapping, bearded Mac geek who thinks my employer is the AntiChrist. Oh.)

But eventually, the restaurant closed up shop, replaced by a Thai place, which is great because Seattle has only 800 or so to choose from, whew. I grew up and went to college, had to go all the way to New York (which was NOT populated with horse-drawn carts, it turns out) to get my grub on at a proper deli. For whatever random reason, the core group of friends I fell in with at Sarah Lawrence all happened to be Jewish; they assumed I was, too, until someone asked me in our senior year if I was going home for Passover. Nope, sorry--Norwegian-Scots with a multiculti palate, that's all. (I became known as The Honorary Jew for the remainder of our schooling. It's true that I would make an excellent Jew or Catholic, since guilt and shame are pretty much my life's breath.) I came home to Seattle, resigned myself to inferior bagels, occasionally missed matzoh crackers scrambled with eggs but not quite enough to buy a whole box and make them myself.

Today, driving across the bridge to work, I noticed the vehicle next to me: Matzoh Momma Catering. A white van with a logo on the side, a woman, a Momma, lovingly stirring a steaming pot of The Soup! I edged alongside, peering. The driver took a call on his cell, steering with one hand; his hair was steely gray and closer-cropped but still mad curly: Pip. Unmistakable. I nearly drove off the bridge, wanted to roll down my window, shout and wave: Pip! Pip! You knew me when I was in kindergarten! I miss you! I miss THE SOUP!

I didn't, of course. But you can be damn sure I wrote down the phone number.

One foot in the grave

The other night I had a standard-issue anxiety dream about my high school. This happens periodically: I'm wandering the building, unable to find my locker, my classroom, the exit, as the halls and staircases go all M. C. Escher around me...and tomorrow, always tomorrow, the term paper's due or the final exam is coming, and I haven't studied or gone to class in, oh, SIXTEEN YEARS. Pretty basic. They've lessened over the intervening decade or so, thank God.

Anyway. Today I stumbled across Garfield's Web site, inadvertently, and for shits and giggles decided to look at their daily bulletin. Turns out that next week is Spirit Week, culminating in Homecoming; each day of the week, pep-minded students are encouraged to dress according to an inane theme. Hence:

Monday, 10/18—Sports Day
Tuesday, 10/19—Neon Day (I do not know what this means. Bright colors? Clothes that light up?)
Wednesday, 10/20—Twin Day
Thursday, 10/21—70s/80s Day
Friday 10/22—Purple and White Day

Hold up. 80s Day? 80s Day? What happened to the 60s day we used to have? That was plenty, right? Countercultural? All soul-hippie-freaky? So, next Thursday, the kids are going to dress...like we did every day. Because now I AM OLD. Old like MY PARENTS old.

They'll get it wrong, of course. No socks, girls--I don't care if it's October.

Now we are six

When I was leaving Darcy's the other night, her son, a newly minted kindergartener I'll call...Pancake, flung upon the door and hollered after me:

"Bye, Butthead!"

Oh yeah? "Bye, Stink-Pants!" I shouted back.

"Bye, Dork Face!"

"Bye, Freaknut!"

"Bye, Jerk-Freak!"

"Bye, Fart-Breath!"

And I got into my car grinning madly, joyous all out of proportion at calling playground insults across the night-dark, leaf-turning neighborhood street. Love that kid.

A sorry truth

Turns out the flu wasn't as much fun as I anticipated, bink or no bink.

Your science minute

Earlier this week, at lunch, one of my colleagues introduced us all to the fact that, if you soak a gummi bear in water overnight, it absorbs the water and expands in size...sort of like those little novelty-shop pellets that turn into foam dinosaurs in the bathtub. I filed this knowledge away for future reference...

...until yesterday, when I was training our newest writer on all the tools and nuances of Our Exhaustive Documentation Process. He was sitting next to me to view my computer screen, but in such a position that he was not easily visible through the window next to the door. So he was even more surprised than I, when Colleague burst in announcing "Here's your entertainment for the afternoon!" and brandishing a gelatinous, four-inch-long gummi mutant, a-quiver on a paper plate.

So, it really does work! As do we, here at BigOlSoftwareCo, though you might not guess that at first glance.

Bink

Plenty of people call a pacifier a "binky," but it was the ELOML's baby word for "blankie" instead: binky, later shortened to bink. He still had his, a comforter his mother had hastily sewn into a basic red-white-and-blue sack. He called it "the sick bink," perfect for huddling under when you had the sniffles and were capable of nothing more than lying on the couch watching "Hunter" reruns on cable, sipping Theraflu. It had a matching pillow, too.

I'm kind of a fool for binks. I like quilts, know a little bit about the traditional patterns, even though I'm incapable of undertaking such a project myself--the biggest sewing task I've accomplished in my life was making kitchen curtains out of cut-up IKEA tablecloths, and that consisted solely of being able to pin and hem a few rectangles. I have a couple storebought quilts that I love, even if they were cranked out by some Pottery Barn wage slave...she might be somebody's grandma, after all. I have a Mexican wool throw in the back of my car, just in case I get caught in a meteorologically unlikely blizzard on the way home. I have a designated Hideous Pink Picnic Blanket that's impervious to stains, or at least looks none the worse for them.

In a sealed plastic tub under the bed, I have my bink...half of it, anyway. I couldn't be parted from it when visiting Grandma as a little girl, and at some point she cut it in two and bound the edges, ensuring that a portion of bink in each household would alleviate any sleepless nights. It's just a mass-produced, unremarkable quilt, strips of disintigrating blue-and-pink fabric barely clinging to the batting. The corners, however, are reinforced with tough squares of one of Grandma's old housecoats, due to my penchant for drifting off, mauling the blanket corners and occasionally sticking one into a nostril. If I washed the bink, I'm sure it would simply dissolve, its last molecules swirling out with the final rinse. It smells like Grandma's house, though, like Grandma. After she died, sometimes I'd just hold it and breathe it in, for a moment. Then quick, quick, stuff it back in the box, try to preserve that Grandma scent. I'm not sure it's working. It smells more and more like plastic tub, I fear.

A couple weekends ago I went with Darcy to Burnt Sugar in the Fremont neighborhood--what, funky housewares? fabulous retro purses? magnificent soaps? oh, all right, TWIST MY ARM--and there was...a bink. A magnificent quilt, made up of felted patchwork squares of old wool sweaters, in rich shades of rose and burgundy and purple. It had different textures, ribbed and smooth and cabled. It had lime-green rickrack around the hem. Rickrack! I stood petting it with my mouth open until the clerk swished up to me.

"Isn't that wonderful?" he said. "It's on sale." Marked down to $175 from $250. God. No. Must. Not. I looked at the lilac-bright blanket-stitched trim.

"Look--it has a little pocket," the clerk said. One of the sweater squares had a dainty breast pocket still attached; he wiggled his fingers in it, to demonstrate.

I put the quilt and my Visa on the counter five minutes of hemming and hawing later. "Look what you made me do!" I told him.

But we talked about knitting and crocheting and quilting, while the other clerk rang up the sale. About his grandmother, who specialized in tatting: cranking out lace doilies while smoking a Pall Mall and reading her Bible at the same time. "'I'm studying for my final exams!'" he quoted her.

So. I have a new sick bink. I'm eager for cold weather, though summer is dragging its heels outside. I can't wait for a bout of the flu. I'm gonna get on the couch with that quilt and both cats and a cup of tea; I'll put kleenexes in that little pocket. It's going to be wonderful.

Are your ears burning?

Because, yeah, I'm talking smack about you.

Dear person who bashed the shit out of my car in the grocery store parking lot and then, apparently, sped off in guilty or oblivious silence: Fuck the fuck off, you cowardly cocksucker. Yes, it is not a fancy car, my 1996 Hyundai Accent, but I'd prefer that it does not look like a total piece of shit, which is difficult to maintain when you smack your ugly-ass blue vehicle all over the driver's side. Thanks a big bunch.

Dear guy at Starbucks, who when I picked your dropped $10 up off the floor and asked if it belonged to anyone nearby, blurted "That's mine!" and whisked it from my fingers: YOU'RE WELCOME, Rude-y McNoManners. Also? Wearing your sunglasses indoors makes you look like an even bigger jackass. Your mother called and said to tell you she's ashamed.

I am in serious need of a karmic top-off. Sigh.

Yo

Working here at SupaDupaSoft, we receive--and distribute--a lot of swag, the corporate-logo-emblazoned giveaway crap that's common to conventions and team-building pep-rally stuff. Mugs and mousepads and key rings and great bales of t-shirts and pretty much any gewgaw you can stick a logo or product name on, you can find in my desk or someone else's. Today I went into the kitchen on our floor and found a yo-yo, touting one of our technologies and abandoned (?) by the recycling bins. Losers weepers; I snagged it immediately. Not only was it an excellent yo-yo, nicely balanced; at the apex of its loop, it both lit up and made an irritating sound. Mine! I strolled yo-yoing back to my office, and bumped into Mike and my boss in the hall.

"Yo-yos are for boys! You're supposed to play with jacks," Mike said.

"You have some gender issues, don't you?" asked my boss. (He does--tsks all over the place when one of his female colleagues cuts her hair short or crumples her petticoat or whatever.)

I round-the-world-ed it close enough to his skull to make him duck. Hee.

Anyway. This started a discussion of toys and games and playground fads, whatever craze or chant would suddenly sweep over the schoolyard in the primary grades. Yo-yos were like this for me; when I was in about 4th grade, some...professional (?) ...yo-yo-ists came to a school assembly and performed amazing tricks, spinning and popping and twirling little orbs all over the gym while we sat cross-legged on the floor, awestruck. They gave away four yo-yos to kids in the audience as prizes. The next day, every kid on the playground had a yo-yo, I swear to god. Within 48 hours, a good percentage of us had accessorized the toy with a black eye or fat lip or at least one tender goose-egg rising on the scalp. Within 72 hours, Mrs. Eskenazi had developed a pretty magnificent yo-yo collection in her desk drawer. I wonder if she still has them?

Somehow, I picked up a few tricks over time. In addition to terrorizing Mike with my yo-yo's orbit, I Rocked the Baby, and Walked the Dog somewhat ineffectually on the office carpet. Lucky thing it's annual review time, eh?

What else? Mike suggested "clackers," another nosebleed-inducing toy of the past: plastic spheres on either end of a string that you slung up and down so that, if you managed their parabolic arc perfectly, they'd clack against each other with an irritating sound. If you managed the arc imperfectly, well, later you might have an interesting scar. I never had much affinity for jacks, and marbles were ehhh for whatever reason in most of my childhood, but I remembered jumping rope, both "Chinese" (a loop around two participants' knees, that you hopped in and out of) and regular, with all the chants and ditties. My boss got a sort of "fuzzy memories" look on her face. "Can you still..." she asked, and then simply raised her hands and pantomimed a little hand-jive in the hall. Why, I'll be Miss Mary Mack--I do remember!

It brought up an old fascination of mine...where does that stuff come from? I mean, we all learn it from other kids, the bigger kids...but where did they learn it? Where did it start? I mean, we didn't have the Internet to spread this around. What accounts for the slight regional differences?--I sing, "See See Oh Playmate" and the next kid insists it's "Say Say." And I remember parodies, too, of our own little folk jingles. What little wise-ass came up with this?

See see oh enemy,
Come out and fight with me!
And bring your [something something] three,
Climb up my [uhh...sticker bush? something dangerous]
Slide down my razor blade [my adult self says, eeeeeauuugh]
Into my dungeon door...

When I retire from the software industry and become that goofy senior citizen bothering everyone else in the American Studies PhD program, this is totally my thesis.

Of course, it's been done: One Potato, Two Potato looks like an interesting treatise on the topic. Or you can just start Googling and see where it gets you, which is how I found Julia's blog entry and comments (which alternate between two topics: babymaking, and playground jingles from all over the globe, an unanticipated combo). Plus, there's always the Harvard Dialect Survey; they're no longer taking new entries, but you can look at the results and the maps and it's absolutely fascinating.

This all reminds me of a lifelong burning question--just what were Paul and Julio doing down by the schoolyard?

Wait up! Hey, you guys, wait up! Hey!

One of the televisions at the gym is perpetually set to ESPN, which has been playing coverage of the Tour de France in the early morning hours while I'm there, slugging it out on the elliptical trainer. It sort of motivates one's lazy ass (or shames it), to be treading blankly in an endless loop, flipping through Entertainment Weekly while the fittest cyclists on the planet ride bikes up a freaking mountain, say.

Anyway. Trek Bicycles is apparently sponsoring a Ride With Lance contest, commercials for which air during the coverage; you can sign up to win a private ride with Lance Armstrong. Logically, I know that I am not the target audience for this contest. I have a mountain bike that I lug out of the garage maybe twice a year; I'm a dreamy cyclist who flinches at traffic and is not so much with the balancing. Imagine if they paired me with Lance, he of the freakishly long femurs and A HEART THE SIZE OF A HAM. What could go wrong?

"Hey, Lance, wait up! A bug flew in my ear! Lance! And I rode off the trail into this ditch! And all the sammiches fell out of my basket! LANCE!"

He would not hear me, of course, because he would be two miles away at this point.

No my first name ain't Baby

Almost forgot--a graffiti tag I saw yesterday in the University District, that I enjoyed muchly:

Mr. Shit Eye

You might want to work on that handle, son.

Jump back!

Well, it wasn't allergies; turns out I actually had some sort of summer cold/flu thing. I spent the first part of the holiday weekend snuffly and feverish and generally irritable.

But. What did I do in this clammy, grouchy state, you might ask? Well, one night when I couldn't sleep, I sat up and watched every last minute of Footloose on VH1's "Movies that Rock."

And...huh. I seem to remember this movie being deeply awesome, when I was 14. Kevin Bacon! So...squintily tortured, as he leapt emotively about the abandoned warehouse! The kids, they just wanted to dance! DANCE! As I did, prissing around my room to the soundtrack album. I was secretly choreographing a figure-skating routine to "Let's Hear It for the Boy" by Denise Williams.

That sentence says more about my early adolescence than anyone should probably ever have known.

So. Age had not been kind to one of us, and I like to think that I've outgrown at least the most visible dorkiness. Footloose did not fare as well. Honestly, what were they thinking? What were WE thinking? A chicken race...on tractors? To the wailing of Bonnie Tyler? "Holding Out for a Hero," all oooh-oooh-Oooh-OOOOOOOH! in the background? And the tight, tight pants for both sexes--however did we walk around like that? Surely putting on jeans so narrowly pegged defied the laws of physics. And the dancing itself! Man, if you busted out that poppin', lockin', western-line-dance crap at the prom today, I imagine the other kids would simply turn on you and kill you.

It's sort of puzzling, too, because there were good actors in this movie. I am always happy to see Kevin Bacon, the hardest working man in show business...but John Lithgow, as the scary preacher who'd banned the sinful gyrations of dance? Dianne Wiest, his wife? Li'l Sarah Jessica Parker, as...the funny best friend? What did they all bring to the set, I wonder? Did they take it seriously? Did they think they were delivering an important cinematic message about oppressed youth, and the freedom to express oneself in a strangely ceaseless storm of glitter?

Finally...was this movie always SO GAY? I don't mean that in the purely pejorative sense; I'm talking about what the TWoP folks call the HoYay! I realize that Kevin Bacon gamely lampooned himself on "Will and Grace" a season or so ago, even doing that freaking dance...but somehow I had completely missed the thunderous homoerotic subtext blasting from every frame of this movie. Mr. Bacon and whichever nice Penn boy that is rassle, and dance, and cuff each other in the head fondly, and should just kiss already for crying out loud. Gayer than the gayest gay in Gaytown, I'm telling you.

Still, though. The climactic, absurd prom scene, all the kids kicking and stepping and doing the splits and backflips and the Robot and whatnot (um...if dancing's been outlawed for years, how did you all...oh, never mind), Kenny Loggins kicking off his Sunday shoes, all balloons and Christmas lights and Jesus, how much glitter IS that? Shit, y'all. That's fun. Any movie where the lead character's last line is to scream, "LET'S DANCE!" ...well, it gives you a little bit of ants in the old pants, it does.

It can't be just the fever.

* * * * *

I should mention that I myself can get to Kevin Bacon in four moves, if you fudge "in a movie with" slightly to "worked with." As teenagers, my sister and I worked in the same local gift shop for one Christmas. Later, in her first major graphic design job, she worked on a Clint Eastwood filmography CD-ROM and got to meet the man (a photo of the team luncheon shows the designers and computer dorks, hilariously paralyzed by awe, and Clint at the head of the table). Clint Eastwood was in "The Bridges of Madison County" with Meryl Streep, who was in "The River Wild" with...Kevin Bacon.

Bummer

While I was writing that last post, I heard the ice-cream man tinkling and tootling through the neighborhood. ("A Bicycle Built for Two," very GBC!) I feel so lousy, and a simple orange popsicle would be so so good right now. The tootling got closer, and I actually jumped up and grabbed a handful of change off the hall table and flung open the door...

...Christ on a pony, man, slow the fuck down! I'm not gonna RUN.

Goddamnit.

Sneezing; linkage

Having another Allergy Blast! of some sort; feel like crap. I'm taking next week off work--24 hours til vacation, and I can hardly even appreciate it. I don't have any original thoughts of my own, so here's a buncha links to other people's. Eventually I'll migrate them over to the list on the right.

Abbie the Cat has a posse...and a blog. It's strangely poetic, moving, and oddly convincing. For a blog written by a cat. It also features the occasional post from the Other Cat who lives there, Martha. I find it fascinating that not only do they have distinctive voices, but Martha seems to be a better typist. Abbie's more the artist, I think. He's been under the weather and the bed, lately, so send your love.

David Wong was my prom date and first boyfriend. He would probably be appalled that I'm telling you that. At any rate, his global adventures are always interesting and frequently funny. "Pandemic Cookie" is the name of my new band.

Heather B. Armstrong at Dooce writes about life and new motherhood with insight, humor, and a filthy dirty sailor mouth, which I think is completely appropriate. Babies? Cute, but they make a fucking MESS, man.

Seth has suddenly posted a flurry of updates to Eminent Romaine, which is good. I think he sometimes blames his preoccupation on his baby. I dunno, Dooce seems to hold it together. But he has my esteem for purchasing To the 5 Borroughs and Sinatra at the Sands on the same day.

Linda is simply a genius.

Well? Go on, then.

Cleanup on aisle 2

How have I gone so long without visiting the Ballard Market? I made my first visit last night. Screw you AND your club card, Safeway! It was so nice--both organic and regular, cheap, possibly toxin-coated produce; chipotle peppers and good ol' Western Family canned tomatoes; Kraft dinner and raw bulghur in bulk. Much less intimidating than Whole Foods, where I fear that all the Hostess cakes and pigs-in-a-blanket meals of my past are visible on my person. Plus, according to this article, the Ballard Market has a motto: "Experience Fresh the Ballard Way." This is much funnier if you know Ballard--sort of the elderly-Scandinavian ghetto.

Anyway, I rambled through the store in happy shopping awe. It smelled good, a positive sign. Actually it smelled kind of zippy. Vinegary, even. Actually, people were starting to sniff and peer around the displays curiously. Actually, it smelled like pickles. Like picklespicklesPICKLES!! right over there, where a weary teenager in an apron was swabbing broken glass and kosher dill slices into a heavy-duty dustpan. Whoopsie.

I was nowhere near the pickles when whatever happened happened, I must insist.

Dos gatos

Yeah, I know, it's been awhile. Life, she intrudes.

One of the things keeping me busy lately is the fact that I've acquired a second cat. This is the part where I should probably point out the big "Sucker!" decal on the back of my t-shirt. I am afraid of being That Lady, a little; I've asked friends to stop me before I get to six.

I already had Tulip, a portly gray tabby a friend had gently foisted on me New Year's Day. She is timid and talkative and so mild-mannered that even interactive kitty toys intimidate her: if you poink her lightly on the flank with one of those feather-wand toys, she scurries away in fear. She prefers the passivity of her catnip-stuffed banana, which she can drool and nap on in peace. So I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to introduce another cat...

...especially the one I'd picked out. I'd first seen his picture online, where the accompanying kitty personal ad listed his favorite activity as "hiding" and his name as the peculiar "Baked Bean." I have a soft spot for orange tabbies, and the PAWS satellite adoption center is walking distance from my house. I dropped by to meet this Bean, who crouched trembling at the back of his cage but, even in his terror, was a Slave to the Kitty Brush in my hand. One of us is a sucker.

I brought him home a week ago Tuesday. I was surprised when he hopped out of his carrier and de-huddled: he's twice the length he appeared in kitty jail. In 24 hours, he was squeezing his lanky frame out from under the futon to greet me when I called; in 48 hours he discovered the cache of heretofore ignored kitty toys and threw them all over the living room in drug-induced bliss. Tulip looked on agahst: "What is wrong with that guy?" He chewed on my plants, splashed water out of his dish for fun, and is sitting on the document shredder beside me as I type this. He is not the shrinking violet indicated in his Web profile. (And THAT has never happened to me before, oh, no.)

After a few days of going through every orange soda, snack food, and baked-bean pun I could think of (Frank?), I settled on the moniker Julius. Hee. There's been a lot of trash talking between the cats, but no real fisticuffs that I've noticed. Tulip has voiced her displeasure to me readily ("That guy is STILL HERE!") but seems to have resigned herself to having a big little brother, as long as he observes a few simple guidelines: he may not sit on The Couch, The Bed, or The Mommy. These are her rules, not mine. So far, peace reigns...aside from the 4 a.m. intervals in which Julius has dragged his favorite mousie into the tub and sent it pattering around and around the porcelain ellipse like it's the Seattle International Raceway.

Yes, do stop me well before I ever get to six.

Unsettling dream

So last night I had one of those extremely detailed, geographically precise dreams in which I apparently was engaged in some classy White Trash Shopping with my mother. We were on Aurora Avenue*, where we intended to do some browsing at Ross Dress for Less...but not before stopping for a meal at the adjacent Burger King, where I was adamant about having "a BK Broiler with bacon." Is that even a thing? I'm scared to find out. Why would I desire this? I haven't been in a Burger King in a decade.

(*For any non-Seattle readers...every decent-sized city has this road: four to six lanes, lined with car lots and motels and check-cashing establishments, coyly named sex-toy stores like "The Love Pantry," and pancake restaurants that started out as a Sambo's or a Denny's but have changed hands at least three times and now have scarily handpainted signage and a big Bud Light neon sign in the window. Yeah, that road. In Yonkers, NY, it was Central Avenue, I remember.)

They've gone and grabbed old Ronnie

(Bonus points if you can identify that line.)

I suppose I should talk about the death of Ronald Reagan. I don't know that I have much to add to the discourse, though...I mean, I have no love for Reagan, the President; I'm a little flabbergasted at the media hysteria, in fact. The Great Communicator! The most beloved and popular and cherished and adored President of all time, forever and ever, don't even try to argue, amen. Really? I don't get it.

I mean, I was a free-lunch kid. So I had Reagan to thank for the threat of a lot of ketchup. He invented and demonized the Welfare Queen; we weren't on the throne, but we were definitely part of the court. I spent no small amount of time in my adolescence fearing a nuclear holocaust, fearing The Russians, fearing it would be "Red Dawn" in the school-bus zone outside Washington Middle School at any moment. (I also feared algebra, the aliens in the movie version of War of the Worlds, and that my mother would die and we'd be sent to live on the farm with our dad, so take that as you will.) I don't remember gleaning anything in particular from the Iran-Contra scandal except, Politicians lie. All the time, like rugs, lie lie lie.

Reagan was the first President I can remember paying any attention to. The pompadour! The apple cheeks! The scary wrinkles! The "Well..." I mean, I knew who Carter was, but I couldn't tell you a single word he ever said. A kid on my bus in second grade went to Washington D.C. on vacation and returned with a wind-up toy, "Jimmy the Walking Peanut," the buzzing clockwork hilarity of which was the sum total of my political consciousness at the time.

Reagan was the first President I could quote. "Honey, I forgot to duck." The Challenger speech, its ending swiped from a poet I could Google in ten seconds but can't remember now. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" I've heard that 20 times in the past 48 hours...thing is, it gives me a little shiver still, because...they did. Eventually, they did. A big hunk of it stands in my company's conference center, as art. Holly roves freely about in a unified Germany. I don't lie in bed worrying about The Bomb any more...though as an adult I've discovered that there are things so much scarier that it's better to not think of them at all if you ever want to sleep again. Dubya, I'm looking at you. Whatever Reagan's legacy, he was better than the current guy holding the contract for the big red phone.

But. Forget the President. I can spare a little grief for Reagan, the man. There are more violent, more painful ways, perhaps...but I can't think of a crueler way to die than Alzheimer's, for victim and family alike. Nancy, scary Nancy, tiny and brittle and fierce--she looks like my grandmother, who always loathed the comparison--it was obvious that they adored each other, and that she loved him to the end. I cannot imagine the horror of watching your husband, partner, father, friend, recede into silence, an enormous speechless toddler, mobile but without thought. A windup toy. The Walking Peanut.

I've read a lot of bitter forums today, people complaining that however much the Reagans suffered, they had help: Nancy could get the best medical treatment for her husband available, could have respite care whenever she needed a break, had coverage and concern her husband denied scores of poor Americans. It's true.

But. I saw that clip half a dozen times today, while I chugged away on the eliptical trainer at the gym: Nancy, putting her ferociously coiffed head down on her husband's coffin, bereft. Goodbye. I have said those goodbyes, myself, recently enough. Say what you will of the President, but...I can grieve a moment for the man.

Bowled over

My team at AllYourBaseAreBelongToUsCo is having a Morale Event this afternoon. As the fiscal budget comes to a close in June, we're always subject to a sudden flurry of presumably attitude-enhancing activities, ballgames and picnics and harbor cruises. Today's excursion is bowling. I'm a little nervous.

I'm a terrible bowler, for starters. In one of my few prior games, I believe my score was 11. So there is that fundamental humiliation forthcoming. Then, too, it's with your work colleagues, so you can't really prepare yourself appropriately for bowling by getting completely shitfaced and grabbing the Rock-n-Bowl karaoke mike. You still have to see these people on Monday.

But I have some body issues, too. I'm not a tiny girl, and bowling involves a lot of specialized postures. What if there is pants splittage?

Worrying.

Plus, Darcy told me that the last time her team undertook a Morale Event at the lanes, she got a little overzealous and, in hurling the ball at the ol' tenpins, actually flung herself to the floor. It's slippery there. So now I have that to worry about as well. Actually, I admire her self-possession under the circumstances. If that were me, I think I'd just have had to get a new job, possibly in a different state.

Your tone of voice is not very motivating

Whew...that was kind of heavy. Let's move on!

Any 24 fans out there? I hope you've enjoyed Chloe, the social-skill-bereft, slightly Aspberger-y computer genius and new addition to CTU. But have you ever wondered what Chloe dreams, what she'd like to be if she wasn't having to save the world from terrorism and point out everyone else's personal shortcomings all freaking day long? Like, maybe...she'd want to be an indie rock star. (Note: it's Quicktime, takes up some bandwidth, and features some f-bombs, so be careful with the clicky-clicky.)

I actually saw the Girls Guitar Club open for Janeane Garofolo a couple years back, but had no idea that the one on the left would end up my favorite tertiary television character of the year. Mary Lynn Rajskub is totally my pretend television friend now.

Thanks for the liberty, and stuff

Yes, I know--I'm coming to Memorial Day a bit late.

Anyway. Over the weekend, I saw this Bon-Macy's commercial on television: people in convertibles, kids frolicking in sprinklers. The voiceover lady declared with warm pomposity, "Memorial Day...a time to remember...a time to relax..."

Me, scoffing: "A time to shop!"

VO Lady: "...A time to SHOP!"

And I've been thinking about it since, trying to parse out how I feel...wondering how I should feel. How should this make me feel?

I think first of WWII, I guess: because it was a just war; because the memorial (which, honestly, I find pretty ham-handed) was dedicated this weekend; because all the news sources and Toms Brokaw and Hanks are quick to remind us that members of that generation, Great and Merely Average, are dying at a rate of 1,100 a day. A day! I had a grandfather in each theatre: Dad's dad went ashore in Normandy, though several days after D-Day; Mom's dad roved the Pacific, performing some sort of clerical duties in the Navy; a family photograph shows him impossibly skinny and jug-eared, hunched over a typewriter with a worried look. Neither one lived to see their memorial; neither one spoke a single word about their war, in my memory. My mother told me later that her dad's only request upon returning home was that his wife never serve him stewed tomatoes again. Grampa was a legendary junk food junkie, true--but it wasn't that he'd grown weary of canned tomatoes, out at sea. It was that it reminded him of the carnage he'd seen.

What to make of it, then, the crass commercialism that's turned a day of reflection into a bargain bonanza? Should I be offended on behalf of all our granddads, the teenagers in sailor suits or olive-drab helmets who saved the world or died trying, who came home and golfed and mowed lawns and kept their nightmares to themselves? Should I be horrified, being urged to grease up the MasterCard as if it would "honor" the current crop of America's sons and daughters have volunteered themselves for George's morally ambiguous train wreck in Iraq?

Or...is that the point? Did (do) these men and women fight to uphold our standards of freedom, right up to and including the big-dumb-goodnatured-Golden-Retriever qualities of the American people? Is democracy's best feature the way it entitles us to surfboards and hot dogs and bad television and good deals on bathmats and crockpots and a Free Gift With Purchase at the Clinique counter?

I really am asking, actually. Because I've been thinking about it, and I really don't know.

* * * * *

Hard to tell--after looking at these for half an hour, they're ALL him--but I think that the Wilson in the front row, far left, is my Mom's dad. Have a Snickers or a packet of corn chips in his memory, won't you?

* * * * *

At the grocery store tonight, in their display of red-white-and-blue picnic-type items for either last weekend or the upcoming Fourth of July, I saw a case of what were basically battery-operated, strobing red taillights, like a cyclist would use...except that these had American flag stickers on 'em and were labeled "Spirit of America Patriotic Flashers."

Yep. Expose yourself to democracy!