Lady in grocery store: Okay, now we need to get some lettuce.
Little kid: But I don't like lettuce!
Lady: You don't like lettuce?
Little kid: Yeah, I like...BANANA CREAM PIE!
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
M is for the many times she did not kill us
* I know, it's been forever, and now I'm recapping the last few weeks all bass-ackwards. Please accept this belated Mother's Day paean to my mum, and I'll cover the nuptials of Mr. and Mrs. Sis in my next post.
A little Interweb research suggests that the Sheila E. song "The Glamorous Life" came out in about 1984. I would have been fourteen or fifteen at the time. (And how deeply distressed am I, to have Googled it and located its versecraft on OldieLyrics.com? Holy shit, that's cold.) Man, how I loved that stupid song, and Sheila E's mad drumming skillz. I found the song's anonymous lead sex-ay and sophisticated--as much as a ninth grader would, anyway. She swans around all year in a mink coat! And a big brown Mercedes sedan! She don't need a man's touch! (Particularly empowering, that last, as I was not getting any real romantic action in World Geography or Algebra II.) I think I also labored under the impression that she and her paramour Made Love IN the brown sedan, which DIRTY! And glamorous indeed!
Anyway. Okay, picture in your mind youthful, teenaged, dork-ass Kim. Probably I am wearing a ski sweater emblazoned with little hearts, or bears, or Scottie dogs; probably my hair is in a long French braid with a droopy ribbon tied to the end. Whether I am faring stylistically better than eleven-year-old Sis is debatable, as she is no doubt sporting a pastel-striped rugby shirt and her Stevie Nicks poodle perm. We think we are Hot Shit! Ssssssssssssssss of hissing steam! We are in fact enormous goobers, but let's not spoil it for the girls, hey? We're young.
I don't remember the event we were supposed to attend, that evening. In all likelihood it was something FOR us--a Parent Night at school, an awards banquet or something. At any rate, Mom had to run an errand before chauffeuring us wherever. She instructed us to get ready while she hurried out; she'd return, pull into the driveway, honk, and take us to our important, time-sensitive destination. She left; Sis and I set to primping, with the Big Stereo in the living room blasting accompaniment...and Sheila E. came on.
We cranked it. We got down with our bad selves, Sis and I, wielding the AquaNet and the Dippity Do, air-drumming furiously, the windows vibrating in their frames. We needed a man's man, baby! Diamonds and furs!
Now I will describe the crux of the action in screenplay form.
I don't know how long Mom sat down there fuming. I just remember the part where the door EXPLODED open, rebounding off the wall with a crash. If Mom could have kicked it completely off the hinges, I'm sure she would have. She was scarlet with rage, apoplectic, pop-eyed; her voice, when she spoke, fell somewhere between "Hulk smash!" and possessed-Linda-Blair:
"WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU I HAVE BEEN HONKING GO GET IN THE GODDAMN CAR!"
Which of course we did--probably sulking and sneering and GOD, mom, CALM DOWN, you don't have to have a total FIT. I still don't remember where we were going, but I am sure my mother laid a patch pulling out of the driveway to take us there.
That was, and is, the angriest I have ever seen my mother. In the intervening twenty years I have known her giddy with laughter and wracked with grief; she's been proud of us, happy with us, hysterical at the girls staggering in their giant shoes on Top Model. She's been weary, and furious, and blissful. But that's the only time I have ever seen Mom go entirely berserk with rage, driven to lose her entire mind simply by the fact of having teenaged daughters...with a little added magic from Sheila E.
Point is...that's a pretty fair average. Borders on sainthood, really. Once more, Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Thanks again for not sending us away to military school!
A little Interweb research suggests that the Sheila E. song "The Glamorous Life" came out in about 1984. I would have been fourteen or fifteen at the time. (And how deeply distressed am I, to have Googled it and located its versecraft on OldieLyrics.com? Holy shit, that's cold.) Man, how I loved that stupid song, and Sheila E's mad drumming skillz. I found the song's anonymous lead sex-ay and sophisticated--as much as a ninth grader would, anyway. She swans around all year in a mink coat! And a big brown Mercedes sedan! She don't need a man's touch! (Particularly empowering, that last, as I was not getting any real romantic action in World Geography or Algebra II.) I think I also labored under the impression that she and her paramour Made Love IN the brown sedan, which DIRTY! And glamorous indeed!
Anyway. Okay, picture in your mind youthful, teenaged, dork-ass Kim. Probably I am wearing a ski sweater emblazoned with little hearts, or bears, or Scottie dogs; probably my hair is in a long French braid with a droopy ribbon tied to the end. Whether I am faring stylistically better than eleven-year-old Sis is debatable, as she is no doubt sporting a pastel-striped rugby shirt and her Stevie Nicks poodle perm. We think we are Hot Shit! Ssssssssssssssss of hissing steam! We are in fact enormous goobers, but let's not spoil it for the girls, hey? We're young.
I don't remember the event we were supposed to attend, that evening. In all likelihood it was something FOR us--a Parent Night at school, an awards banquet or something. At any rate, Mom had to run an errand before chauffeuring us wherever. She instructed us to get ready while she hurried out; she'd return, pull into the driveway, honk, and take us to our important, time-sensitive destination. She left; Sis and I set to primping, with the Big Stereo in the living room blasting accompaniment...and Sheila E. came on.
We cranked it. We got down with our bad selves, Sis and I, wielding the AquaNet and the Dippity Do, air-drumming furiously, the windows vibrating in their frames. We needed a man's man, baby! Diamonds and furs!
Now I will describe the crux of the action in screenplay form.
EXTERIOR. NIGHT. MOM pulls into the driveway below and honks the horn briskly.
INTERIOR. KIM and SIS dance spastically to the very loud strains of Sheila E.
EXT. NIGHT. MOM again honks, more insistently.
INT. The girls apply mousse, gold eyeshadow, etc. Still rocking out.
EXT. NIGHT. MOM leans on the horn. From this angle she can see the silhouetted forms of her daughters in the window, doing the booty bump.
INT. More Sheila E. funk jam antics.
I don't know how long Mom sat down there fuming. I just remember the part where the door EXPLODED open, rebounding off the wall with a crash. If Mom could have kicked it completely off the hinges, I'm sure she would have. She was scarlet with rage, apoplectic, pop-eyed; her voice, when she spoke, fell somewhere between "Hulk smash!" and possessed-Linda-Blair:
"WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU I HAVE BEEN HONKING GO GET IN THE GODDAMN CAR!"
Which of course we did--probably sulking and sneering and GOD, mom, CALM DOWN, you don't have to have a total FIT. I still don't remember where we were going, but I am sure my mother laid a patch pulling out of the driveway to take us there.
That was, and is, the angriest I have ever seen my mother. In the intervening twenty years I have known her giddy with laughter and wracked with grief; she's been proud of us, happy with us, hysterical at the girls staggering in their giant shoes on Top Model. She's been weary, and furious, and blissful. But that's the only time I have ever seen Mom go entirely berserk with rage, driven to lose her entire mind simply by the fact of having teenaged daughters...with a little added magic from Sheila E.
Point is...that's a pretty fair average. Borders on sainthood, really. Once more, Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Thanks again for not sending us away to military school!
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Our amphibian friend...and also his little amphibian friend
Sis works in graphic design, also in the computer industry. It's like our skill sets were neatly split along some genetic line: I have an obsessive-compulsive eye for the written detail but couldn't draw so much as a map to my own ass, while Sis has designed business logos and user interfaces and elaborate media content.
Today, though, she is in what she described as a career valley. Her employer is hosting a Take Our Progeny To Work Day event tomorrow, and trying to come up with fun activities for the kidlets. One of their corporate mascots (or a client's? I'm not clear on just what represents who, here) is a sort of deranged, animated toad creature. He originates from somewhere in Europe, so he is, you know, alternative , and edgy, and, apparently...anatomically correct.
So. This afternoon, Sis was asked to apply her artistic talents to removing a cartoon frog penis. They're going to distribute the newly neutered logo to the kiddies as a Color Me! handout.
That there? Is a real resumé-builder, I tell you what.
Today, though, she is in what she described as a career valley. Her employer is hosting a Take Our Progeny To Work Day event tomorrow, and trying to come up with fun activities for the kidlets. One of their corporate mascots (or a client's? I'm not clear on just what represents who, here) is a sort of deranged, animated toad creature. He originates from somewhere in Europe, so he is, you know, alternative , and edgy, and, apparently...anatomically correct.
So. This afternoon, Sis was asked to apply her artistic talents to removing a cartoon frog penis. They're going to distribute the newly neutered logo to the kiddies as a Color Me! handout.
That there? Is a real resumé-builder, I tell you what.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Your mother works neither here nor there
I am, at best, an indifferent housekeeper. It's not Whitney Houston's bathroom or anything, but a) I have two cats who shed so copiously, I can't understand how they have anything left to hork up in hairball form in the laundry basket, and b) I suffer from, and am aided and abetted by all friends in, an addiction to the written word. I dust, I tidy a little...and then the piles of books and magazines and newspapers begin creeping across every flat surface again, like plate techtonics.
I do have a healthy degree of respect for shared public space, however. I've long puzzled over the kitchen messes at NerdCo; not a day goes by when the countertop isn't littered with half-finished beverages, blops of unidentified casseroles, milk souring in the carton 26 inches from the refrigerator. People pour god-knows-what into the sinks, which have no disposals; they mark their path with damp wads of paper towel, like the hatch-marked trail of Little Billy in Family Circus. We had a popcorn machine on this floor that I am sure had not been cleaned in a decade, its glass walls opaque with an electric-yellow film of Butter Flavoring. (One of the writers at last took it upon himself to disassemble and scour the works, with mixed results: some of the crud was baked on there like space-shuttle tiles, plus the machine was...rather harder to put back together than he'd anticipated. Whoops, no more popcorn, kiddies!)
I'd made the default, sexist assumption that most of this kitchen slobbery could be blamed on boys. There are so many of them at NerdCo, vastly outnumbering the fairer sex, wandering around with their Mountain Dew and their foosball and their Y-chromosomes.
However. Through Fat Club, I've been spending a large percentage of my time at the gym, and a good segment of that in the women's locker room (not quite as Alyssa depicts it, though God I laughed), and I have to say: Ladies, YOU ARE PIGS.
Seriously, chicks, what is up with that? It's crowded, we're all in a hurry, I get that...but how hard is it really to pick up your towels and your water bottles and your 87 ponytail bands before scurrying off to the rest of your day? If you accidentally squirt lotion across the dressing area, or crumble a cake of pink eyeshadow onto the counter, take two seconds to WIPE THAT SHIT UP. Perhaps with one of your many many towels? The ones that you do not seem to be using in the shower stalls, considering that some days I have to wade across the tiles? How do you even GET the surrounding area that wet, outside the shower? What kind of sprinkler attachment are you dancing around with in there?
(Side complaint about towels: I don't have a problem with the periodic nakedness in the locker room. People dress and bathe there, both tasks that are easier to start from the default clothes-free condition. But on the other hand, enough with the Nudes On Parade routine for a few of you. I read Our Bodies, Ourselves, I too am proud of my womanness, but this isn't a runway. Wrap it up.)
I think that, in either locale, it's that root sense of entitlement that bothers me most. Do you wander around your home, a trail of sodden terrycloth and assorted garbage in your wake? Surely not. Just because there are people whose job it is to clean, to collect the towels and take out the trash...you shouldn't extrapolate that to mean that said people are your Personal Filth Assistants, you know? I seriously don't understand someone who can drop their crap on the floor and walk away, secure in the faith that "someone" will pick it up. It's no excuse to trash the place.
The gym features weird giant ceramic urns as both its trash cans and towel bins; they are similar, but different. The other day a woman marched right up beside me and flung her towel into the trash by mistake. "Oh, no," she said, and we laughed.
"I hate it when that happens," I said.
"I know!" she said. Then...she left.
This is why the gym costs a million dollars, folks. I wrapped my own towel around my hand (because surely that is antibiotically protective, yes?), dug her towel out of the trash, and deposited them both in the correct giant ceramic urn. Had I not, that little karmic wrinkle would have bothered me ALLLLL DAY.
Must be easy, to be some other people.
I suppose it could always be worse. A friend's mother was famously forgetful, twice accidentally leaving her prosthetic breast at the pool. (She had another, for day use; I guess this was a regulation swim boob.) That would be a fun one to retrieve from the Lost-And-Found bin, no?
I do have a healthy degree of respect for shared public space, however. I've long puzzled over the kitchen messes at NerdCo; not a day goes by when the countertop isn't littered with half-finished beverages, blops of unidentified casseroles, milk souring in the carton 26 inches from the refrigerator. People pour god-knows-what into the sinks, which have no disposals; they mark their path with damp wads of paper towel, like the hatch-marked trail of Little Billy in Family Circus. We had a popcorn machine on this floor that I am sure had not been cleaned in a decade, its glass walls opaque with an electric-yellow film of Butter Flavoring. (One of the writers at last took it upon himself to disassemble and scour the works, with mixed results: some of the crud was baked on there like space-shuttle tiles, plus the machine was...rather harder to put back together than he'd anticipated. Whoops, no more popcorn, kiddies!)
I'd made the default, sexist assumption that most of this kitchen slobbery could be blamed on boys. There are so many of them at NerdCo, vastly outnumbering the fairer sex, wandering around with their Mountain Dew and their foosball and their Y-chromosomes.
However. Through Fat Club, I've been spending a large percentage of my time at the gym, and a good segment of that in the women's locker room (not quite as Alyssa depicts it, though God I laughed), and I have to say: Ladies, YOU ARE PIGS.
Seriously, chicks, what is up with that? It's crowded, we're all in a hurry, I get that...but how hard is it really to pick up your towels and your water bottles and your 87 ponytail bands before scurrying off to the rest of your day? If you accidentally squirt lotion across the dressing area, or crumble a cake of pink eyeshadow onto the counter, take two seconds to WIPE THAT SHIT UP. Perhaps with one of your many many towels? The ones that you do not seem to be using in the shower stalls, considering that some days I have to wade across the tiles? How do you even GET the surrounding area that wet, outside the shower? What kind of sprinkler attachment are you dancing around with in there?
(Side complaint about towels: I don't have a problem with the periodic nakedness in the locker room. People dress and bathe there, both tasks that are easier to start from the default clothes-free condition. But on the other hand, enough with the Nudes On Parade routine for a few of you. I read Our Bodies, Ourselves, I too am proud of my womanness, but this isn't a runway. Wrap it up.)
I think that, in either locale, it's that root sense of entitlement that bothers me most. Do you wander around your home, a trail of sodden terrycloth and assorted garbage in your wake? Surely not. Just because there are people whose job it is to clean, to collect the towels and take out the trash...you shouldn't extrapolate that to mean that said people are your Personal Filth Assistants, you know? I seriously don't understand someone who can drop their crap on the floor and walk away, secure in the faith that "someone" will pick it up. It's no excuse to trash the place.
The gym features weird giant ceramic urns as both its trash cans and towel bins; they are similar, but different. The other day a woman marched right up beside me and flung her towel into the trash by mistake. "Oh, no," she said, and we laughed.
"I hate it when that happens," I said.
"I know!" she said. Then...she left.
This is why the gym costs a million dollars, folks. I wrapped my own towel around my hand (because surely that is antibiotically protective, yes?), dug her towel out of the trash, and deposited them both in the correct giant ceramic urn. Had I not, that little karmic wrinkle would have bothered me ALLLLL DAY.
Must be easy, to be some other people.
I suppose it could always be worse. A friend's mother was famously forgetful, twice accidentally leaving her prosthetic breast at the pool. (She had another, for day use; I guess this was a regulation swim boob.) That would be a fun one to retrieve from the Lost-And-Found bin, no?
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Three-fer
Three things that vexed me today, one with slight mitigation.
1. Vanity plate, MANOWAR. Being a progressive pacifist pinko, I probably would have just stuck to my initial thought--"Like, a giant jellyfish?"--and been on my way...but for the big clipped-to-the-window American flag also flying from the automobile. Then I was given to wonder. Man-o-war as in your car is an armed naval vessel? Man-o-war as in you're a veteran? Or...Man-o-war 'cause you just think war is...kind of awesome? There was some sort of pro-Dubya, God Bless the USA, bomb-Eye-Raq-now vibe hovering over the whole thing that unsettled me, war as a spectator sport. CNN, ESPN, quelle difference?
Though there were not any visible Bush stickers or magnetic ribbons. Perhaps he is just a proud patriot who also happens to be fond of the 80s metal band.
2. Safeway. They were piping in innocuous lite hits, as you do...but as I patrolled the aisles in search of my Fat Club-approved lean proteins and frozen blueberries, I gradually became aware that the song playing overhead was...the theme to the Mickey Mouse Club.
First, buh? That doesn't turn up on your average Time-Life compilation. If there was some sort of promotional tie-in going on, I missed it. Second? I'd never thought about it before, but that song consists primarily of CHILDREN YELLING. At ten o'clock in the freaking morning; what gives, Safeway?
3. Here at NerdCo we are subject to a perpetual onslaught of internal marketing. Lavish banners and posters appear in the night, urging us to check out this or that new Awesome Product TM; glossy fliers are thrust into our thousands of mailboxes. I've never understood this because nine times out of ten, I have been looking at/working on Awesome Product TM all damn day and I KNOW ALREADY, NerdCo! Just who are they trying to reach?
Anyway. New poster in the hall this week, touting something or other, with the bold, bright headline: More Firepower. Less Firedrills.
No, no, NO! Wrong! Bad! FEWER. "Less" goes with numbered items, "fewer" with abstract quantities. (Yes, I am one of those people who wigs out in the grammatically incorrect express checkout lane.) Perhaps they could have spent less dollars on posters, and tapped one of the HUNDREDS of NerdCo editors before this thing rolled off the presses, maybe?
So. Grumpy, I marched back out there with my red pen to correct/vandalize corporate property. Imagine my delight to find that someone else had beaten me to the punch! Editors--we are everywhere, bub, look out.
1. Vanity plate, MANOWAR. Being a progressive pacifist pinko, I probably would have just stuck to my initial thought--"Like, a giant jellyfish?"--and been on my way...but for the big clipped-to-the-window American flag also flying from the automobile. Then I was given to wonder. Man-o-war as in your car is an armed naval vessel? Man-o-war as in you're a veteran? Or...Man-o-war 'cause you just think war is...kind of awesome? There was some sort of pro-Dubya, God Bless the USA, bomb-Eye-Raq-now vibe hovering over the whole thing that unsettled me, war as a spectator sport. CNN, ESPN, quelle difference?
Though there were not any visible Bush stickers or magnetic ribbons. Perhaps he is just a proud patriot who also happens to be fond of the 80s metal band.
2. Safeway. They were piping in innocuous lite hits, as you do...but as I patrolled the aisles in search of my Fat Club-approved lean proteins and frozen blueberries, I gradually became aware that the song playing overhead was...the theme to the Mickey Mouse Club.
First, buh? That doesn't turn up on your average Time-Life compilation. If there was some sort of promotional tie-in going on, I missed it. Second? I'd never thought about it before, but that song consists primarily of CHILDREN YELLING. At ten o'clock in the freaking morning; what gives, Safeway?
3. Here at NerdCo we are subject to a perpetual onslaught of internal marketing. Lavish banners and posters appear in the night, urging us to check out this or that new Awesome Product TM; glossy fliers are thrust into our thousands of mailboxes. I've never understood this because nine times out of ten, I have been looking at/working on Awesome Product TM all damn day and I KNOW ALREADY, NerdCo! Just who are they trying to reach?
Anyway. New poster in the hall this week, touting something or other, with the bold, bright headline: More Firepower. Less Firedrills.
No, no, NO! Wrong! Bad! FEWER. "Less" goes with numbered items, "fewer" with abstract quantities. (Yes, I am one of those people who wigs out in the grammatically incorrect express checkout lane.) Perhaps they could have spent less dollars on posters, and tapped one of the HUNDREDS of NerdCo editors before this thing rolled off the presses, maybe?
So. Grumpy, I marched back out there with my red pen to correct/vandalize corporate property. Imagine my delight to find that someone else had beaten me to the punch! Editors--we are everywhere, bub, look out.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Reading between the lines
Just got e-mail at work announcing that the parking garage for my particular building at NerdCo is being repainted over the coming weekend: fresh stripes for the drivers of Hummers and other penile enhancements to callously disregard come Monday.
I liked the name of the company they've hired, though: Straight Line Striping. Apparently, Half-Assed Crooked Striping didn't underbid it nearly as much as you'd think.
I liked the name of the company they've hired, though: Straight Line Striping. Apparently, Half-Assed Crooked Striping didn't underbid it nearly as much as you'd think.
Spring
Yesterday was the Seattle Mariners' home opener. I'm third-generation in the Church of Baseball, and for over a decade the fam and I have observed Opening Day like a religious holiday, trucking down to the Safe (and the Kingdome before it) to slowly grow numb with cold (well, that's new to open-air ball in Seattle), savor the last of the hot dogs left over from last year, and oftener than not observe the M's lose.
Which they did, yesterday--but we were not in attendance. The openers are usually day games, scheduled at weird hours, and Mom couldn't make yesterday's 2:05 start all the way down from Mukilteo. We're going tonight instead, probably a wise choice because the sun is out, for a change.
My reputation precedes me, however. Yesterday at about 1:30, Boss burst into my office brandishing this year's M's schedule. "WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?" she fretted. I had to explain myself, and reassure her that I had not lost my faith. Heh. I'm loyal; they still have 161 chances to prove me wrong, this year.
Which they did, yesterday--but we were not in attendance. The openers are usually day games, scheduled at weird hours, and Mom couldn't make yesterday's 2:05 start all the way down from Mukilteo. We're going tonight instead, probably a wise choice because the sun is out, for a change.
My reputation precedes me, however. Yesterday at about 1:30, Boss burst into my office brandishing this year's M's schedule. "WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?" she fretted. I had to explain myself, and reassure her that I had not lost my faith. Heh. I'm loyal; they still have 161 chances to prove me wrong, this year.
Friday, March 24, 2006
The first rule of Fat Club
I've been debating with myself on whether to write about this at all. I've insisted before that this isn't a weight-loss blog, per se; rather, it's a blog where I alternately bitch about and make fun of the things that occasionally penetrate my usual inattention. A mixed-grill blog. Haha.
But. I have decided, after many months of soul-searching, to embark upon a very strenuous, medically supervised weight loss and management program, offered through my gym and, incredibly, co-sponsored by NerdCo and their insurance provider. They are paying the lion's share to help me get this shit under control once and for all, and for that I feel very much blessed, and privileged, and grateful. Also, if I fail to complete the program, I owe NerdCo Health Insurance $10 grand. Consider me incentified.
So. Since the NerdCo-brand Fat Club pretty much owns me from now until Christmas, I anticipate that it will by necessity come up in the blog from time to time over the next 32 weeks. Thus, if my new Nautilus regimen renders me too sore to dress myself, or if I end up eating printer cover sheets out of the recycling bin in a hysterical bid for carbs, ANY CARBS PLEASE BABY JESUS....well, Internets, you will be the first to know.
* * * * *
To enroll in Fat Club, you have to go through quite the battery of tests. Their offices in the gym convey this odd sort of louche, Dynasty Medical Center circa 1989 vibe: plush burgundy carpet, lots of brass and faux marble accents. It's a lot like providing Nordstrom's with a urine sample. The exam rooms are equally glamorous, and I had blood drawn while reclining on a vast chaise lounge upholstered in mauve vinyl. When I give blood at my Regular Doctor's, I sit in a plastic cafeteria chair with an arm chute bolted onto it like a torpedo chamber. I guess Fat Club atmosphere is what you get for the big bucks.
This week, I met with my assigned Fat Shrink. (She is not fat; she is there to counsel me into being less fat. She does, however, bear a striking resemblance to Rachel Dratch, so I fully expected her to bust out with something zany during the entire session. This was distracting.) Together we agreed that I was already getting quite a lot of therapy and so didn't need to talk Fat every single solitary week, and thank goodness.
I also had a fitness assessment on Wednesday. I was very anxious about it, largely because I did not know exactly what it would entail and so could speculate many different worst-case scenarios. What if I registered simply as "inert" on all their diagnostic tools? What if I, like, fell over, or shot off the end of the treadmill? Or tripped on it and abraded the flesh from my lower extremities, like Mike? (Sorry, Mike.)
"You should try and get some exercise beforehand, so your legs don't seize up," my father recommended. I am not sure how incapacitated by blubber my father thinks I am, but nonetheless this statement was not encouraging.
What if they made me jog with one of those oxygen mask-and-tube rigs strapped over my mouth?
"I think tests that sophisticated are really expensive," Boss informed me kindly. Boss is of course one of the healthiest, most active women on the planet and spent her Sunday trotting up 69 flights of stairs for charity; I imagine her fitness assessment would fall somewhere in the "can lift Kim over her head while dancing the can-can" category. Still, I amused and terrified myself in equal measure, imagining a NASA-caliber series of evaluations, culminating in the part where they strap you into the G-force simulator and spin you around, jowls a-flappin'. It's scientific!
It was, for good and ill, nothing like that. For the first half hour we filled out forms and reviewed the degree to which I was signing my life away. They took my measurements and my "Before!" pictures, at which I groaned. "Everybody hates this part the most," said my assessor cheerfully. Can't think why.
I was zapped with electrodes to determine my body-fat percentage, and made to blow into a tube to check my lung capacity. I walked on the treadmill to determine how long it took to elevate my heart rate to a certain point; the hardest part of this was trying to strap on the heart-rate monitor beneath my ample bosom.
I sat on the floor and reeeeaaaached for my toes while holding onto...a little stick on a string, that magically measured my flexibility. They also measured my upper-body strength by having me stand on a platform and curl a bicep bar tethered to it; this whole thing was wired somehow into a computer to record the results. I expected to be able to actually curl the bar; I hadn't realized that the tether was fixed and simply measured the force I exerted. It didn't move, and so I nearly did a back flip with the effort I put into that first pull. Luckily, I'd schlepped a 34-pound bag of cat litter to my car on Sunday, so I don't think my arm tone is entirely nonexistent.
Anyway. All my stats were duly noted and will be provided to my trainer and my nutritionist, both of whom I start seeing next week. At the end of the proceedings, the assessor handed me back my steaming Visa card and said, "Wait, I have one more thing to give you--your $4000 water bottle!"--a 28-ounce bike bottle emblazoned with the Fat Club logo, because yeah, you really want to wave that around. Ha ha ha ha ha.
In truth, I'm looking forward to getting freaking started already, though occasionally indulging in a pie-eyed, muttered round of whathaveIdonewhathaveIdonewhathaveIdone. We'll see how it feels next week, when I'm getting up at 6:00 a.m. for the expensive privilege of toiling under the command of a perky blonde. Energy! Woooooo!
But. I have decided, after many months of soul-searching, to embark upon a very strenuous, medically supervised weight loss and management program, offered through my gym and, incredibly, co-sponsored by NerdCo and their insurance provider. They are paying the lion's share to help me get this shit under control once and for all, and for that I feel very much blessed, and privileged, and grateful. Also, if I fail to complete the program, I owe NerdCo Health Insurance $10 grand. Consider me incentified.
So. Since the NerdCo-brand Fat Club pretty much owns me from now until Christmas, I anticipate that it will by necessity come up in the blog from time to time over the next 32 weeks. Thus, if my new Nautilus regimen renders me too sore to dress myself, or if I end up eating printer cover sheets out of the recycling bin in a hysterical bid for carbs, ANY CARBS PLEASE BABY JESUS....well, Internets, you will be the first to know.
* * * * *
To enroll in Fat Club, you have to go through quite the battery of tests. Their offices in the gym convey this odd sort of louche, Dynasty Medical Center circa 1989 vibe: plush burgundy carpet, lots of brass and faux marble accents. It's a lot like providing Nordstrom's with a urine sample. The exam rooms are equally glamorous, and I had blood drawn while reclining on a vast chaise lounge upholstered in mauve vinyl. When I give blood at my Regular Doctor's, I sit in a plastic cafeteria chair with an arm chute bolted onto it like a torpedo chamber. I guess Fat Club atmosphere is what you get for the big bucks.
This week, I met with my assigned Fat Shrink. (She is not fat; she is there to counsel me into being less fat. She does, however, bear a striking resemblance to Rachel Dratch, so I fully expected her to bust out with something zany during the entire session. This was distracting.) Together we agreed that I was already getting quite a lot of therapy and so didn't need to talk Fat every single solitary week, and thank goodness.
I also had a fitness assessment on Wednesday. I was very anxious about it, largely because I did not know exactly what it would entail and so could speculate many different worst-case scenarios. What if I registered simply as "inert" on all their diagnostic tools? What if I, like, fell over, or shot off the end of the treadmill? Or tripped on it and abraded the flesh from my lower extremities, like Mike? (Sorry, Mike.)
"You should try and get some exercise beforehand, so your legs don't seize up," my father recommended. I am not sure how incapacitated by blubber my father thinks I am, but nonetheless this statement was not encouraging.
What if they made me jog with one of those oxygen mask-and-tube rigs strapped over my mouth?
"I think tests that sophisticated are really expensive," Boss informed me kindly. Boss is of course one of the healthiest, most active women on the planet and spent her Sunday trotting up 69 flights of stairs for charity; I imagine her fitness assessment would fall somewhere in the "can lift Kim over her head while dancing the can-can" category. Still, I amused and terrified myself in equal measure, imagining a NASA-caliber series of evaluations, culminating in the part where they strap you into the G-force simulator and spin you around, jowls a-flappin'. It's scientific!
It was, for good and ill, nothing like that. For the first half hour we filled out forms and reviewed the degree to which I was signing my life away. They took my measurements and my "Before!" pictures, at which I groaned. "Everybody hates this part the most," said my assessor cheerfully. Can't think why.
I was zapped with electrodes to determine my body-fat percentage, and made to blow into a tube to check my lung capacity. I walked on the treadmill to determine how long it took to elevate my heart rate to a certain point; the hardest part of this was trying to strap on the heart-rate monitor beneath my ample bosom.
I sat on the floor and reeeeaaaached for my toes while holding onto...a little stick on a string, that magically measured my flexibility. They also measured my upper-body strength by having me stand on a platform and curl a bicep bar tethered to it; this whole thing was wired somehow into a computer to record the results. I expected to be able to actually curl the bar; I hadn't realized that the tether was fixed and simply measured the force I exerted. It didn't move, and so I nearly did a back flip with the effort I put into that first pull. Luckily, I'd schlepped a 34-pound bag of cat litter to my car on Sunday, so I don't think my arm tone is entirely nonexistent.
Anyway. All my stats were duly noted and will be provided to my trainer and my nutritionist, both of whom I start seeing next week. At the end of the proceedings, the assessor handed me back my steaming Visa card and said, "Wait, I have one more thing to give you--your $4000 water bottle!"--a 28-ounce bike bottle emblazoned with the Fat Club logo, because yeah, you really want to wave that around. Ha ha ha ha ha.
In truth, I'm looking forward to getting freaking started already, though occasionally indulging in a pie-eyed, muttered round of whathaveIdonewhathaveIdonewhathaveIdone. We'll see how it feels next week, when I'm getting up at 6:00 a.m. for the expensive privilege of toiling under the command of a perky blonde. Energy! Woooooo!
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Things that make you say AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
Dude. Dude. New item on the list of Things I Will Never Be Able to Stop Thinking About Ever: spontaneous globe luxation. Or, as Slate describes it, when YOUR EYEBALL POPS OUT WHEN YOUR EYELID IS PUSHED IN THE RIGHT WAY.
Oh sweet Jesus, I could totally have my eyeball come boinging out accidentally at any time. It was kind of Slate's Explainer to describe how to relocate my fucking eyeball back in my fucking skull, there at the end of the article, but at that point I was not paying much attention because of having leapt backwards over my desk chair, causing it to twirl emptily as I writhed on the floor holding my hands over my face JUST IN CASE.
Nighty night! Sweet dreams!
Oh sweet Jesus, I could totally have my eyeball come boinging out accidentally at any time. It was kind of Slate's Explainer to describe how to relocate my fucking eyeball back in my fucking skull, there at the end of the article, but at that point I was not paying much attention because of having leapt backwards over my desk chair, causing it to twirl emptily as I writhed on the floor holding my hands over my face JUST IN CASE.
Nighty night! Sweet dreams!
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
June Cleaver is dead
(Actually, after I composed that title, I had to run over to IMDB and check. I'm delighted to report that the lovely Barbara Billingsley, perfectly coiffed and fluent in jive, is very much alive and well, and was working as recently as 2003, bless her heart. Jus' hang loose, blood!)
My mom is a capable but largely indifferent cook. I mean no disrespect; she kept us adequately fed and everything, but Sis and I have no explanation for our own competitive culinary excesses and kitchen gadgetry...it's some genetic quirk that may have skipped multiple generations, we think. Mom was given detention in junior high for throwing lemons around like softballs in Home Ec, so maybe she missed something that day? At any rate, she was fun, but not at all a cake-baking sort of mom...more the "smuggle contraband candy into the movies" kind of mom, which has its own merits.
This is a lengthy prelude to saying that I can remember my mother baking only two cakes in my entire lifetime. One was for my twelfth birthday: a round layer cake frosted to resemble a giant hamburger, with real sesame seeds sprinkled over the top "bun." I had begged and pleaded and cajoled for this cake, which I'd found in a kids' cookbook, and I'm not sure what aspect of my whining finally propelled Mom to forgo the Albertson's bakery and approach the oven. She entered the kitchen with the grim focus of a Los Alamos physicist; I wasn't invited to participate in the endeavor, girlish bake-bonding be damned. But at the appointed birthday hour she emerged dazed but triumphant, burger cake in hand. She could, it seems, follow an existing template. I was ecstatic, as this was the coolest preteen hipster cake I could imagine. For a brief afternoon, I ruled the sixth grade.
Five or six years ago, Mom endeavored to bake a lemon cake for Sis's birthday. I think there were intimations that she could not do this, and she took umbrage. Over the years, Mom's limited-to-begin-with selection of decent cookware had continued to deteriorate, but the fact that she possessed one round and one square cake pan did not deter her. Maybe I should mention here that in her spare time, Mom is a collage artist? So. Sis received a square bottom layer of cake, with a vaguely starburst-y bunch of irregular cake cutouts arranged on top. Mom had covered this all with a Jackson Pollock motif of different-colored icings, some of which contained alcohol. "Is this the cake from MacArthur Park?" I asked, which made Mom mad. (You can tell when she is mad, because she says "I'm not mad!!" and smiles very very hard.) Anyway, the cake was delicious, if terrifying in appearance.
Last Saturday, we celebrated Sis's 33rd birthday with a plethora of curries at Bombay Grill. I don't know what prompted Mom to attempt another cake...but several hours before the meal, she called me in a state of some agitation.
It was quite the litany of woes. Again armed with a single round cake pan, she'd elected to pour the boxed mix into a sheet pan rather than baking three separate layers in shifts. The oven in her new house is somewhat overzealous, and so the edges and bottom of the resulting cake were...kind of charred. Mom decided to turn it out onto a cutting board, trim off the offending blackened bits, and then cut it down the middle and plop one half atop the other: layers! Sadly, the cake was not as architecturally sound as she had hoped. Increasingly frantic applications of cream-cheese frosting to spackle it all together were, likewise, temporary solutions at best. Martha should avert her eyes here, because Mom is not so much having the revolving cake pedestal, or the offset spatula, or the skillful crumb-coating. At some point in the decorative process, her frustration got the best of her.
Here is the cake Mom presented to Sis, to honor her birth:
Note the shoring up of the foundation, here (and that Mom had run out of the cream-cheese frosting at this point). It appears to be proceeding apace with the NOLA levee reconstruction as performed by the Army Corps of Engineers:
I wish I had photos of us all completely falling out in the kitchen. Alas, these were taken once we'd had time to calm down and catch our breath. We were too curry-stuffed to partake, but Sis brought the cake to her office the next day and it was a smashing success.
"As God is my witness, I am never baking a fucking cake again. I want you all to hear me," Mom announced formally over this production. Which in my mind is a real shame, actually. I am closer to 40 than 30...I kind of want all of my birthday cakes to make this same rousing declaration, for the forseeable future.
My mom is a capable but largely indifferent cook. I mean no disrespect; she kept us adequately fed and everything, but Sis and I have no explanation for our own competitive culinary excesses and kitchen gadgetry...it's some genetic quirk that may have skipped multiple generations, we think. Mom was given detention in junior high for throwing lemons around like softballs in Home Ec, so maybe she missed something that day? At any rate, she was fun, but not at all a cake-baking sort of mom...more the "smuggle contraband candy into the movies" kind of mom, which has its own merits.
This is a lengthy prelude to saying that I can remember my mother baking only two cakes in my entire lifetime. One was for my twelfth birthday: a round layer cake frosted to resemble a giant hamburger, with real sesame seeds sprinkled over the top "bun." I had begged and pleaded and cajoled for this cake, which I'd found in a kids' cookbook, and I'm not sure what aspect of my whining finally propelled Mom to forgo the Albertson's bakery and approach the oven. She entered the kitchen with the grim focus of a Los Alamos physicist; I wasn't invited to participate in the endeavor, girlish bake-bonding be damned. But at the appointed birthday hour she emerged dazed but triumphant, burger cake in hand. She could, it seems, follow an existing template. I was ecstatic, as this was the coolest preteen hipster cake I could imagine. For a brief afternoon, I ruled the sixth grade.
Five or six years ago, Mom endeavored to bake a lemon cake for Sis's birthday. I think there were intimations that she could not do this, and she took umbrage. Over the years, Mom's limited-to-begin-with selection of decent cookware had continued to deteriorate, but the fact that she possessed one round and one square cake pan did not deter her. Maybe I should mention here that in her spare time, Mom is a collage artist? So. Sis received a square bottom layer of cake, with a vaguely starburst-y bunch of irregular cake cutouts arranged on top. Mom had covered this all with a Jackson Pollock motif of different-colored icings, some of which contained alcohol. "Is this the cake from MacArthur Park?" I asked, which made Mom mad. (You can tell when she is mad, because she says "I'm not mad!!" and smiles very very hard.) Anyway, the cake was delicious, if terrifying in appearance.
Last Saturday, we celebrated Sis's 33rd birthday with a plethora of curries at Bombay Grill. I don't know what prompted Mom to attempt another cake...but several hours before the meal, she called me in a state of some agitation.
It was quite the litany of woes. Again armed with a single round cake pan, she'd elected to pour the boxed mix into a sheet pan rather than baking three separate layers in shifts. The oven in her new house is somewhat overzealous, and so the edges and bottom of the resulting cake were...kind of charred. Mom decided to turn it out onto a cutting board, trim off the offending blackened bits, and then cut it down the middle and plop one half atop the other: layers! Sadly, the cake was not as architecturally sound as she had hoped. Increasingly frantic applications of cream-cheese frosting to spackle it all together were, likewise, temporary solutions at best. Martha should avert her eyes here, because Mom is not so much having the revolving cake pedestal, or the offset spatula, or the skillful crumb-coating. At some point in the decorative process, her frustration got the best of her.
Here is the cake Mom presented to Sis, to honor her birth:
Note the shoring up of the foundation, here (and that Mom had run out of the cream-cheese frosting at this point). It appears to be proceeding apace with the NOLA levee reconstruction as performed by the Army Corps of Engineers:
I wish I had photos of us all completely falling out in the kitchen. Alas, these were taken once we'd had time to calm down and catch our breath. We were too curry-stuffed to partake, but Sis brought the cake to her office the next day and it was a smashing success.
"As God is my witness, I am never baking a fucking cake again. I want you all to hear me," Mom announced formally over this production. Which in my mind is a real shame, actually. I am closer to 40 than 30...I kind of want all of my birthday cakes to make this same rousing declaration, for the forseeable future.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
An open letter
...to the person who parked next to me yesterday:
Hey! Hi! So, remember how you parked your expensive German automobile with wacky disregard for the pretty white lines painted on the ground to indicate regular, ample automobile spaces for all? So that I had to shimmy into my vehicle through an improbable six-inch gap, giving myself a free mammomgram in the process and pinching a nerve in my shoulder such that three fingers on my left hand are still a little tingly? Yeah, that! Well, I might have opened the door of my 10-year-old Korean crap car very vigorously into the door of your car. Two or three more times. You know, just to see that everything was working properly, what with the neurological damage and the mashed boob and all. Sorry about that. Except, completely and totally not, dickweed.
Hey! Hi! So, remember how you parked your expensive German automobile with wacky disregard for the pretty white lines painted on the ground to indicate regular, ample automobile spaces for all? So that I had to shimmy into my vehicle through an improbable six-inch gap, giving myself a free mammomgram in the process and pinching a nerve in my shoulder such that three fingers on my left hand are still a little tingly? Yeah, that! Well, I might have opened the door of my 10-year-old Korean crap car very vigorously into the door of your car. Two or three more times. You know, just to see that everything was working properly, what with the neurological damage and the mashed boob and all. Sorry about that. Except, completely and totally not, dickweed.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Nothing says "I love you" like unbridled panic in the parking lot
Spotted during this morning's coffee stop:
1) Wild-eyed man exiting Safeway with dozen red roses in cellophane.
2) Wild-eyed dude in skater-boy knit cap, randomly picking up chocolates and teddy bears and coffee tumblers in the adjacent Starbucks and examining each with grave uncertainty. What does she want, man? WHAT?
Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. For some reason I'm decidedly cheerful today; I've bought my own truffles and am wearing socks with hearts on them. Singularity be damned!
1) Wild-eyed man exiting Safeway with dozen red roses in cellophane.
2) Wild-eyed dude in skater-boy knit cap, randomly picking up chocolates and teddy bears and coffee tumblers in the adjacent Starbucks and examining each with grave uncertainty. What does she want, man? WHAT?
Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. For some reason I'm decidedly cheerful today; I've bought my own truffles and am wearing socks with hearts on them. Singularity be damned!
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Meme me me ME me me meeeee....
It's so peculiar for Mike to tag someone with a meme, I sort of feel obliged/compelled. Mike, you are putting a lot of pressure on me for content this week, man.
Anyway, yes. All in fun; if you choose not to play, ignore me like a credit offer from the First Bank of ScamFraudia.
Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot.
1) Haligweorc
2) King Alfred
3) polyglot conspiracy
4) mike's web log
5) pagooey
Next select five people to annoy. Uh, to tag. Tag!
1) Alyssa
2) David
3) Michelle
4) Brooke
5) Erin
What were you doing ten years ago?
I was nearly a year into my first grown-up, career-type job, writing software training manuals for a small local company. I made $24,000 a year and baby, I. Was. Rich! At the time it seemed extraordinary; in hindsight it was basically 11th grade, with a salary. Today I have to watch "The Office" between my fingers because it's just too real. I was living with my then-boyfriend in a crappy apartment with a severe mildew problem. In rainy season. We scrubbed the walls with bleach on a weekly basis, to no avail. I blame that shithole for the breakup, actually!
What were you doing one year ago?
Preparing to embark on a long-awaited trip to NYC, to visit my college mentor and see Christo's installation of "The Gates" in Central Park. Gorgeous and fun, until I contracted the Bird Flu. Beyond that, my blog archives suggest that I was doing mostly the same things: bitching about Valentine's Day, sustaining housework injuries, and failing to update with any regularity.
Five snacks you enjoy:
1) Tortilla chips--just plain, not Cool Ranch Margarita Blast!! or some shit
2) Toast
3) Those little Laughing Cow wedges of cheese
4) Potstickers
5) Chocolate and peanut-butter chips, the kind for baking, straight out of the bag (hides face in shame)
Five songs you know the words to:
Dude, I know TOO MANY SONGS. It falls somewhere between "curse" and "talent;" on my deathbed, I won't remember my children's names but will be able to bust out "Copacabana," "Embraceable You," or the entire Beatles catalogue.
Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1) Take care of my loved ones, first.
2) Supplement my humble abode with an apartment each in Manhattan and Paris.
3) Endow...oh, something, at my alma mater. Pour money into their scholarship fund, without which I would not have enjoyed the privilege.
4) Help these guys.
5) And these, too.
Five bad habits:
1) Saying "I could do that" instead of a plain yes or no, when invited to or offered something. It's verbal hedging, me trying to avoid actual decision-making. Michelle called me out on this; I'm still working on it.
2) Binge shopping. I can't buy a lone CD, a single book.
3) Deferred maintenance. I dawdle when faced with doctors, dentists, or mechanics.
4) Free candy? Don't mind if I do!
5) Unresponsive to most of the 5394 items currently in my e-mail inbox.
Five things you enjoy doing:
1) Reading.
2) Cooking; I'm powerless in the thrall of a new kitchen implement.
3) Lolling around in the tub with various girly bubble products, my pink inflatable pillow, and a couple water-wrinkled magazines.
4) Cat naps, accompanied by cats.
5) Being outside, near water, on a bright blustery day.
Five things you would never wear again:
1) Miniskirts. Stacey and Clinton forbid it!
2) Stirrup pants.
3) God, I don't know. I came of age in the 80s; terrible things happened. Neon-colored garments? knickers? pastel overalls? green mascara? patterned shoelaces as hair ornaments? I think I can say with certainty that none of these will appear on my person again.
4) Okay, one more: an extremely...frivolous, itchy, and...complex...foundation garment I picked up at Victoria's Secret as a college student. (Look away, important business colleagues! Skip to the next item!) I needed an engineering degree to put the damn thing on. What do you do with such a thing, outgrown, anyway? I've never had the nerve to toss it into the Goodwill bag, but...no matter how hard I work at losing weight and improving my fitness, ain't no way I'm ever gonna be 21 again. The eliptical trainer does not, to my knowledge, have a "Time Travel" feature.
Five favorite toys:
1) TiVo.
2) Food processor.
3) Le Creuset silicone spatula. I cannot wreck it!
4) My new Mr. Clean Magical Bathroom Wand thingie. Incredibly awesome for a short lady, plus no impaling myself on the shower door track trying to reach a far corner.
5) Dishwasher. My beloved!
Enough about me. What do you think of me?
Anyway, yes. All in fun; if you choose not to play, ignore me like a credit offer from the First Bank of ScamFraudia.
Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot.
1) Haligweorc
2) King Alfred
3) polyglot conspiracy
4) mike's web log
5) pagooey
Next select five people to annoy. Uh, to tag. Tag!
1) Alyssa
2) David
3) Michelle
4) Brooke
5) Erin
What were you doing ten years ago?
I was nearly a year into my first grown-up, career-type job, writing software training manuals for a small local company. I made $24,000 a year and baby, I. Was. Rich! At the time it seemed extraordinary; in hindsight it was basically 11th grade, with a salary. Today I have to watch "The Office" between my fingers because it's just too real. I was living with my then-boyfriend in a crappy apartment with a severe mildew problem. In rainy season. We scrubbed the walls with bleach on a weekly basis, to no avail. I blame that shithole for the breakup, actually!
What were you doing one year ago?
Preparing to embark on a long-awaited trip to NYC, to visit my college mentor and see Christo's installation of "The Gates" in Central Park. Gorgeous and fun, until I contracted the Bird Flu. Beyond that, my blog archives suggest that I was doing mostly the same things: bitching about Valentine's Day, sustaining housework injuries, and failing to update with any regularity.
Five snacks you enjoy:
1) Tortilla chips--just plain, not Cool Ranch Margarita Blast!! or some shit
2) Toast
3) Those little Laughing Cow wedges of cheese
4) Potstickers
5) Chocolate and peanut-butter chips, the kind for baking, straight out of the bag (hides face in shame)
Five songs you know the words to:
Dude, I know TOO MANY SONGS. It falls somewhere between "curse" and "talent;" on my deathbed, I won't remember my children's names but will be able to bust out "Copacabana," "Embraceable You," or the entire Beatles catalogue.
Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1) Take care of my loved ones, first.
2) Supplement my humble abode with an apartment each in Manhattan and Paris.
3) Endow...oh, something, at my alma mater. Pour money into their scholarship fund, without which I would not have enjoyed the privilege.
4) Help these guys.
5) And these, too.
Five bad habits:
1) Saying "I could do that" instead of a plain yes or no, when invited to or offered something. It's verbal hedging, me trying to avoid actual decision-making. Michelle called me out on this; I'm still working on it.
2) Binge shopping. I can't buy a lone CD, a single book.
3) Deferred maintenance. I dawdle when faced with doctors, dentists, or mechanics.
4) Free candy? Don't mind if I do!
5) Unresponsive to most of the 5394 items currently in my e-mail inbox.
Five things you enjoy doing:
1) Reading.
2) Cooking; I'm powerless in the thrall of a new kitchen implement.
3) Lolling around in the tub with various girly bubble products, my pink inflatable pillow, and a couple water-wrinkled magazines.
4) Cat naps, accompanied by cats.
5) Being outside, near water, on a bright blustery day.
Five things you would never wear again:
1) Miniskirts. Stacey and Clinton forbid it!
2) Stirrup pants.
3) God, I don't know. I came of age in the 80s; terrible things happened. Neon-colored garments? knickers? pastel overalls? green mascara? patterned shoelaces as hair ornaments? I think I can say with certainty that none of these will appear on my person again.
4) Okay, one more: an extremely...frivolous, itchy, and...complex...foundation garment I picked up at Victoria's Secret as a college student. (Look away, important business colleagues! Skip to the next item!) I needed an engineering degree to put the damn thing on. What do you do with such a thing, outgrown, anyway? I've never had the nerve to toss it into the Goodwill bag, but...no matter how hard I work at losing weight and improving my fitness, ain't no way I'm ever gonna be 21 again. The eliptical trainer does not, to my knowledge, have a "Time Travel" feature.
Five favorite toys:
1) TiVo.
2) Food processor.
3) Le Creuset silicone spatula. I cannot wreck it!
4) My new Mr. Clean Magical Bathroom Wand thingie. Incredibly awesome for a short lady, plus no impaling myself on the shower door track trying to reach a far corner.
5) Dishwasher. My beloved!
Enough about me. What do you think of me?
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Walk it like a daaawwwwg
Mike has written before about his annual pilgrimage with our buddy Roger to a Garfield High School basketball game. Mike's kids were/are Bulldogs; Roger played for West Seattle High back in the day. As another GHS alum, this year I begged to go along, and they agreed to accomodate me provided I participate in the other aspect of the ritual, dinner at Ezell's across the street. This was further incentive, not a deterrent.
For reasons I can't now explain, I'd never attended a high-school basketball game, my own or any other, in my life. During my Garfield years we had something of a hoops dynasty going; both boys and girls won state titles in 1987. Mysteriously, though, I chose to attend only football games, at the grim, crumbling Memorial Stadium. Garfield did and does suck at football; I vividly recall trudging disconsolately to the car in this or that third quarter and hearing the horn and loudspeaker blare from the distant stadium: "Touchdown, Opponent's Name Here."
So. It had been close to 20 years since I'd been inside the GHS gym, scheduled to be demolished and replaced this summer: might as well get to it. We wolfed our chicken and double orders of mashed potatoes (hi, Holly!) outside, steam curling off our greasy fingers, and headed in. Prior to the excursion, I'd located my 1985 student ID card, but did not quite have the nerve to submit it for a discount. Garfield was once again playing Redmond, illustrating a race and class divide that Mike's noted in his previous entries on the topic. Mike, Roger, and I all happen to be honkies; "Redmond to the left," the ticket seller told us genially. Ouch. We climbed the bleachers on the Garfield side.
"What are you thinking?" Mike asked as we settled in.
"It is SO SMALL," I blurted. "I know everyone says that, but DAMN." I couldn't help myself. When I was 15 that gym was vast, the stands packed with hundreds of kids and the floor spacious enough for balloons and cheerleaders and the entire homecoming court on an elevated platform wrapped in crepe paper. The hell?
I couldn't get over the intimacy: kids milling in the stands, athletes whipping the b-ball around mere feet away. Since high school I've only been to professional sporting events in immense tax-loophole venues; it felt like those high-school players were going to fall into my lap at any moment. (At one point they almost did, lunging out of bounds and nearly flattening a cheerleader who let loose a magnificent scream but, admirably, held her ground.) Across the room I noticed the guidelines painted above the bleachers: ADULTS, VISITORS. I'd forgotten that: that grownups were encouraged to self-segregate into their own incomprehensible, utterly boring world. We sat on the GARFIELD STUDENTS side nonetheless.
I spent the bulk of the evening in a Things-Have-Changed reverie, the fried chicken triggering Proustian memories that conflicted with the scene below:
* The uniforms. Both boys and girls hitched up their huge voluminous shorts between every play. Likewise, no one seemed to be sporting the Jheri Curl made legendary by the star player of my generation, a kid named Kelly who was immortalized on a mural above the attendance office. (Is that still there, I wonder?)
* The (small, teeny) gym. It had a reasonably fresh coat of paint, with a cartoon bulldog logo emblazoned over the more sober G that had been shellacked onto the center court in my day.
* The cheerleaders. Their chants were largely incomprehensible, aside from a souped-up version of "Rock Steady" I was able to pick out. They did not do the "Bulldogs...are FRESH!" hip-thrusting number I most vividly recalled. Also, their pom-poms were the new little puffy kind, not the long, shaggy, swishy ones I secretly envied in the darkest corner of my teenage heart.
* My ass. I have considerably more padding than I did in my student days, but MY GOD I AM CRIPPLED after a couple hours on those hard, hard bleachers. Where is my lumbar cushion? Where is my memory foam? My lower back STILL hurts, man.
* The phones. My god, the phones! Kids in the stands called each other or snapped grainy photos; cheerleaders teleconferenced between quarters. In my day, you folded a note to the size of a pea, passed it down the row and prayed it would not be wrongly intercepted. Uphill! Both ways! In the snow! No shoes!
Anyway. I think what surprised me the most was...the kid-ness of the kids. When I was 15, I was deeply intimidated by most of my classmates, the cheerleaders not excepted. Hell, our cheerleaders were TOUGH; they could grunt out a cheer and beat your ass with a free hand. Scary. But these kids in purple pleated skirts in front of me were just...kids. The girl center whose every pass would take your head off if you weren't paying attention; the boy who took an elbow to the face and rolled on the floor, the team doctor sprinting to his side; everyone around us slouching and gossiping, getting called down out of the stands for excessive horseplay, cheering and rousing themselves for a chorus of "I'm So Glad," all of them...just kids.
That's the most elusive memory, I told Roger, leaving: what it felt like when everything MATTERED. It all mattered, so much! Who you saw, who you sat by, would you win, all of it thrilling and devastating and excruciatingly significant. The ADULTS were over there in their own section of the bleachers like a distant planet, and by god, EVERYTHING MATTERED.
We! Are! Together We Are! Together We Are the Mighty Bulldogs!
Okay, yeah. Dork. Point taken.
For reasons I can't now explain, I'd never attended a high-school basketball game, my own or any other, in my life. During my Garfield years we had something of a hoops dynasty going; both boys and girls won state titles in 1987. Mysteriously, though, I chose to attend only football games, at the grim, crumbling Memorial Stadium. Garfield did and does suck at football; I vividly recall trudging disconsolately to the car in this or that third quarter and hearing the horn and loudspeaker blare from the distant stadium: "Touchdown, Opponent's Name Here."
So. It had been close to 20 years since I'd been inside the GHS gym, scheduled to be demolished and replaced this summer: might as well get to it. We wolfed our chicken and double orders of mashed potatoes (hi, Holly!) outside, steam curling off our greasy fingers, and headed in. Prior to the excursion, I'd located my 1985 student ID card, but did not quite have the nerve to submit it for a discount. Garfield was once again playing Redmond, illustrating a race and class divide that Mike's noted in his previous entries on the topic. Mike, Roger, and I all happen to be honkies; "Redmond to the left," the ticket seller told us genially. Ouch. We climbed the bleachers on the Garfield side.
"What are you thinking?" Mike asked as we settled in.
"It is SO SMALL," I blurted. "I know everyone says that, but DAMN." I couldn't help myself. When I was 15 that gym was vast, the stands packed with hundreds of kids and the floor spacious enough for balloons and cheerleaders and the entire homecoming court on an elevated platform wrapped in crepe paper. The hell?
I couldn't get over the intimacy: kids milling in the stands, athletes whipping the b-ball around mere feet away. Since high school I've only been to professional sporting events in immense tax-loophole venues; it felt like those high-school players were going to fall into my lap at any moment. (At one point they almost did, lunging out of bounds and nearly flattening a cheerleader who let loose a magnificent scream but, admirably, held her ground.) Across the room I noticed the guidelines painted above the bleachers: ADULTS, VISITORS. I'd forgotten that: that grownups were encouraged to self-segregate into their own incomprehensible, utterly boring world. We sat on the GARFIELD STUDENTS side nonetheless.
I spent the bulk of the evening in a Things-Have-Changed reverie, the fried chicken triggering Proustian memories that conflicted with the scene below:
* The uniforms. Both boys and girls hitched up their huge voluminous shorts between every play. Likewise, no one seemed to be sporting the Jheri Curl made legendary by the star player of my generation, a kid named Kelly who was immortalized on a mural above the attendance office. (Is that still there, I wonder?)
* The (small, teeny) gym. It had a reasonably fresh coat of paint, with a cartoon bulldog logo emblazoned over the more sober G that had been shellacked onto the center court in my day.
* The cheerleaders. Their chants were largely incomprehensible, aside from a souped-up version of "Rock Steady" I was able to pick out. They did not do the "Bulldogs...are FRESH!" hip-thrusting number I most vividly recalled. Also, their pom-poms were the new little puffy kind, not the long, shaggy, swishy ones I secretly envied in the darkest corner of my teenage heart.
* My ass. I have considerably more padding than I did in my student days, but MY GOD I AM CRIPPLED after a couple hours on those hard, hard bleachers. Where is my lumbar cushion? Where is my memory foam? My lower back STILL hurts, man.
* The phones. My god, the phones! Kids in the stands called each other or snapped grainy photos; cheerleaders teleconferenced between quarters. In my day, you folded a note to the size of a pea, passed it down the row and prayed it would not be wrongly intercepted. Uphill! Both ways! In the snow! No shoes!
Anyway. I think what surprised me the most was...the kid-ness of the kids. When I was 15, I was deeply intimidated by most of my classmates, the cheerleaders not excepted. Hell, our cheerleaders were TOUGH; they could grunt out a cheer and beat your ass with a free hand. Scary. But these kids in purple pleated skirts in front of me were just...kids. The girl center whose every pass would take your head off if you weren't paying attention; the boy who took an elbow to the face and rolled on the floor, the team doctor sprinting to his side; everyone around us slouching and gossiping, getting called down out of the stands for excessive horseplay, cheering and rousing themselves for a chorus of "I'm So Glad," all of them...just kids.
That's the most elusive memory, I told Roger, leaving: what it felt like when everything MATTERED. It all mattered, so much! Who you saw, who you sat by, would you win, all of it thrilling and devastating and excruciatingly significant. The ADULTS were over there in their own section of the bleachers like a distant planet, and by god, EVERYTHING MATTERED.
We! Are! Together We Are! Together We Are the Mighty Bulldogs!
Okay, yeah. Dork. Point taken.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Losers
In the break room this morning: a tray of sad, blue-iced, leftover cupcakes, each inscribed with a crookedly frosted "S" for Seahawks.
* * * * *
On another note, whose large white granny panties did Mick Jagger politely flick back off the stage during the halftime show? Honey, it's the Rolling Stones; the very least you could do is buy a nice pair, special.
* * * * *
On another note, whose large white granny panties did Mick Jagger politely flick back off the stage during the halftime show? Honey, it's the Rolling Stones; the very least you could do is buy a nice pair, special.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
I have no life
Seriously. To wit: my cable has been out for over 24 hours now, and I am slightly mortified by how this has made me fret and fidget in agony as if I've suffered an amputation. I missed Skating with Has-Beens! I missed 24! How will I catch up? Although: probably Jack punched out some bad guys, and CTU thought they had everything under control...and then they didn't! Dun dun DUN!
I bet the local cable guys are crapping their pants hoping to get this resolved by Sunday, though, with the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. If Seattle t.v. goes down for that, Comcast will have to be on the lookout for snipers, I expect.
I bet the local cable guys are crapping their pants hoping to get this resolved by Sunday, though, with the Seahawks in the Super Bowl. If Seattle t.v. goes down for that, Comcast will have to be on the lookout for snipers, I expect.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
There's oversharing, and then there's...this
I have been so remiss in my posting, neglecting any sort of holiday letter or 2005 recap for y'all. But that's okay, because possibly the most astonishing Holiday Letter EVER was forwarded to me this year. I won't tell by whom; I don't want to incriminate anyone. Suffice to say, the sender is elderly but...vigorous. He sent a single-spaced, legal-size, double-sided letter to a vast cavalcade of friends and family, and buried in its exhaustive recounting was this paragraph:
May we all have a joyful and prosperous 2006, free of troubles up to and including ass shingles, my friends. Praises Be!
Also, somebody needs a blog, methinks.
On Tuesday of Holy Week, March 22, my urination began to turn off. The urologist found no reason for the symptom. In the early morning of Easter Monday at the hospital ER the doctor diagnosed me as having a case of shingles in the genital and anus area of my body, which turned out to be the cause of my urine failure. I had a bag and went through self urination for about 10 weeks before I gained full relief. It was a debilitating and frustrating time. But I recovered without long term problems. Thanks be to God!
May we all have a joyful and prosperous 2006, free of troubles up to and including ass shingles, my friends. Praises Be!
Also, somebody needs a blog, methinks.
Friday, December 16, 2005
Friday before Xmas at NerdCo
Writer: (agitated) I need a bottle opener! Do you have a bottle opener?
Editor: No, sorry.
Writer: What kind of an editor ARE you?
Editor: No, sorry.
Writer: What kind of an editor ARE you?
Thursday, December 15, 2005
So far out, I'm IN
When I was...oh, nine-ish...I got this Sew Perfect toy sewing machine for Christmas. It had a real needle and actually worked, in the sense that you could stitch two pieces of cloth together and they would stay affixed for a limited amount of time before unraveling. The set came with a couple snap-in thread cartridges and a handful of simple patterns; the only one I ever mastered was the Draw-String Bag: basically an open-ended fabric rectangle with a two-inch seam that you could run a ribbon or a piece of yarn through. A more-capable-seamstress friend of my grandmother's kindly gave me a big box of her fabric scraps, and I stitched up a whole bevy of those stupid Draw-String Bags. I should probably mention that they were all maybe six inches square, so we're not talking handy beach tote or even lunch sack here. But they matched my skill set--of sewing four relatively straight seams.
I also tried my hand at some doll clothes...but all of these garments were ponchos, a square with a hole in the middle. Occasionally a belt, if I was really feeling creative. When, two years ago, I made my own kitchen curtains out of cut-up IKEA tablecloths, on Michelle's machine, everybody asked me "Can you SEW?" Well, girls, I can make A SQUARE. With a rod pocket, too--in essence, the classic Draw-String Bag writ large.
This is a long-winded way for me to get to my admission that I'm addicted to Project Runway again. First, I appreciate the fact that it's a reality show that tests its participants on a measurable skill--it's not just mazes and puzzles in the jungle, or random promotions of salad dressing/toothpaste/Donald Trump spring water. These people make stuff. And of course it helps that the designers are dramatic and dorky and occasionally batshit crazy...but really I'm mesmerized more by the skill itself than any participant histrionics.
I mean, these competitors can think and sketch and cut and pin fabric, and all of a sudden whip up fully three-dimensional garments, literally out of whole cloth/thin air, and then here comes an outfit down the runway on this or that freakishly stomping model. This ability is so foreign to my way of thinking that I'm entirely awestruck each time...astonished as if they'd brought out a dog riding a bicycle or playing the trumpet. My imagination simply does not work that way, and so every single ensemble strikes me as MIRACULOUS. How do they do that?!? So weird, and so cool.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
A message from Matlock
My mother's e-mail response to the gingerbread house photos, in its entirety:
A few too many...children?
Well if you look like you are ready to cook and eat children, I look like I've already had a few too many!! I look just like Andy Griffith on that dumb show where he is a lawyer! I could be his double on film!!! I appear to be in my 70's or 80's!! Today I feel like it too!! Oh well, it was fun anyway! M.
A few too many...children?
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