Sorry for the semi-coherent ramble. I'm airy and high on a Reese's Fastbreak and no lunch.

Things people have said about me:

"She's a real firecracker!"
"That girl - she's got moxie!"
"What a scamp!"
"She sure is a spitfire!"

Okay, I lied. Noone has ever said those things about me. Why not? Are they not true? I like to think so, but I'm probably deluded. Is it because of the obsolete vernacular? As a young girl my romantic fantasy was not about being a pretty princess (today's girls all dream of being one, if the press release on my desk is telling the truth) but being the feisty, slightly naughty gal who enchants a guy with her wit and her free-spirited heart. Of course now I'm grown up and sometimes the spitfire-ness is perceived as bitchiness, and the firecracker-osity has become more of an anger-management problem. Stupid fuckin' reality, with your men who are all flawed and shit, not having infinite patience like I do (oh, I do, really, sure I do. oh, fuck off) with other people's bad attitudes and grouchiness.

I just left some strong responses over on Up Yours about Dawn's commentary on the Wellstone memorial. She's angry about how partisan and political it was. I didn't see the memorial, but the entire thing could have been a Democrat-only campaign rally and it would have suited me fine. This was a celebration of Wellstone's life, and he was foremost a politician; a true liberal, one of the good ones. I usually don't enter heated political discussions because they get nowhere and produce nothing but frustration, but this time... The upcoming election has me very worried. If the republicans gain Congress then I predict tremendous misery for the country. Relaxed pollution controls, tax breaks for billionaires, blooming budget deficits, world war III... I'm sure whatever evil I can imagine, they're already planning something worse.

I taped a poster I printed from moveonpac.org to my car window. It says "Regime Change Begins at Home: VOTE!" Kind of useless in Mass., where John Kerry has no viable opponent (the only challenger on the ballot is a Libertarian), but I'm hoping the Ladies Who Lunch from Connecticut who come into my quaint town to do a little shopping will see it. And for those who live here, there are some juicy referendae to vote on. Or is it referendums? Whatever.

Last night our home was visited by:

Dracula
2 witches
2 Tiggers
a Red Sox player
a ballerina
3 cats
a skeleton
a werewolf
Spiderman
Spongebob Squarepants
a clump of teens, male and female, all dressed in evening gowns
a hippie
a very cute lion
assorted indistinct ghouls and witch-like people
2 Dalmatians
Harry Potter
and a cheerleader.

We almost ran out of candy (two bags - Kit-Kat and Reese's Fastbreak) but ended up with 5 pieces left. Whew. We went to the free Haunted House at Flywheel, which was hilarious. They had crammed all these scenes into their performance space - a crazy tea party with real finger sandwiches, a seance - all populated by Flywheel regulars like Helen and Steverino. My favorite part was the zombie disco; all of these 70's-dressed zombies are lying on the dance floor, but as "The Hustle" starts up they slowly start jerking to the beat until they end up on their feet, dancing to the funky music while staring menacingly at the audience. I couldn't stop laughing. That, and the extremely cute toddler in a lion costume, were the highlights of my Halloween.

So on Nov. 16th or so there's gonna be a sing-along version of the movie Hair playing in town (at the Academy). I am all over this, but I need to go with someone who won't make fun of me as I inevitably cry at the end of the film.

This is how the NYT explains scratching to its more "genteel" readership: "When a drumbeat on a vinyl record is scratched back and forth under a needle, it makes a sort of percussive swishing sound."

D.J. for Run-DMC Is Shot to Death in Queens What the fuck? Run-DMC are all old-school "with-a zip, zop, zippity-zip-zop, a bing-bang-zippity-do!" They weren't ganster rappers, yo. What the fuck happened?

I was inspired my Kitty Bukkake, and the fact that the pen on this 10-year-old scrap of paper is fading, to type in this recipe for y'all.

Butterscotch Brownies
1/4 cup shortening (butter, always butter)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt shortening in saucepan (pick a pan big enough to hold and stir all ingredients). Remove from heat and stir in sugar, egg, and vanilla. Add rest of ingredients. Spread in greased 8-inch square pan. Bake 25 minutes. Cut brownies while still warm.

Last night I helped A with her homework; refining an essay that compares issues raised in the Scarlet Letter to a current event. She chose an op/ed article about women getting the death penalty. She's in 10th grade, and the teacher had written a critique that said things like "You might want to talk about the paradox inherent in privilege, how it both provides and excludes" that A needed help understanding. No kidding. I didn't get comments like that until college. She only needed help with her closing paragraph, as she had already made her argument: that the punishment for Hester might have been death had she been a man, though it's because she was a woman that she was punished at all; and the public still sees women as incapable of true evil, and is uncomfortable putting them to death, yet the public also doesn't want to be sexist, so they do want to put women to death. Complicated stuff. I had to explain to her what a paradox was, and I got so into it I ended up just flat out writing a key sentence; something about how Chivalry both helps women and confines them. "See? That's a paradox! Doors being held open for you can be nice, but it also means that you're seen as too gentle to handle powerful jobs and shit like that! It's both good and bad combined in one thing! A paradox!"

Hmm. That's sort of how I felt about the season premiere of 24 last night. [warning: spoilers ahead.] On the one hand, I liked it being commercial-free, and on the other I had to sit through a minutes-long mega commercials for a car manufacturer I refuse to name, an ad so obnoxious that muting the sound wasn't enough to protect me from the crap, before the show began. On the one hand, I'm happy 24 is back on the air, and the first episode was exciting and intriguing, on the other... well I have some problems with it. The first series took a few episodes to build up to the truly unbelievable, far-fetched turn-of-events, and this time we get several of these in the first ep. (What are the chances Kim would end up nannying for a crazy gun-toting wife-beater? Why did Jack kill the witness? And how in the hell did Palmer get back to his office from his Oregon fishing trip in five minutes?) I didn't like the clumsy exposition but I understand why it's necessary and hope it's all done now. I'll definitely keep watching, mainly because I have a case of Keifer-love (and man did he look fine after shaving off that beard) and I like Palmer (yet another TV president who I wish was the real president). I just hope the show doesn't make a fool of me.

P and I came up with a good bumper sticker last night: "We lefties may be flakes, but at least we're not fucking evil like the Republicans." Yeah, that pretty much sums up my current political philosophy.

The second season of 24 starts tonight! I am looking forward to eating some Jell-O (which grosses out everyone else in the house, but it's a key comfort food for me) while watching Buffy and 24 tonight in my cozy living room.

My old childhood friend Fiamma has recently moved back east after studying chinese medicine in San Diego and I am happy about it. She had some interesting stuff to say about my strange illness:

In Chinese Medicine, simultaneous vomiting & diarrhea is called "sudden turmoil disorder." Seems appropriate. Without knowing more about the "event" and your medical history etc, it seems like the 2 main possibilities are some a)sort of buggish culprit (the source of which can be difficult to determine, being that there are so many things we put in our mouths over the course of an "incubation period," which can be 2-3 days); and b) an irritable bowel type condition. Although a) can't really be ruled out, the fact that this has happened before suggests b). I don't know how much you know about IBS (s=syndrome), but the good thing is that there's no really horrible things going physically wrong with your parts, because it's a "functional" problem rather than "organic." Although the causes are speculative, it seems to me that it indicates a more sensitive nervous system, and various triggers can overstimulate it & cause it to go haywire. Hormones are directly involved in stumulating the nervous system (which controls your bowels & everything else), stress hormones in particular. That is why stress can be a trigger for an IBS "event." It doesn't mean that the condition is psychological, by
the way. The hormones & chemical changes are very real. So is the shit & vomit! (Other triggers include certain foods that are too difficult to digest & irritate the bowels). But Irritable Bowel Disease involves intestinal pathological changes that are more of a concern than IBS b/c the degenerative changes can oviously get worse. You do have the option of getting yourself checked out again to rule out those pathological changes (especially if your last test was inconclusive). At that point, assuming they don't find anything, IBS would be a likely diagnosis. Especially if you tend to have minor GI unpleasantness semi-regularly (tummy aches or something of that nature). These things tend to be congenital.

me again: I've thought for a long time that I have a mild case of IBS, and from what I've read online I don't have IBD (which is much nastier). I'd much rather have something cureable so I can be rid of it. Sigh. I did call my doc finally; I'm waiting for him to call me back, if he ever does.

I had a horrible GI "event" yesterday afternoon. I'll spare you the play-by-play but it involved intestinal cramps, diarrhea, and vomiting, simultaneously at a few moments. This was not brought on by anything I can figure; all the food I ate yesterday was normal stuff I've eaten many times before. The episode was almost exactly the same as the infamous Thanksgiving 2001 pass-out, which kicked off months of mysterious stomach pains culminating in an MRI of my intestines, a test that I hadn't prepared for properly (I would've skipped the apple juice I drank pre-test if the nurse had warned me about having to choke down a couple of liters of barium) so the results were a bit inconclusive. They did tell me I didn't seem to have any massive tumors, which was nice. My personal-care doctor was very sympathetic and gave me multiple options but he never figured out exactly what caused it.

Whatever happened yesterday and last Thanksgiving was so violent, painful, and horrible that I will do whatever it takes for it to never happen again. I am supposed to call my doctor and let him know "it's happened again" but I feel dumb about doing it. "Hi, I'm just calling to leave a message for my doctor: it's happened again. What? No, I feel okay now. Just wanted to let him know." Any words of comfort or advice is very welcome.

Black People Love Us! This cracks me up. (My favorite part is the One Love pictures.)

A related note: my college had a group called "White Students Against Racism." I was always sort of conflicted about it; on one hand, I guess it was good to have a place where you could talk about facing your internalized racism, but on the other hand, um ... your group about fighting racism excludes minorities! I think most of the people in the group grew up in very white, homogenous places and they just wanted to learn how to be comfortable around black people. I always felt a little sad (and, to be honest, superior to) the group members.

my old site o' fun Holy crap, my old abandoned website is still up! I haven't updated this in at least 3 ior 4 years. Take a look if you'd like. The Runt story is the best part. I dropped my javanet/RCN account over a year ago so RCN must just be very lazy.

I'm all edgy and shit, bouncing up and down in my chair. I just want to leave the office. It's a combo of boredom and caffeine and sugar. I had a plan for a few hours earlier to drive to NJ after work tonight and catch a friend's car to the demonstration down in D.C., departure time from NJ: 6:30 a.m. But now I think I don't have it in me. I have many projects I need to begin, such as altering an old bridesmaid's dress to make it useable (huge puffy sleeves will be removed) and starting an art project (secret!) for my friends' wedding gift (very soon!). Plus I'm fuckin' tired. Plus the house will be overrun with teen girls this weekend, with T having two friends over for the whole weekend and A having another two over tonight, and I kind of want to observe them. They fascinate me. I was so much more insecure and bitchy than these kids when I was their age. I also never cared about my appearance much, because, you know, you can't shine shit. I didn't feel like I looked SO terrible but I also never wore makeup or any uncomfortable clothes for the sake of fashion, either (I also had an idea that baggy clothes would disguise the fact that I had tiny breasts, which just doesn't work). The few times I tried to wear something trendy I'd inevitably get it wrong in some way and would be ridiculed for it. Eventually in high school I embraced my lack-of-hipness and wore terrific, awful, punk-esque combos such as a vintage green cocktail dress with an enormous orange sweater. I was very "artistic." Now I have a mix of unique and conventional clothes and even when I wear something semi-outrageous I always make sure it makes me look good. I must be doing something right because the teen girls borrow my clothes all the time.

The Living Rockumentary Clearly Max needs to start writing his own songs because his poem about his swollen cheek is excellent.

20 Questions with Drums & Tuba and Spaceheads By Jennifer O'Connor It breaks my heart that the Knitting Factory is only showing "Heat Vision and Jack" on Monday night, ensuring there's no way I can go see it without missing two days of work. That show it my holy grail, people. It's a parody of Knight-Rider- and Six-Million-Dollar-Man-type shows, starring Jack Black and Owen Wilson as the voice of his motorcycle. Come on! This is Saturday night entertainment, not Monday! Damn.

Ew. EW! I checked the search queries list that people used to get to my site, and one fo the new ones is:

crispy used panties

EW! Men are gross. Though a few years ago I considered trying to sell my panties on eBay, just because it seemed like a ridiculously easy way to make a buck. (Now they don't allow unwashed underwear to be auctioned off - how lame is that?) Also, Howard Stern is doing "It's Just Wrong" with twin sisters next week. Whaddaya say, sis? We could win 10 grand! And all we'd have to do is answer trivia questions and undress each other. I'd actually do it but I know a few people at work who listen to his show, and I'd be afraid he'd ask me if I did anal, or something else really embarrassing. Though the fact that I listen to the show at all (only during my 15-minute ride to work) is embarrassing enough.

Ugh. For lunch I had two "sushi balls" from the veggie place in town and now I feel bloated and sleepy. The sushi balls are like sushi sans the protein or nutrition: basically, they're balls of sticky white rice that you dip in soy sauce. No wonder I'm fuzzy-headed. It doesn't help that I've done only about 10 minutes of actual work today, and I've been here for six and a half hours.

I'm waiting for some kind of response on my last post, either from my sister saying "Wow, I forgot all about that! That was so weird!" or a friend saying "oh my god, you grew up in a really fucked-up place!" or "Wow, almost the same exact thing happened to me once!" or "I used to masturbate by humping my stuffed animals all the time, and what of it? Get off your high horse, missy!"

I think I shall add kitty bukake to my list of links, since she was so nice to email me about a comment I left in her blog's comments section. She has a book out now about the Furries, a group of people who like to dress up as stuffed animals (as opposed to actually dressing as animals, which would be less creepy for me - plain old beastiality without the animal torture, you know?) and have sex. There are also Plushies, who like to fuck stuffed animals. Hey, who among us hasn't spent a bored-to-tears suburban afternoon watching a 12-year-old friend hump her teddy bear in the middle of her all-pink-decorated bedroom floor while you and your sister watch in discomfort? Who indeed?

Achewood Sunday Edition (Tuesdays)

i dig boners

Here's an image to cheer me/you up.

It's very very fall today. Louise and I played ball this morning on the frost-covered grass, and everything was vibrant and colorful. In a week or two the trees will be more bare and it will get depressing, but right now it's very fine.

I'm sad. I just read about the decline and death of an acquaintance of mine, a very good Quaker (who was coincidentally born in the town I'm typing from right now) who really, really didn't deserve to die so early and in such a nasty way. He found he had sudden onset leukemia, quickly developed serious encephailitis and organ failure, and died within a month. His family kept a kind of news diary about it and it's incredibly tragic. It reminded me so much of living through the death of P's dad two years ago. He had six months from diagnosis to death, and only had a few days when he was in the hospital and/or too out of it to talk to us. Different experiences, but in both cases an incredibly peaceful, smart, loving man died too soon. If you want to read his obit and the story of his death, go to bluebloggy thru my links at left and click on her link to John Bishop.

I have a little poster's remorse. Henning, I was just giving you crap re: the back strain episode. Just in case you thought I suddenly turned into an asshole.

FOUND magazine Such a great site, magazine, lifestyle. I wish the Found Mag tour was coming to my town.

Hi. I had a great weekend alone. And just wrote this very epic entry about it, so go get a cuppa coffee and get ready. Okay, good.

I left work extra early (2:00) on Friday to drive the girls up to Montpelier. I got a little anxious during the drive but managed to keep from actually freaking out. On the way up a horrible accident closed 91 in both directions (in order that a helicopter from Baystate could land there, said the radio) between exits 3 and 4, so all traffic had to drive on Rt. 5 between Brattleboro and Putney. It took us right by the Putney Co-op, the place where we used to always get the girls from their mom on visitation weekends, back when P's parents lived in Putney. So we stopped for a snack and little nostalgia-fest. I really miss Putney. Staying at P's parental home was such a treat. They lived way up on Putney Mt., on a long dirt road, no streetlights and hardly any other houses. Very far from my suburban NJ home.

Anyway, later on the drive we were talking about "being bad" which A and T seem to love to do (talking about it, and hearing my 'bad' stories) and A said "Remember that time when you and Dad were really drunk, and you peed in the ATM building? And it was all glass windows, everyone could see you, and we were saying 'Debbie, stop it! You are so drunk!'" At first I was all "Wha..? I never did that!" but then I caught on and started embellishing the story, and then said "But A, what was even worse was when you really had to pee in the Big E, so you just squatted in the produce department! We were so embarrassed!" It was very funny. Then A said here, I'll draw the story of what happened, and she took a paper napkin and drew a hilarious cartoon of me peeing in an Easthampton Savings Bank ATM building, and there are all sorts of inside jokes involved. It was very well done.

I can't wait to see if anyone googling "Easthampton Savings Bank" ends up reading this.

The drive took about 6 hours total, so I was back around 9 p.m. I chilled at home, happy to be alone and free from my parenting duties for the weekend, changed clothes, and went out to see The Fawns and School For the Dead at Harry's. I finally remembered to bring the plastic lawn deer that currently sits in a shady part of my back yard. During a break between songs, I placed it on stage as a prop. I had bought it with Henning and Lisa so they were familiar with him (the deer is named Danny, after H's dog. For some reason it cracks me up to steal the fake dog's name for my fake deer). The Fawns were great; Lisa seems to be getting more and more relaxed and confident and it's fun to watch. When SFTD came on I took the deer back to the table to watch. The band was great. I wish everyone would have danced because I would have. I almost was the One Lady Dancing but there was One Drunk Guy Dancing at the time and I didn't feel like giving him a reason to interact with me.I sat with fun people and had a great time. I was all loose and irresponsible and free. So I fucked a couple of guys in the bathroom and snorted a couple of lines of coke.

No. But I did go to Jake's after the show with L, H, Tony, and Ken. I was deliriously tired, and everything was starting to look kind of unreal. All I remember is getting some good homefries and wishing I had also gotten a waffle.

Saturday I woke up late and made myself eggs and turkey bacon and butter-slathered toast. I got a lot of chores done: 3 loads of laundry, sweeping the halls and the kitchen, vacuuming the downstairs... I even made the kids' beds. I also went to the mall to buy T some cool pants at Forever 21, a store which makes me feel uncomfortable because of its name. I imagine either people assume I'm trying to pretend I'm still 21, or I'm not pretending but can't let go of my fast-fading youth. The store is sort of the new H&M; ultra-trendy clothes at disposible prices, which normally I like, but the name is a huge hurdle for me. I know, I'm a dork.

I went over to H and L's, and I remembered to bring L the Hot Rock Lisa doll I found at a discount dollar store in Bridgeport, CT. It's a very bad barbie knock-off, but she has awesome white gogo boots and a pink heavy-metal guitar. Plus it says Hot Rock Lisa. What more could you want? Lisa was thrilled. H had thrown out his back doing something even the most feeble among us could do without difficulty, so he foolishly took two prescription painkillers (Rokinblok, or Roxsette, or something) which were just starting to kick in when I arrived at their place. We drove out to the Bison Farm to buy tickets and meet up with Rob and Laurie and Poppy. Then we decided to go eat at Chili's (too crowded) and then Friendly's (just right) while waiting for our hayride time. H had been kind of weaving when he walked but had been joking about it until we got to Friendly's, when he suddenly looked very ill and stopped joking. He was all sweaty and pale and so L took him home. We were worried about him but managed to enjoy our Supermelts and Wraps. R, L, and P quizzed me about my life. We barely know each other, and my life is kind of odd at the moment (being an instant stepmom, and the events leading up to that) so I didn't mind the interview.

The Haunted Hayride, I was assured, was going to be scary and totally worth $10 a person. Finally our number was called and it was scary ride time (no actual hay in the wagons). We sat in the first of a train of two wagons, and a tractor pulled the wagons around the farm to different scary scenes populated by crazy people yelling at you and banging on the sides of the wagon and sometimes entering the wagon to threaten you personally. It was fun, and funny in parts, but I was only really scared in a few parts, and even then they weren't the fun "startled" kind of scared but the "shit, maybe this college kid in the scary clown mask really does intend to keep honking his horn in my face for the rest of the night" kind of scared. The most interesting/disturbing part was at a scene set in a cannibalistic diner. The waitress was, for no apparent reason, a guy in drag camping it up. Someone in the second wagon said something inaudible to us, probably about the fact that she was a he, which made the waitress guy say something about her weight, like "I see they let people of all sizes ride here." The lot of us went "Ohhh!" in that "oh, snap! oh-no-he-di'int" kind of way, but she must have said something else to him because he kept at it, totally breaking character to make fat jokes at her expense. It was odd and uncomfortable, like, is this part of the scariness? I mean, there was a kid in our wagon, and some not-skinny people too. While I like to see homophobes ridiculed as much as the next person, going after someone's weight is not the way to go.

On the drive back to Northampton we noticed fireworks over the town. As we got closer we realized they were being shot off at Smith College. L quickly drove up to the top of the new Smith College Parking Structure, where we had a beautiful view. It was a full fireworks show, with fancy rockets and a complete finale, and it was beautiful and quiet up on the parking structure; you could hear the sound rolling across the valley and bouncing back at us from the mountains. It was crisp and cold so the sound seemed even more clear. After it was done we asked one of the other smart people up on the deck what the display had been for. "Oh, Smith just inaugurated a new President. There was a big celebration held tonight." Wow. Shit like that does not happen when I get promoted, let me tell you. Smith is very wealthy, but this seemed over-the-top even for them. I was glad I got to enjoy it, though.

Once I got home H called to make sure I was okay. He and L were worried about abandoning me with people I hardly know. I so hadn't even thought about it; like, H was so clearly sick, I am not the one they should be thinking about. It was very sweet of them to call, they're good people. I was more concerned about H, who said he felt better after laying down for a while.

Sunday was pretty boring, I picked up the girls in Brattleboro and bought some hilarious vintage, plaid pants that I will wear to work, and for dinner I made peanut noodles that the girls raved about. P comes home tonight and we are all happy, me especially. This morning was the last time (for a while) that I have to get up at 6:30 and drive A to school! T's birthday is tomorrow so we are planning some minor fun for that and a bigger party thing this weekend, maybe.

I love homestar runner.

Today me and all of the other full-time employees (about 75 percent of the office) received little gifts from the corporate gods to thank us for "exceeding our goals three years in a row." The gift is a man-sized Kenneth Cole watch, though in my office (and in the entire company, I'd wager) the vast majority of us are female. Typical. The watch face is brass and rectangular and huge, so as to fit two separate watch faces (so I guess one can be set on L.A. or Paris time). Even on the smallest hole the thing doesn't fit me. Next time, just give us nice crisp $20 bills and we'll all be so much happier.

I am so tired. I had one of those nights with the super-sweats. I woke up because sweat was trickling down my front. I dabbed at my skin with a tissue, decided I was too asleep to change to a lighter blanket, threw a limb out into the cold air instead, and fell back asleep.

A and I had our first fight of this solo-trip time period yesterday:

Me: So I'm going to leave work earlier tomorrow, at 3, so we can leave for your mom's.
A: What? We'll never make it on time! I told someone we'd be there to pick them up at 6:15!
Me: What? A, you have to tell me these things. How was I supposed to know that?
A: Well how was I supposed to know we were going to be leaving at a different time? We always get there at 6!
Me: Not this time, this is a special circumstance. Besides, we won't be much later than 6; we'll just swing by the house, pick up T and your stuff, and go.
A: Yeah, it'll take like half an hour, and then we'll be leaving at 4.
Me: No we won't; I'm not your dad, I move very quickly and I'm not late all the time [sorry P, but it's true].
A: You are too late! I've been late to school every day you've driven me!
Me (getting mad): What are you talking about? Except for one day I was late, there've been a million other cars there dropping off other kids when I've dropped you off! You're there at 7:30!
A (snotty): I'm supposed to be there at 7:25, which you'd know if you looked on the stupid little piece of paper you wrote it down on. I come in, and everyone else is sitting down already. [note that she is not late, at all; she is admitting she is perfectly on time] We're supposed to leave at 7:10, and -
Me (cutting her off, voice rising; did I mention this was happening in my cubicle, in earshot of my entire office?): Ana, I am getting very angry! Stop talking right now!

And that was that. I'm still a little pissed about it, though I swallowed it all like a good soldier/stepmom, and broke the silence a few minutes later by giving her $5 to go get a bagel. I know all teens are incredibly selfish, but the depths of if amaze me every time.

Anya and Max did cook us up a delicious dinner last night at their lovely apartment. I was so grateful to not have to cook or clean (I did offer) I was almost in tears when I hugged them goodbye. What a fuckin' wreck I am.

Okay, I did my own search for screaming stukas, and it looks like a stuka is a German war plane. Hitler used them during the blitzkreig. Here's a good website all about stukas, if you've come here looking for that sort of thing: http://home.freeuk.com/johndillon/ju87.htm

Chowflap blog: it's edutainmental!

Some new "weird search queries" that sent people to my blog:

screaming stukas [what's a stuka?]

bad gory pictures of iraq

anna kournikova balls in panties poster

towelie girl models

jackass episode pirating

cabernet panties [my favorite]

devil fortune teller on ebay

unifroms people wearing for a 15 years old girl [sounds vaguely disturbing]

castration fantasies photos

Okay, I feel better today. My happiness seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of water currently flooding the basement. Also, I made a great stir-fry with tofu I fried the fuck out of so it was all crispy on the outside, and then I asked the girls to clean up afterwards, and they did without a complaint. Then I spent the rest of the evening sucking water out of the basement, a futile gesture since the water level immediately rose back up as soon as I stopped.

This North Korea thing is scary and will take a delicate series of maneuvers to de-fuse. I'm sure Bush will completely fuck it up and we'll end up going to war with both Iraq and North Korea at the same time. WWIII, here we come!

Shrink never called me yesterday, so we had a short phone meeting this afternoon in my car after I dropped off A at home. All I do all day is drive and work and cook and clean. Today I have nothing interesting to say. Being a single mom sucks.

I have a shrink appointment tonight which I have to cancel due to having to take T to her 7:45 p.m. dance class. I just spoke to shrink's secretary person, and man, what a bitch. She was really unhelpful and sort of snottily asked me why I needed to change it (none of your fuckin' business), and told me that I would still have to pay for it (and insurance does not cover it, and it's $95, and I'd still have to see him and pay another $95 for the privilege). So I'm going to do a phone consult at 7:20 while driving to Hadley with T in the car. "Uh yeah, I'm feeling basically okay, though having these kids here is stressing me out... Watch it, Toyota! Fuckin' cutting me off.... Anyway, uh hold on, I need to shift... Yeah, I'm taking care of A and T while their dad's away and it's difficult. Wait, T, don't cry, I didn't mean you were difficult! Oops, just ran a red light..."

Okay, so, hi. This morning I discovered that if I have to, I can go from being in bed to being ready to go to work in ten minutes. Heh. Sorry for the lack of blog; I had yesterday off to celebrate the life of Christopher Columbus. Actually I took it off to go to a theme park. We did make it to Six Flags yesterday, and it was fun and scary in a good way. But I had a rough weekend overall.

Saturday morning the basement flooded, which made me freak out. I've never had to deal with such a thing, and our basement hasn't flooded in the 2-plus years we've lived here. I bought a pump and sucked most of the water out - it was only about an inch and a half deep. But a couple of hours later it was back.

That afternoon we drove two hours to visit with P for dinner and to see his show. He's been on tour for a few days and comes back Oct. 21. I was exhausted by dealing with the flood and taking the kids to the mall and I basically broke down once we finished dinner. I hid out in the car after P was done playing (A and T were watching the headliner perform) and P came out and talked to me. I just felt like I could not do it, could not be a single mom, could not take care of everything without him. I tried to remember that I WAS doing it, and today was just a miserable day, but I was so tired I couldn't get a grip. Eventually I felt okay enough to drive us home.

Sunday my dad showed up around noon with a van full of furniture for the kids. First he looked at the basement situation; the water level was down to mere puddles, but he couldn't figure out why the sump pump was working since we couldn't find where the water was ending up. I made pesto while he cleaned up the puddles with a sponge mop, without making a big deal out of it (just "where's the mop?"), which made me very grateful. The rest of the day was spent moving furniture around. My Ikea shelving unit from high school has been reborn. Thea went to acting class, and when I picked her up two hours later, she told me class had actually been cancelled due to Columbus Day (whatever) but the young, geeky, too-earnest theater guy made him stay and help scrape windows with him. T finds him creepy and having met him I understand why. Afterwards Dad took us out to eat at Pizzeria Paradiso and then it was time for bed.

Sunday was Big Fun Secret Surprise Day. I made everyone dress warmly and we drove down to Six Flags. Ana caught on to where we were going pretty quickly, though she didn't let on until we got there, but Thea seemed to not know until we were in sight of the roller coasters. Dad came too, in his own car so he could leave early and drive home to NJ. On the ticket line the people in front of us told us that if we showed the ticket seller a piece of paper with "105.9" written on it, our tickets would only be $10 each, due to some crazy radio promotion. With our coupons we were going to be spending $30 a ticket so this seemed much too good to be true. But after the guy in front got to the window and turned around to tell us gleefully, "it worked!" I said to his son "Gimme that pen, kid!" and scribbled 105.9 on the 10-bucks-off coupon I was holding. And it worked! Amazing. Instead of $120 we spent $40.

A and T and Dad went on all of the huge roller coasters. I stood on line with them and always took the chicken exit near the loading station. I did go on the Thunderbolt, a Cyclone-sized wooden coaster, and it was fun though a little jerky. Dad left around 5:00, having hit all of the rides he wanted (all of the big ones). We wandered around and paid to do one of the indoor haunted houses, which was just walking through a twisty corridor with day-glo paintings of scary clowns, and once in a while some teenager dressed as a scary clown would jump out at you. It was over in less than five minutes. Once it got dark we went on the Trail of Terror, for which we had to stand on the Long Queue of Coldness, as it was even colder out once the sun went down. It was worth it, though. The trail went way into the woods and through different tableaus, like a toxic dump, an axe-murderer's camp, and an abandoned bus, and the actors here were very good at suprising you and acting genuinely deranged and dangerous. Unlike in the haunted house, I got seriously frightened a couple of times by scary people leaping out at me. The three of us huddled together and screamed in unison any time anything happened. It was so much fun. On our way out I bought us some hot, fresh kettle corn we watched being made. We crunched on warm yummy kernels all the way home.

So the Sunday with Dad Six Flags trip may not happen after all. T has acting class that evening, early, so we'd have to cut our park time very short. Dammit.

Also, Rufus Wainwright's been cancelled! The ticket guy who called me gave no reason. I wonder what happened? I am bummed.

My dad just called. He's going to be visiting me Sunday morning-Monday morning, and we were discussing what furniture from my childhood home he should bring for the girls. Of course now the kids are both fighting over the hutch, a nice china-and-linen-cabinet thingy that I used as my bureau when I was a teen. I have as of yet no creative way to determine who gets it. A is older, so maybe she gets it, but T seems more in need of storage. A is definitely the squeakier wheel, though, and I don't want to look like I'm rewarding her loud complainings. At the same time, at her age I used to be just as cranky as she is, so I shouldn't let her bad attitude count against her either.

Do you see how hard it is? Little things like this turn the wheels in my brain until important facts and figures that someday I'll really need get turned to ash.

Anyway, I told my dad about trying to take the girls to Six Flags this weekend, and having to either take work off Monday or do it Friday night, and he said, well, why don't we go on Sunday? I'd love to go to Six Flags! So it looks like the four of us might go. He's always been the one in our nuclear family to go on all of the big rides, while me and my mom and sister waited for him so we could do the bumper cars or the log flume. I've never been close to my dad, and throughout my adolescence we had horrible screaming and yelling and very mean fights. I really believed that I hated him. He's the typical emotionally-closed-off WASPy dad from the Northeast, prone to sudden bursts of anger directed at inanimate objects. This did not mix well with me as a teen. I did however learn how to calm down irrationally angry people (stay quiet, don't get angry yourself, talk in a normal reasoned voice, tell them it doesn't matter the bowl of pasta fell on the floor, we can make more). As little kids it was fine, our dad was the game-player in the house so he was the go-to guy for fun. But then we stopped playing games and drifted away from him and he didnt' seem to know how to communicate with us. He still has trouble and probably always will. I'm trying to be at peace with that.

So this trip to the amusement park should be interesting. We have some old snapshots of me and my sister as young kids at Great Adventure, the Six Flags park nearest our home, that dad took while we were on the swing ride. Our arms reach out like wings and our mouths are wide with delight and we're flying, all safe and worry-free.

New links: I added Dawn Olson's blog, Up Yours, a couple of days ago, since I check hers almost daily, and Achewood, which is especially endearing and funny today.

I don't know if I really have any fetish, but I do like the word "panties"...

Your Secret Fetish Is Panties!

Mmmm... panties.


You might like them fresh out of the wrapper or incredibley nasty and dirty.


Chances are that you and your lover keep your underwear on during sex...


and that you can be caught peeking up skirts from time to time.



What's *Your* Secret Fetish? Click Here to Find Out!

Handles This link is really for my pal Avani, who has decided to start making bags to sell! You go, girl!

I'm starting to freak out a little. P is leaving tomorrow and won't be back until Oct. 21. I will be single-parenting during that time, and also dealing with not having P around. I have a separation problem which makes me weak as a kitten when people I am attached to are not around. I can usually distract myself and do fun things with other people, but there's always that time when you have to go to bed and nobody is there and it is very quiet. And I love my dog, who is my alternate bed companion, but she's just not the same as P. She farts a little less, for one.

So my little Six Flags Surprise plan may not work after all. Saturday night I wanted to go see P in CT, and Sunday my dad will be visiting. So the only good day is Monday, which T and A have off from school, but I might have to work and won't know until Friday if I do.

Addendum: The hypnotherapy birthing thing didn't not work, exactly, but it requires more time between contractions to really get it going. Alice had very rapid labor right from the start, two minute contractions with two minutes in-between. And apparently the hypno techniques helped calm her down on the cab ride on the way to the hospital.

Salon.com Sex | A classic conundrum Gary Tennis's answer to the first reader's question could have been written by P. Good answer.

Man, I should get a good night's sleep more often. I went to bed at 10 instead of my usual 11:30 and I feel great. I even got to work on time, 9:00.

My sister Sarah's best friend Alice had her baby yesterday! She's my friend too, by proxy (plus I see her every time I visit the sister). Apparently the hypno-pain-relief method she learned didn't work... But she had a quick labor, like 6 hours, and had an epidural at a late stage in the game which didn't work that well, but Alice was well enough afterwards to call S and sound very normal and calm and not exhausted. I think S is hoping to visit them in the hospital today and will take some digital pics for me. It's a boy, named Henry or Jake (they're undecided) and he's about 7 pounds.

The mall last night was fine. I felt ill for most of it, but then I felt better. T bought a couple of shirts at Old Navy but was undecided on some other items. We checked out Forever 21, which is supposed to be the New H&M. It was pretty good, cheap trendy clothes, though there were a lot of cheap leather items that gave off a funky odor. I tried on some tight red low-rise cords, which fit me fine, but I have enough clothes already that I can't wear to work. We're going back, with A this time, on Friday. I have a sneaky plan to take them to Six Flags on Sunday, but I'm not going to tell them about it in advance. It's a crazy expense but I just found some $10-off coupons and I know they really, really want to go. I'm gonna have to bring a book because they go on the vomitrific rides I would never go on. Anyone out there want to go with us?

The bad thing about going to bed early, besides making me feel old, is that I miss the Daily Show. I found out that it's rerun at 5:30 every night so as long as I make it home on time I can still watch it.

Hi. Busy weekend. As part of my natural nesting reaction to the weather turning colder, I did a lot of cleaning: I scrubbed the kitchen, taking an especially long time with getting the sticky, lint-coated grease off of our big, white "vintage" oven, and using oven cleaner on the burner drip tray things (which worked satisfyingly well, though some residue still remains). The girls were up in VT, getting heartbreakingly dissed by their mom again (she did take them out to dinner and a movie, but opted to send them home early on a train instead of spending Sunday with them; they spent both nights at friends' homes).

Sunday night P, A, T, and I went out to dinner with P's mom, aunt, and cousin. Aunt and cousin were visiting from Atlanta (they're from Texas originally, I think). We were at a sort of fancy, quirky place, Green St. Cafe, and as usual P's mom had much to complain about. "They really should do something about the handwriting on these menus!" "That little pot of tapenade for ALL of us?!" When figuring out what wine she wanted, as they didn't have Merlot or Cabernet, she looked plaintively up at the waitress and said "I've never heard of any of these before in my life." After our waitress brought over a taste of something for her to try, she said "This is awful. Ugh, it's just undrinkable." She has a knack of making waitstaff ridiculously uncomfortable, leaving the rest of us to try to patch things up by tempering her statements with compliments and apologies. It makes eating out with her very stressful sometimes. Yet she paid for my meal, so I guess I'm just an ungrateful swine.

I liked P's cousin, though, who seemed smart and funny and interesting. But I was too wrapped up in keeping a grouchy A happy and trying not to ignore a sidelined-as-usual T. I must have succeeded because we did goofy prancing walks on our way back to the car.

Tonight I've told T I'm taking her to the mall, though I'm quite exhausted. I went to bed around 12:30, I woke up at 3:00 with stomach and anxiety issues and read on the sofa downstairs, dozing off a little while Wedge cat kept kneading me to keep me awake. I returned to bed at 5:23, to wake up for good around 7:30. Oy.

Crazy situation (not even a fight per se, just butting of heads) with A last night prompted an emergency session with P's longtime shrink in Brattleboro this morning. Here are the basic tips he gave us:

You have no power. So fighting for it is futile. Have you ever seriously tried to force someone do the dishes? Can't be done.

Avoid power struggles. See above.

Turn it all back on the kid so they are forced to take responsibility. No explaining, "In this house, we do the dishes because we all chip in." Just, Do the dishes. They say, "No, I won't do them," you say, "Huh." Or even add, "Now what?" and stare at them expectantly. Supposedly this will get them to (eventually) do the dishes, instead of fighting (which is what would come of "do the dishes because it's your job and I cooked and blah blah blah.").

We are ascared of putting this into action. We both feel like we need scripts for each specific incident. My instinct is to go the explaining route and THEN let it drop. Then leave the dishes until there are no more clean dishes, then say oh look, the dishes didn't magically clean themselves. But apparently we're supposed to say as little as possible and do a lot of staring.


Also, there's basically nothing we can do to help fix their relationship with Abandonment Mom (tm). I said, Maybe P could call her and suggest she try calling more often? And the shrink said, no, no, no. You can't make her change like that. So the only thing we can do is keep listening and telling them we see how much it is hurting them, and it's okay to be angry and depressed, we aren't going anywhere. And then P and I will secretly plot our revenge on their behalf.

Ha, just kidding. Ha. ha.

Neal Pollack's blog today is a sly satire of Jonathan Franzen's article in the recent New Yorker, about serious literature vs. fun reads. I'm all proud I get the references.

I've gotten back into the habit of saying "I've got to get my cone on" and "I need to get my coffee on." I expect it will only last another day or two.

P.S. "Wise Up" and "Save Me" are the Magnolia songs she played last night.

You are jealous of me. I saw Aimee Mann last night. What a great show she puts on. She played a bunch of songs from her new album, some favorites from the Magnolia soundtrack (before one of the songs she said "now just picture frogs raining down on you") and Bachelor No. 2. Some highlights:

"Red Vines" during the first encore

"Humpty Dumpty" and "Pavlov's Bell" were great

"Deathly" from B. #2, one of my favorite songs of hers. She also played "Calling it Quits" and "Susan" and among others, though not my favorite song, "How Am I Different"

a woman in the audience yelled out "Voices Carry!" and Aimee sighed and pretended to strangle herself. She said, "no, It's okay, I know you only said that so you'd see if I would get really angry or explode, right?" Then as the audience laughed she said "No - I'm gonna do it. I'm going to sing Voices Carry for you." she turned to the keyboardist and said "give me a C, a bouncy C" and the band started to play accompaniment, and she did it, she sang Voices Carry! I was so happy. That was a favorite song of mine in 1985-86, and I loved the video too, with Aimee's crazy freak-hair...

She had a new lighting guy who used projected polka-dot circles and mesh patterns that would rotate on the back wall of the stage then slowly slip up to the ceiling and then back down across the audience. Very beautiful and colorful and fitting.

Also, before the show I had a girls-night-out dinner at Cha's with Anya and Penny. It was very nice. I've always found it more difficult making friends with women than with men. Yet I crave female friends. I guess it's hard for me to be myself, all exposed without that veil of jokes and flirtiness to hide behind. Women see through all that bullshit (at least I do, and I assume others do) when they watch other women. Anyway. I've become so much less self-conscious than when I was in high school and college. It's made me more comfortable in my own skin. Life is just easier when you aren't constantly thinking of how other people are judging you or admiring you. Now I'm all, Who the fuck cares? When I was a kid, my parents had this embarrassing overweight single friend named Lee. Whenever there was a good song on the radio, she'd tap and slap her thigh in time with the music. It was mortifying and so, so dorky. Yet it's exactly what i did at the show last night (I would have been up dancing but this was an old theater with assigned seats and no dance floor). Lee didn't care and I didn't either.

map of who says what This is interesting: A map of where people say "soda" and where people say "pop" and where people say "Coke" when they mean any kind of generic soda. "Soda" is of course the correct word, though I do find "pop" kind of charming. Now if there was a map comparing a hamburger to a hamburg (which seems to be a New England, or at least a Western Mass, thing that I loathe) to a burger.

So on Monday night I finished Warioland 4 on my Gameboy Advance. It served its purpose. It was actually really well done; I really like the Mario side-scrollers, they're clever and the graphics are simple yet creative. I started Deus Ex later the same night. It is very hard. I like that there are multiple ways of getting things done, but I think there's a steep learning curve on the controls. Sneaking around the Statue of Liberty park is time-consuming, and if I make any shortcuts the people find me and kill me. I found the secret back way in, but can't get up or down without getting killed, so now I'm back to finding the bum at the North Dock or whatever.

I'm sure this is fascinating to all of you who haven't played the game. Or even if you have.

Here's something interesting: Edamame appears to give me horrendous gas.

So I'm looking for a new Game Boy Advance game. Maybe another Mario-world game like Yoshi's Island or MarioKart, or this game called Urban Yeti, or Grand Theft Auto 3 when it comes out in a few days.

Not in Our Name

I am very conflicted when it comes to peace marches such as this. As a kid I attended the huge anti-nuke march on Washington in 1982 (or was it 1980?) and was proud of it, and of our numbers. But now... I believe, roughly, in what these people are saying, but I worry that the way they say it is outdated. Marches and other protest events seem to be nothing but a punchline for the people they demonstrate against. Soon after Sept. 11 last year I was part of a short peace march in my small town, which ended with speeches at a park. Most of them were from overly-ernest, simplistic stereotypical hippies. We left soon after, because I was afraid, I joked, that soon they'd start singing Kumbaya. And later I found out that's exactly what they did. People, please. I know I wasn't the only person there who was embarrassed to hear about it. This is why the Left is so fractured and ineffective. The self-appointed leaders alienate the non-extremists and the realists and this is why you/we fail. Serious people who bathe and have real jobs need to lead this movement if it's to have any support outside the gang of usual suspects from the ACLU and Greenpeace and the like. The average Joe Schmoe only scans the crowd, sees a bunch of ragtag drug casualties from the 1960s and their children, and he chuckles and goes back to reading the National Review. And the anti-war movement will not succeed unless we have huge popular support because, let's face it, Bush and co. really aren't interested in what a small minority of the voting population thinks about it.

I don't want to sing soft little songs about how war is bad and peace is nice and love is the best ever. I want the public to hear the persuasive arguments about why this particular war is a very bad idea. They're political and financial reasons, which aren't as emotional and sexy as shouting "no blood for oil" which made sense in 1991 but doesn't apply, really, to this conflict. It's a post-9-11 world and you have to admit that yes, there are some very very bad guys in the Middle East who want to kill us and we have to stop them. But those bad guys are called Al Quaeda, not The Entire Country of Iraq.

Okay, I'm rambling. Go to this march if you feel like it but don't think it will change anything. At best you'll get a minute or two on the evening news probably closed with a couple of snickering comments from the newscaster. I think well-placed editorials and letters to your congressmen - or better yet, meet personally with your rep and tell him how you feel - would do better at getting the message out.

Sunday Herald article; Bush administration's crazy warmongering I have a feeling this is going to be linked all over blogdom... This article says that Bush's regime has had one main (yet secret) goal, even before Sept. 11: to ensure the world superiority of the United States through war and other acts of terror, the U.N. and any other allies we might have be damned. Quite scary, nauseating, and infuriating stuff.

Hi, I'm back, I'm here, had a busy weekend. An hour or so after I arrived home from the airport my sis and bro-in-law arrived and we did a bunch of Fall stuff: apple-picking, the local library's fantastic book sale, apple-pie baking, Masterpiece-game playing, local trade show with many free raffles to enter... We also took in the last Aloha Steamtrain show ever, in a packed and sweaty bar. I was annoyed at the scratchy-sweater-wearing couple to my right, who weren't dancing properly. They needed to free their minds and let their asses follow, but they didn't. Mid-show Max took off his shirt as directed and we pogo-d and knocked into people for a few songs.

Wednesday I have tentative plans to do a girls' night out kind of a thing, but now I'm realizing Aimee Mann is playing that night.

Mind has turned to mush. More later. Probably tomorrow.

It looks like this is going to be the big peace march to attend. I haven't been to anything but little Quakerly candelight vigils since college, myself. I think it's time to start marching, if only to feel a little less helpless. I have some problems with activist rallies, actually; I find the experience of marching around with a lot of other people who already agree with me a little bit, you know, dumb. And I don't think I can face chanting simplistic slogans anymore (1, 2, 3, 4! We don't want your racist war! etc.). But what the hell else can I do? When they come for me in the end, I want to be able to say that at least I stood up and made sure I was counted in the opposition. Maybe then I won't be first against the wall... (who am I kidding -- I'm going to be first against the wall because Bush is going to turn the entire world against us, violently, and then more terrorists are going to blow up more shit in my city, and it's going to be exactly your fault, you Sept.-11th-politically-profiteering mutherfucker, you stupid evil dough-face, you blind sniggering crotch-sniffer, you manipulative doublespeak-spouting shameless bastard!)

I got the latest issue of the Smith Alumnae Quarterly yesterday, and I found out that someone I knew at Smith has died. She was a year younger than me, and I didn't know her all that well -- I think we were on nodding terms, since we had a few friends and classes in common. And because she was just that cool and outgoing and full of energy. Everyone on campus knew her, I think. She was on the rugby team and was a DJ at Smith's radio station and she'd always be dancing away funky-style at the LBA dances (the best dances on campus). Anyway, she developed brain cancer and died a few months ago. Her sister made this amazing website for her here.

Top four butt-innuendo-laden phrases from this summer:

1. Chocolate Jell Ring (Italian ice flavor)
2. Smuggler's Notch (souvenir pennant seen at stoop sale)
3. BK Back Porch Grillers (hamburger advertisement)
4. Fudge Patrol (almost too obvious to list; t-shirt available from Ye Olde Fudge Shoppe on Long Beach Island, NJ. Around the corner, you can see how their fudge is made!)

I can only hope that the fall and winter will bring yet more ass-innuendo opportunities.

The most offensive design job I've ever worked on: the audio packaging for a book that not only glorifies warfare in general (that would already be against my religion, quite frankly) but the military might of Nazi Germany in particular. You heard me. A quote from the back-of-book blurb:
"Aided by the tremendous air power of deadly screaming Stukas, Panzer battalions attacked swiftly and violently, smashing through enemy lines, destroying supplies and artillery positions, and shattering the enemy's will to resist. The sheer scale of rapid-fire victories amazed the world and elevated the tank soldiers to an almost mythical status."
...I guess if you're really into the whole technology of warfare thing you can let moral judgments re: a war's participants fall by the wayside. And did I insert some sort of subtle anti-war message into the design somehow? No, because I am a chicken. Anyway, I've closed this project, but there's a second volume coming up soon. Suggestions?

Another crumbling Asbury Park essay. On another note, I sure wish Weird NJ magazine had been around when I was growing up. The suburbs of north-central NJ are a soul-less and boring place. Pretending that some of the local roads were haunted or something might've helped.

When D and I were kids our parents took us to Asbury Park. It was already pretty run-down, but there were still a couple of buildings along the boardwalk with working rides in them. I remember a Ferris Wheel that was half in and half out of a building -- so when you were at the lower part of the circle, you were indoors, and then you'd very dramatically whoosh up and into the open air. Great views of the boardwalk and the ocean. I also remember D getting lost in a funhouse mirror maze and freaking out; one of my parents had to come in the exit to get her.

Anyway, this is what Asbury Park looks like now.

I love photos of crumbling amusement parks, I can't help it. So eerie and inappropriate. I also love the whole nature-taking-back angle.

And then I spent another 45 minutes adding to the post below. It was about tourists and NYC and 9/11/01. You'll just have to imagine the brilliance, since there was a run-time error or some shit. I'll get the hang of this eventually...

I just wrote -- no, carefully crafted -- a long and witty post that included a seamless segue between Neuticles and last nightÕs Emmys. And then Blogger has some kind of error and deleted all my good work. In brief: if youÕre obsessed with the look and feel of your dog or catÕs nutsack, and this obsession (combined with your own deep-rooted castration fantasies) is keeping you from getting your pet neutered, might I suggest neuticles?

The first quote on the neuticles media page is from the Daily Show, which should tell you something right there. My friend E (see, IÕm doing DÕs initial-only thing now) writes for the Daily Show -- in fact, he couldÕve written that neuticles joke, though I doubt it -- and he was up for an Emmy last night. The Daily Show writers lost this year to SNL; they won last year, though. I was on my honeymoon by the time they actually aired the Emmys last year (in early November) and did you know they delay broadcast of the Emmys on the west coast? Even though thatÕs where they take place? So we actually called E back in NY to find out if he won.

Speaking of E, he's the one who first alerted me to the mind-bogglingly good Flash animations at hoogerbrugge. I've viewed all 99 of the Modern Living animations, and if you're like me, it'll make you want to run right out and learn Flash, but then stop yourself before you've made it out the door, because how could you ever make anything that creative and amazing? It's already been done. Relax and enjoy.

Yeah, um, "Sarah"? I haven't been mentioning the name of my employers here, so keep it a bit more secret, okay? I mean, I signed something when I was hired that means I might get fired for this kind of thing. Anyway, enjoy the blog, and pray for my safe return!

Hey! My first blog entry ever. I'm honored to guest-host Chowflap whilst my sister is experiencing several days of meetings and "imagineered" meal-events courtesy of The Mouse. Fasten your seatbelts, folks.

Dang. My whole name is up there for anyone to google. There goes my secret identity...

Having some lagging troubles with my new-to-me G3. Hmmm... Anyway. we finally ate at Smokin' Lil's last night, pretty much the only non-diner-or-fast-food restaurant in this shitty little town. It was fabulous. I got a mound of pulled chicken, with two sides - smashed potatoes and baked beans, and P got a 1/4 chicken and pulled pork with collard greens and dirty rice. It was all very Southern but not so authentic that the greens were boiled grey. They had sweet tea on the menu, for example. We ate and stuffed ourselves and had trouble sleeping later, we were so stuffed. Anyway, thumbs up for Lil's. They serve food that you can't get in Northampton so I think they have a good shot at making it.

I'm going to set up my twin sister, Sarah, as a guest blogger for the coming work week. She's an identical twin, so you'll hardly notice a difference, I'm sure. Also please note two new links, the Rockumentary which I've mentioned before, and Neal Pollack, who can go skinny dipping with me anytime, and his wife can come too.

I'm going to SoCal, flying miles up in the air in a lightweight tube of aluminum packed with people wearing too much cologne spray, and I haven't a laptop to bring. So I'm going to be computer-free next week, Monday-Friday, and it's unlikely I'll be adding blog entries. I might ask someone to guest-blog for me (maybe my twin sister). That could be fun. I will be blogging today and all weekend long, hot diggity.

Today there are posters up all over town that say "What kind of a man would BURN HIS OWN PANTS? Never forgive. Never forget."

It's been noted elsewhere in the web universe, but it bears repeating: Pants is a very funny word.

Bacon. Love it. Live it. If you know me at all you know why this site is perfect for me.

So last night I went to the open house at T's middle school. Man, that place is depressing. It reminded me of my Junior High School - narrow hallways, orange lockers, confusing layout, not enough/small windows... But this is almost twenty years later. The building, the posters, the chairs, the little models of cells and planets, they're all straight out of the 1960s. (In fact the cell models looked like something I'd buy at a flea market - they were nicely mounted, made of plster probably, with little metal nameplates.) I was looking forward to going to this, but almost immediately after I entered I started feeling the old familiar anxiety, feeling trapped and bored, like I was back in school again. P has been distant lately so I was kind of on my own. We had to sit in a crowded auditorium, feeling like strangers from another planet, hiding in plain sight amid all of these "regular" people: They were about our age but seemed much older, and much more square, yet more in-the-know and relaxed than we were. The principal was introducing some of the teachers there, and kept saying things like "and I'm sure you all know Mr. X" and "Mrs. Z is familiar to all of you." Also things like "band C has two new teachers" and "your kids might be mentioning that 'specials' are different this year." Huh? I'd look at P and he'd just shrug I dunno.

Then it was time to find T's classroom. We found a familiar-sounding teacher's name on the map and headed over. We had to walk the length of the building to an area that was all open classrooms with "temporary" walls, with signs everywhere telling people to be quiet, since the walls were literally made of fabric and cardboard. After we stood in line to sign-in we took our seats. A bunch of parents had brought their kids, which seemed odd. The teachers introduced themselves and each gave a little speech about the curriculum for the year. Each of them ended their speech with some variation of this: We try to make it as easy as possible, but ultimately it's the student's responsibility to write down their homework assignment, and please, please make sure they do their homework, as it's very important for learning, and please please don't take them out of class all the time. All of which seems damn obvious to me. I was beginning to realize why T hates this school. The teachers here spend all of their time trying to bring up the rear and don't do anything to move the top students forward. They are incredibly under-funded, but it's more of a mindset than anything. Who knows, maybe all of the kids there are stupid, or their parents are, but I doubt it. We spoke to her Language Arts teacher afterwards (me: "Hi, I'm T's stepmom.") and she was glowing about T. She said "Oh we love Thea. She will excell." Well okay. So you already know that everything you'll ask her to do for the rest of the year will be too easy for her? We actually like this teacher, she seems to be no-bullshit and yet creative. I just wish there was some gifted-and-talented things going on, like there was at my school. Of course our G-n-T program was really just an excuse to get out of class and goof off with our hippy/flaky G-n-T teacher. But still.

I guess we should just be grateful that we don't have to yell at T to do her half-hour of reading every night, or to actually do her homework, or to ask us for help when she needs it. She does these things without being asked, because that's just what you should do. We are blessed that way, for sure. I just hope she can catch up when she transfers to the better high school in the next town over, or goes to the charter school, because the kids here are being groomed only for the local HS or the regional vocational school.

Personality Disorder Test - Personality Test Hey, I'm an avoidant, paranoid, dependent histrionic! How about you?

Iraq, Upside Down Here's Thomas Friedman's take on the only possible way a war on Iraq would actually help the U.S. Of course no war here is neccessary because Iraq does not pose a threat to the US. If we're going in just because he's a bad and scary person, well, the world is full of them. If we're going in to "stop terrorism" then so far, with our puffed-up chests and our "we'll do anything we damn well please" attitude, we're doing the opposite of what we should be doing. The Iraqis already hate us for imposing sanctions. Why give them and their Arab pals more reason to hate us? Why not at least attempt weapons inspections? We can take action after we discover hidden chemical labs and the like. But not going in to inspect at all will send a horrible message to the rest of the world. It's simply wretched politics - but then again, the rest of the world doesn't vote in the U.S., so why should Bush and co. care?

So I did it.

I bought a GameBoy Advance. And a Warioland 4 game. Total came to just over $100.

At home, the girls were incredulous. "Why do you have that?" Dumbfounded. "Where did you get that?" They figured I had stolen it from an 8-year-old or something. But no, I bought it.

I figure it will help me travel next week (and the future). And it's a treat, sure, to make me feel better. Is it bad that part of my justification was thinking, lots of people buy new books each time they fly... This is like a book, only better, and I can use it over and over, unlike a book.

I am a product of my generation. Or something like that.

I am also planning on taking my knitting needles on the plane. I bought some random yarn at the Salvation Army (three balls for a buck) and have retaught myself how to knit with some online help. My needles are bamboo so they shouldn't show up on the scanner.

From the Onion, of course. Go there and give them some money whydontcha.

Also, I started working on my actual website, www.chowflap.com if you want to take a look. Temporary, it's all temporary...

A passed her driving test. She got points taken off for going too slow, of all things. But she passed.

I'm having a bad day. Someone prone to loads of self-criticism and low self-esteem should not enter the publishing field. Or any field, for that matter. In fact, just stay indoors at all times and only communicate with people on the most benign message boards like those at Cat Fancy or some place supportive like I Have Cancer.com.

Will Ferrell Apple "Switch" Ad I bet this is hilarious but I can't figure out how to make it play here at work. Probably for the best, actually...

Neal Pollack's The MaelstromCheck it out, the world's greatest living American writer Neal Pollack has a blog! I pre-ordered his McSweeney's book when it came out a couple of years ago and got a free poster of Neal naked except for a strategically-placed kitten. If you don't know who he is, just read the "about" page.

CrashBonsai This is pretty fantastic.

Tomorrow A takes her driving test. God have mercy on us all. She's taking it in Vermont, since that's where she got her learner's permit. She has to fill out this log "proving" that she's practiced different driving skills for a total of 40 hours. She filled it out yesterday. We'll see how she does tomorrow...

T has the boys after her. A kid from NYYM is sweatin' her via IM, and there's a "popular" boy at school who is interested (i.e. "has had a crush" on her "ever since he first saw her" - a whole two weeks). I'm happy for her. Sad a little for A, who is older and as far as I can tell doesn't get as much of this type of attention.

Salon.com Sex | Love in the age of irony The letter titled "We Hate You Guys," about how ridiculous and pathetic the boomers' self-importance looks to non-boomers, is right on. And the fact that it was written by the brother of a friend of mine only sweetens how good it is.

P is trying to teach me Dreamweaver. My head is about to explode. Anyway, here's a photo of some people inside a shark on Long Beach Island.

Get this. People got to my site after putting in these searches:

overweight anna nicole pictures

towelie shirts

long beach island chowder hut

pregnant fuck

My favorite is the last one, of course.

Okay, most of you know me personally, so this doesn't really matter. But I've made myself slightly more anonymous just so I can sleep better at night. Nothing really happened, don't worry.

We went to the Big E today, me and the stepkids. I am a stepmom. How about that. I have a headache from tiredness so I'll have to give the gory details tomorrow.

Some other bloggers have been making lists. So here's a list for ya.

1. My first real kiss tasted like bean sprouts and was incredibly emotion-free. The day after, though, I got so excited thinking about it I was having trouble paying attention in class. I was 18.

2. My office is not so bad. Today we had the third-annual Brat-Fest, with bratwurst grilled on the deck out back and beer and chips. Started at 3:00, too, so I got paid for not working. I'm at the office right now in fact, with a nice buzz on.

3. My coworker friend is almost convincing me to try the Keeper, or the Keeper's disposable cousin whose brand name I forget.

4. Number four has been removed due to sensitive materials possibly reaching sensitive eyes.

5. I hope T's mom's karma catches up to her someday.

6. One day this weekend we will go to the Big E. The other day, I will help A learn how to drive in Vermont, the only state she's allowed to drive in. I do not know which day will be on which day. In between, the garden needs massive work, and I have many things I want to put on eBay to sell, plus some stuff I want to try to sell to the vintage clothing store, and my laundry situation has hit level orange. I am also very tired.

Where is my sister? I haven't heard from her in a while. Methinks she followed Mario through her Gamecube to Sunshineland or whatever its called.

I think I need to fire my therapist. I've been seeing her for 6 years. Lately all she does is make me second-guess my own decisions and plant seeds of doubt in my head. Which is exactly what I don't need. Here's a sample exchange:

me: Yeah, I emailed my family telling them if they wanted to help us out, they could send us some cash earmarked for A and T's school supplies. The kids ended up getting their grandparents to buy everything they needed, though.

T: How do your parents feel about giving money to P's kids?

me: Well, I know my mom is happy to help, she really likes the idea of having instant grandkids, and she thinks these kids are great. It doesn't even matter because they never got the email asking them to help.

T: Well, why would you give P money for his kids' clothes?

me: Um, it wasn't for clothes, it was for backpacks and binders and stuff, which we didn't even end up buying. I wouldn't buy them clothes, I guess...

T: Hey, as your therapist, I'm just looking out for you, because I know how bad you are at sticking up for yourself.

Do you see the problem here? 1. I don't think I'm bad at sticking up for myself. 2. What the hell would be wrong with giving money to a couple of kids that I love who are going through a traumatic event in their lives? 3. The way I asked for money from my family was done in a very no-pressure, optional way. Anyway, due to some error on my part I'm sure, the email missive I sent only went to the first person on my list - my grandmother, who happily sent a check for $50 for the girls to split, which they still don't know about. I think I'll suggest they spend it on curtains and other room essentials they need. Or maybe I'll spend it on their behalf. Which is my behalf too, since I want to try to help them be happy here.

Anyway. My therapist makes me feel dirty and wrong, like I'm living in sin. But she's an ex-bohemian hippie from NYC. I really don't get it. I see her point, kind of, that I'm the financially responsible one in the house, and here I am planning on adding even more to our collective debt (via a home equity loan for finishing our attic), which on paper P is not at all accountable for.... But why can't she just trust me to make the right decisions? Obviously I've thought about all of these things, and I know I'm taking a risk. I've spent much of my life avoiding risks and that's no way to live. Like I need someone else to doubt and judge me. Fuck her. I feel like I just waste my time with her, and we never get to the core of the problem, I spend the whole time explaining things I've already told her, or telling her things I've already solved on my own.

So that's why I have this blog! ha ha! You, my nine-hits-per-day readers, are my new therapist! ha ha ha!

MassLive News - Fun at the fair I can't wait to go to the Big E. I went once, years ago, and saw much craziness: David Hasslehoff doing a sound-check which turned into a mini-concert, a giraffe in a petting zoo, fireworks timed to Star Wars music, a stunt-filled racecar demonstration, crazy rides that seemed designed only to induce vomiting, truly awful crafts, free food samples.... And that was just one random day.

I was gonna post this yesterday but I wrote it at the office and the email and internet access was down for the entire day. So here it is, belatedly. These are my memories of hearing the news, and I might be off on some of the time details. The human memory is faulty.

A year ago I flipped on the radio to hear the Howard Stern show as I began my drive to work. I was late, as usual. The radio show was all confusing; I was hardly listening until I realized they were simply playing the audio from a local newscast, and Howard kept mentioning a plane flying into the Twin Towers. How horrible, I thought. I assumed it was some drunk or suicidal guy flying his Cessna like an idiot, and that the people saying it looked more like an M-80 were just overreacting, or even, maybe, the whole thing was some sick joke for the show. But then a second plane hit, and it was becoming clear that this wasnÕt some skit or prank. Howard and his fans were angrily calling for bombing towel-heads and kicking them out of the country. By the time I got to work I had changed the station to NPR which was also broadcasting the news instead of the usual classical music. In the office everyone was packed into the conference room to watch TV. My coworkers looked drained and stunned. The Towers were standing there puffing away like two giant smokestacks. They replayed the second plane hitting the tower a few times. I went upstairs. I didnÕt really know what to do so I called P who had just been tipped off by a call from my mother to turn on the television. Then someone told me that one of the towers had collapsed; I ran downstair and saw replays of it on the conference room TV. People were crying now. I called my sister in Brooklyn and got through on the second or third try. My brother-in-law answered. ÒI guess we canÕt call them the twin towers anymore, huh?Ó He always went to work late, otherwise he might have been stuck in a subway underneath midtown right about now. Of course now nobody was going to work.

It was a little after 10 and it was time for our weekly production meeting, which our boss insisted we do despite what was happening. Me and G, who grew up in the NYC area like I did, were appalled that she make us concentrate on our stupid trivial magazine during a time like this when thousands of people were dying, more reports of attacks kept coming in, news was changing every minute. The people from the art department came in half an hour late, saying quietly that the second tower had collapsed. I was furious that I had to be in a meeting instead of keeping vigil at the television or talking to my family on the phone. As soon as possible the meeting ended and I called my sister again. This time it took much longer to get through Ñ I kept getting a recording that all of the circuits were busy due to an emergency Ñ but I finally reached her. She had watched the towers fall, live, in real-time. ÒI just saw thousands of people die,Ó she said softly. She had also seen people leaping to their deaths. All of this I missed, which I was partly thankful for and partly angry I had missed it. I just wanted to experience what everyone else was.
I wanted to drive down to Brooklyn right away, and I wanted my sister to leave Brooklyn right away. I was incredibly sad that Bush was going to be deciding what our country was to do. I was feeling a nauseous mixture of exitement, terror, helplessness, and sadness. I knew nothing would ever feel
the same. A dark cloud had just passed over the country and would stay over us for a very long time.

All right, forget it. Links are back to normal. Sigh.

I'm trying to use blogroller but it's simply not working. For some reason it's only putting up one link and it's always the same one, so I don't think it's because the column is too small. My stab-in-the-dark method of html coding seems to be catching up to me.

So around 3:00 today all Important Files were off my desk so I could get to work in ernest, making business cards to leave out at this reception tonight. Yes the chair I have been painting lo these many days is done. I brought it up to the gallery in Thornes during lunch and there were two other chairs there and well, I think mine outshone them both. I'm just saying. I made the text of the business cards in Quark, 8 to a page with a half-inch margin around each, and then I did a different doodle on each of the 8. Then I went to Paradise Copies, where Lord Russ helped me print my stuff onto ivory cardstock. He was wearing his "Ning" t-shirt, which has a photo of young Henning and "ning" written all over it. And of course he didn't charge me a thing. Northampton will be a less groovy place after Russ leaves.
Anyway, P is coming to this reception thing, though he is very busy and tells me about that a lot. I shouldn't complain, really. He threw a birthday party for me last night and it was very sweet. It was a semi-surprise in that I knew when it was and that other people were coming, but no other details. At the last minute he told me, "You have to go out and get ice and Cokes, I forgot them!" and I knew it was a ruse but I played along. A came with me and as we were walking thru the Big E she kept on stopping to remark on things to drag out the time. "Oh look at these Thomas's Waffles, they're all spongey and weird! Hey, have you ever had these frozen sausage things? They're really good." When we came back the living room was decked in balloons and streamers, and T had set up paper plates of party favors for everyone: Playdough, plastic cowboys and indians, and Blow-loons. Actually I think these were B'loonies, but Blow-loons is the best name for a product ever. Dennis and Lauren and Max and Anya and Penny all showed up. It was sort of a quiet time but fun anyway. We grilled. There were scallops and shrimp and pasta salad. I got great gifts from everyone. Among other things, P gave me a book about Step-parenting. (apparently when P told A he had bought it for me, she made a kind of sad/cute "aww" noise. I'm not sure what exactly that means, since such a gift can be taken in several different ways. Like giving a fat person a dieting book: What, you think I'm fat? In his defense, though, I had told him my therapist recommended I get a book on parenting teens... but I don't think A knows that) I stayed up late last night reading it, forcing myself not to fall asleep, sure that on the next page I'd find exactly the answers and advice I was looking for. Instead there was a lot of validation of my feelings of competition and frustration, which was nice and makes me fel less crazy. But mainly the book tells couples to See a Counselor. Anyway, I got into bed after 1:00 and couldn't sleep until Philip got up around 6 a.m. I got up at 8:00 and was extra late for work. Oh well.
I took photos at the party and of the painted chair but I can't upload the photos until P teaches me how to do it and he's withholding that info from me in a frustrating way.

Dear reader, something horrible just happened. I bought some "chunks of energy" at Cornucopia (name not changed in order to indict the guilty) and I took a couple of bites out of one. About to take another bite, I look down at the "chunk" and it has a grain moth worm squirming out of it! Aaaaugh! I tossed it and the whole bag in the trash and spit out whatever was in my mouth but dear reader I had already swallowed some of it. In fact there is still "chunk" stuck to my teeth. What is it with health food stores and grain moths? I know it's because of all the bulk food, but jesus people, get an exterminator in there! Strewing cedar and lavender around is not gonna cut it. Stupid hippies, making me almost lose my lunch.

And so A and T's first week of school here draws to a close. A was invited out to a movie tonight by a girl. She's not sure she wants to go. Both of them have decided they don't really like the kids in their school very much. Their mindset is completely foreign to me so I'm kind of at a loss. I never had to move when I was a kid, and I went to school with basically the same people for 12 years. In a way that's good, in a way bad, because you never get a chance to reinvent yourself. I felt very trapped in my awkward-nerd role and transforming into my awkward-artist role took a long time. Anyway, if I was a teen moving to a new school and a new state and someone invited me to do something social after school, I'd jump at the chance out of gratitude if nothing else. Even if she doesn't get a great friend out of it, she's putting herself out there and who knows - lots of people act differently outside of the confines of school. I'm going to try to convince her to go.

In other news, I made a kick-ass carrot soup last night with carrots I grew myself. Of course it took about an hour and a half what with the almond-toasting and the carrot-peeling and chopping. It had ginger and cinammon in it but wasn't sweet, just yummm. I love growing carrots; each time you pull one up it's a little surprise. Will it be big and long? Will it be short and stubby? Will it have three legs? I also have way too many tomatoes which are currently rotting in the pantry. I just don't really like gazpacho, and I don't know how to can things. I'm eating them as fast as I can.

I also worked on the chair I'm painting for Safe Passage. It's a bitch to paint, because I end up in all of these wacky positions I have to hold while I try to paint straight. My legs are actually sore from the looming and hovering I had to do. And it's not even done. It has to be finished by early tomorrow so I can poly-coat it before the artist reception thing on Monday. I don't even know if I can poly this safely, since I used acrylic paints; I'm worried the polyurethane will smear the paint. I'll try to do a test somewhere inconspicuous.

A and T had okay days at school today. T's day was better than her first, and it was A's first day. A liked half of her teachers. But she has the same complaint as T, that the people here are not worth being friends with. I think they're being a little snobby, though I know the main reason why they don't like the kids here is that they aren't their friends back home, the friends they were forced to leave for no good reason, just because some selfish whore decided she didn't want to be a mom anymore. I'm sorry, did I type that out loud?

So I'd better write about my birthday weekend extravaganza before it gets to be too far in the past. Thursday night we arrived late at my parents house, where my sis and bro-in-law already were. We had lasagne and Carvel ice cream cake - we always, always had a Carvel ice cream cake for our birthday growing up; usually we'd give the Carvel person some picture of Garfield or Snoopy torn out of the Sunday comics for them to draw (with icing) on the top. This time the top was this thick fudge. While pulling the candles off of it, we coined the phrase "Fudge Suction," a future band. After their first self-titled album, they'll release "Forkful of Fudge." But it just won't have the buzz of the first one and will quickly end up in the remainder bins.
I got the aforementioned digital camera, which was exciting; sis got a Game Cube, which I will never own because I have enough trouble staying away from the television. And then Mom pulled out these huge photo albums she had made for us, all photos of us and our family from birth to now. Most of the shots I had never seen before, because my dad used to only shoot slides because the color was better. So they got prints made from the slides, and the prints look brand-new, unlike the old photos. It's one of the best presents I've ever gotten.
Friday we picked up friends A and SR and convoy-ed down to Long Beach Island. It was cloudy and a little chilly. LBI is less charming than I remembered, but it was still pretty neat; it's very skinny and the little beach houses (way too many) are cute and strange. Some of the best store names we passed: Hands (a department store), Sunglass Menagerie, and Capt. Jackson's Mr. Breakfast.
We got into the Green Gables and were shown our rooms. They were pretty shabby, and P and I got the worst one of the three; but they all had some problems, with bubbling paint, old linens, dirty windows, etc. It was "shabby chic" without the "chic." Plus, I had been expecting some sort of common room or lobby we could hang out in, but there was nothing. Really, Green Gables' main gig is the restaurant, which is very expensive and well-regarded (glowing reviews coated the walls). The "Inn" part of it was a total afterthought. It seemed like they had this old Victorian house with a restaurant on the first floor, and they had these old rooms on the second and third floors, and hell, let's put some "antique" furniture in it and charge $130 a night for 'em. And the free breakfast, the one where they tell you the chef bakes special pastry treats for? It's bullshit. The first morning we caught them buying bagels and muffins from the place next door.
Anyway. I'm not going to do a recap of everything because that would be boring. So I'll do an US Weekly-style bulleted list.
- We should have swam in the cold our first day, when we had a chance (pre-rain). The water was very warm.
- It is very hard to find food that isn't fried in LBI.
- Lobsters over one pound are easy to overcook.
- Lots and lots of immature yet hilarious jokes can be made when visiting the Fudge Factory, where you can See It Made and buy Fudge Patrol t-shirts.
- Chowder Hut may have been recommended by someone on Chowhound.com, but their clam chowder pretty much sucks.
- Crazy Taxi is a very fun game.
- I rule the Skill Cranes. I got a stuffed Grover and a talking Towelie (South Park character I've never seen).
- A funny real LBI band name is the Swingin Johnsons.
- The nature trail at Barnegat Light is very nice. I wanted to climb up the stairs to the top of the lighthouse but noone would come with me. Instead P and I walked out on the huge jetty and got buffeted by strong winds and rain and spray and had a ball.
- The protected wildlife refuge apparently doesn't count fish, since they were letting SUVs drive on the beach to reach the prime surf-casting areas. We did see incredible waves churned up by wind and dolphins frolicking in the surf. The wind was so strong the sand stung our bare legs.
- There's really only so long you can play video games before you start feeling dizzy and bored.
So on Sunday it was pouring, really raining, and we decided to go to Brooklyn. We had to pay for the third night anyway, which really sucked, since we didn't really like giving the place any more money than they had earned. The whole island seemed to be done for the summer. Everyone seemed worn out and like they didn't care anymore. I don't blame them, but a vacation like this is extremely rare for me, so yeah, I was disappointed.
We hit Brooklyn around 6 p.m. and read the rest of the blah-blah in the entry below for 9/2.
I actually had a lot of fun. I got some kick-ass gifts and hung out with very funny sarcastic people and ate fudge and I slept very well. So do not feel sad for Debbie.

Welcome to The Graciela Burbank, Burbank's newest hotelIt looks like we're staying here instead of the Universal Hilton for the LA trip later this month. It looks a lot nicer, is only $2 more a night, and includes some kind of free breakfast. The rooms are big and have useable bathtubs and DVD players and down-filled duvets. Sweet.

My officemates surprised me with a cake right in the middle of a meeting today - really it was the only way they could have done it and still surprise me, since I've been here for 6 years and I know the sneaky cake drill (and it is always sneaky): set up an "emergency meeting" or tell everyone to "come to the conference room for a short meeting about next issue." yada yada. It was yummy cake, chocolate, with very fudge-like frosting, from La Fiorentina.

I just got word from P that T arrived home from her first day at the new school. She hated it; said the teachers suck and the students suck and then her eyes filled with tears. Junior High is one of the deepest levels of hell. I feel for her so much. She is changing schools at a terrible time in her life. Poor T!!! And she might not want to talk about it, about what happened, if anything did, because I know I never told my parents about the mean things people did and said to me. But I could actually give her advice. I know I got the worst advice in the world, about how to handle someone teasing you: ignore it. Which never works, ever. If you fight back, even a little, they start to respect you, and leave you alone. It took me a long time to learn that lesson.

Hopefully she just hates it because they're all uninteresting hicks, though.

lyrics to Rufus Wainwright's "Grey Gardens"

I love Rufus, and if I was younger he'd be someone I'd have an unhealthy infatuation with, just because he's so cute and smart and unavailable. During the trip I tried to figure out the words to this song, which I now see was a futile gesture. I grew up deciphering Elvis Costello lyrics but here I was overmatched. I would never have heard "Honey I'm a roller concrete clover" or "In between been dragging a dragonfly," though to my credit I did understand the word "dragonfly."

Hi, I'm back, and I'm 30. My trip is through. Though all in all I had a fun time, there were many disappointments in the Inn and the weather and the food. Plus I never found the "Jersey girls- Best in the World" t-shirt I was hoping for. We left the Jersey shore Sunday instead of Monday because the weather on Long Beach Island was so bad - rainy and windy - that we never ended up swimming, and we had quickly exhausted all of the entertainment options (which were slim to begin with). We ended up going back to Brooklyn yesterday, just in time to have dinner in Manhattan and shop at Toy Tokyo, my new favorite shop in the entire world, and buy the two most recent Magic Whistles at St. Mark's Comics. Anyway, I will write more about the trip in the days to come. I also got a digital camera as predicted, so expect to see some photos.