Points
- Finished Olive Kitteridge. Best book I’ve read in a long, long time. I am Olive Kitteridge. I don’t know how much I like that.
- Cut off most of the little hair I had to get rid of the nasty indiscriminate feelings I’ve had all week. Don’t worry – it was professionally done.
- Spent this month’s extra money on an apron. I want to bake real bread.
- The Lakers had better win tonight.
- Schwarzenegger’s newly proposed budget cuts make me want to vomit. I actually felt overwhelmingly nauseous most of the night I read the list and amounts.
- Best friend passes on the travel bug like an incredible contagion. I absolutely need to go to to 1) the beach and 2) Israel.
- Brought out the watercolors yesterday and reminded myself that being an artistically hopeless amateur isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world.
Dr. Yeh
Found in my spam folder this morning:
ORDER A Ph.D. – WHAT A GREAT IDEA!
We provide a concept that will allow anyone with sufficient work experience to obtain a fully verifiable University Degree.
Bachelors, Masters or even a Doctorate.
For US: 1.845.709.8044
Outside US: +1.845.709.8044“Just leave your NAME & PHONE NO. (with CountryCode)” in the voicemail.
Our staff will get back to you in next few days!
Why didn’t I think of this earlier?
Us – 1: Them – 2
My brother has resorted to listening to the Carpenters after the Lakers’ defeat last night in Denver. The Nuggets played dirty and the refs exhibited ridiculous amounts of preferential treatment (Walton got a technical? Please.)
I’m eating an entire box of mac and cheese to cope with California’s latest move to block same sex marriage and gearing up to do more to change the popular opinion on the matter (Thanks, EC, for re-directing my energy).
But today, Sotomayor was nominated for the Supreme Court. YES.
Ew!
Last night I dreamed that I was using both hands to scoop dozens of egg yolks out of a sink to put them into some sort of container (like a bucket or something – the details here aren’t so clear.) I distinctly remember all the eggs were that vibrant yellowy-orange color, and some of them still had the thick, globby part of the white still attached. Ewwww…..
In The Age
This is probably something that doesn’t occur to anyone but me, but I have certain ages that I associate with people in my family. My cousin M, although in his late 20s, is someone I think of as being 16, because that’s probably how old he was when we had the most interaction. His older brother T, in his 30s, is someone I think of as being 24, even though that’s my current age. When T graduated from college and found a great job at the company he still works for today, he was in his early 20s and his success made an impression on my concept of what it means to start life on your own. So, in my mind, M will always be 16 and T will always be 24.
My brother R will always be 5 years old to me. I’m certain he’s aware of this, and I’m sure he dislikes it very much, but he’s too cool to let it get to him. When he was 5, I was screaming and yelling at him to get out of my room, leave my stuff untouched, and stop talking so much. As an 11 year old sister, I didn’t understand that he wanted to be a part of my life, curious about my girly belongings, and was exploring language and communication. Today is his 19th birthday, and I find myself wishing I had known better back then, even though realistically that wasn’t possible. The hard part about being siblings of opposite genders with a 6-year age gap is that we do a lot of our growing up apart from one another. By the time R got old enough for us to begin understanding each other, I was moving away to college. He moved through junior high and high school without me, and I missed out on so much of his growing up. Our personalities are as disparate as humanly possible for being two people who share so much genetic material. He’s not my little kid brother anymore (he’s about 5′10″ and I’ve lost track of how much he’s able to bench press at this point), and I’m struggling to find ways to connect with him now that he’s older. I’m hoping the feeling of disconnect is mostly on my side, with me being the mushy-girly-bonding type, and hoping even more that our relationship isn’t actually all that distant (aren’t guys generally more aloof anyway?).
Happy Birthday to my one and only brother. Two more years until Vegas. Hang in there.
What the…?
I woke up in the middle of the night to find D sitting up in bed, reading his iPhone (the extra light disturbed my sleep).
Me: What are you doing?
D: Being awake.
He has no recollection of this happening. If I don’t get a normal night’s sleep again in this lifetime, I’m going to be grumpy for the rest of my days.
A Small Accomplishment, I Suppose
I bought my first hanks of yarn for a project I’m working on – which feels all fancy to me because I have to turn it into pull-able balls of yarn before I can use it (ooOOooh…). This means I’ve been getting some practice using the backs of my dining chairs and a toilet paper roll in lieu of the professional-looking umbrella and handled spinning thing (aka ball winder) when Doug’s not around for me to borrow his arms.
The set up:
First try:
Second try:
I’m feeling pretty spiffy right about now. If you’ve ever seen what the umbrella contraption turns out, you’ll know that the second try looks pretty close to what they’re supposed to look like. If you haven’t, well – take my word for it.
The Funniest Thing
I’m finishing up Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Anything by Bill Bryson is absolutely hilarious and ridiculously entertaining. I can’t read this book on the bus or the El because I’m afraid of scaring the other passengers, who might think I’m a total looney bin snickering and chuckling to myself. I can’t read this book before going to bed, either, because I usually end up cracking up and getting all worked up so I can’t sleep. If you need any more convinving that this book is one of the best diversions you could ever use to treat yourself, here’s a bit I came across today:
“They were all named Mabel and they all suffered greatly from the heat…They spent their lives shooing flies from food with spatulas (setting their old arms a-wobbling, in a hypnotizing manner)…and making sure that no human being within fifty yards failed to have a heaped paper plate of hearty but deeply odd food – and dinners in the 1950s, let me say, were odd indeed. The main courses at these potluck events nearly always consisted of a range of meat loafs, each about the size of a V-8 engine, all of them glazed and studded with a breathtaking array of improbable ingredients from which they drew their names – Peanut Brittle ‘n’ Cheez Whiz Upside-Down Spam Loaf and that sort of thing. Nearly all of them had at least one “‘n’” and an “upside down” in their names somewhere…”Hey Dwayne, come over here and try some of this Spiced Liver ‘n’ Candy Corn Upside-Down Casserole,” one of the Mabels would say. “Mabel made it. It’s delicious.” “Upside down?” Dwayne would remark with a dry look that indicated a quip was coming. “What happened – she drop it?”
The rest of the book is peppered with lines that send me reeling with laughter (see description of his grandparents’ recliner chair on p. 177). Find yourself a copy and give yourself a break today.
Great Example
This morning, I was woken up just before 7 by a screaming kid outside. After 15 minutes of whining on the part of the kid and strained coaxing on the part of the mom, apparently the dad pulls up in the family car and then exchange progressed to something like this:
“I don’t WANNNNNNA GOOOOO!”
(mom under her breath) “Get in the car.”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH I don’t wannnna!!!!”
(dad, full on yelling, first to the kid, then the mom, I presume) Get in the car now! We’re already really late…you do this every f*in’ time!!
So I rolled out of bed because I knew I wasn’t going to go back to sleep after that, and I usually get up around this time anyway, with or without screaming kids and pissed off dads outside my window. I then spent the next hour at the farmer’s market, where scores of screaming kids bitched about how they did-or-didn’t-want-this-breakfast-sandwich-or-that-baked-treat and wanted-to-try-this-cube-of-cheese-and-not-the-other-one and look-mommy-she’s-touching-my-crackers and DEAR LORD WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE TO SPEND SO MANY YEARS OF THEIR LIVES AS BABIES????
It’s not even 9:30 and I want a drink. I’ve got $7 cheese to go with it.
