Fumbling With Grace

And for Christmas, I Give You...Myself

2010-11-28T20:50:00.002-05:00

Oh, hello there! Been awhile, eh? It's been alarmingly close to eleven months, to be exact, and I have thought a lot about all the mayhem I could have manhandled myself into in the last eleven months, and all without your knowledge! If I were going to disappear for eleven months, I think I could have at least done you the courtesy of getting into some kind of media-worthy public shenanigans, possibly involving outrageous nudity and/or familial estrangement, so you could keep up with my antics in the tabloids. It seems to work well for Heidi Montag and her personal on-board shrine to silicone, at least.

In eleven months, I could have conceived, carried, birthed, named, and likely become at least somewhat attached to an entire human being. But I didn't.

In eleven months, I could have become a notorious pearl-wearing, cookie-baking, Richmond-area drug kingpin with legions of quivering, loyal addicts fueling my nefarious empire. Well, that's only really feasible if the drugs were chocolate-chip cookies. But I didn't.

In eleven months, I could have convinced Lawyer Boy to help me sell all our possessions, buy a ranch in Utah, convert to The Church of the Engorged Family Unit, and take a flock of sister-wives to sew my requisite ankle-length dresses and be my personal bitches. But I didn't.

(Just to make sure we're clear, Lawyer Boy and I did purchase a flock of sister-wives online to help with the laundry, but they haven't arrived yet. Product review forthcoming upon arrival.)

So, all tomfoolery and polygamagic aside, what was I up to during those excruciating eleven months in which you wept over my absence and swore angrily and vehemently never to love again? On the professional, practical end, I left my old job and started a new one. A new one that I'd been waiting to open up for the last few years, one that greatly decreases the amount of time I spend crying in my office and greatly increases the amount of time I spend smiling at people. I still work in immigration, but I'm still not telling you where, because I know that if I did, the boxes of chocolates and hand-tied bouquets of flowers you'd send constantly would just make my new coworkers jealous. And I soooooo want to be popular.

On the less reasonable, ragingly irresponsible end, Lawyer Boy and I have spent the last eleven months goofing off with our friends and generally acting like we didn't get the message that we're rapidly approaching adulthood. Or actively wallowing in it. Or desperately fleeing it. Either way, we've been having a blast going out on weeknights, throwing late-night dinner parties, and speaking in sillier and sillier voices when we imitate our cat.

But now, as 2010 draws to a close, I've recommitted to flinging my mental detritus at the interwebz and to doing laundry more than just once a month. I know, I know. Quite the Christmas present for both the interwebz in general, and Lawyer Boy in particular!

1,2,3: Britney, Lawyer Boy, and Me

2010-01-10T19:29:00.004-05:00

I have begun the new year with a startling realization: Britney Spears is following me. If I knew what I had done to merit this fantastic honor, trust me, I'd share. Perhaps she's drawn to my stellar cookie-baking abilities. Or perhaps it's my alluring natural musk that's got her hooked.

My money's on the musk. I am pretty damn irresistibly musky, if I do say so myself.

Whatever the bait, Britney is waiting for Lawyer Boy and I every single time we get in the car together. She's lurking on the local pop/trash station, Q94, ready to wail her latest chart-raper, "Three," from the select speakers that still work in my ten-year-old Jeep. This has happened so many times and with such unfailing consistency that even LB has noticed it, and he's normally pretty hell-bent on ignoring whatever Auto-Tuned tart I've chosen to aurally assault us that day.

Since I've been hearing this song all the time, I started paying attention to the lyrics, and I was half shocked off my rocker, and half not even remotely surprised, to discover that the song is about threesomes. No, Mom, not a golf threesome. A three-people sex-fiesta* threesome. I wanted to be surprised, but then I remembered that Britney willingly and repeatedly had sex with Kevin "C Is For Condoms, And Condoms Aren't For Me" Federline, so absolutely nothing is off the table. I accepted the fact that American radio stations were habitually playing a song about group sex, and naturally, I immediately tried to learn all the words.

And those words are a funny thing. I am notoriously awful at deciphering song lyrics, to the point that listening to me sing, you'd wonder if English was my second language (and also, how to make me stop singing). My most epic failure, and one for which I am still mercilessly mocked, is TLC's "Waterfalls," which contains the refrain: Don't go chasin' waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to.

When I was at summer camp when I was twelve, this song was really popular, and a friend of mine who I shan't name, but whose name contains the letters Anne, told everyone in our cabin that I consummately believed the lyrics to be don't go, Jason Waterfalls, etc. What? Why could the guy she loved NOT be named Jason Waterfalls? I still fail to see the problem with this interpretation.

In fifteen years my skills haven't advanced much, and the reason is simple: I believe that singers and songwriters must, by their very nature, be crazier than I am.

Stop laughing at me.

When I hear song lyrics that don't make any sense as I understand them, I just assume that the lyrics don't make sense because the writer was either high or insane when she wrote them, and I have to just accept them for what they are. Seriously, would you try to argue with me that Britney Spears isn't high most of the time? Or that she is just naturally rational and reasonable? Thank you.

So after I'd heard "Three" a few times, I thought I had the lyrics down. The words I was rocking out to went something like this:

1, 2, 3, I don’t mean you and me,
Got one lady agreed,
And I’m caught in between.

Count 'em 1, 2, 3,
Need an automatic three,
Getting down with three-peat
Everybody loves UUUHHHH.

Okay, so maybe they're not the most reasonable lyrics in the world. But again, we're talking about Britney, who again, had sex with Kevin Federline repeatedly. And on purpose.

As it turns out, the lyrics are more along the lines of:

1, 2, 3
Not only you and me
Got one eighty degrees
And I'm caught in between
Countin'
1, 2, 3
Peter, Paul & Mary
Gettin' down with 3P
Everybody loves ***
Countin'

"Got one eighty degrees"? I don't even know what that means! To be fair, I also don't know what an "automatic three" or a "three-peat" are, but this is her song, not mine! It's her job to make sense, not mine!

As always, it is apparently not ever my job to make sense. However, it is also apparent that despite this shortcoming, Britney really wants to serenade LB and I until she convinces us to be part of her personal three-peat.

Confidential to Britney: We live in Richmond.

Confidential to LB: Both HELLZ and NO.

*I would like to go on the record as being the first person to ever use the term "sex-fiesta," and as such, I will allow you to make up your own definition for it. Make it good, because seriously? Sex-fiesta?!!??

Of Chicken Breasts and Gynecology

2009-12-08T20:32:00.003-05:00

BIENVENIDOS!!! After a long and painful separation, I have returned like the Persian cat of the Internet, to shed hair upon your literary couch and make you wish you hadn't fed me the six Flirtinis and chicken livers that I just recreated upon your new rug. I missed you, amigos. It was a long month of redoing our kitchen, during which I nearly came apart at the seams, and Thanksgiving, after which my pants nearly followed suit. I know I promised photo updates of the kitchen as both a work in progress and a finished triumph, and I know you've come to look to me as a bastion of reliability, but would you believe me if I said the kitchen is still not done? It's definitely functional, after a solid two weeks of having no running water, no counters, and no dignity as we scarfed frozen pizza and paper-bagged cheeseburgers every night. But it's still not cosmetically done, in the sense that I could unveil a finished product to you with a flourish of my hand, fantastic mouth-trumpet noises, and intense profanity as I tried to upload the pictures.

Lawyer Boy is in there painting as we speak. Before you try to peg me as the lazy one, turn your eyes to the fact that not only did I cook and clean up dinner, but that my painting skills produce a finish similar to dropping a pigeon into a bucket of paint and letting it flap and freak around the room until its wings are clean again. Also, someone has to keep the dog and cat company in here.

What finally pulled me out of my intense writer's block was a paltry poultry adventure just now, wherein I got to third base with a chicken against my better judgment. Guys, I didn't even know her name! Here is the story. Don't judge.

Sunday I had bought an entire raw chicken, which is strangely cheaper than a venti caramel latte, to cook this week. I decided to brine it, which is when you make a cracked-out marinade that you soak your fowl friend in overnight. So I made the brine and pulled the chicken out of the fridge to drop it into the deep end, but before we could get on with the skinny-dipping, I had to undress the chicken. We didn't know each other very well, but I grabbed a knife and popped its plastic off in no time. I require no flirting. I require action. And here is where it gets graphic.

We all know that I cook all the time, but everyone has things they don't like to touch, and mine is raw chicken. If you want to call me weird, I'd like you to know that LB's is velvet and fleece. Yes, my husband won't touch velvet. Marinate on that for a bit. At least my fear would give me salmonella if things went south--his would just make him unwillingly plush and snuggly.

So as I prepare to get intimate with this chicken, I'm bracing myself for sticking my hand in its carcass to seek out the baggie of giblets, which as far as I can tell, are alien life forms sent from another planet to study our food. The brand of chicken I normally buy leaves the giblets intact, in a sealed plastic bag inside the chicken, just as God made them. Apparently this time I bought a different brand of chicken.

I thrust my unwilling hand into either the neck end or the ass end, whichever is bigger, and I would like you to know that if you can tell which is which, I'm concerned on your behalf. I wiggled my fingers around trying to find the baggie, and came out holding something that looked like a naked snail. Oh God. There's no baggie.

OH GOD. I realized at this point that I had two problems: First, that I had to stick my hand back up the chicken's muffler, and second, that I had no idea what I was looking for. Beyond the alien life form and the snail, do you have any idea what-all is meant to be retrieved from a chicken's rear? I don't. The baggie was missing, so there went my only guess. Elvis could be in there. This was, after all, a very plump chicken.

I pulled myself together and plunged my hand back into the chicken. I was rooting around in there like a truffle pig after the prize, fully engaged in my mission, probing squeemy bit after jumbly lump after funky chunk, when the most horrifying thought that could have possibly intruded into my consciousness popped in for a visit. As soon as I had finished thinking, while practically convulsing from repulsion, "Omigosh omigosh what what what ISSSS THAAAAAAAAAAAAAT??????" what came into my head but,

"THIS MUST BE WHAT FIRST-YEAR GYNECOLOGY RESIDENTS FEEL LIKE."

Quicker than you can say stirrup, my hand was out of that chicken and my mouth was running seventeen miles a minute in a chorus of "ew ew ew ew ew ew ew what the hell ew ew ew ew" as I flailed my salmonella-coated hands around helplessly and tried to figure out how to retrieve the rest of the aliens from the chicken's rear. Neck. Rear?

Ultimately, I turned the chicken neck-end up (I think) and shook it like a violent can of hairspray to dislodge the rest of the giblets. I got chicken jumblies all over my new granite counter tops, but I was able to spare LB's brand-new paint job from any harm. I can't say the same for the chicken's dignity, though. I think it'll be awhile before she's back in the saddle.

A Year Of Public Fumbling

2009-11-18T20:24:00.006-05:00

It's official. Midnight marks the first anniversary of this here ridiculous corner of the Interwebz, with all its glorious insanity and beloved fart jokery. When I first started writing this blog, it was mostly because I had too many words to spew and not enough people to catch them, and after reading month after month of my elaborate, long-winded email epics, my girlfriends suggested that I find a space for rent on the 'webz.

And thus, here we are, a year older and perhaps none the wiser. Over dinner this summer, my friend Jess looked at me and said, "so, what's your ultimate goal for your blog?" and I swear, she may as well have asked me to explain the origin of the universe as it relates to modern animal husbandry. Really? I just like to write. Over the last year I've had some people I don't know in person find this blog, which I think is fantastic, and I had the editor of a magazine approach me about writing a humor column for her rag, which I think is super-fantastic. If people find me, I get excited, but if they don't, I'm okay with that too. Although I feel I must say, just so we're all clear:

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR READING ME I REALLY APPRECIATE IT AND LOVE YOU EACH DEEPLY, PERSONALLY, AND POSSIBLY ECUMENICALLY!!!

That said, I thought that for my first anniversary, I'd answer the questions that I'm asked most frequently about my exploits here at the Fumbling. So, in no particular order...

Dear Grace: Why do you write under a pseudonym?
Okay, I apologize if I've wrecked anyone's life here, but my name is not actually Grace. And, hold the phone, Lawyer Boy's name is not in fact Lawyer Boy. I know, I know, pick your jaw off the floor and try to move on, mostly because all kinds of nasty feet have been on that floor, and you do not want your jaw all up in someone's foot junks. I write under a pseudonym, and assigned one to LB as well, because we both work in professions where creativity is not exactly rewarded, per se. I don't think that the clients we work with need to know all of the insane things we do in our free time, and I really didn't want clients who got a little drunk and Google-happy discovering things about us that have nothing to do with the work they pay our firms for. I think that, at least in my life, the line between personal and professional needs to exist.

Dear Grace: Why don't you ever write about work? Funny stuff happens there, doesn't it?
I don't write about work because I'm not careful enough to prevent the people I'd write about from finding out about it. Funny, outrageous, and borderline unbelievable things happen at my office, but I don't want to embarrass anyone publicly, nor do I want to worry that they heard about this ridiculousness through the grapevine, and now they and their posse have a bone to pick with me in the parking lot after quitting time. Many of my coworkers read The Fumbling, or at least, they did until our asshole Interwebz blocker shut down sites hosted by Blogger, and I can't handle worrying that someone found me and is OMG SUPER PISSED. My rule of thumb is usually, if my boss found this and read it, would he want to fire me?

Dear Grace: What's up with all the fart jokes?
I grew up with a dad who is big into poot humor, and a younger brother who followed in the family biz. I've noticed that my friends who grew up with discreet parents and/or a houseful of sisters tend to have a much more refined sense of humor, but not me. My sense of humor is so outrageously lowbrow that guys are often amazed at the things that come out of my mouth. This is partly because I'm a girl, but partly because I'm a girl who tends to wear pearls, show up bearing meticulously-decorated cupcakes...and then drop the f-bomb in the first ten minutes of a party. I'm just very up front about the way I am, is all.

Dear Grace: Do you do anything other than write and cook?
I do, in fact, have many hobbies, most of which I don't have enough time for. LB and I have been restoring our old house for the last 13 months, and that takes a lot of time and even more energy (and, if I may, a heck of a lot of our disposable income). My friends know me for having dinner parties, making jewelry, knitting, and of course, making fart jokes. I wish I had more time to write, but it takes a couple of hours and the write frame of mind to churn out something respectable, so I'm really at the whim of my creative side, which is a fickle, fickle princess.

Dear Grace: Who's your favorite author?
Alright fine, no one really asks me that. But I just thought I'd share. It's Ralph Waldo Emerson, Dave Barry, and of course, Henry David Thoreau.

Anything else you want to know, please feel free to shoot me an email at gracethoreau@gmail.com. Again, thanks for reading and making the last year so much fun!

Who pooted?

The Semi-Epic Do-Over, Part 2: The Staredown

2009-11-12T21:59:00.003-05:00

Okay, in order of importance:

1) It needs to stop raining. Three days of rain. When it's italicized as Three Days Of Rain and is a play that Julia Roberts (whom I deeply, puffy, puffy heart) starred in on Broadway, it's lovely. When it's all up in my house, and it's punctuated with "ugh three days of rain ugh," it starts to eat at my soul a bit. The ground is giving way like warm Jell-o salad and the Labradozer is tracking progressively more and more foul things into the house. Waterlogged beetles, anyone?

ii) I've been feeling all week like I'm teetering on the edge of getting sick, and I am chomping at the bit to either topple over the edge into a pit of misery, or spring back victorious and bound off to do important things. Part of me thinks it's from all the sheetrock dust, plywood dust, cementboard dust, stardust, mold, mildew, and assorted bullhockey floating around my house. My less reasonable side thinks it's definitely and incurably ebola with a side of the clap. Because, you know, why not? Seriously, trying to talk down my more, shall we say, excitable side is like trying to fight off a pitbull with a toothbrush. Oral-B engaged!

C) If I'm not going to get to be the office Typhoid Mary (which is, admit it, a vague position of power), then I would really like to fast-forward to Saturday morning, when we can get on with this do-over project. Did you ever think you would see me so excited to work with a tool that could snap my fingers off if it wanted to? I have told LB that I want to learn to "do tile" this weekend, so he has gamely agreed to teach me how to work the tile saw and lay tile. I really just want to move along with this project, which I am sure will inevitably bore me after 30 minutes of tedium and loud noises, so that we can have our kitchen back. I also want our special backsplash tile to come in already, so I can love it down. Don't really care if it makes it onto the walls. Just want to stroke it and share my deepest thoughts with it.

Quattro) Watching the Labradozer half-bark and chase imaginary things in her sleep is one of the cutest things in the world.

The Semi-Epic Do-Over, Part 1

2009-11-11T21:02:00.015-05:00

Normally when I sit down to talk to you about important, wordly topics (like exactly how I made a pizza out of five croissants, a can of tomatoes, and seven minutes of intense prayer), I have a rule that I follow fairly strictly: I have to be telling a story. Beginning, middle, end. Writing with a purpose, and a point. I try to avoid writing what I often characterize as an "and for breakfast this morning, I had Cheerios"-style blog, because for the most part, that style bores me. Some people can write it, and write it well, and somehow, their Cheerios are hilarious. I do eat Cheerios every morning, but they're not funny. Just delicious.

However, henceforth and forthwith, I am abandoning that rule for the next week. For the first time in recorded history, though, there is a reason for my madness: HGTV's own Lawyer Boy and I are tearing out and redoing most of our kitchen, and since many of our friends are deeply intrigued by the fact that we tore out our countertops on purpose and by ourselves, they have demanded pictures of this superhuman feat. Also, I noticed that y'all tend to enjoy those rare spans of time when I actually rub two brain cells together hard enough to post more than one record of my exploits per week, so I decided that I will chronicle our kitchen do-over with photos and commentary. And also a deep misunderstanding of the functions and basic operating procedures for most power tools.

Let's begin with the reason why we felt the need to destroy our kitchen: Exhibit A, the kitchen that was last redone in 1963, at which point it was a high-end kitchen remodel.

Okay, so in this picture, it doesn't look too bad. There's a friendly sunbeam come to visit, and the cabinets are actual wood, and nice-looking wood, at that. What you can't see here is that the four doors in this room are all painted teal, as are the three windows over the sink. The coup de grace is the counters: They're laminate from 1963, and aside from being a breeding ground for all breeds of mold, they're hideous. They're white with teal daisies drawn all over them. And because laminate is the king of all construction materials cheap and shitty, these have not passed the test of time, and have warped, particularly around the sink in the face of invading water demons. So in the categories of beauty and function, we have a fail and a fail.

For an extra touch of fail, the laminate defacing the counters is also plastered to the walls, from the surface of the counter to the bottoms of the cabinets. The previous owners of our house apparently felt the same overpowering love for daisy-speckled laminate that they did for teal paint, ghastly wallpaper, and mildew. So the acres of laminate, while borderline visually offensive, are not wholly surprising. I have no doubt that the previous owners were all buried in laminate caskets lined in teal velvet.

In case you don't believe me, here's what hell they had wrought upon the dining room:

Remember, when words aren't enough...there's always vomit. And yes, we've repainted.

Now that you've seen what we're working with, here's the plan for the Semi-Epic Do-Over:

Keep: Cherry cabinets as they are; appliances, since we just bought them last year when we moved in; floor, because OMFG we are not taking up the floor. Just no. Dear Lord, no.

Kill: Countertops; laminate backsplash; ugly faux-bronze cabinet hardware; peeling wallpaper; sink, faucet, and violent sprayer that sprays whenever the faucet is on; and drywall soffets above the cabinets. The de-soffetization of the walls wasn't part of the original plan, but when we peeled off the wallpaper, it wrecked that section of drywall, and LB said it would be easier just to pop the drywall out and put in new drywall, than to patch what was there. Fine by me. I'm just the minion here.

We began The Semi-Epic Do-Over last weekend by tearing out the short section of countertop that doesn't have cabinets underneath, to give us an understanding of what this was going to entail. What we learned is that it was going to entail significant manpower, metal tools reminiscent of Civil War-era medicine, and loud explosions of otherworldly profanity. So over the course of the weekend, LB tore out the less-essential half of the counters, the backsplash behind them, and the soffets.

LB working on the soffets in his trusty work-moccasins, which LL Bean sells under the name slippers. The soffets are the parts that are no longer there above the cabinets. Did you think I was kidding about the windows being teal? Because no.

Mango approves of our progress thus far. What a relief.

LB removing the beflowered backsplash from behind where the stove normally lives. You didn't believe me when I said this stuff was everywhere, did you? We have learned some interesting things about the construction of our house during this project. For example, there used to be a window right where LB's head is (on the wall, not on his neck), and there was a sink under it.

The view of the opposite end of the kitchen from where LB was excavating behind the stove. Because I just really, really need for you to appreciate the sheer bum-fugliness of this kitchen. Our appliances don't normally congregate in the middle of the room like this. We have a strict no-loitering policy in effect.

We saved the rest of the counters for Saturday morning, since they were going to make off with our sink upon their exit, and we were trying to preserve a semblance of functionality for as long as possible. Last week I moved things out of the kitchen to make way for the hurricane, hit the grocery store repeatedly to stock up on MSG-licious frozen meals, and stared the weekend down with great trepidation.

Saturday morning, LB and I had a plan: Hit the tile store to pick out tile for the area behind the stove, hit Lowe's to pick up the drywall and plywood we still needed, and then return home to invade the kitchen and BLOW. IT. UP. The tile store adventure was simple enough: We enter, I fall in love with the most expensive item in the store, we debate, we consider, I elope with the most expensive item in the store, and we decide to take it home. Fortunately we didn't need much of the accent tile I picked, because if we had, I'd be selling one of my kidneys on eBay right now, rather than talking to you.

We left the tile store triumphant and headed to Lowe's. In record time, we had built a raft of drywall atop a flatbed cart, and steered it to the checkout line. Special thanks to Douchecannon Randomhag, for making it a point to get in my way while I attempted to pilot the 4-by-8-foot drywall raft around the store. The part later, where I pulled up close enough behind your bologna-colored minivan so as to render it unfathomably difficult to load your purchases? It was on purpose, and it was childish, BUT IT WAS AWESOME.

After a debacle at Lowe's that kept us there for an hour and a half, leaving me certain that everyone at Lowe's is in love with me and thus conspires to keep me there as long as humanly possible, we finally headed for home, where LB started to rip out the final counters and the sink.

That sprayer has been around or about that same position for the last freaking year, and it has plucked my last nerve for the last time. SO I KILLED IT DEAD. The moral? Don't cross me. Clearly.

LB with the sink. If you can't read lips, what he's saying is, "OMYGOD Grace, stop taking pictures and open the damn door!!" Smile, sweetheart!

Finally, after the sink left the building, LB ripped the rest of the counters out with the help of our friend Brian, who is so getting a gold star on his next report card for all his volunteer work. Brian and his wife Melissa, who I have been friends with for approximately ever, had us over for dinner that night, since, as you may have noticed, there was no magic to be made in our current kitchen. I'm good, but not that good.

The next morning Brian, intent on earning another gold star, showed up early to help LB build the counters, which are a layer of plywood topped with a layer of cementboard, which will ultimately be topped with a layer of granite tile. (Don't I sound like I know what I'm talking about? I've learned to fake it.)

The plywood base of the counters. Once they had covered this in cementboard, we cut the hole for the sink, which goes right above the cabinets to the left of the dishwasher, in a space that is currently occupied by an electrical outlet. Yup. Safety first! The missing drawer is currently in our dining room. I have no idea why. No one tells me these things.

LB and Brian laying the cementboard over the plywood base, on the opposite side of the kitchen. Where the counters used to be one section above cabinets, and then a lower section above nothing, we made one long section. The midget counter really drove me crazy, and this way, I can set up lots of food for parties in the kitchen. Like I needed an excuse to have a party.

With the cementboard in place and ready for tiling, we closed up shop for the weekend. All that was left was to clean up, and for that, we had another volunteer:

The Labradozer is really quite the clean freak. She can work that ShopVac like a pro!

The kitchen is currently full of drywall, dust, and appliances gathered together like they're on a smoke break. This weekend, the plan is to tile the counters, put in the sink, and get the essential stuff done so we can use the kitchen again. I'll keep you posted!

The Life and Times of a Halloweenie

2009-11-02T19:41:00.002-05:00

I love Halloween. I love the fall weather, I love the midgetine candy bars, and I love the way Halloween gets everyone outside and talking to their neighbors. However, just like my forbidden love for Taco Bell, there's a very good reason why I shouldn't love Halloween: I hate being scared, and just about everything inherent to the celebration of Halloween scares me. I'm very easily startled, and I would say that I tend to blur the line between reality and fantasy when I'm frightened, except that I do not know of a single point in my life at which I have ever actually recognized any line between reality and fantasy. If I watch a horror movie, the characters follow me to bed and stare at me all night. If I encounter someone in a seasonally scary mask, they may as well snuggle up to me as I lay me down to sleep, because that mask is burned into my brain, terrifying me into sleeping with my eyes open all night long.

One of my dad's favorite stories from the The Life & Times Of Grace is torn from the pages of Halloween 1991, when Yours Timidly dressed as Cleopatra and traipsed about the neighborhood with the other kids. The dad gang ambled behind us, preventing the boys from getting into trouble, and going to the doors of particularly "scary" houses to collect candy on my behalf, since I refused to cross the property lines of any yards decorated with otherworldly foam headstones and DayGlo skulls. As we walked between two particular houses, absolutely nothing was happening. No other kids were around. No stray dogs were barking. It was calm as calm could be. And then Dad ruined it.

From ten feet behind me, in a deadpan stolen from the throat of Ben Stein, Dad said -did not scream, yell, menace, or pant- he said, "Look. Grace. A. Real. Witch." AND I WAS GONE. Legend has it that I hiked my royal Cleopatra robes to my knees, ditched my bucket of midgetine candy bars, and fled for the street, wimpering the whole way. I don't know where I was going, since I don't know where I thought "the witch" was; for all I knew I was running straight into her loving caress. But wherever I was headed, I was getting there in record time, and with a smashing gold snake headdress.

In the last 18 years, absolutely nothing has changed. I mean, I can't fit into that Cleopatra outfit any more, but I still jump at my own shadow while celebrating Halloween in a decidedly nonfrightening costume. Why would I want to be something that scares me when I look in the mirror? For once, I am exercising common sense here, people. To demonstrate what I mean by "decidedly nonfrightening," let's take a short tour through the last few years of my costumes.

Freshman year of college, before I had any sense whatsoever, and when I lived within shouting distance of someone who could loan me a spangly pink bra. And a see-through button-down. And who could spray-paint a plaid skirt onto me. That's my bestifer Shelley next to me, and the Dutch exchange student behind me. Eight years later, I still have no freaking clue what the other girl was supposed to be. She looks like she wants to beat some serious ass. While holding an appletini.
This was Halloween 2008, when I dressed as a tennis mom. See how clever I was, with my punny tennis racket of petit fours? I was serving up a good time. Interestingly, our neighbors thought that my tennis dress was lingerie, and I was giving out candy to their children in lingerie. And tennis shoes? Hm. Apropos of nothing, please note the melodramatic teal walls.

Apparently when I said I had never gone as anything frightening for Halloween, I was unaware of the existence of this picture. Phoooooooo. Ooooooooo. Let's move on. MOVE ON!

And thus we arrive at Halloween 2009, when I dressed as The Goddess of Everything. I would call myself "Pandeia," pan for "everything" and deia for "goddess," but some other mythological bitch claimed that already. It's moments like these, where I explain the Latin origins of my made-up Halloween costume nerdery, that I think we can really appreciate what I mean when I say thank God I am not dating any more.
Do I look regal here? Do I look regal enough that you could forget that I tried to create a legitimate Latin name for myself? Let's not talk about me for a minute. Let's talk about how my regal robes coordinate with the paint job in the front hall, which is no longer the color of mildew.

After a couple hours of giving out candy in my robes, which I am sure the neighbors thought was me tumbling out the door in a bedsheet, Lawyer Boy and I went to the Halloween party that our friends Molly and Lee were throwing. Molly and Lee had turned their house into a full-blown haunted half-acre, complete with an animatronic skeleton, giant video screens, and a haunted maze out back. Strobe lights flickered over the fog-filled backyard as the screams of terrified trick-or-treaters erupted from within the maze, the occasional crying child careening out of the exit, damaged for life.

So of course, I went near none of it. I was perfectly content to stay in the house, sipping Firefly lemonades and socializing with my fellow deity, Lawyer Boy:

Lawyer Boy was the God of Animal House, or, as many of our friends have aptly surmised, the lazy one. I particularly like the axe in the back of this picture. We could have used it to cut up the mini quiches, had we started to run low. That's just about all the Halloween carnage I can handle.

Professional Attire At All Times

2009-10-27T08:45:00.003-04:00

The part I love most about wearing a skirt to the office is that I don't have to worry all day long about making sure my fly is zipped. This is more of a chronic problem for me than it really should be for anyone over the age of, oh, I dunno, three. Although fortunately, I have long since dispensed with another habit I had when I was three, which was taking off all my clothes every time I went to the bathroom. Socks included. Hairbow optional.

I'm sure my coworkers are more than thrilled by this development.

Casa Del Grace, For Your Enjoyment

2009-10-20T18:52:00.011-04:00

Alright, so true to my usual form of making a promise and then beating around the bush fulfilling it for longer than it takes a first-grader to sound out "antidisestablishmentarianism," I am here two weeks after I originally promised pictures of my refinished bedroom furniture, to provide pictures of my refinished bedroom furniure. And to rant, natch. What, you were here for sunshine and kittens?

Okay, fine. Kittens!

Well, singular kitten. Singular kitten totally digging his Santa outfit, whereby "totally digging his Santa outfit," I mean, "shit dude, I'm stoked he didn't kill me!"

Lawyer Boy and I discovered recently that our upstairs bathroom is an unholy disaster of Biblical proportions, and that renovating a bathroom is, coincidentally, a financial disaster of Biblical proportions. We have spent the last year of our lives slaving away on this house that we bought for approximately four dollars and a salami sandwich, which was formerly a disgusting mildew-ridden cricket cave, and which now is...not. I recognize that I've set the bar fairly low here: All I've said is that our house is no longer disgusting, mildew-ridden, or infested with cave crickets, who look to the uninitiated like craggy prostitutes with their ankles behind their heads. * It has been more work than herding a litter of kittens to get this house into shape, but finally, it's really coming together, and our house is no longer a big bucket of suck. We think the progress on the house is moving along well enough, in fact, that in order to get the bathroom done, we applied for a refinance. Yesterday.

This morning, like before-most-college-students-had-gotten-to-bed early this morning, the bank called LB (apparently they know who speaks their language around here). In order to figure out how generously they would like to reward our blood, sweat, and unspeakable profanity of the last year, they want to do a walk-through appraisal of our house on Wednesday morning. Tomorrow. TO-EFFING-MORROW, AMIGOS!!!

Commence extreme panic, frenzied cleaning, and fervent lighting of prayers candles in the Thoreau household. We had been hoping to avoid a walk-through appraisal, the real-life version of "My House Is Worth What?" with less of the profoundly obnoxious Kendra Todd, and more of the tangible real-life consequences. A walk-through appraisal with less than twenty-four hours' notice was, to say the least, as unwelcome as a Jehovah's Witness knocking on the door of a Sig Ep Kamoniwannaleia** tropical mixer. In preparation for the real estate apocalypse that is upon us, one of us finally had to wrangle our wardrobe back into the closet, dresser, nightstand, bookshelf, and everywhere else we use to contain the fabric of our lives when it's not smeared across our entire second floor.

So, my panic-stricken cleaning fest is your gain, and thus I finally bring you, at long last and with much fanfare***, photos of our freshly refinished bedroom furniture. In case you had forgotten, which is possible since I began this topic when Tara Reid had never enjoyed surgical enhancement, LB and I had some truly hideous oak bedroom furniture that I decided we should sand, repaint, and refinish to look "weathered," to fit in with our bedroom theme of "French country romantic."

Now, bear in mind that we're not there yet. The furniture is done but we haven't hung pictures or accessorized or figured out the most flattering pose for the cat to strike while lying on the bed. But, in its infant stages, here is our bedroom:

The view from the doorway. Yes, my bedtime reading is "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Some of us just think about food all the time. Some of us are going to be a threat to the world food supply when we're pregnant.

From the same end of the room, but really just to emphasize the fact that I have two chandeliers in my bedroom. This room used to be two bedrooms, one of which was roughly the size of a Lean Cuisine, so we have two light fixtures. They are both chandeliers because my husband is awesomesticks.****

In case you're wondering which fabric we picked out at Fondiqua's, this is it. We had to cover the cardboard back of the no-longer-oak bookshelf. Stage left showcases a picture that I haven't found a home for yet. Don't worry, we tuck it in each night and assure it of its personal worth.

Girlfriend just likes to be in her own pictures. Also, Grace-Based Trivia: I'm wearing the same shirt in this picture, that I'm wearing in the picture on the dresser. Play within a play, what what!

The aforementioned dresser, without the aforementioned assbaggery, tomfoolery, and cockamamery. Still with pictures of me, though, so my ego is assuaged. And thank God!

For those of you who are unnecessarily interested in the artistic aspects of this project, this is what the crackle finish looks like up close. It's a chocolate brown base coat with cream crackled over top. Chocolate plus cream. Mmmmmmm. Mmmmmmm....

Speaking of chocolate, I will leave you tonight with a shot of my favorite chunk of chocolate love, Breeze, our 100-lb Labradozer who has recently taken to sleeping on the sofa:

Can you imagine trying to move that so you can sit down?
No, I just can't imagine trying to make that face move. Who is a muffin? Who is a sweet, sweet chocolate muffin?

*A worthy skill, of course.
**Wherever you are, and I include in that an open cubicle or church, please say that out loud.
***Cue the fanfare! I said cue the trumpet fanfare NOW!!
****Thanks to Mr. Apron, who called my sense of humor "awesomesticks," which I can only assume is a compliment.

A Brush With Celebrity

2009-10-06T21:57:00.002-04:00

Okay, seriously, pictures of my extremely exciting new bedroom decor, complete with panty window valances and seersucker jacket draperies, are on their way. At least, that's what it's going to look like if I don't ever put on my big-girl pants and address the laundry mayhem that has blanketed the room like San Francisco fog.

I would put my big-girl pants on if I weren't currently using them as window treatments.

Instead of playing the responsible role of Holly Housewife at home tonight, I went to my first-ever book club meeting, starring as Holly Housewife At Large, wherein I showed up with hot spinach dip but neglected to read the assigned book. I'm guessing that the cheesetastic dip was more popular than my comments on the book likely would have been, since they would probably have been in the vein of "I would love this character, except she's a giant asshole."

The exciting part of the book club meeting was that after reading her blog for almost a year and feeling a tad bit e-stalkery, I finally got to meet OMG FAMOUS VALERIE. Val is a friend of my friend Hayley, and Hayley turned me on to Val's blog around the this time last year. Something I may have never mentioned here before, possibly because it makes almost no sense, is that in my head all bloggers are celebrities. Following this logic, I still find it surprising and borderline insulting that the paparazzi aren't stalking my every move, following me at the grocery store to report back to my adoring public which heirloom tomatoes I selected for dinner tonight.

All assbaggery aside, I certainly don't consider myself a celebrity, or even worth taking seriously 99% of the time, but I rather illogically do consider all other bloggers to be rockstars. So when I walked into Hayley's living room tonight and immediately recognized OMG FAMOUS VAL from her blog pictures, I became a bit starstruck. It took me a good forty-five minutes of sweaty palms and mentally rehearsed opening lines before I could figure out a way to talk to her. Am I a frat boy, and is this the Mardi Gras mixer, or what?

Proving that I am smooth like pistachio pudding, I eventually went and knelt down next to her chair, and waited for a pause in the conversation. This gave me a chance to refine my personal introduction from a high-pitched giggle to actual English words. Words like, "SQUEEEEEEEEE HIIIIIIIIIII!!!!! Iknowyoubutyoudon'tknowmedon'tbescaaaaaaaaared!"

I was totally delighted to discover that Val is a really lovely person to talk to, in addition to being a great writer and mother to a super-precious chubby bunny of a baby. I don't know what I would have done if she had been some sort of steely-eyed girl-hating bitch, but I think it would have involved making love to the bowl of hot spinach dip in the corner to comfort myself.

That said, check out her blog and her chubby bunny baby, while I play over here and stall for more time to post pictures of my new bedroom.

Promise + Compromise = Prompromise!

2009-10-05T19:37:00.002-04:00

Now really, when I wrote the title for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism you're about to read, I was thinking that my dear seventeen readers would immediately see things as I do,* and would recognize the word as a a head-on collision of the business end of "promise" with the party end of "compromise."

What it actually appears to be is a mashup of the popular springtime high school ritual known as "Prom Promise." I actually prefer my take on it, injecting the spirit of compromise into the oath teenagers take not to Do It On Prom Night just because they suddenly can't resist each other's rented clothing and overzealously applied body glitter. The Prompromise is more in the spirit of, "Sure Mom, I promise not to Do It On Prom Night, so as a compromise, we'll only Sprint To Shortstop in the backseat of his dad's Taurus. But we definitely won't Do It. No worries."

Anyway. I was trying to convey that in the spirit of last night, when I promised I'd be back tonight to share pictures of our bedroom furniture project, I am here to shed words upon you. However, I don't have pictures of the project yet, because I have yet to act anything like the grownup I play on TV and get my wardrobe out of the bedroom floor. So, as a compromise, I figured I'd just write about something else. See? It's a prompromise!

Apparently I'm also super + lame = superlame, but that's neither here nor there.

Lawyer Boy and I were all set to corral my calamitous clothing and get the rest of the furniture in place tonight, and the only piece of the puzzle we had yet to procure was a little fabric to cover the hideous faux-oak (fauk?) backing on the bookcase. In order to do so, unfortunately, we had to go to a fabric store of the generic variety. You've probably got anywhere between one and forty-two of these retail lint traps in your current locale, and out of a desire to not get sued for Christmas, I'll call it Fondiqua's. LB hates fabric stores because his mom dragged him through each and every one on the Eastern Seaboard frequently and at great length when he was a kid. I hate fabric stores because they involve paying attention to one thing and one thing only, most of which is ugly, and most of which is not shoes, wine, or food, the only topics to which I can devote my undivided attention for more than thirty-two seconds.

So we wandered into Fondiqua's all set to sprint through the store, pick out a piece of fabric in a Michael Phelps amount of time, and sprint back out before Fondiqua's could cover us in applique-ed ducks and corduroy covered in autumn leaves. Or giraffes. Or whatever the hell they were.

We found our fabric. We even figured out how much we needed, which was something of a magical occurrence, since one of us whose name rhymes with Sawyer Joy forgot to measure the fauk panel we were trying to mask. We even unhinged the roll (bolt? cape?) of fabric from the rack without destroying or wearing any of the other capes of fabric, which was really fortunate, since absolutely none of them were my color. Seriously, since when is everyone a Winter? We took our prize and paraded it to the front of the store, where we had to wait in line. Twice.

Have you ever met anyone who likes to wait in line? Have you ever seen an industry that isn't actively trying to get rid of waiting in line? Self check-out. Associate to Aisle 5. "I can take whoever's next!" No one likes waiting in lines, so every store with common sense and a desire to write some black ink this year tries to get you out of them quicker than Kanye West out of any public event whatsoever. Fabric stores, however, do a number two on your desire to cut and run: You have to wait for the gravy-ass Scissor Sister to cut your fabric for you, and thennnnn you have to get in line agaaaaaaaiiiiin to give them dollars in addition to the sanity you've already given them. Look how generous you are! Dollars AND sanity! Bless your heart.

Seriously, did they plant the purchaser of yards and yards of bargain-basement purple polyester in front of me on purpose? Did they steal her ability to speak English just to keep me teetering on my three-inch pointy-toed shiny red heels just as long as humanly possible? Did they miss the part where I almost threw my three-inch pointy-toed shiny red heels at the polyester procurer just to get her the eff out of Fondiqua's? Because all. of that. HAPPENED. PEOPLE.

By the time LB and I sprang free from the cottony clutches of Fondiqua's, we were both so exhausted, hungry, and in immense pain from a day in three-inch pointy-toed shiny red heels that we couldn't bear the thought of finishing the bedroom. I don't think I can touch that fabric for at least another twenty-for hours.

*Which is, frankly, a terrifying thought.

Wherefore Art Thou, Grace?

2009-10-04T20:53:00.002-04:00

Well, faithful amigos, I've been around. Recently I've been a really useful combination of busy and lazy, wherein I run around doing all kinds of productive, meaningful things like painting furniture and making my own yogurt,* only to be so butt-ass worn out by the time I sit down in the evening, that finding two words to put together is even more difficult than finding a shadow of a brain cell anywhere between Megan Fox's elaborately pierced ears.

Stop Googling "Megan Fox piercings" right now. This is about me, people!

Anyway, I promise to return triumphant this week. Lawyer Boy and I have been busy trying to prepare our house and our persons for La Grande Douche, or as it would roughly translate from French, "the part where we have to tear apart our entire bathroom, our only full bathroom, to pull a complete do-over from the floor underneath the tile all the way up to the peeling plaster ceiling." We're not embarking on this test of our sanity and marital strength until November, so until then, we're finishing up all the other random projects we had swirling around the giant toilet bowl of our house, in hopes that while the bathroom is a giant pit of suck, the rest of the house can be somewhat less suckiful.

Today we finally finished refinishing all our bedroom furniture. Remember like, six lifetimes ago (okay, back in June) when I said I was going to do that? Yeah, we finally did that! I will have pictures for you tomorrow, once the ratio of my underwear collection to actual furniture in the room has been significantly diminished. Right now the room is much less "French country romantic" than it is "detonated laundry warhead." I've actually come to enjoy the way my tweed work pants double as window treatments.

That said, I'll regale you with all manner of ridiculosity tomorrow. Happy Monday!

I know, right? Ew.

*Total waste of time, this yogurt business. Well played, Yoplait. You win this time.

Little Yard of Horrors

2009-09-15T20:55:00.003-04:00

I have a weird relationship with gardening: I really want to love it, but I also really want to smack it in the face and make it cry. I think our Chris Brown/Rihanna relationship stems from my rather overblown romantic notion of what gardening is. I prefer to think of gardening as a bright, fresh morning, the night's dew sparkling on my tomatoes and zucchini before it melts away under the hot summer sun. Before the sun is out in full force to wreak havoc upon the friendly dewdrops, I emerge from my house, my hair loosely braided, and clad in all-natural fibers--you know, something appropriately bohemian but also consciously fashionable, like a J. Crew sheer cotton button-down. I have some sort of fair-trade wicker basket in my hand (organically sourced and hand-woven, natch) and an exceptionally cute, sustainable straw hat on my head, maybe with a bow. I mean, hey! This gardening stuff? It's hard work, people! I need the right gear.

As I wander from my house, completely one with nature and in full communion with Mother Earth, who is coming over later for tea and gossip, I stop at the various plots of fertile soil in my garden, from which have emerged a veritable Thanksgiving cornucopia: shiny tomatoes about to burst, fat blackberries practically jumping off the vine, and cucumbers bigger than Jon Gosselin's ego (EGO. I said EGO, perverts!). I pick anything and everything I desire, filling my lovely, sustainable basket to the brim, and then meander back into the house, where I make blackberry teacakes for my date with Mother Earth.

Yeah.

You know what gardening is REALLY about? Gardening is DIRT. And BUGS. And digging up the long-dead housepets of the prior owner of your eighty-year-old house, and wondering if that discovery falls into the category of "grave robbery" or "clinical exhumation." Ultimately, I realized that, unfortunately, bugs are inherent to any outdoor adventure, and that any exploits that involve Lawyer Boy and I debating whether the subject was once named Fluffy or Pookiss is not in any way a "clinical" exercise.

We have spent the better part of the last six months trying to wrestle our front and back yards free from the terrifying grip of ivy, kudzu, and what I have been told is grass, but what I patently refuse to believe is grass. Frankly, it is too friendly and loving to be grass. It grows quickly, and so long and free that we sit in the sun together, the "grass" and I, braiding each others' locks and giggling about boys we want to talk to us. I've never met grass so eager to please, but LB burst my love bubble by telling me that it's not the grass, it's me. The love that it gives as freely as a middle-schooler with a crush is not because it really wants me; it's because I refuse to break up with it. Put simply, the grass wouldn't be all up in my biznass if I would remember to cut it more frequently than once a month.

So instead of a Garden of Eden of delectable, desirable vegetables, I am faced with acres of ivy and slutty grass that wants only to wind itself provocatively around my ankles. Anything that is supposed to grow, anything that is planted on purpose, dies as soon as I glance at it, killing my dreams of sustainable baskets and beribboned straw hats. I possess the mythical kiss of death. I only wish I'd known that when I was dating; I could really have used that power to weed out the losers earlier in the game.

However, Lawyer Boy is quite the Prince of the Pea Pod over here, raking and hoeing Fluffy's graveyard into producing some serious farmer's market goods. He has grown whole plants from seeds, which I find beyond impressive, since I cannot grow plants from plants. In just a few months, the kudzu has been bitchslapped, the ivy sent to boot camp, and the overgrown grass taught to shape up and keep its pants on. He is a true Green Giant to my Blackbeard.

Not that I, you know, have a beard. But if I did, I would totally braid a ribbon into it before wandering out into the garden, so that it coordinated with my sustainable straw hat.

I Know I'm A Twit...What Of It?

2009-09-11T19:24:00.002-04:00

After many months and much confused cocking of my head, I finally gave in to peer pressure and the allure of broadcasting every bizarre idea that cruises through my cranium to the Whole Wide Intarwebz, and signed up on Twitter. Or, as Lawyer Boy calls it, Tweeter. You can find me on Tweeter as @gracethoreau, or $gracethoreau, or #$%!gracethoreau, or whatever you use to Tweeter on me. At me. Upon me. All up in my Tweetness.

Regardless of whatever verb you would like to use in the phrase "____ @gracethoreau" (kick, hug, flying elbow) you should follow me on Tweeter. I just (like, right this hot second) discovered that I have to know someone's Tweetername to Tweetertalk to them, which really throws a wrench in my plan to get on Tweeter just to e-yell "stop being a dumb ho!" to Lindsey Lohan, Mary-Kate Olsen, Ashley Olsen, Heidi Montag-Breast, Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, and the chick at my office whose skirt was so tight today, I could see her soul through it.

There should be a button on the right-hand side of this illustrious bit of the Intarwebz directing you to my Tweeterage, but since I all but have a stroke and collapse anytime I have to do anything other than throw word bitlets at the Intarwebz, I make no promises.

That said, Tweet away!

Food Doof Challenge, Day 7: The Grand Finale!

2009-09-07T20:54:00.005-04:00

Well, we made it. We went seven days and seven dinners without hitting the grocery store, and to give you the Cliff's Notes: No one starved, died, or vomited profusely while screaming my name and obscenities, alternately cursing my cooking and begging God for mercy.

In a way it got easier to cook later in the week, because I was no longer paranoid about using up the useful ingredients and not having them later in the week, because obvi, it was already later in the week. Tonight I had two packs of frozen chopped spinach and a package of fresh carrots that I needed to use before they went to the bad, as my dad says, and as usual, I had enough bakery supplies to force-feed both of us pound cake all the way to a diabeetus coma.

I decided to make a crustless spinach quiche, which is one of my favorite quick dinners, the recipe for which I can share with you in three easy-to-read sentences: Buy a box of Bisquik. Find the recipe on the side for "Impossible Cheeseburger Pie." Omit the ground beef, onion, and cheddar cheese, using in their place anything you want (meat and mushrooms have to be cooked first, but that's the only limitation I've found). I like to make this with frozen spinach, cooked and drained, and whatever cheese I have in the house, which is usually around a dozen different varieties. Tonight it was either Parmesan or Gruyere, since that was all we had left.

To go with the quiche, I sliced the carrots lengthwise, tossed them with a little butter, sugar, and spices, and roasted them. I threw together a batch of baking powder biscuits, adding Parmesan and black pepper, and voila! For the last night of the Food Doof Challenge, we had the most nutritionally-balanced meal yet. And it was actually good, which is always a bonus.

Last night I mentioned that I had one last project that I was holding out to try tonight, and it's in the oven right now. I made a cake with the cranberry sauce, and I think it might have actually baked into something other than a big pan of barf. I have a great recipe for pound cake that I make all the time, and I've added jam to it before for random flavor, so I thought, hey, cranberry sauce is like jam! I could add it to the pound cake, and maybe no one would die!

In case the cranberry pound cake turned into a kitchen disaster equal to Rachael Ray, I cut the recipe in half. As usual, halfway through putting the cake together, I forgot that I had halved the recipe, so I used the full amount of baking soda and salt. If I had any sense at all, I would take the advice that cookbooks always give, and I would write out the measurements for a reduced recipe separately, and follow THAT instead of the original recipe. But if I had any sense at all, we probably wouldn't be here.

Before I put the cake in the oven, I tasted the batter, and--yes, I tasted the raw batter. Yes, I know I could get salmonella. Yes, I know how gross raw egg is. But seriously? Cake batter, brownie batter, and cookie dough are too delicious for a little threat like a bacterial hurricane to stop me. Also, it's important to know if your baked good sucks rocks before you bake it, so that you have time to drown your sorrows and disappointment in a quart of ice cream before the terrible finished product comes out of the oven. Or, you can taste it so you can tinker with the seasonings one last time before it's too late. Whatever.

ANYWAY.

I tasted the batter, and the first thing I thought was, "*gasp*! This tastes like Christmas!" I had added the cranberry sauce (all professionally mooshed up), cinnamon, vanilla, and Chinese five-spice to the batter, and in its raw, deliciously contaminated state, it tasted like Yule-y goodness and holiday cheer. Because it takes longer to bake a pound cake than it does to grow a real human baby, I'm still waiting for my pan of Christmas cheer to come out of the oven. Stay tuned!

***ONE HOUR LATER***

CAKEWIN!!! The cranberry sauce cake is delicious. It's a Christmas miracle! It has a nice tart undertone, like Granny Smith apples, which plays nicely against the warm, holiday spiciness of the seasonings. Additionally, it does not suck. I would totally make this cake, blanket it with cream cheese frosting (which, honestly, I would put on anything, including cheesecake, cheese crackers, and actual cream cheese), and take it to a holiday meal. If anyone would like the recipe, just shoot me an email and I'll send it over.

Well, on that happy Christmas note, I declare this week of the Food Doof Challenge closed. I also declare it a success, and I invite you all to try it out, naturally requiring you to email me photos of any particularly disastrous culinary catastrophes immediately. Captions involving four-letter charmers are also welcome.

And if I've learned anything from this week, looking at the goblins that continue to haunt my pantry despite my best efforts, it is that diamonds are not forever. Excess barbecue sauce and brown rice are forever.

Food Doof Challenge, Day 6: Pasta alla Partial Puttanesca

2009-09-06T19:40:00.002-04:00

Last night's wedding was absolutely beautiful, and the food delicious, even beyond the fact that it was not frozen spinach sauteed in Memphis barbecue sauce that I rustled up from the back of the fridge. I'll write about the wedding more tomorrow, after the final episode of the Food Doof, but for now, I will let you know that the part where Lawyer Boy dropped me in the middle of the dance floor was less delicious than the almond wedding cake with Irish Cream filling.

Tonight I had planned to make pasta (fettucine, from a box in the cabinet) with puttanesca sauce, which is one of our perennial favorites. For the uninitiated, puttanesca roughly translates from Italian as "whore," so obviously, we at The Fumbling could not care less what it tastes like, but we are all about making Whore Sauce. Puttanesca is named after Ye Olde Italiane Whores because it's quick and easy (I am not making this up), but beyond that, it's a tomato-based sauce containing garlic, onions, artichokes, anchovies, green olives, and my lovechild, capers. Our favorite restaurant, Avenue 805, does a fantastic puttanesca, and even though LB spares no love for anchovies or green olives, he sucks that stuff down like, well, an Italian whore.

After my little affairette with the tomato saucentrate the other night, I had lots of tomato sauce left over, since one pizza doesn't take a whole lot. I decided to marry that "sauce" with the artichoke hearts and capers in the cabinet, along with a chopped onion and the end of the fresh garlic, for a partial puttanesca. We didn't have anchovies or green olives, but you can't taste them and LB picks them out, respectively, so I didn't feel like we were creating "Jeopardy!" without Alex Trebek over here. I sauteed the onion and minced garlic in olive oil and went to add the tomato sauce, turning the Tupperware upside down to pour the sauce in...and the sauce did not move.

Personal note to tomato sauce: Hi, my name's Grace. We played this game Friday night. Remember? I almost threw you away because you were a dry, pasty whore, but then I added to you the entirety of the Atlantic Ocean and we were good to go for saucy delight. And now? When did you get so thirsty? Now, when I want you to be a whore of a sauce, when I am begging you to be a whore of a sauce, you have transformed back into a mealy brick of seasoned tomato glue? Please. A little justice for the Food Doof, you...whore.

Once I had pried the tomato block out of the Tupperware and nestled it into the sizzling onions, garlic, capers, and artichokes, I poured in some chicken broth, and added in a liberal glug of white wine. I added kosher salt and cayenne pepper, and a dash of white wine vinegar, and covered the sauce to simmer and think about what it did. About forty-five minutes later, when we were ready for dinner, I boiled the fettucine. Upon stirring the thick, tangy sauce into the finished pasta, I threw in a bunch of basil from our garden, because what is life without a chiffonade of basil? And because LB grows mad crazy plants.

Seriously. No holds barred. This was THE BEST DISH so far in Food Doof Challenge Week; so delicious, in fact, that I wrote the recipe down to recreate it at a time when I'm not culinarily unstable. Everything really came together perfectly. The sauce thickened up just right, and when I tossed it with the starch-laden freshly-cooked pasta, it clung to the noodles in just the right way to prevent the noodles from floating in a watery mess of sodden sauce and vegetable bitlets. Put simply, it was absolutely delicious, which leaves me concerned that tomorrow's dinner, the final hurrah in Food Doof Week, will just not be able to measure up.

For tomorrow night, I do have one grand finale planned, not so much in the meal, but in the form of a dessert that I've been throwing around in my head all week. It will either be spectacularly delicious, or spectacularly, mind-blowingly horrendous. Either way, it will be the perfect finish to the Food Doof Challenge!

Food Doof Challenge, Day 5: Victory, Italian-Style

2009-09-04T20:06:00.002-04:00

Well, here we are at Day 5, with only two more "meals" left to brew in this week's cauldron of calamity. I don't know who's more relieved that we're nearing the finish line: Me, for no longer having to stress over what to cook with a collection of ingredients more random than Lindsey Lohan's sexual partners, or Lawyer Boy, for no longer having to stress that I'm going to ask him, at long last, to unhinge his jaw and suck down the vacuum pack of teriyaki tuna in the cupboard.

Last night's lemon chess cheaterfest was definitely a success, as was Molly's arugula pesto dinner, which was far beyond anything my kitchen is capable of spawning at this point in the week. The Italian dinner, complete with prosciutto-wrapped melon and homemade limoncello, got my Giada juices flowing, and I decided to (try to) follow suit with my own Italian masterpiece: Pizza made with absolutely no mozzarella to be found.

In between rolling out pie crusts for everyone I have ever met, and rolling out pie crusts for everyone I might hope to ever meet, last Saturday I happened to finally find a great recipe for pizza crust, while at the same time discovering that my oven will heat to a summery five hundred and fifty degrees. I made two really fantastic pizzas in three days and fortunately, as a totally unhinged baker, I still had tons of flour and yeast in the house. What sealed the deal was the small jar of tomato paste that I found in the back of the dwindling cabinet last night. Raise your hand if you know what tomato paste is. Raise your hand if you know what tomato paste is for. I, frankly, question humanity's need for the existence of tomato paste, since it seems to be nothing more than what happens if I leave tomato sauce on the stove for too long. If I had known I could bottle that crap and that people would pay real dollars for it, full-time employment would no longer be de rigueur in these parts.

My mom, however, recently told me that tomato paste is just tomato sauce concentrate, to which you can add liquid to turn it back into tomato sauce. Okay, seriously, why. do. they. not. say. that. on. the. can??? Or call it tomato sauce concentrate? Or even better, tomato saucentrate? Or just share with the world at large that THIS PRODUCT HAS A PURPOSE???

I'll write my Congressman about that later. Tonight, while my dough rose, I added liquid to turn the erstwhile tomato sauce back into tomato sauce, throwing in salt, herbs, and spices so it didn't taste like licking a tomato on Ecstasy. With the dough rolled out and spread with my reconstituted saucentrate, the only hurdle left to overcome was the fact that we had zero mozzarella cheese in the house. I pillaged the fridge for melty dairy products, coming away with two slices of havarti, a half-cup of Pecorino-Romano, and eight ounces of Gruyere.

Every time I cook with an unusual combination of ingredients, I think to myself, "this is such a cool idea! Why hasn't this become really popular yet?" Most of the time, the reason is, "because it tastes like ass." So when I mixed my three cheeses and spread them over the pizza, it occurred to me that there is probably a reason no one uses those three in harmony. But since it was either the cheese stooges or apple butter, I decided to take my chances with the cheese.

All in all, the pizza was good. The crust was outstanding, but I hadn't been forced to compromise anything in making that. The sauce, on the other hand, was HOLY SHIT TOMATO. I added lots of liquid, but it was still extremely tomato-y, although the garlic and spices fought hard to assert themselves against the crimson tide. The cheeses were a mixed bag. The havarti completely disappeared, leaving the Pecorino and Gruyere to duke it out for the title of Dairy Queen. Ultimately, the Gruyere won, beating out the Pecorino in a most unexpected way.

Does anyone else think Gruyere tastes like pineapple? I always have, but I was hoping that once it was onstage performing with the rest of the cast, the pineapple would take a backseat to, oh, I dunno, the actual taste of cheese. In fact, not so much. Either that, or a gnome snuck into my oven and spritzed my pizza with a pina colada.

With all the weirdness I've seen come out of my oven this week, my money's on the gnome.

***

As a reminder, LB and I are off to a wedding tomorrow night, to nibble on delicious cuisine that wasn't fished out of the back of the bottom shelf of someone's fridge, sprinkled with coconut and brown rice, and deep-fried. See you on Sunday!

Food Doof Challenge, Day 4: Cheater, Cheater, Lemon Pie Eater?

2009-09-03T18:55:00.002-04:00

Dearly beloved, I have a confession. LB and I are not eating dinner at home tonight, which appears on the surface to be a grievous breach of the solemn promise I made to y'all Monday night to eat all the bizarre and atrocious things lurking in my kitchen, for a week straight.

But seriously, I'm only human, and more importantly, I tend toward the flakier side of humanity, particularly when it comes to managing my own busy and demanding schedule of cocktail hours and hair appointments. Put simply and abjectly apologetically, I'm terrible about double-booking myself, and since the technology that would allow me to annoy people at two events at the same time hasn't beleaguered humanity yet, this causes problems. When I committed to a week of Doofery on Monday, I had forgotten that our friends Molly and Lee had invited us for dinner tonight, so natch, I said yes. I also volunteered to bring dessert, before I volunteered to not buy groceries for a week.

Upon realizing my fumble, I decided that I could make amends by bringing a dessert created only with foods already in my kitchen.

Time out. Did you think I was going to say that I decided we would reschedule with Molly and Lee for next week? Please. How lame would that be? "I'm sorry, I can't come over to enjoy your meticulously prepared haute cuisine, because I have a date with canned asparagus and crunchy taco shells. LYLAS!" Also, Molly is making homemade limoncello from her grandmother's recipe, and no one has ever made me hootch from scratch* before, so there was no way I was walking away from that. I pledged to destroy the excess in my kitchen, not the lifeblood of my social life!

I justified it with ~~an intense case of denial~~ the rationalization that if I were to cook a whole, fancy dessert from things in my kitchen, it was equivalent, at least in number of ingredients, to making dinner from the same kitchen contents. I had a pie crust in the fridge that I made last weekend that I needed to use, and I found a recipe for lemon chess pie composed entirely of random crap in my fridge. Making it helped me deplete the five-pound bag of lemons that I bought last week, for a reason that has since wandered out of my head, to get lost in the woods and never return.

The pie is baking right now, and it smells so much better than any of the oddities to come out of my kitchen this week. It actually smells so good that it has inspired in me a new idea for how to go to dinner with friends, and still stick to my challenge. We go to Molly and Lee's, take the pie with us, and while everyone else eats Molly's cooking, I take a fork to the pie and call it dinner.

What? You totally know that lots of people would eat half a pie and call it dinner. I mean, I'm just saying, I know people who have eaten a hunk of pie and called it dinner. Like people who live in my house. Who are named Grace.

So am I a terrible, unforgivable cheater who deserves punishment of a criminal nature?

*I would call it "scratch-hootch," but doesn't that sound like an STD? I know.

Food Doof Challenge, Day 3: Tacos Con Bizzarros

2009-09-02T19:40:00.002-04:00

Lawyer Boy and I love tacos. I can't sugarcoat that and try to make it sound classy or sophisticated, nor can I deny the fact that if one of us pulls out the Old El Paso Taco Shells box, the other is bound to start hopping up and down, dancing with glee like the Labradozer at the sight of a Pupperoni, possibly with similar accompanying drool. We usually have Taco Night once a week, and my only complaint is that it's always over too fast, leaving me to content myself with a plate full of salsa and happy, crunchy memories.

So of course, delving into Doofery this week, we had a box of taco shells, but no ground beef, and no envelope of taco sodium with a hint of seasoning. LB and I are purists in our Taco Night ritual, and the cast is always crunchy tacos with seasoned beef, cheddar cheese, and salsa. I don't know why I decided that the taco shells should become innocent victims to my Doofery, though I suspect it has something to do with my borderline-homicidal desire to deep-six the can of refried beans that set up camp in my cabinet. What else could I do with them? Stir them into oatmeal for a dash of savory protein? Toss them with penne pasta and artichoke hearts for a cross-cultural carbo load?

Well, it's official. No one will ever come eat at my house again, after that last suggestion.

Following the plan I concocted last night, I saved half the baked chicken tenderloins to season for tacos. I pulled out the refried beans and allowed myself to be moderately appalled as they slid from the can in one solid piece, laying themselves to rest in the pan like some little-known internal organ. I added garlic powder, sauteed onion, salt, cayenne, and paprika to try to disguise the fact that it was a massive hunk of smearable fiber, and tried to break up the chunks to destroy the ridges of the can imprinted in its loins. The beans were in business.

I cut the chicken into little itty bits, hoping that the tinier the pieces, the tinier the utterly disgusting leftover-chicken taste would be. I don't know why, but leftover poultry tastes awful to me, so my least favorite day of the year is the day after Thanksgiving. When all there is to eat is turkey soup, turkey stew, turkey burgers, and turkey tetrazzini, I consider it the perfect day to go out for Indian. But since my friends in curry weren't available to help out this week, I had to figure out some way to cover up the chicken-y taste of the chicken, and Mexican spices seemed like the best bet. Into the skillet with the chicken went the same spices as the beans, a little water, and then a chunk of cream cheese. I've done that before and in my humble opinion, it's faboo. The cream cheese melts and mixed with the water and spices to make a really thick sauce, and a thick cream sauce can cover up a variety of shortcomings, including tough meat, flavorless meat, and bad first dates.

With the chicken cooked and the beans as gussied-up as I could make them, we were ready for taco assemblage. (Yes, I cooked the taco shells too, but throwing a baking sheet in the oven didn't seem to merit a narrative.) I smeared some beans into the bottoms of the shells and was moderately disconcerted at the beans' uncanny resemblance to peanut butter. A little cheddar cheese, the end of another glorious cheese product, went between the bean layer and the chicken with sauce. Taco Night was ON!

Well, on-ish. The tacos weren't bad, but seriously, anyone who tells you beans are a worthy substitute for beef needs to head for the halls of Congress, because he or she is obviously an accomplished career liar. The chicken was delish, mostly because it tasted like spicy cream sauce and not foul leftover fowl. On the downside, we didn't have enough cheddar for me to turn my tacos into a dairy bomb as I love to do, and the beans softened the crunchy shells more than I liked.

But on the upside, it was dinner that was not disgusting, and contained enough protein to actually call it a meal. Furthermore, it confirmed my suspicions that I am a meatatarian for a reason. Beef over beans at all costs!

And henceforth, we have no more meat for the rest of the week. Anyone know how to catch a squirrel?

Food Doof Challenge, Day 2: ChickiParm

2009-09-01T20:10:00.004-04:00

In case you missed the beginning of The Food Doof Challenge, you can read about its humble start here.

Because I am not Harry Potter and thus cannot magic bizarre culinary oddities into unexpected deliciousness, I did not spend all day slaving away in the kitchen, waving a wand in an attempt to piece together a nutritious and delicious dinner from cranberry sauce and refried beans. However, I did spend all day obsessing over it. My biggest concern at this stage of Food Doofery* is that I will use up all my useful ingredients, the ones that I could actually build a meal around, in the first three days. By Thursday, if this were to happen, dinner would be brown rice pilaf with a Cheerio crust, glazed with an orange marmalade-chili bean sauce.

Fear of Doof disaster has led me to ration my ingredients that don't actively suck, breaking them into portions that are proportionally different from what I'd normally serve. For example, I had a 1.25 pound package of chicken tenderloins in the fridge that needed to be cooked sooner rather than later (read: immediately), and in my regularly scheduled programming, I'd dedicate them all to one dish. But as a committed Food Doof, and with the specter of orange marmalade chili beans lurking behind me, I decided to stretch the chicken by making it more of a splashy accent to the dish for two nights, as opposed to the main dish just once. The Watson to the plate's Sherlock Holmes, if you will.

What, would you not call Watson "splashy"? Clearly you missed the "Watson Gone Wild" Vegas special. Might I suggest Tivo?

I knew I wanted to bread the chicken and serve it over pasta, so I breaded half of it using some long-neglected Italian breadcrumbs I found in the cabinet. The other half I sprinkled with a little salt and pepper, so that I could bake it tonight, then shred it, season it, and mix it with the refried beans to serve as taco filling tomorrow night. It's like killing two birds with one stone...except for it's one bird...with one stone...hm.

For the main attraction, I had bowtie pasta and the remains of what used to be tomato bruschetta. A couple weeks ago I had served tomato bruschetta over goat cheese as an appetizer, and to keep the bruschetta from oozing everywhere, I had scooped it out with a slotted spoon, leaving several cups of bruschetta juice in the jar. Then, it seemed completely reasonable and economical to save the bruschetta juice for a later use, because I was apparently high at that time. Had I not stepped up to the Doof Challenge this week, I would have done like any normal person and poured the bruschetta juice out when I came to my senses, but staring into my fridge and receiving the cold stare of a tub of Cool Whip and three dill pickles in return, bowtie pasta in bruschetta juice sounded simply divine.

So while the chicken baked, I cooked the pasta, scalding myself on the cooking water, then put it back in the cooking pot with the bruschetta juice. I added some reserved demonic pasta cooking water, and stirred in a bunch of grated Pecorino Romano cheese (just about the end of my stash of that gem, by the way). After just a couple of minutes of bubbling, stirring, and intense praying, I had bowtie pasta in a thick, creamy tomato cheese sauce, to top with strips of breaded chicken. I hesitate to call it chicken Parmesan, since 1) it wasn't, and 2) no Parmesan was harmed in the making of this dish, but since it was so similar, I've named it ChickiParm.

And here I am, two nights into this potential foodie fiasco. Tomorrow I'm trying to magic up some tacos with the shredded chicken, but I have no idea what to serve as a side dish. Suggestions would be super!

The problem I have already noticed is that, aside from some beans, two packs of frozen spinach (which cook down into approximately two tablespoons each), and cranberry sauce, we don't really have any vegetables, not counting potatoes, so I've been nagging LB to make sure he eats lots of roughage at lunch. Otherwise, he'd come home and try to call four servings of beans his daily quota, in which case I'd refuse to sleep in the same room with him.

Scratch that. I'd refuse to sleep in the same house with him.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment of The Food Doof Challenge! I assure you that this will become progressively more squirrelly as the week goes on...such that I am not entirely ruling out the possibility of eating squirrels. In orange marmalade chili beans, natch.

*One of my friends recently questioned my use of the word "doofier," which is not exactly recognized by Merriam-Webster, per se. Every time I spin "doof" or "doofus" into a new vocabulary bit, I see his eyebrows raising and hear his voice of reason scaling up, asking "doofier?" So of course I try to use it in casual conversation at least three times a day.

Letter To The Human Clown Car

2009-09-01T08:15:00.002-04:00

Dear Michelle Duggar,
When you have spent an enormous amount of your life in stirrups, and yet you are not an award-winning equestrian, it is time to reconsider your hobbies and life goals. While I do understand that at this point, childbirth no longer involves actual labor, and that your babies just wander out into the light, blinking, might I suggest scrapbooking or knitting as hobbies that are both meaningful and less draining than childbirth?
Other great hobby choices include cross-stich, vasectomies, and identifying the 18 humans you've already dropped.
Yours in Huggies,
Grace

"Food" Is Just "Doof" Spelled Backwards

2009-08-31T19:28:00.005-04:00

The release of this summer's Streep-apalooza "Julie & Julia" has caused many of my friends to examine, with renewed interest and hopeful appetites, my maniacal cooking habits. Some of them have compared me to Julie Powell, although I personally see no similarities beyond the two of us possessing both a nosy cat and ovaries. Additionally, I like to believe that I'm at least marginally sane and/or emotionally stable; at the very least, I do not talk to an imaginary friend while I pound out pie crust. I am very clearly screaming at the rogue pie crust as I hurl creative obscenities into the kitchen.

My kinder, gentler friends have made the more flattering comparison of me to Julia Child, and while all of them are on a special list to receive extra-large, flashy-like-Vegas Christmas presents, I have to disagree with this one as well. I am not now, and could never hope to be, the prolific pioneer that Julia was in shaping American cuisine as we know and love it today, and I can only cook because I have outstanding chefs like Julia to Xerox.

Also, I read her memoir, My Life In France, and would you believe that there is not a single fart joke in that entire book?

I just really love to cook, and coincidentally enough, Lawyer Boy and I love to eat, so most of my experiments don't last too long around these parts--except when I get carried away by the tides of kitchen creativity. Case in point: This weekend I became a bit, shall we say, overzealous about perfecting my mixing, chilling, and rolling techniques for pie crust...so I made four. (No, Mom, I did not eat them, and yes, I know what my cholesterol is.) Two of them became peach turnovers and two of them went into the freezer for future delight. For the future, when my cholesterol comes down out of the quadruple digits, circa the year 2034.

As the above-referenced crust capade might lead you to believe, my culinary explosions are not always practical, but I try to plan our weeknight dinners to include more balanced meals than not. Sometimes it works and I can turn out fare that makes 30 Minute Meals cry into its cacciatore in the corner; sometimes, like tonight, I discover that I've got canned cranberry sauce, taco shells, and Triscuits to spin up into a meal. For some reason, I just don't think a sprig of parsley and some creative plating are going to disguise that kind of horror.

Staring into my cabinets and wondering who bought chili beans and instant mashed potatoes (me and me, respectively), I thought of an experiment that the Bon Appetit Foodist had written about a few months ago: To cook dinner for yourself and, if applicable, your long-suffering spouse, for a week, using only the current contents of your kitchen. I find the thought of giving myself a week to dispose of the ridiculously random ingredients that have been staring me down for months vastly appealing, in a cleansing sort of way, and I find the idea of living at the mercy of my more unfortunate grocery acquisitions appealing, in a punitive sort of way. Seriously, I need to be punished for buying instant mashed potatoes.

And thus tonight, for better or for worse, for fantastic or foul, LB and I decided that this will be the week of The Food Doof Challenge, wherein we will bumble our way through disposing of the contents of our kitchen in the next seven days, trying to find the most appetizing ways to prepare what we've got. The only rules of The Food Doof Challenge are:

1) We can only use what we already have, period;
2) We have to, throughout the course of the week, use as much of the food that we have as possible (so no living on brown rice); and
3) We have to actually cook dinner each night (so no living on Cheerios).

As we begin our quest for gastronomic glory, the more useful elements in our corner include one pound of chicken breast, plain nonfat yogurt, artichoke hearts, capers, and two boxes of pasta. The more challenging items, however, include cranberry sauce, lard-free refried beans, three kinds of vinegar, and four jars of jam. And who bought seven bottles of barbecue sauce? I'm not naming names...but his rhymes with Lawyer Boy.

Day 1: The Food Doof Challenge Kickoff Event

Tonight we didn't do too badly. I roasted a pound of broccoli, which is both delicious and an appropriate detox mechanism after a weekend of pastry and pizza, and LB made a burrito with our lone tortilla (of questionable provenance and age), a can of black beans, cheddar cheese, and the salsa I made last week. Calling the tortilla cardboard would be unfair to cardboard, but LB's stomach is apparently quite the Viking. And seeing as I just plowed through a pound of broccoli, I'd better be hoping for some Viking digestive powers of my own. Normally I'd go for a more balanced meal than just a fiber tsunami, but I wasn't particularly hungry tonight.

I'll report back each night for seven nights to let you know what we ate, how we cooked it, and who was the first to gag. As a caveat, we are going to a wedding Saturday night, so we'll have a night off from chick peas slow-simmered in peach-caper jam (and if not, I'm having a chat with the bride), but we'll make up for that by driving this train through this time next week.

Bon appetit! If you dare.

All Hail Suxor!

2009-08-24T20:46:00.004-04:00

You know what is absolutely Suxor, King Of Suckonia And Surrounding Counties? When you go out for a run and for the first time in at least two molten months, it's not eleven thousand degrees, so you don't feel like every stride is taking you one step closer to a big, beefy hug from the Grim Reaper. You're so excited, you're even timing yourself intently (which you don't normally do because your molasses pace makes you cry) to see if this newfound freedom from running through a Swedish sauna is helping your splits at all...

...and you are suddenly hit with a horrible cramp in an abdominal organ you didn't even know you had, the intense pain of which convinces you that there must be a tiny, deranged elf up in there, performing an appendectomy with a plastic picnic spork, cackling maniacally. You slow your triumphant run to a walk, but the elf continues to hack away at your marginally vital organs until you slow...to...a...stop. Phooooooooooooo. You finally silence the elf within, but you're still half a mile from home. And you're pissed. Phoooooooooooo.

All hail Suxor, for he is mighty! And has a wicked herd of elves.

Ode To My Lost Love

2009-08-20T18:55:00.012-04:00

Thursday nights are one of my all-time favorite channels on the TV Guide of my life. Thursday night is relaxing, because while I know I have to go to work the next day, it's Friday, so there are only eight hours left in which matters at the office can catch fire, blow up in my face, or commit other acts of workplace arson. Because Thursday night isn't Friday night, I don't have the inherent feeling of guilt that I get when I just laze around on the couch on a weekend night, feeling like I should be doing something more productively and outstandingly fun with my Get Out of Jail Free night.

Thursday nights in the summer are even more creamy delicious, because everything is just plain better in the summer (except pot roast, my brain function, and large, sweaty men). It's the closest I ever feel to the summer nights when I was a kid, when the only items on my agenda were to finish my dripping popsicle, and to kick my brother in the shins for smearing my dripping popsicle in my ponytail. Oh, summer lovin'.

Last summer I found myself falling into another delightful summer Thursday night ritual, courtesy of my amigos at CBS. I would describe it to you, but here, let me show you it!

(That little circle says "The Neighbors Are Closer Than You Think," because they can't say "The Neighbors Want Your Butt" during prime time.)

For those of you who remain dismally unaware of Swingtown, allow me to give you the executive summary, in which Swingtown will henceforth be known as Summer's Excellent Xtremelyrisque guiltYpleasure, or SEXY, for short. Set in 1976 in a suburb of Chicago, SEXY follows the adventures of the Miller family, parents Bruce and Susan and teenagers Laurie and BJ*, as they move up the social ladder and into a flashy new house, with flashy new neighbors who have a flashy basement orgy playroom. They find themselves torn between their new neighbors, Tom and Trina Decker, who are swingers with a voracious appetite for fresh meat, and their old BFFs, Janet and Roger, who wear a depressing amount of plaid. Bruce and Susan get involved with their new neighbors in more than just a potluck recipe swap, and the show explores the changing dynamic of their family as they struggle to adapt to their changing world, and to hide from their kids the fact that they're now smoking dope and spelunking their neighbors.

As you may have guessed from my deep love for this show, most of the episodes were not any more serious than a backyard wiener roast...or any other backyard wiener adventure. In the initial episodes, there was a lot of this face:

"You said to bring buns, so I brought buns...what? Show you those buns? But they're in the kitche...OH."

Once the writers had us acquainted with the swingers of our summer seduction, most of the episodes centered around the Deckers throwing some sort of themed hot-weather get-together, where, by the end of the night, the company always got stickier than the barbecue. Every synopsis on the TV Guide channel seemed to begin with, "At the Decker's annual [insert ass-random party theme here] party,..." and at first I thought this was odd, that all these feather-haired folks did was throw parties. Then I realized that if you're only out to bean your neighbors, your best bet is to get them all likkered up and high on Quaaludes, just a hop, skip, and a bra away from your flashy basement orgy playroom.

Honestly, it wasn't the raunchy summer guilt that got me hooked on SEXY, it was the fact that SEXY took place in my most favorite decade, the seventies. Someone on the SEXY crew did their homework, and the set dressing and costuming, from the crocheted potholders to the slick polyester camisoles, was spot on, forming the perfect music video to accompany The Eagles, Jackson Browne, and the rest of the soundtrack--if their music videos back in the day had been, you know, porn.

Of all the disco-day touches that SEXY mastered, my favorite was the hair. The women's hair was free-range and fluffy, yet perfectly placed and purposeful:

Trina Decker (Lana Parilla).** Illegal in six states and fourteen countries. In any decade.

Women always aim to please, but when the men come through with the goods, it's always delightfully surprising, and the men really came through with delicious, lush hair in SEXY. That's what seventies hair was all about, as photos of my dad as a polo-shirted twentysomething have evidenced. Whatever happened to lush hair? I understand, and absolutely advocate, the death of polyester leisure suits (if only to avoid the fire hazard), but why did we pick gel over locks? Mohawks over feathers? Just look...look...

Ignore the fifteen-year-oldness. Love the lush.

Lush. Love it.

Lush. Lush! TOUCH IT!

And then we have, by uncomfortable comparison, what man-hair devolved into:

Not lush! NOT LUSH AT ALL!!! Go home.

SEXY became my Thursday night wine buddy, opening the gate into What The Frickday, starting my weekend off right with its disco vibe and sex for free--like a Britney video, but with a better dance beat. But I knew that the end was near when SEXY was deported to the Friday night lineup, a death sentence for prime-time programming, and sure enough, SEXY was cancelled after just one debaucherous season.I cried into my Chardonnay.

This summer I've tried to move on. I've tried Burn Notice. I've tried Royal Pains. And while I love them, in their own ways, they just can't bring back the swingerriffic thrills of SEXY. It's disappointing, like a hot summer night without a popsicle in your ponytail.

So I beseech you, CBS. Bring SEXY back. Why not? Come on. I'm bringing SEXY back.

You motherfuckers don't know how to act.

*There's your first clue.

**Maybe I have a girl crush.

Lawyer Boy Represent

2009-08-16T20:02:00.001-04:00

As you may remember from my epic and indignant whining, on the way to the beach for Memorial Weekend, I got my first ever speeding ticket while most definitely NOT speeding through Prince "Deliverance" George County, Virginny. In lieu of showing up at the courthouse to shoot my mouth off inappropriately, I was given the option of pre-paying the fine and going on about my life, having coughed up one hundred and six of the most unjust blood dollars ever in the history of moving violations. This inherently involved an admission of guilt to a heinous crime that I knew that I hadn't committed, and I was not okay with being swept away in that grave miscarriage of justice.

I'm also married to a really belligerent attorney.

Before you picture me sailing into the courtroom surrounded by a million dollar club of slick defense sharks, throwing gems like, "if the speed trap was shit, you must acquit!" at the starstruck jury, I have to confess...Lawyer Boy is a real estate attorney. He's in front of a judge about as often as I'm on stage at the Kennedy Center shaking a tambourine behind Yo Yo Ma, so having him represent me in such a high-stakes legal matter was a slightly precarious gamble. However, he really wanted to get into open court again, and I really didn't want to stroke a fat check to my BFFs in Deliverance, so we opted to appear in court.

The first thing LB did in representing me to the highest extent of his ability was, naturally, to call the Commonwealth Attorney's office and try to sweet talk our collective way out of it. The Commonwealth unfortunately felt that habeas corpus was all there and my mens rea was perfectly capable of standing trial for the e pluribus unum crime of speedius ticketorium, so there was no bribing the law with a box of cookies in this case. However, thanks to his winning combination of crazy-good legal skills and outrageous charm,* LB was able to get the Commonwealth to agree to a plea of "defective equipment," which as I understood it, meant that I would stand up and claim that my defective foot was responsible for how hard it was pushing down the gas pedal. Perhaps, in furtherance of my claim, I should limp into the courtroom, dragging my pointy-shoed defective foot behind me. With this deal secured, all my cracker-jack legal team and I would need to do would be to breeze into the court room and yell, "defective equipment, Your Honor!" as we continued on our way over to the cashier's window to pay the fine. Why even take a seat if it's that easy?

This seemed a bit too easy to me, frankly, but the entire goal of this legal operation was to keep my insurance rates from going up, and claiming a defective foot would swish the ball right into the goal, so I took the morning off and practiced my best contrite yet angelically unaware face.

In the few days leading up to my trial, another attorney I know did everything in his power to convince me that the end of my court appearance would find me dangling from the stocks in the town square, having been sentenced to three days of public humiliation for inadequate representation by a real estate attorney. The Commonwealth would have no record of my plea. LB would have no idea what he was doing. The judge would be cranky after his wife accidentally scrambled his over-easy eggs, and he would find no sympathy in his heart for my defective limb. I would have to hang like a wet sock from the stocks and, to fulfill the "public humiliation" portion of my sentence, I would be forced to do so wearing the same clothes I wore to frat parties freshman year of college.

ALL WOULD BE LOST, Y'ALL.

The morning of what could potentially be my last day of freedom from platform shoes and Pussycat Doll-worthy eyeliner, LB and I got up early and put on our most responsible-looking outfits--the ones with matching creases in the pants and big, innocent doe eyes. We got into the car, me at the helm, and it occurred to me that I should take extra precautions not to speed, since it would be the height of irony to get a speeding ticket on the way to try to get out of a speeding ticket. I crept down I-95, nervously watching the other cars fly angrily past me, trying to hide my face from the glares of the other drivers, and telling myself that the middle finger is the new thumbs-up. After heading farther off 95 than I knew was possible without dead-ending at the Clampett's cabin, we finally arrived at the Deliverance County Courthouse.

Would you believe they had electricity out there? The court complex, built with the money collected from other unjust speeding tickets, was actually quite lovely. I had pictured a wooden structure on par with the courthouse in The Crucible, the judge glowering at me through the smoke of sputtering candles and the screams of the demon-possessed teenage girls. As we were unable to find a hitching post, we parked our wagon in the lot and headed inside, where LB quickly found my name on the docket.

As we waited in the hallway outside the courtroom, I looked at my attorney, so handsome in his suit and--oh, what is that?! A hair had fallen out of place and across his forehead, giving him more the appearance of a rakish college boy than a responsible attorney. LB saw me looking at him and smiled at me. I reached up and gently brushed the hair back into place. Without breaking his smile or moving his lips, LB hissed at me, "Do not do that in here. I'm your attorney right now!"

Well, pfft, fine. I can't help how cute my counsel is, is all.

We were finally called into the courtroom to stand trial along with the rest of the accused. As we waited for the unwashed pandemonium to settle into order, I busied myself with my favorite activity: shameless and unabashed people watching. LB and I were truly an anomaly that morning, in that we were neatly groomed, clothed in business attire, and in comparison to some of the other guest stars, we were just plain fully clothed. As the carnie folk and Clown College waitlisted applicants milled around us, I noticed all of the attorneys filing into a room behind the judge's bench. I nudged LB. "Are you supposed to be in there with the other attorneys?" I asked, concerned.

"Nah," he replied. "I don't know why I'd need to be."

The bailiff stepped out of the secret negotiation chamber and read from a piece of paper in his hand. "Attorney Thoreau?" he called out. LB and I perked up like cats in front of a fishtank. The bailiff motioned for LB to follow him, and my legal counsel, my representation, my only slight chance of not spending three days locked in the stocks wearing a tie-back shirt, disappeared into the negotiation chamber.

ALL WOULD BE LOST, Y'ALL.

I barely had time to think about the most effective way to panic mindlessly when LB and the bailiff emerged from the secret chamber. They walked straight across the court and out the door marked EXIT. Commence mindless panicking, STAT!

Half a second later, and just before I would have started unbuttoning my shirt to represent myself with the time-honored Massive Cleavage Defense,** LB popped back in from the exit and motioned for me to join him. Forgetting all about limping dramatically on my defective foot, I bolted for the exit faster than I had bolted through Deliverance County on that fateful trip and darted through the door.

"What's going on? Why aren't we in court?" I asked, half relieved and half concerned that I had already been found guilty behind my back, which would still be better than a variety of other things that have happened behind my back in the past.

"They're trying to clear out the docket to move the schedule along. They had the Commonwealth Attorney and I agree in front of the judge that we had reached a plea deal, and the judge gave his approval. We can just pay the defective equipment fine and go." He pulled out the checkbook.

"That's it?" I practically fell over from shock.

"That's it. We can go now."

I was so excited I was practically giddy. In no time at all, we were out of the courthouse and back to the car. No jail time! No stocks! No skin-tight black pants melting to my butt in the blazing summer sun! Justice had been served!

My only regret was that I didn't get to watch LB morph into Matthew McConnaughey in A Time To Kill, pacing about in front of a jury while sweat poured from his head as he furiously defended my honor, rolling up his sleeves and gesturing emphatically to my defective foot.

But seriously? No objection, Your Honor.

*I am in no way biased.
**Which I am, in reality, physically incapable of, um, mounting.

Summer Vacation: Lazy R Us

2009-08-10T22:04:00.002-04:00

Well, it has been two weeks since I have flung my mental detritus at you, and truth be told, I miss it like the tabloids miss La Lohan when she decides not to wander the streets of L.A., panties begone and dignity thrown to the wind, for a full weekend at a time. What has happened is this: It is a two-fold problem.

1. It is hot. It is August, which is ancient Latin for "foul swamp fungus," which means that outside, it is hot, humid, and generally akin to walking into an eighty-year-old man's denture-riffic mouth after he plowed through a bowl of Brunswick stew. The heat is killing me and my precious brain cells. All I want to do is bathe in sweet tea, with ice cubes and mint leaves floating around my puffy, sticky self. Would you believe that Lawyer Boy refuses to cold-brew me seventeen gallons of sweet tea? Oh, the abuse.

2. I have an obsession problem with food. If you're really interested in what I'm up to in my copious free time, when I'm not working as a paralegal, restoring my old house, being a crazy social butterfly, or being generally inappropriate, you can read about it here. I know I have told you before that I am a nuttermeister foodie, but I don't think I was really explicit enough about it. In layman's terms, I make up my own recipes and cater small events. (Actually, that's pretty much it, in layman's, technical, and theological terms.) When I'm in food mode, which I have been recently, my attempts at writing fail like Victoria Beckham on this side of the Atlantic. I can do one or the other, but both food and funny can't play on the same court.

Between the heat and the personal failure, the fact that I haven't flung poo at the World Wide Interwebs recently is killing me. KILLING ME. I have so many things to tell you, but they just fly around my head, shapeless and without reason, because all my good brain cells (the seven I haven't killed from alcohol) have been devoted to recipe development. I am working on coming back to you, amigos. I will be back soon. I promise.

PROMISE. Or I'll send you cookies.

Just ask Ghost Baker. When I say I'll send cookies, I send cookies. Look at my beautiful cookies, so glamorous in their very first Hollywood(-ish) photo shoot! All they're missing is their stunning feather boas and shiny lipstick.

Lake Anna: Pit of Poor Judgment

2009-07-28T22:16:00.001-04:00

Every summer, our friends Mike and Jess invite everyone they know (like, literally--the Evite is longer than Gene Simmons' "Tapped That" List) to come to Mike's parents' lake house, cause mayhem of Biblical proportions, and pass out in assorted Cubist positions on the basement floor circa 3am. They schedule it around the Fourth of July so that we can pretend that we're getting together to rally round the flag and squeal patriotic hymns, but really, the gathering serves to get us all together in such a way that we can stagger around the house the next morning, mugs of coffee dangling dangerously from our shaky hands, moaning the motto of every twentysomething in America: "I just can't drink like I used to."

This year Lawyer Boy and I pulled out of Richmond right around lunchtime, aiming to be in full frolic on the shores of the lake a mere hour later. We should have known better, as I-95 on a sweltering summer Satuday was jammed full of my arch-nemesis, Every Other Driver Ever. We slogged along for an hour, me shrieking impotently behind the wheel and LB trying to cover the dog's ears from my violent profanity, the highlights of which would have made Howard Stern blush. Finally we escaped the interstate's wrath and flew down the country roads towards barbecue, booze, and those foam noodle things that make unseemly attempts to drown me every summer.

When we docked ourselves at the house, Mike was just pulling up the boat from taking his friend Kevin waterskiing, and offered to drag me around the lake. I grew up boating, and I know how to waterski, which is astounding, since some days it is questionable as to whether or not I actually know how to walk. I had to debate whether I really wanted to try out my sea legs for two reasons. First off, there was a dock full of people waiting to watch me skip my face across the water like an unlucky, wailing pebble. A lot of Mike and Jess' friends know me from college, so they know me for my more charming traits, like nosediving into a puddle in the middle of a bar, and making tender yet passionate love to a toilet bowl at 2am.

The second reason I was concerned about skiing behind this boat is because it involved skiing behind this boat, which is not meant to pull skiers. A good boat to ski behind has enough power to speed up quickly, yanking the skier up out of the water so she can try to find her balance immediately. A bad boat to ski behind, while it might be great for trolling around looking for bass or whatever, pulls you up so slowly that you might as well be trying to hoist yourself up behind a three-year-old on a tricycle. If you're not out of the water, you can't balance. If you can't balance, you teeter along for a few seconds, screaming like a hooker and watching your thighs billow in the wind before your head smacks into the water, where you open your eyes in time to see your bikini bottom drifting toward a watery grave at the bottom of the lake, free as a bird. Just like your ass.

I mean, that's purely hypothetical.*

On my second try at public humiliation, I managed to get up and stay up, and had a nice ride around the lake, except for the part where El Capitan kept steering the boat through the wakes of other boats. When you're being dragged behind a boat, skittering along precariously on two glorified two-by-fours, and you see said boat start to bounce like a yo-yo, it is likely that you will start to wonder if the same people who brought us the Spanish Inquisition were also responsible for the birth of water sports.

Once we returned to dry land and everyone stopped laughing at me**, it was time to kick back with a cold one. Everyone had brought a contribution for dinner, ranging from a delicious cucumber salad down to my totally obscene "tropical" cake. I had originally planned to use my completely marginal cake-decorating skills to smear frosting into a patriotic pattern in honor of the Fourth, but the day before the party, Jess mentioned that they had decided on a tropical theme for the party instead. It was my feeling that Betsy Ross couldn't come to a party hosted by Hawaii Five-Oh, so I decided to whip up some pink, yellow, and green frosting, and festoon the cake with tropical flowers. What resulted was a cake covered in what appeared to be, by all accounts, pink and yellow octopi trying to have filthy squid-sex all over it. The pink ones were the girls, obvi, and let me tell you something. Thank God we had all been drinking by the time we laid into the cake, or watching nature take its course all over our dessert would have been too much to stomach.

After dinner we did all those great summer things that you do at the lake, like making a bonfire, lighting fireworks, and getting ticks all over us. When we had eventually had enough of playing buffet to the local insect population, we made our way into the basement, which is fully tricked out with a wet bar, poker table, and pool table. LB, Jess, and a few others commandeered the poker table for a game that I assume I do not know the rules to, since no one invited me, and I am positive that this had nothing to do with the fact that I am a totally useless sack of whiny during card games of any sort. Mike, Kevin, and I set up shop at the bar, where we mixed drinks while Kevin made fun of the music on my ipod for a solid five hours. All I have to say is, Kevin must have been genuinely and thoroughly wasted, because that is the only circumstance under which someone could not appreciate the musical genius of Tiffany, Britney, and Flo-Rida.***

Without my knowledge and likely against my will, someone took this picture of Kevin and I sitting at the bar, and now I understand how celebrities feel when the paparazzi snap shots of them staggering out of clubs in the wee hours of the morning. Can't you see the headline on the cover of Life & Style now?

WHERE'S LAWYER BOY????

A dazed Grace gets wasted at the bar with a mystery man, while Lawyer Boy plays it up with sexxxy ladies!

We were all of three feet apart, but everyone would be saying that we were leaving Richmond and packing our bags for Splitsville.**** Do you think this is what happened to Jon & Kate?

Me neither.

The card game wound down around 2:30, at which point those of us in the group with more common sense than unhousebroken puppies went to bed--which is to say, I stayed up. Mike, Kevin, and I decided to play pool, Mike actually playing for himself and Kevin coaching me, whereby "coaching" meant "flicking balls into pockets when Mike wasn't looking." Even on a good (sober) day, I'm terrible at pool. I have been told that there is a theory that, up to a certain level of drunkity, alcohol actually makes you a better pool player, resulting in an optimal level of drunken athletic prowess. That may be true, but when you have to be reminded before each shot whether you are the plain balls or the stripey balls, you are no longer at the optimal point of anything. Mike later claimed that I eventually stopped taking aim at the cue ball, and instead fired directly at the ball I was trying to sink.

Sidebar, Your Honor: I would like to know why pool is not played that way in the first place. Maybe if it were, pool could take its place among other respectable sports like baseball, tennis, and polo, where in order to hit the ball you are aiming for, you actually hit the ball you are aiming for.

Sometime around 4:30, one of us realized that we were within an hour of dawn and suggested we go to bed, an idea I brutally rebuffed. Going to bed once you realize it's already almost dawn is a bit like ordering a Diet Coke with a Big Mac and fries and giving yourself a pat on the back for maintaining your rigorous nutritional standards. We played a few more rounds (sets? matches?) of "pool" before the guys, wimps to the core, begged off. I contemplated staying up to watch the sun rise by myself, eventually deciding against an idea that would put me awake, by myself, in full daylight. What would I do then? Make muffins and coffee and wait for everyone else to wake up?

Fine, I did think of that. But I couldn't find baking powder.

*Except for the part where that happened to me when I was 14.
**Which was three hours after we returned to dry land.
***Flo Rida? Flow-Ridah? Florida?
****We're not, BTW. LB is the best thing since peanut butter M&Ms.*****
*****Which are beyond outstanding, if that is any indication of how much I love him.

Bienvenidos To Me!

2009-07-26T20:30:00.003-04:00

Welcome back to my universe, amigos! It probably would have been more useful if I had told you that I was going on vacation before I went on vacation, as opposed to letting you know now, when I'm back, when you undoubtedly spent the last week in mourning, convinced I had died of avian Ebola flu, never to throw words and vulgarities at you again.

I mean, I know you got over it, but you thought it.

That said, I am back, and with many delightful things to tell you all about. There was a lake party, a visit from Mil and Dil, a visit from our friends who hosted the lake party*, and a whole week of sun-drenched drinking at the beach. I will tell you all about it...but not right now.

There are many exciting things to come this week, but they will come after I have taken a nap or two, checked myself for ticks, and checked myself into rehab.

And, oh yeah, after I've gone back to my regular day job, which involves neither waterskiing, sunbathing, nor dancing like a completely hopeless sorority case to Right Round.

*Summer goal: Make them as sick of us as humanly possible.

Do The Charleston, Chapter B: The TP Penitentiary

2009-07-09T22:11:00.000-04:00

At 11:45 Thursday night, Lawyer Boy and I finally arrived in Monck's Corner, Scarolina, a suburb of Charleston characterized by its extreme suburban sprawl, the neighborhoods, shopping centers, and gas stations strewn so far apart that it's best to pack a lunch to get you through the trip, should you decide to go out to dinner. And if you venture out after dark, a travel toothbrush is a necessity.

I would give you my in-laws' names, but it's much more fun for me to call them Mil and Dil, which is my juvenile yet functional abbreviation for Mom-in-law and Dad-in-law. Or, their names could in fact be Millard and Dillene. Don't act like I made that one up. You know that somewhere, way down deep in the sphincter of the South, with a sister named Lurlene and a brother named Bass, is a little girl named Dillene, dreaming of the days when she can let her light shine, get out of the family double-wide that smells perpetually of Cheez Whiz and Raid, and make it big, singin' June Carter Cash at the traveling carnival for free funnel cakes and rides on the Tilt-A-Whirl. You go, little Dillene. YOU GO!

And for my next act, I plan to put down the crack pipe.

Aaaaaanyway, Mil and Dil just moved into their new house a week before our arrival, and they had been hard at work trying to erase all decorative evidence of the prior owners, whose taste I would be gracious to describe as 1980s Duckblind Chic. In contrast, Mil and Dil have fabulously excellent taste in home decor; their prior house, a rambling farmhouse they had built in Virginia, looked like a model home out of Southern Living, with acres of shiny wood floors and gleaming granite countertops. Upon arrival at the new pad, Mil told me the first thing she and Dil had done was to tear the forest-green shag carpet out of the master bathroom, before the color gave them seizures or the underlying mildew crept out and murdered them while they slept.

Thus I present to you a collage of the TP Penitentiary, before it goes extinct. Seriously, where's a good meteor when you need one? The pictures are of my traditional poor quality, in part because I took them, and in part because I took them quickly, on my cell phone, while I was pretending to drain the swamp before the trip home.

First off, the reason behind my naming the bathroom the TP Penitentiary: the actual toilet paper jail cell.

This is a maximum-security toilet paper incarceration facility, locking up dangerous, criminal toilet paper for your protection. I am aware that there is no actual toilet paper in there at this moment. It's all out workin' on the chain gang.

Next, the prison guard at the TP Penitentiary:
Guarding over his prisoners, the covert war-mallard pulls double duty, serving as a dirty, creepy eyeball to watch you while you drain the swamp. Adding an extra level of skank, he does not blink. He only stares.

Up next, should you be interested in washing the terror off your hands, a shelf holds all the hygienic necessities:Literally, up next--up next to the ceiling, above the shower, is where the prior owners stowed the hand soap. The thing that looks exactly like a lantern (and how clever!) is actually a hand soap dispenser. Squeaky clean hands were just a fantasy for these folks, apparently. And should you feel the need to cast a line into the toilet, a handy tackle basket awaits, full of whatever you might need to go fishing. Like I know what that is. The one thing I do know you need, though...

...is hooks.
Can I...just...for a minute? THERE ARE FISH HOOKS ALL UP IN THE TOILET SEAT!!! Phoooo. Phooooooooo. Nothing welcomes your tender bits like a seat full of multi-purpose metal shards.

I'd like to remind you that the previous owners of this bathroom paid real live money for a seat full of jumblies specifically placed to be right next to their...jumblies.

I can't imagine why Mil and Dil want to redecorate.

Dammit, Horizon Wireless

2009-07-08T21:01:00.003-04:00

Last night I promised you a post about the TP Penitentiary, complete with pictures. True to my word, because I am an honorable little being, like a knight of the Round Table but with personal hygiene habits that do not involve dry-clean-only metal panties, I have already written that post. Howevz, I have been fumbled by my wireless company, which is refusing to spirit the pictures from my phone onto the intarwebz. I am not naming names, but if you wanted to become a knock-off service provider for less, you'd do well to trade under the name Horizon Wireless.

Actually, I like replacing the first part of their name with "Ho." It's just so appropriate, since I give them my money, and they in turn perform acts that are illegal in many states.

Anyway, hopefully I can smack the phone around enough and threaten to take away its dessert privileges for a week, so that by tomorrow, I'll be able to share the photos with you. Normally I am not particularly wedded to posting photos, but you need to see these photos to appreciate the story, just like when I gave you all those nice shots of my new driver's license photos. Can you imagine if I tried to do that one with words? "And next, I'm making a beaver face. My teeth look like giant slices of Wonderbread and I'm showing a bit too much of the whites of my eyes..." Just not as good.

I thought that, until I can fulfill my solemn oath to you, I'd leave you with a bit of a challenge. Last night, after having giggled to myself repeatedly and hysterically over this all day, I told LB that my new favorite word is bitchopotamus. Albeit it was out of nowhere and apropos of absolutely nothing, but he still looked at me like I'd just said I wanted to farm salamanders instead of having children.

Seriously. Bitchopotamus. Can you think of a word funnier than that?

That, amigos, is my challenge to you. Give me a word that's funnier than bitchopotamus, and I'll mail you cookies. I'll even raise that to a full two dozen cookies, because I just don't think there's a word out there that's funnier than that.

But I want you to try. Ready, set, bitchopotamus!

Do The Charleston, Chapter 1: Graceful Road Rage

2009-07-07T21:57:00.002-04:00

This past weekend's patriotic sojourn southward began with my least favorite activity in the world, ever, so help me Gawd, amen. Now, I have never given birth, eaten chitlins, or sat through an entire N*Sync concert, but I do not believe that I could loathe any of these activities any more than I mega-loathe being in the car. I can handle up to about three hours of four-wheeled confinement -just long enough to get to Blacksburg, Home of the Hokies, and ooze into the nearest bar- but after that I start to come apart at the seams, bits and pieces of my sanity littering the car like the cheap, greasy gas station popcorn that I insist on buying for car trips. Road trips. Bad for my sanity, bad for my cholesterol.

Before we even got on the road, I could hear the orchestra warming up for the opening act of "Motor Doom" in the back of my mind: Holiday weekend traffic would clog up I-95 faster than I could scream "Get out of my lane, you scraggly slut!!!" turning a seven-hour trip into a sixteen-hour slog through the darker recesses of my vocabulary. I don't think I'm known for a sparkling, clean vocabulary safe for preschoolers and the dainty, but new guests to my Jeep are often shocked and horrified by the demons that screech out of my mouth in heavy traffic. Well, not even in heavy traffic. All you really have to do is hesitate at a traffic stop long enough to make me think that I might miss out on the beacon of hope that is the green light, and in decibels rivaling a sonic boom, I will proceed to insult your hair color, religion, mother, clothing choices, pets, and unborn children. In that order, and in furious, red-faced profanity.

Lawyer Boy and I managed to schlep our shizz out the front door of our house only forty-five minutes behind schedule, which is pretty decent for a household that may as well not own a clock. We could be more punctual if we only timed ourselves using a sundial, and that is saying a lot, since as far as sundials go, I do not even know which way is up. We loaded the Labradozer into her seat in the back, perched my perfect chocolate cake precariously on top of our luggage, and set the tripometer to zero, so we could watch every one of the 419.9 miles of our odyssey roll by. I am a glutton for punishment.

The tripometer had not even registered 5.5 miles before we came to an infuriating standstill, parked on the ramp from the Downtown Expressway onto I-95 South. As far as we could see, cars attempting to flee the city for a carefree holiday weekend were stalled, their pilots simmering from the stress of moving .02 miles in half an hour.

I started to get a little twitchy. I perhaps suggested not less than sixteen times, as casually as I could, that maybe we could turn around, cancel the trip, and get ourselves a nice baby pool from Target for a grand staycation in the comfort of our backyard. Maybe I banged the steering wheel a bit. Maybe there were tears.

This is just a thought, but if you are twelve minutes into a seven hour road trip and you find yourself on the roof of your car, naked, throwing your cute pointy shoes at the car in front of you and shrieking, "BITCH I WILL CUT YOU!!!" as a result of a perceived traffic slight, you should perhaps consider changing your travel plans. Either you change your travel plans, or the state troopers and their Tazers will, is all I'm saying.

Traffic crawled for an hour. I eventually stopped crying, put my clothes back on, and resumed my duties as diligent driver. The nice lady in the car in front of us even graciously returned my shoes. (I so would not have.) I smoldered in an angry little pile of hate, cursing Henry Ford, GM, Honda, and anyone else I could blame for the proliferation of the automobile in America. I went so far as to flip the bird at the Richmond Raceway sign as we trolled past it.

Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, as we passed through the cesspool of disease that is Petersburg (motto: "Clap If You're Clappy!"), traffic lifted. All the other cars disappeared! Dumbledore must have heard my prayers, and swooped in to save me. The road opened up and we were free to fly through the next 400 miles of the trip. Of course, after that point, LB offered to drive. My sciatic nerve -medical Latin for "whiny thigh"- was bugging me, and I think the dark curses I was muttering under my breath were bothering him. He took over at the helm, and I spent the next six hours trying to get comfortable in the mixing bowl-sized passenger seat.

I never succeeded, but we did eventually make it to Charleston.

***
Tomorrow, I promise The Tale of the T.P. Penitentiary, complete with pictures!

Party Poop't

2009-07-01T21:17:00.004-04:00

This has been a long week, amigos. Yes, I am aware that it is only Wednesday, and that it is technically a "short week" because everyone except the mall is closed on Friday, but I have felt every excruciating hour at the office drip by like drops in an IV bag. I still do not think I have recovered from my Eight Hour Birthday Festival. Even though I celebrated my own glorious presence until three o'clock Sunday morning, I didn't sleep in that day because my elderly body thinks that dawn is already noon, and that if we are not already up by then, WE HAVE LOST THE DAY, PEOPLE.*

Lawyer Boy and I had to clean up the house from what looked like a visit from Courtney Love & Co., resulting in the accumulation of 16 wine bottles and one bajillion beer bottles in the recycling bin out front. (The recycling people are never going to let their kids play with our kids.) After that, I found the energy to curl up with my shiny new porno, "The Art and Soul of Baking," and fantasized about croissants and baguettes for the rest of the day.

Coming back to work without the birthday princess card to play was, of course, a letdown, but really, is Monday morning ever not a total wart of a time period? This week at work I've been slap-happy slammed. For example, today I spent an unfortunately ginormous amount of time engaged in Celebrity Death Match: Grace Thoreau v. The Department of Labor. Experience has taught me that the DOL will likely claim victory in this battle, due to sheer size and strength. Also they pull hair.

In my copious free time, when I haven't been passed out from exhaustion or fishing for the rogue beer caps rattling in the dishwasher, I've been trying to get LB and I ready to haul it to Charleston, South Cackalacky this weekend for America's high holy day. Don't get me wrong; I'm super-stoked for the Fourth. I am rabidly, almost embarrassingly patriotic, but in order to get to the point where I get to cry while watching fireworks Saturday night, we have to get us, the Labradozer, and all the food I made across two state lines. Of course I made a ton of food for the trip. What else could I be doing to get ready? Laundry? LB's boxers could be walking themselves around our house, stealing food from the fridge, before it would occur to me to break from decorating a cake to wash them.

It has taken me this many words to wind around to the point that I came here to make, which is that you won't hear from me for the next few days. I'll be back next week to regale you with tales of my raucous patriotism and massive patriotic picnic, complete with Betsy Ross cap and corset.

And, if I may?

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY, AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!

*Have you noticed I always refer to myself in the plural? I think that says a lot about what's going on upstairs.

Cupcakes and Donkey Balls

2009-06-28T20:47:00.004-04:00

Saturday night was my birthday party, to celebrate the epic (not) milestone (not) that turning 26 years old is (not). Mostly I just wanted to have an excuse to cook a lot of food and have people over, and none of my friends have ever argued with an invitation to come eat my food. An invitation to come over to help me decide between "Creme Brulee" or "Endless Wheat" as a wall color, perhaps, but never an invitation to come over to actually ingest creme brulee or endless wheat, whatever endless wheat is. Aside from a recipe for gastric disaster, of course.

I had started cooking early last week so as to ensure that there would be enough food for everyone to consider nibbling between drinks, should they feel compelled to put their drinks down long enough to assemble a plate. I made Greek chicken skewers, enormous chocolate cupcakes, a giant lemon tart, and a slew of other things that no one would be able to taste once they had drunk enough to render their tongues plastic and numb. Additionally, I had made the party as eco-friendly as possible: The cocktail plates were all reusable, recycled glass, the beverage bottles were recyclable, and the wine was all sourced from criminal grapes who deserved to die. Eco-justice for all!

The first win for the evening was that I did not suffer a wardrobe malfunction, which I considered a real and frightening possibility as I slipped an apron that tied around my neck over my sundress, which also tied around my neck. Right before the first guests arrived, I was whipping a batch of chocolate frosting, and the chocolate frosting whispered to me that it wanted nothing more in life than to make sticky love to my Lily Pulitzer sundress. I couldn't have any such fraternizing on my personal person at the start of the party, so I threw on the apron to finish putting the food together. Amazingly, in a frenzy to later whip the apron off so as to appear party-ready, I managed to not untie the sundress AND the apron in a humiliating act that would have put my later plans to pop out of my own cake to shame. Not flaunting your birthday suit at your birthday party: WIN.

The second win was that approximately 647.2 people showed up, ebbing and flowing in and out of the front door constantly from 7 to 11 pm. It was all I could do to keep up with squealing at new guests, checking the drinks of the guests who were already cruising down the freeway to Bourbontown, and reminding LB to make sure he had on his tiara and birthday sash to jump out of my cake on cue. I started at least 877 conversations over the course of the evening, and by the time the last reveler wandered out the front door, I think I had only finished four of them. House full of friends: WIN.

At one point I happened to glance out the front window in time to see LB shepherding a tall couple through our front yard, thoughtfully showing them the progress we had made in the yard. (It should be noted that this was the only *thoughtful* occurrence of the evening.) I had no idea who these people were! Did we invite them? Do I even know them? I darted from window to window, trying to peek stealthily between the blinds without them noticing--which was probably a lost cause, since my sundress was louder than I could ever hope to be. After a few minutes of scrambling around the front of my house, I finally thought to open the door, to discover that the mystery party-crashers were, in fact, my godparents. Who, by the way, I had invited. And whom I was really excited to see, once I realized they weren't covert serial killers out to wreck my party. Because, you know, that happens.

The third win for the evening was the presence of Donkey Balls, the Super Bowl of yard games. Apparently in classy circles and/or Wal-Mart, this game is known as Ladder Golf, but when we met, it was introduced to me as Donkey Balls, and I think it might hurt the Balls' feelings if I were to rename it at this point in our relationship. We played with the Donk all throughout the night, including after dark, which was an accomplishment of Olympic proportions, since there is no light in our backyard. What is really the accomplishment is that no one got whacked in the face with a drunken Donk. At least, not in my backyard, and not on my watch. Excessive use of the word "Donk" in public: WIN.

Throughout the night, I gave house tours to a huge number of our guests. I had forgotten how many of our friends hadn't seen the new house, and by the end of the evening, I was a regular Debbie Docent, swinging my wine glass perilously through my prepared spiel about plaster walls and wrought iron. I really had the routine down, hitting the high points with booze-fueled fervor, until I took one of my friends on the tour late in the evening. As we walked into the first stop on the upstairs circuit, I hit my cue. "And this is our master bedroom," I said, strolling in to check my hair in the mirror. My bangs were striking out to form their own independent nation.

"Ohhh, I see," he said. "So this is where the magic happens!" Quicker than you can say three-legged giraffe, I shot back without even thinking about it, "Nope, that's the kitchen!"

What? I'm a good cook. Oh, and my friend to whom I fired that gem? My former boss, Michael Scott. He couldn't be but so surprised; I'm not much more of a normal human being at the office. I just drink less. Kinda.

All of our friends whose babysitters would turn into pumpkins at midnight had to punch out around 11:15, and those of us that stayed through the halftime show burned it down until THREE AM. The best part? I have absolutely no idea what we did until then. I know we played with the Balls, and I think I ate 45 cheese wafers, but the overarching theme here is that I am still not too old to think it was a little ridiculous. Eight-hour birthday festival: WIN.

We are so doing that again next year. Or next weekend. Once my liver has recovered, whichever comes first.

Kitty Poppins

2009-06-25T22:21:00.005-04:00

As the owners/parents/slaves of one completely ridiculous cat, Lawyer Boy and I are well acquainted with the mania that is the feline mind. Mango chases dust particles around like they're criminals on the run from his fur-striped Miami Vice. He attacks our feet under the covers suddenly and without warning, when those same feet had served as pillows for the six hours immediately prior. He does whatever the hell he wants, whenever the hell he wants, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.

Strangely, we're down with that.

I have seen Mango do some bizarre things in the two years that I've been his bitch, but ten minutes ago, he really topped himself. Allow me to set the scene for you: I'm sitting on the sofa in our living room that faces the fireplace and the TV. LB is lying on the couch next to me, and we're pretty dazed out.

All the sudden, we notice that Mango is standing on the logs in the fireplace, which by the way, is a total black hole of haunted soot. John Gotti could be up there for all we know. I have never looked our eighty-year-old chimney in the eye, and I do not intend to start.

So Mango is now standing on his back legs, lengthy orange body stretched out to his front paws placed on the filthy brick wall. All I'm thinking at this point is, snatch his orange ass as soon as he comes down, as I envision sooty black pawprints on my bedsheets and face. LB and I watched him, amused, as he meowed into the foul depths of the chimney and tried to get traction on the wall. Spider-Cat he is not.

And suddenly, in the midst of our snickering, Mango vanished up the chimney! He just disappeared, tiny orange feet flying up the chimney like a pad-foot Mary Poppins! It took LB and me a second to process what we had just seen, and then the panic set in. HOLY CRAP THE CAT JUST DISAPPEARED UP THE CHIMNEY!!!

Once we regained the ability to move, we both ran over to the fireplace, staring up into the black abyss. This may come as a shock, but looking up a dirty chimney at night does not afford one a great deal of visibility. However, there was ZERO CAT in the chimney! THE CHIMNEY ATE THE CAT! So now we know the chimney is, like me, a meatatarian.

After a minute of staring, our eyes adjusted to the dark, and we saw a twitching tail on the wall. Who knew there was a shelf in the chimney? Is there a shelf in your chimney? Who is seriously acquainted with chimney anatomy? Aside from Dick Van Dyke and those nice chimney sweeps, that is. But they are on vacay right now, so we have to rescue Mango on our own. After a few sweet words and a little begging, Mango was still unwilling to come down from his perch. However, as soon as we pulled out the camera to take a picture of his catfoolery to share with all of you, he leapt down quick as a...cat. And quick as a cat, I grabbed him to hose him off before he dappled my sheets with little foot kisses.

I would like to have no more surprises tonight. I would also really, really like to watch "Mary Poppins" now.

Bed Bath and Birthday

2009-06-24T21:27:00.004-04:00

I had promised in my last post to share with you what my parents had bestowed upon me for my birthday at a later date, and I am here tonight to fulfill my promise to you. I know, right? Now, your heart can go on.

For my birthday, I had asked my family for gift cards to Bed Bath and Bedazzled, so I could buy the one essential appliance my kitchen still lacked: a food processor powerful enough to puree the entire Garden of Eden in one pulse. I will henceforth refer to the food processor as "procsy," since that is what I call it as a loving term of endearment. I spend a huge amount of time in my kitchen -I have lost valuable hours of sleep during the workweek to the creation of perfect cheese wafers- and had noticed that many recipes for pie crust and other flaky necessities require a procsy. It's apparently the only way to get a perfect pastry, as we all know that when Ma Ingalls was loading up the covered wagon for the great trek out of the Big Woods, she made sure to nestle the procsy next to the heirloom china and handmade quilts. And those back-issues of Us Weekly about Britney Spears' mental collapse. Man, Ma Ingalls did love her some Brit-Brit.

Mom and Dad started off my proscy piggy bank with a Bed Bath and Bediculous gift card Monday night, and Tuesday night the whole family assembled like a well-dressed religious cult at my grandmother's for dinner. After roast turkey and enough fresh vegetables to regulate the Dallas Cowboys (and possibly their entire fan base), I was allowed to ravage the pile of presents. I received not only enough Bed Bath and Bespeckled gift cards to claim my procsy, but also a cake pan that produces a giant cupcake, and a fabulous striped silk Coach purse, which my cousin Wayne picked out for me. I do love my tiny purses. Wayne feeds my addiction for smaller and smaller handbags, and if this progression continues, I will eventually be carrying a thimble by a shiny leather handle. In a fashionable color, natch.

After I had moved all of my necessities (keys, wallet, phone, and 26 lipsticks) into my new Coach Chicklet, I dragged Lawyer Boy straight to Bed Bath and Bewitched, where I followed the siren song of the small appliance section. I located and immediately pounced upon the procsy I had preselected online, only to discover that it cost a full hundred dollars less than what I had remembered! Remember the part where I said I had enough gift cards to cover the full cost of the procscy? Remember how freakdiculous I am about kitchen gizmos?

At the realization that I had a hundred extra dollars to marry with small appliances, I about near fell over, right after I stopped running around and shrieking with glee, which caused LB to head for the shower curtain section, where he wrapped himself in as many curtains as possible to hide from anyone who knew he was with me.

Once I picked myself and my handbag up off the floor, I settled on the pasta machine attachment for my stand mixer. I love my stand mixer so much I ~~practically~~ cuddle it to sleep every night, and because I have no social life and a minimal grasp on normalcy, I had recently decided I wanted to make my own pasta. My insanity knows no bounds. What, like you're surprised?

New appliances in hand and pie-eating grin stretched from ear to ear, LB and I proceeded to checkout, and to take our new baby home for the first time. We had previously installed the carseat per the manufacturer's instructions, so the procsy had a safe and snuggly ride home.

I promise to be a good mom, as long as it doesn't wake me up crying in the middle of the night.

Happy Birthday To Meeeeeee

2009-06-22T20:23:00.004-04:00

Well, today I turned the big 2-6, which is only slightly less underwhelming than discovering on my 21st that the bathrooms in bars I was newly permitted into were just as horrific as those found in bars that had previously admitted my underage ass. I would like to beseech bar-going ladies worldwide to stop decorating the stalls in Early Modern Gastric Violence, and to ask if anyone has ever gotten a call-back on a number scrawled in lipstick across the soap-splattered mirrors.*

I would like to thank everyone who made my birthday so lovely, for ignoring my variety of attempts to downplay my day. It usually surprises people that I don't make a big deal out of my birthday, since I talk a lot (perhaps you noticed) and I like to tell everyone everything that's going on (perhaps you noticed). I just don't like to throw out my princess day to everyone, everywhere,** because I don't want anyone to feel like they have to make a big deal out of me, just because I said so. However, it is perfectly acceptable for me to rub the tiara of my Annual Princess Day all over Lawyer Boy, because he signed up for a lifetime of my ridiculous antics when he said I do. And no, I did not make him. I just told him what to wear and where to wear it and what to say and when to say it, is all.

LB had gotten me my big birthday present, a pink vintage bicycle, a few months ago. I wanted a bike so I could show the whole Greater Richmond Metropolitan Area what an unrepentant dork I am by riding my bike to the grocery store, shiny purple helmet complementing the shiny pink paint on my trusty steed. However, the bike didn't come with a basket, so until this morning, when I unwrapped my present, I looked like this gentleman, trying to cart all my necessities back from Kroger:
Clearly my hair has more volume than his, but the idea is the same. Now I have a basket, which magically compresses my 14 refrigerator boxes full of strawberries and organic milk into a compact load. I feel so much safer traveling now!

Thanks to the firm-wide birthday list, my coworkers knew it was my birthday, and they came out in full force. Particular thanks are in order to Ghost Baker's mom, for the cupcake-art birthday card, Sharon for the alarmingly abundant amount of fresh-baked doughnuts, and Melissa for the pan of gooey, underbaked brownies. (Please note that Melissa is apparently my only friend who is not a hyperlink.) I would also like to thank my boss for walking into my office at 9am and groaning his way through "Happy Birthday," in its entirety, by way of celebration. That is far and away a much better present than letting me leave an hour (or seven) early on my princess day. Totes.

Mom and Dad came over to hug me in celebration of the fact that they spawned me, and to give me my present, which I will tell you about tomorrow, when it will make much more sense. Suffice to say that it is a further extension of my personal rampant dorkery. While they were here we drank wine, stood in my backyard, and freely donated our blood to the local mosquito population. We're so kind.

My birthday dinner was crunchy beef tacos, which LB was more than happy to produce as a surprise for me. I've eaten at some of the best restaurants in the world, I make up my own recipes, and I've even single-handedly catered several events, but few things make me happier than the results of an Old El Paso Taco Dinner Kit. I can't explain it; it's just happiness in a crispy browned shell. Add to that a glass of wine, a cup of ice cream, and the man I love, and that's a recipe for birthday bliss.

I will fill you in on more birthday festivities tomorrow, after the big family celebration at my grandmother's. For now I am too sleepy and happily relaxed to do much more than curl up with the cat, the man, and a glass of Zinfandel. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who made my birthday so wonderful.

And for those of you who haven't yet found a way to celebrate me--now is an excellent time to start. You still have a few hours till midnight.

*Sidebar to 540-956-2345: You never returned my voicemail.
**Apparently I had forgotten that Facebook reminds everyone, including the unborn and the socially dysfunctional, of the anniversary of my debut.

Eye Am An Ass

2009-06-17T21:40:00.005-04:00

I used to work in customer service. The year right out of college that I spent working at what I would politely call a daily bucket of suck taught me a very important lesson about getting what you want out of people who can help you. If you give customer service a reason to hate you, they probably can't do a thing about it without getting fired--which is, in fact, sometimes their goal. They can throw darts at your file, they can put the phone on mute and hiss like a feral cat in heat at you, and they can fart in your general direction, but ultimately, they have to help you.

But, if you're nice to them, you might get a little something extra, just for being a cut above the average mouth-breathing teleclown. This was the angle I was trying to work tonight when I decided to email the customer service elves at 1-800 Contacts to get some clarification on why, time and time again, they insist on squatting on my order for at least a week before they ship it. I was hoping that maybe, by working my inherent charm and feminine wiles, I could perhaps con them into upgrading my order to overnight shipping, or even kicking it out the door before the summer solstice.

I think I failed.

Here is what I sent them, unedited for your judgment.

Hello 1-800 Contacts,

I have a question about the order that I just placed, and I'm hoping you have the correct answer for me. While the order status page shows that it will ship in 2-3 business days, the information under one of the specific products I ordered (toric lenses) is showing that it won't ship until June 26. What's up with that? I don't know who to believe. I'm hoping it's the 2-3 business days option, because frankly, I rely upon the speediness and presumed prompt service of internet ordering to allow me to indulge my inner procrastinator, and wait until my last pair is practically a couple of crunchy cornflakes before I reorder. Waiting until June 26, and then waiting another five to seven business days for FedEx to drop-kick them over to me, is really going to cramp my style. I really don't like wearing my glasses to work. Hence, you know, contacts.

If we can step back and refocus for a minute, there's a bigger picture I'd like to take a gander at. This is the fourth time I've ordered this same product from your fine e-stablishment, and every single time, I get an email the day after I place my order, telling me that my order will be delayed for at least a half a lunar cycle. Is there an ongoing hostage situation with the toric lenses that I, as a concerned citizen of the world, need to be aware of? I'd be more than happy to do my part to help liberate them in advance of June 26. It just really takes the quickness and convenience out of quick and convenient internet ordering to be hit with a lethargic ten-day lead time every single time. I want to trust you, 1-800 Contacts, I really do. Just give me a sign.

Speaking of, my birthday is June 22. Any chance these could ship out by the time I blow out the candles?

Thanks for your help,
Grace

My God. It seemed perfectly reasonable when I wrote it, but after hitting send, I realized that there are only two ways this can end: They completely ignore my email and the resulting desire to drive out here and bitch-slap me, or they ship my lenses early. After having licked them.

Vampire Insurance

2009-06-15T20:24:00.002-04:00

Alright amigos, today I was going to tell you all about my fancy new home-improvement project. You know, the one that I am miraculously and shockingly still not sick of, despite having spent all weekend baking like a brick-oven pizza in the summer heat so that I could cover my legs and some of the furniture in oil paint and mosquito kisses.

Instead, today I was beset by a calamity of such a staggeringly large consequence, both mentally and physically, that it wiped my mind squeaky clean of any other possible ramblings. Today I had to face my worst fear, in my own home, with Lawyer Boy holding my hand, and the cat shrieking nearby like a drunken banshee.

Today a woman came to my house to steal my blood. WITH HER FANGS.

Okay, fine. She was a nurse, it was for life insurance, and she used a handy-dandy disposable needle -the darling of the medical profession- which I can only assume was for efficiency, since biting me on the arm is not exactly a sure thing. Mostly because I squirm. But seriously, having blood taken is one of my worst fears: You can give me a shot, poke my eyes, and dig to China using all manner of tools, but do not try to stick things into my veins. I don't care if it hurts or not. I have a phenomenal pain tolerance, but my tolerance for things, metal things, violating my sacrosanct tubular parts is low, because I get all worked up thinking of holes being poked up in my insides. And then I get whiny, testy, frantic, and desperate.

LB had given me fair warning that the nurse was coming to steal my fluids, which gave me ample time to get myself fully worked into a lather over the procedure. By four o'clock this afternoon, fellow office-dwellers wandering by my bat cave had a front-row view of a harrowed Grace, showing a bit too much of the whites of my eyes and pulling out my own hair, strand by frantic strand. I was going to die. I was just going to straight-up die.

By the time I got home, I was so nervous that my fingernails had turned blue and my extremities were the texture and temperature of raw oysters. I paced the floor like a rabid dog awaiting the arrival of the vampiress. I envisioned the evening devolving into a scene like something from The Shining, wherein the nurse, wielding an intravenous line like a garden hose, chased a hospital-gown-clad me through the neighborhood, while I shrieked "you'll nevah take me aliiiiive!" and tried to find a mature boxwood to hide behind. The hospital gown got involved in my nightmare because clothing that made a centerpiece of my crack is the only thing that could have made this scenario worse. The neighbors would be horrified at my immaturity and pasty rear. We would have to move.

I was marginally pacified when the nurse arrived, curls falling across her forehead and a VCU Research Science Division nametag pinned to her fairy-tale printed scrubs. "Live happily ever after!" they cheerfully advised me. At that point, I would have been happy just to live ever after, period. Fortunately, my inner psychopath had not overshadowed my manners and I offered her brownies, scones, and something to drink. She politely declined, screwing my chances of bribing her into taking the cat's blood instead of mine. Do you think Meow Mix is alarmingly high in cholesterol?

In order to suss out my chances for survival, I questioned her very honestly. "Monique," I said calmly. "I am not good at giving blood. Are you really, really good at taking blood?"

Monique looked at me and smiled. "I've worked in pediatrics for fourteen years."

"Thank God!" I exclaimed. "You're used to my people!"

In order to spare her from extended periods of time spent in the company of the more extreme reaches of my personality, I suggested that we kick off the festivities with a little bloodletting. Surprisingly, she agreed, which meant I was suddenly face-to-face with my arch-nemesis, hollow needles. I took a seat at my dining room table, usually the site of festive dinners and celebratory toasts. What if I died in this chair? LB would never again be able to host a dinner party at this table. I gave her my arm, having agreed to let her stick the wee (she promised it was wee!) needle wherever she found the "juiciest" vein. I grasped LB's hands, preparing to transfer the pain to his willing self, and looked away from my victimized arm.

"OW! Ow, Grace! STOP!" LB shrieked, his hands trapped in my death-grip. "She hasn't even stuck you yet!" He pulled one of his hands back to reveal red half-moons etched into his flesh by my fingernails. The price of my love is steep.

He was still gently harassing me for making him the victim when Monique stuck me. When she told me that she was done, I didn't believe her. She couldn't be done. Nothing had hurt. I hadn't felt a jab, hadn't felt an intravenous vacuum stealing my personal blood. "Here," she said, putting a cotton ball into my free hand. "Hold that right there in your elbow," she instructed, pressing my fingers to the minute red dot in my skin.

"Monique?" I asked quiveringly.

"Yes?" she replied, efficiently packing my personal blood samples into the box with my paperwork.

"I love you," I confessed, so relieved that I had survived unscathed that, had she asked me right at that moment to bear her children, I would have agreed in a heartbeat.

As long as it didn't involve giving blood.

Projects I Will Soon Tire Of

2009-06-11T20:37:00.004-04:00

I love a good project--craft project, not sketchy government housing. While I do consider myself at least somewhat creative, and start a variety of intriguing craft projects throughout the year, I am not exactly known for an unyielding tenacity* to stick with it till the end and finish the job. This explains the four half-scarves, one half of a baby blanket, and one sleeve of a sweater that I started knitting, only to get bored, go looking for snacks, and return to the projects six months later to discover that it was no longer scarf season, the baby was now a toddler, and I no longer felt that my wardrobe required a sage green sweater.

My completely ADD lifestyle wouldn't be quite so problematic if I didn't insist on starting every project that scampers through my brain like a deranged Martha Stewart, crooning siren songs of nubbly knitted blankets and hand-stamped monogrammed stationery. Do you know what concentration and skill it takes to create hand-stamped monogrammed stationery? Yeah, me neither. I totally bought the supplies, then lied down for a nap and awoke to a new me, one who did not give a crap about notecards any more. Whatever. Post-Its get the job done, the new me stated lazily.

So when I told Lawyer Boy last weekend that I wanted to sand and refinish our bedroom furniture, color me blown-away blue when he actually agreed to letting me take an orbital sander to the oak furniture his parents had given us. Maybe he's excited that I'm getting into power tools. Maybe he's thinking that this time, I'll stick with it till the touchdown dance in the end zone.

Maybe he thinks the furniture is as butt-fugly as I do.

Not that there's anything wrong with your bedroom looking like it belongs to a nine-year-old boy who loves camp-outs and digging for worms--if you are a nine-year-old boy who loves camp-outs and digging for worms. LB's parents had bought this furniture for him when he was in elementary school, and when he started Lawyer Boy School and had zero furniture to his name, they gave it to him for his apartment. As much as I'm not a huge screaming fan of this furniture, I have to admit that it was a step up from LB keeping his t-shirts rolled up like sushi in a Tupperware bin.

The furniture is boxy, chunky, and varnished a dark oak color. No, it is not the ubiquitous 80s-kids-bedroom cargo furniture that deserves only to be used for firewood. I stared at it, silently hating it and vowing to burn it like a witch at the stake, for years, until I finally realized: The furniture itself is not ugly. I don't like the color at all, but structurally, the furniture has an old-fashioned, wooden trunk-y look to it, which could play very well into the "French country romantic" theme that I'm allegedly using for our bedroom. I say allegedly, because right now all I've got is a chandelier, a fantasy, and a working knowledge of the words for many pieces of furniture in French.

So I thought to myself, "Grace, we are a crafty being. We have, at summer camp 12 years ago, painted picture frames with tempera paint and only gotten paint under six of our fingernails and on four other campers. We are, therefore, completely qualified to attack real furniture with violent weapons, and finger-paint colors onto it." I figured out what colors I would use, if I had grown-up paint skills, and took my proposal to LB.

No, I did not get him drunk before I asked him. Even sober, he was surprisingly amenable to the suggestion--probably because we are too cheap to buy entirely new bedroom furniture. We decided we would complete the entire project -sand, prime, paint, and crackle-coat paint- on the mirror that goes with the set first, so that if it wasn't actually a good idea, we could just set the mirror on fire, scatter the ashes to the wind, and pretend the whole thing never happened. If all goes well, the furniture will be painted espresso brown, with an ivory crackle-coat overtop that only vaguely resembles peeling sunburn.

If all does not go well, we'll have to confess to my mother-in-law, whom I love dearly, that we maybe-sort-of-on-accident ruined all the furniture, which she loves dearly. In that case, I will blame the whole thing on LB, since I will likely only be interested in this project for another .16 minutes of the 47 remaining hours of work we have left on it. Actions speak louder than words, amigos: If he was the one who carried out the bulk of the destruction, then the fact that I was the one to verbalize the plan in the first place means nothing.

I'm telling you all this so that, should you not hear from me again this weekend, you will know that the orbital sander won the battle and I am no longer an animate being with working fingers. Either that, or I sanded for five minutes, got bored, chased a butterfly through the yard, and headed off for a picnic, returning home later to the realization that I would much rather throw my own pottery than refinish furniture. I think we have some clay in the basement...and pottery wheels are on sale at Michael's right now...

*Dear Everyone Who Uses The Linguistic Abomination "stick-to-it-iveness": I would like to introduce you to the real English word that means the same thing. It is tenacity. Stick-to-it-iveness is not only cumbersome and annoying, it is unnecessary, as we have a word that has been blessed by Pope Merriam-Webster and legitimized into our language.

End grammatic rant.

Fumbled by Facebook

2009-06-10T20:00:00.002-04:00

If you are reading this on Facebook, where it appears that this is just a random "note" that I, for whatever reason, threw onto my profile, please visit my actual blog for the rest of my ramblings. I tied the blog to Facebook thinking it would give a wee snippet of each post and direct readers to the blog itself, but it does no such thing.

There's a shock. Me, thwarted by technology again. The internet remains a tricky, magical creature full of surprises.

Balls--Lots of Tiny Balls

2009-06-09T21:13:00.008-04:00

Last week my coworker Sharon commissioned me, likely against her better judgment, and possibly after much pleading on my part, to make the cake for her son's end-of-season baseball party. In my free time, when I'm not harassing the cat, harassing Lawyer Boy, or making fart jokes, I love to bake and decorate cakes. I've mostly been commissioned to make them for showers at the office, either bridal or baby, and frankly, I would like some credit for politely abstaining from writing "Way To Spawn!" on the cakes for the fetus-themed fetes.

Last summer, my girlfriends asked me to make a cake for our friend Erin's lingerie shower, and I obliged by baking up a full-figured corset, slathered in creamy frosting and practically bursting from real womanly curves, made possible by my mad skills in creating 3-D cake-boobs. I was so proud of her, my delectable lingerie, that I named her Tammy Sue. Seriously, can you blame me?
In case you're curious, "EK" would be Erin's new monogram after her wedding. It did not stand for "Extreme Kurves" or "Extra Klassy." Clearly I am not so fantastic at drawing with frosting, but I am extremely skilled at frosting rosettes, and also very enthusiastic about cramming as many of them into a given space as possible. Poor Tammy Sue apparently has chicken pox. Or, more appropriately, the herp.

This time around, Sharon had told me that her son's team was the Yankees, so I tried to work around that. I looked up the professional Yankees' team logo...
...and immediately nixed that as a design option. While it would be very authentic, it would more likely than not look like a big gum-paste penis sporting an Abe Lincoln top hat by the time I had recreated it, and no parent wants to explain that fumble to their 10-year-old son. And that just does not scream CELEBRATION, unless you are a patriotic porn star. I pondered the design some more, even contemplating borrowing the 3D boob effect from Tammy Sue to produce a 3D baseball, but I had to nix that idea after I determined it was impractical to make an entire batch of cake batter for one 3-inch-round ball. It was impractical, because I would have eaten the remaining cake in one sitting.

I finally decided to keep it simple and write "Yankees 2009" on top of a white cake, bordered by baseball stitching and blue dots. I know, it's simple, but the less I had to screw up, the less I could screw up. I frosted the cake smooth, piped a long border of blue dots around the bottom, and wrote the words across the top in a script similar to the logo, being careful to actually spell the words right. Sharon said she had dreamed before I gave her the cake that I had horribly misspelled YANKEES, which, knowing me, is a somewhat reasonable fear. I took extra precautions to ensure that I did not write YANKLES or YANKIES, because blue writing on a white cake is like giving birth--once it's out, you can't take it back. I carefully stitched red piping along the top of the cake for the baseball stitching, and I was done!

Because it's so cute, and because I know how much you're just dying for more glamour shots, here's a side view:I was so proud of myself, I just had to share with someone, and it was completely impossible for me to wait 26 more minutes before I would drop the cake off to Sharon. So I called my mom and squealed a lot.

"Mom, it turned out so well. It's so cute! And I didn't smear blue icing anywhere!"

"That's great!" she replied. "What does it look like?"

"Well," I wound up for my dramatic monologue. "It's white, and it says YANKEES 2009 in dark blue across the top, and then I used red frosting to stitch all around the top edge like a baseball, and then I bordered the entire bottom with blue balls. Oh God." I am what is known as an external processor, meaning things do not often fully register to me until I have said them out loud. Therefore, all the time I had spent conceptualizing "blue ball border" and then thinking "careful with the blue balls" as I had piped them onto the cake, it had not actually occurred to me that I was ringing a cake with blue balls. As soon as the words left my lips, though, I realized exactly what I had done.

"So you're giving blue balls to an entire baseball team?" Mom said. I could hear her starting to laugh, hard, at my blunder. "Way to go, Grace!"

Adding to my discomfort over my foul ball(s), when I dropped the cake off to Sharon, she had brought along her ten-year-old son, the Yankees player himself. He thought the cake was sooooo cool, which was extremely gratifying, until he said, "and look at the blue balls!" I could see Sharon's face over her son's head, and she was making that "do not laugh do not laugh your face can explode but you cannot laugh" face that moms are so good at.

In keeping with the baseball theme, do you think this was a home run, or a strike out?

Lawyer Boy: Man of Ginormous Style

2009-06-07T21:18:00.008-04:00

I am married to a clothes tyrannosaur. I think Lawyer Boy passed Clothes Horse for the win about two years ago, when he added "Clothes For Playing Lawyer" to his already-burgeoning wardrobe of "Clothes For Bumming On The Beach" and "Clothes For Drinking In." I don't know why I even bother doing laundry, because I think he is trying to single-handedly bankrupt Tide by owning enough boxer shorts to sustain his ass (literally and metaphorically) for a month straight.

One of the challenges of moving into an eighty-year-old house has been cramming all of our stuff into the trial-sized storage space provided. It is a little-known historical fact that, prior to 1940, Americans were elves. Thus the closets in our house, which was completed in 1930, are luxuriously sized to hold a full four-season wardrobe for every member of the fashion-forward elf family. This true historic fact also explains how the cast of Munchkinland was assembled for The Wizard of Oz: Warner Brothers just rolled out a yellow brick road down Main Street USA and filmed the citizens going about their day, singing joyfully and hatching babies out of eggs.

Zip ahead almost eighty years and enter Twenty-First Century Lawyer Boy, luxuriously sized for the 21st century and fully equipped to practice law, mow the lawn, walk the dog, and drink mojitos on the beach, every single day for a month, all while looking sporty and all without having to learn how to turn on the washing machine. Trying to cram all his clothes into one elvin closet was the equivalent of trying to cram a jelly doughnut into a Discman. Now I know why he doesn't know how to turn on the washing machine--in eight months, he has not once run out of clean clothes. He just learned how to turn on the vacuum last weekend. Baby steps, amigos.

Before you think I'm a mean hag just out to trash my husband, he does know how to work the tile saw, Sawz-All, orbital sander, hedge clippers, and a variety of other things that I generally ignore. We have an agreement wherein he does not have to do housework and I do not have to touch icky things. But my concern remains that if something were to take me away from the house for an extended period of time, the cat-hair tumbleweeds on the floor would grow into full-blown housecats, screaming for food, before he would notice there was a problem.

I will not lie and pretend that I do not own six pairs of taupe pants, four white shirts, and an equally essential number of pointy-toed shoes, but thanks to my loving husband, my clothes and accessories live safely in the bureau and closets in our bedroom. Upon moving into the antique house, LB graciously gave me control of both midgetine closets in the master, opting to take the dresser and closet in the guest bedroom for his own. Retrospectively, I know that he did this so that, in the privacy of a room I rarely enter, he could detonate his atomic wardrobe, showering clothes, shoes, belts, and cuff links helter-skelter across the floor and all over the furniture.

The gig was up yesterday morning, when the hospital called to say that the guest bed had been admitted after having collapsed under the weight of fourteen hoodies and thirty-seven French-cuff dress shirts.

After breakfast and before he had time to sneak out on me, I herded LB into the guest room to dig through the wardrobe war zone and return the guest room to its stated purpose, a room that guests could sleep in. At that point, a room that guests could actually walk in would have been an improvement. We pulled through his clothing for several hours, separating the keeps from the donates, the trash, and the tell your grandmother to stop buying me sweaters, eventually narrowing the pool down to the lucky finalists who earned a place in the closet. After a bit more shuffling and a tearful goodbye when LB finally voted some worn-out nubby bits off the island, his clothes actually all fit in the closet. Well, closets--he has the closets in both our spare bedrooms. Like I said before, baby steps, amigos.

With his clothes safely wrangled into submission, I headed out to Bed Bath and Bewildered for a shoe rack for my own closet, which I was able to locate only after wandering through the china, crystal, small appliance, large appliance, bedding, bathing, and Roman antiquities sections. I picked one that would hold a reasonable amount of my unreasonable shoe collection and departed victorious. Upon arriving back home, I decided to play Rosie Riveter and put together the shoe rack myself. The box proudly stated NO TOOLS REQUIRED, which I quickly discovered was a lie as I struggled to snap the metal bars into the plastic ends, resulting in the metal bars not snapping into the plastic ends, and clanging into the floor. After a five-minute concert from the wind chimes from hell, I brought in a hammer. Violence is the answer, and I had that shoe rack assembled to withstand hurricane-force winds in a matter of minutes.

And then I discovered that the shoe rack did not actually fit into my closet. Not in any way, any direction, not even diagonally, which I knew would be obnoxious to live with, but which I was willing to live with if it would allow me to claim victory. No dice. Swearing like a sailor, I worked up every bit of elbow grease I could to pry apart the rack and jam it back into the box. Back to Bed Bath and Befuddled, except a different branch than the one I had previously patronized, since I was too embarrassed to hit the same store twice in one hour.

I got into the shoe rack section and stood before the completely overwhelming selection before I realized something crucial: I still had not measured the closet! Still had no idea what I was there for. Still special like a three-legged giraffe. I whipped out my phonette and dialed LB. "Hi sweetie, can you go upstairs and do me a favor?" He did, and he measured the closet for me.

"Can you also measure under our bed? I need some storage bins and forgot to measure that, too." So he sprawled under the bed to get its digits.

"Oh, um, and can you also measure the distance from the floor to the bottom of the guest bed mattress? I didn't measure that before last time either, and I bought the wrong size bed skirt." I would say that I owe him for this, but I had already spent several hours in the company of his gym shorts and wool jackets. Turnabout is fair play.

Finally, I bought what I needed for real, and headed back home. The new shoe rack fit into the closet, and I loaded it up with the twenty-four pairs of shoes that I consider essential. But I know the new rack would hold so many more pairs if they were tiny elf shoes.

The Escolar Escapade

2009-06-04T18:47:00.005-04:00

Tuesday night, when my writing organs were all constipated and absolutely no creative thoughts were flowing through the pipes whatsoever, I did what any other writer would do when suffering from stubborn writer's block. I walked over to my neighbor's house, commandeered a rocking chair on their front porch, and drank a few of their beers while we shared stories of past episodes of violent gastric distress. I have no idea how we got started on this topic, but I think it may have been when Lawyer Boy reminded everyone of that time that I threw up everything that I had eaten in the past decade after a run-in with some particularly ferocious red-headed sluts.

In the course of trying to one-up each other with the most ridiculous Hurricane Colon story of the night, I brought forth the Escolar Escapade, a harrowing tale of what a fish called escolar will bring forth in your person (or rather, out of your person), should you choose to feast on its flesh. Erin, Edward, and LB unanimously declared the story so insane that they demanded I share it with all of you. It's part tale of intestinal pyrotechnics at their best, and part dire public service warning. Read on, for your own health.

One night a few months before I got married, while I was living with Mom and Dad, Dad brought home a huge paper package of fish from the local fishmonger (I could not resist using that word). He said it was called escolar, and it was a thick, white fish that none of us had tried before. He had been amazed that it was for sale on the cheap, but Freddy Fishmonger had assured him that it was just on special, and it was quite delicious--in other words, it wasn't on sale because it was weird and no one was buying it. Really.

Well, all of us are dedicated foodies, so we were delighted to have a new fish to try. Mom and I pulled together some side dishes; retrospectively, we should have cooked things that we thought we might never want to eat again after that night. Dad cooked the fish simply, as Fishmonger had instructed him to: Drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with a little salt and pepper, and broiled. We set the table with high hopes and hungry anticipation, topped off our wine glasses, and laid into the platter of fish. I had gone for a run just before dinner, and so was interested in eating an obscene amount of food, the amount most commonly seen on a linebacker's cafeteria tray; Dad is 5'11 and 185 pounds, so he chunked off a sizeable portion of escolar, too. Mom, who is apparently a culinary clairvoyant, took only the recommended portion for one person. We began to eat.

Even though I know all too well and all too painfully what would come to pass after the escolar dinner, thinking of how good that fish was makes my mouth water even now. It was the best fish I'd ever had. It was thick and juicy, buttery and supple, without any greasiness at all. Cooked with just the oil, salt, and pepper, it had only a mild fish flavor, and had a wonderful, bacon-y richness to it. We were all blown away by how good it was. So cheap, and the best fish we'd ever had! The best fish we'd ever had, and yet we'd never seen it on a restaurant menu! Never heard other foodies rave about it! How did no one else know the gourmet glory they were missing?

Apparently, everyone else had Googled escolar before they actually ate it, which was why they never ate it. Having not consulted the Google-y gods before dinner, we were unaware of the consequences of our actions, so Dad and I went back for seconds. Maybe thirds. Maybe we licked the platter, and fought over who got to nibble the remaining bitlets off the serving fork. It might have happened, is all I'm saying.

We cleaned up dinner, still raving about our fantastic fish find, still totally innocent to the horror that lurked right around the corner like an evil, greasy goblin.

Dad said later that he had started to feel nauseated about half an hour after dinner, so he took some Alka-Seltzer and went to bed. I didn't start feeling funky till right when I got into bed, but I chalked it up to the fact that I had overeaten like a piggy little puppy at an All-You-Can-Chow Pedigree buffet. I was nauseated, but unfortunately, not so much that I felt I couldn't go in to work the next day.

The next morning dawned as usual, and I wandered into the bathroom. What happened next was so beyond horrifying that it's difficult to describe without sending you running for the hills, with images worse than Britney Spears On Ice burned into your brain.

Unbeknownst to me the previous night, when I had tried to cram as much escolar into my mouth in the shortest amount of time possible, escolar is equivalent to eating a big, delicious, meaty laxative. Large portions of its flesh are completely indigestible, leaving your body with no choice but to turn itself into a loaded machine gun, expelling fish-fat with a force commensurate with actual warfare.

And this is no ordinary gastric warfare. The enemy fights dirty in this battle, and please bear in mind when I say what I'm about to say, that I am trying to be polite. When escolar begins to fire using you as the barrel of the gun, the end result looks like you opened a can of Orange Crush and poured it directly into the bowl of the toilet. All of it. Think for a second about the ensuing panic.

Escolar causes a condition called Kerriorrhoea, which is Hawaiian for "diarrhea Bazooka." It involves huge amounts of orange oil and worst of all, a slight inability to control its arrival. It also involves hiding in the bathroom all day, staying home from work, and trying to find a feminine way to explain to your girlfriends that you can't go on that weekend road trip you had planned, for fear of ruining the upholstery of the car.

The above-mentioned leakage actually happened to someone I know. I am not naming names, but he was half responsible for the miracle of life that was the birth of Grace.

On the upside, the effects of escolaritis will have leaked out of your system in around a day. On the downside, you'll never want to drink Orange Crush again.

But years later, you will still be thinking of how damn delicious that fish was.

Fumbling at the DMV

2009-06-03T19:17:00.008-04:00

Three states and my own beloved Dammit-We're-A-Commonwealth-Not-A-State recently passed legislation that banned smiling in driver's license pictures. I'm so glad that while the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal aliens, and the war on kids who wear their pants too low continue to rage, our legislators are taking the time to craft legislation governing the really important things in life. They claim that smiling in license pictures obscures certain points on your face that facial recognition software uses to...recognize...your face.

What, were you expecting it to whip you up a frappucino to turn that frown upside-down?

Seriously, between my name, social security number, fingerprints, address, and complete personal history, they still felt it necessary to frump me up for a picture in order to figure out who I am. I would rather they take gallons of my blood, at once, through a clear twisty straw, than force me to look dour in a photo that I cannot do over for ten years.

Then the more I thought about it, I realized they aren't telling me I have to be sad or boring. They're just saying I can't smile. Just that one thing, smiling, is banned like real nipples in a topless bar. (Welcome to Virginia, where the Puritans are still penning the laws with a quill and a vengeance!) There are many expressive faces I can flash for the camera, ensuring that my license photo adequately reflects who I am.

Thus I have created for you Grace's Guide to the DMV, a handy reference for anyone who might be forced to go hand over six hours of their lives while waiting for a shiny new license.

Grace's Guide to the DMV
A Handy Guide for Navigating Those Pesky New Rules

Let's begin with a sampling of what is no longer allowed: Your Friendly Neighborhood Grace
Don't you bring that tricksy tramp 'round these parts again. We just can't trust those teeth.

Next, let's move into the examples of expressions that ARE allowed. Exhibit 1: Twilight Vampire Action Figure Grace is not banned.
Proof of familial relationship to Edward Cullen required before license will be issued.

Exhibit 2: Emotionally Fragile Grace is not banned.
Sugar, we didn't mean to say that you look fat. We just meant that maybe you should suck in your chin. And neck. And five jowls.

Exhibit 3: Grace Grace Beaver Face is not banned.
Please check large bags, backpacks, and residual pieces of dam that you may have on your person at the front desk.

I hope this brief guide will help you breeze through your next adventure at the DMV, jaws clenched against any possible glimmer of a smile, beaver teeth at the ready.

***
I'm vaguely concerned that I staged and posed for any/all of these pictures, but apparently not concerned enough to NOT publish them for the perusal of the whole wide Internets. Shame and I broke up a few years ago, and no way am I going back.

Sage Words of Wisdom

2009-06-02T19:50:00.002-04:00

If you're wondering why you haven't heard from me much recently, it's because I've been working of late on a column that someone actually asked me to write.

No, this person is not related to me by birth, marriage, or that summer-camp voodoo mess that made you blood-sisters for life, or until the next time you washed your hands.

Yes, I have been asked to refrain from dropping the f-bomb more frequently than tropical thunderstorms shower upon the rainforest.

I'm not sure who-all out there among you loyal chuggers of my Kool-Aid is a writer, so maybe this is just preaching to the choir, but writing. is. hard. Especially when you're worried that your new, specific audience will think you are any of the following: dumb, flippant, rude, arrogant, condescending, or at worst, a mean girl.

Fine, you guessed it. The White House hired me as a speech writer/style consultant.

When I was growing up I was always writing things, and I remember once wandering into the kitchen at home, having rammed head-first and at full speed into a cement writer's block in the middle of finishing a story for my creative writing class (which, by the way, broke my soul and kept me from writing for another eight years). My dad, one of the most creative people I know, asked me what was wrong. I told him that all I had to do was cap the story off and I could be finished, but it was just so hard to find exactly the right words. Or at that point, any words at all.

Dad looked at me and said, "Writing is easy. Just sit down and cut open a vein."

That is even more true advice than the time that someone told me that if you just don't touch your hair while it air-dries, you'll get the best curls ever.

I think of Dad telling me that every time I sit down to spew words, and they won't even trickle out. I feel like I'm sitting in front of the keyboard, trying to open a vein with a plastic picnic spork. Or, as a friend of mine from high school once called it, a bat-spoon.

Le sigh. Truth hurts.

Bring On The Sea Breeze

2009-05-29T21:16:00.006-04:00

Lawyer Boy and I spent last weekend, Memorial "Sunburn Kick-off" Weekend, at my parents' beach house with my parents (you didn't see that coming and I know it), my sister and brother-in-law, and their two kids. The peach-and-white sand palace, appropriately named "The Beach Peach,"* lives four hours from Richmond on the Outer Banks, so LB and I tore out of work Friday afternoon so we could get home, pack nine times more clothes than we would need for a trip twice as long, and fire up the crane to hoist our Labradozer, Breeze, into the back of my Jeep.

If you've never encountered a Labradozer before, I highly recommend the breed. They're a high-energy, Cadillac-sized crossbreed of a Labrador Retriever and a bulldozer, and Breeze is really exemplary of the breed. At eleven years old -freakin' geriatric in dog years- she shows no sign of slowing down in trying to meet her goal of sniffing the crotch of every animate being in the tri-state area. We had another Lab, Amor, and she and Breeze were Bee Eff Effs in a way that made the Olsen twins look like frenemies. Three weeks ago, when Amor went to the Big Backyard In The Sky, we became worried that Breeze would slip into a deep doggie depression, so we decided to take her to the beach with us to keep her occupied. Our fears were apparently unfounded, since plenty of animate crotches still abound for Breeze to discover, and she hasn't missed a beat.

And so last Friday, an hour outside work, we had everything packed, loaded, and placated in the back of the Jeep, and we were off to show Breeze her first glimpse of the ocean!

Y'all, we got no more than thirty minutes outside Richmond before the ominousness (ominosity?) hit. We were heading through Prince George County on our way deeper into the eastern nether regions of Virginia, when we came upon a gas station so overrun with cops, squad cars leaking out of every exit and oozing across parking spaces, that we could only assume that Al Qaeda had been discovered, hunkered down over lemon chess pie in a back booth at the adjoining Stuckey's.**

In actuality, this was nothing more than a bored local police force out trying to raise funds for the annual Spring Fling by ticketing as many come-here's as possible over the holiday weekend. Guess who had been chosen in the Lottery O' Life to pay for the six trays of chicken wings doused in SHIT THAT'S HOT sauce?

As soon as we had cleared the stoplight directly in front of the gas station that had been marked for death, blue lights flashed obnoxiously in my rear view. LB and I exchanged puzzled stares. They couldn't pull me for an overdue inspection; that was current. For the first time in two years, my registration tags were actually current, so that couldn't be it. And how do you pull someone for speeding when you discovered them at a dead stop?

Dutiful, and fully huffed-up, citizen that I am, I steered the Black Sheep into the first available parking lot. The young officer, overseen by a much more senior officer riding shotgun, already had my license and registration in his hand by the time he drooled the words "liiiisnce 'n' rej'strayshin pleez." Confusion as to why I had been pulled had led me to act quickly in procuring the documents; confusion as to where he was, and what day it was, had caused him to black out the basic functions of his job.

"Ma'am," he drawled, losing points instantly for calling me ma'am when the license trapped in his sweaty palm clearly indicated that I'm all of 25. "We cawt ya on the lay-zah doin' sixty-two in a fawty-fahv. This's a fawty-fahv, heeyuh."

"What??!?!" I practically shrieked, losing all sense of manners in the heat of the moment. I am normally unreasonably nice to people I don't know, particularly anyone in a uniform. But apparently, when I feel my life and dignity are at stake, I'm a complete asshole. "Officer, I know I wasn't going that fast. Where was this?!?!?!?"

"Under th' overpass, ma'am. Th' lay-zah cawt ya at sixty-two. This's a fawty-fahv, heeyuh." Thank you, Officer Rainman. Speed limit is 45. Roger.

Several frustrated syllables that cannot be expressed within the confines of the English language hiccuped out of my mouth before I could finally sputter, "Officer, I hit the underpass right after a STOP LIGHT! This car will not get up to sixty-two that fast! It just can't! I was not going that fast!!!" And would you like one of the cookies I have in the back?

Officer Rainman shrugged noncommittally. At this point LB, ever the peoples' advocate, stepped in. "Officer, is there a chance your laser caught someone else, and you pulled my wife by mistake? I know she couldn't go that fast, right there." I noticed his Virginia Bar card casually protruding behind his driver's license.

Officer Rainman paused. I guess he was thinking; he was staring off into the distance and either counting gnats or considering LB's question. Either way, his eventual answer did not exude decisiveness. "Naw. I'be raht bayck." And off he ambled to write the first speeding ticket of my life. Do you hear me? Exactly one month, to the day, before I would have hit my ten-year anniversary of being a licensed driver with a perfect record, Officer Rainman breaks my streak. Oh, the wrath. Ohhhh, the fury!

A few minutes later, having written my ticket and eaten six chicken fingers, Rainman wandered back. He bumbled through the standard assignment-of-blame language, then decided to try small talk.

"Y'all headed to th' beach th'sweekend?" No, Officer, scenic East Jesus was our destination.

"Yes, Officer," I replied.

"Well," he drawled, visibly fighting the urge to spit. "I hope I din' ruin y'all's weeken'." No, you didn't. I just hope your wife cheats on you with Jon Gosselin, is all.

"No, Officer," I said calmly. "You're just doing your job."

"Y'all have a sayfe trip. Drahv slow!" he called out in farewell. I used my most ferocious ESP skills to beam rays of Jon Gosselin into his wife's head.

Thoroughly incensed and more ready than ever to burn the road to the beach, LB and I got back on the road. Not two miles of monitoring speed limit signs like ravenous hawks later, I saw something glistening and black in the road. It looked like a plastic bag blowing across the asphalt. All too late, I realized the plastic bag was a thick black snake, stretched so long across the road that it had sealed its own slithery fate.

"OMIGAAAAAAAAOOOOODDD!!!" I shrieked as I felt the almost undetectable bump of my wheels flattening the snake's tail. "I KILLED HIM I KILLED HIM OOOOHHHH NOOOO!!!!" I saw the poor snake's body curled up in the middle of the road, slithering no more.

I carried on like this for five minutes, thoroughly disturbed that I had killed something so violently, while LB tried unsuccessfully to convince me that the snake had felt no pain, and that if the snake had met me personally, he probably would have bitten me on the face. Hell, the way I was carrying on, I would have bitten me on the face, too.

Four hours later, we finally made it to the beach, and had a fantastic time. I'm not worried about the speeding ticket, because I'm married to Lawyer Boy. Have I mentioned he's a lawyer?

Have I mentioned he's a real estate lawyer?

Have I mentioned the fact that the only crime he could really defend me for is if I were charged with painting my house too fast?

Maybe I'll get off on a technicality. Maybe the officer won't show due to severe emotional trauma. He just found out his wife was having an affair with Jon Gosselin, is all.

*Complete with its own personal sign sporting a peach painted like a smiling woman's face, which they had to send back after it was first painted because the cleft in the peach looked indisputably like a big beachy buttcrack.
**They were only discovered when Raylene, the perennial pie-server, asked after their mamas. Rather than answering, they went back to their pie and coffee, causing Raylene to yank them straight up by their ears, at which point she realized they weren't the Jenkins boys. Ain't nobody go'n ignore Raylene, y'all.

Tiger Beat, Chapter 3: Questicle's B.S.

2009-05-28T19:45:00.002-04:00

Welcome back amigos, for the grand and exciting(ish) conclusion to the Tiger Beat Chronicles, wherein my baby brother gets drunk, gets his degree, and gets drunk again, in that order. Onward!

***

Saturday morning, the dawn of The Day, found the inhabitants of Questicle's apartment less than chipper and hangin' a little lower than usual. I was fully awake, all fidgety and jangly like a six-year-old on Christmas, at 7am--and unhappily so. Have you ever been awake in the single digits of the morning in a college apartment? It's like being hopelessly marooned on a desert island that some previous castaway pre-scented with beer and sorority girl pheromones. I busied myself texting LB and chugging environmentally unsound amounts of water to combat the previous night's chugging calamities, glad that I had abstained from the vodka shots that had been passed around circa 1am.

Questicle, however, had drunk deeply from the pitcher of fun the previous night, including the aforementioned vodka shots, and was not exactly en bonne forme upon the arrival of the morning star. When I finally forced him to peel himself off the sheets and consider consciousness, it became obvious that the only thing that would drag him out of The Land Before Time was a salty greasebomb and strong coffee. In other words, a bag from Bojangles.

Have you ever had Bojangles before? Broadening my search a bit, have you ever had a chicken biscuit before? Somehow, despite a lifetime spent studying the finer points of grits, red-eye gravy, and biscuits with sausage gravy, I had never had one. I was fully prepared to hand over my chicken biscuit v-card, and Macy (both tiny AND fabulous!) was well equipped to punch it for me: She knew how to get to the nearest Bojangles. So off we rode, in search of grease and enlightenment!

And what a mixed bag of victory we brought back. Win: Delicious chicken biscuits for all! Fail: Apparently Questicle wanted a bacon-egg biscuit instead of a chicken biscuit, and apparently Bojangles felt like we only deserved two of the three biscuits we gave them dollars for. My first ever chicken biscuit was actually a demi-biscuit, shared with Macy, while Questicle plowed through his biscuit and attempted to stick the straw in his Diet Coke directly into a vein. After twenty minutes and 6,000 calories, we finally felt ready to shower and mosey over to the Coliseum to watch The University bestow a B.S. on Questicle.

After getting choked up the first of six times watching Questicle process in with the rest of the class, and professors in a progression of sillier and sillier academic hats, I settled in for a graduation ceremony longer than Elton John's career. Clemson has a charming dedication to allowing each and every university graduate the opportunity to shake the hand of the president of the university himself, before snagging his diploma in front of 20,000 of his closest friends. I, for one, would much prefer if the president would make house calls to give out these handshakes, since watching him glad-hand 1,099 graduates, in addition to the one I personally showed up for was, to say the least: boring, mind-numbing, excruciating, tedious, leaden, exhausting, drool-inducing, and in summary, enough to make me (and everyone else in the arena) wish that I could voluntarily slip into a deep, dark coma.

I tried everything to stay focused. I gave up. I tried everything to stay awake. I gave up. I experimented in trying to sleep with my eyes open. I became concerned that if I were able to accomplish such a feat, gnats would land on my eyeballs. I eventually became bored enough to stop caring, only to discover that I am not capable of sleeping with my eyes open, gnats or no gnats.

Finally, at long last, Questicle mounted and crossed the stage to shake the hand of the president of the university. He later said that when he got there, he was smiling so big that the president said to him, grasping his hand, "It feels good, doesn't it?" Questicle grinned even bigger and replied, "yes sir, it does!"

Damn, little Questicle, I'm so proud of you I'm tearing up even now. How awesome! But, if I may request, please don't graduate again. I seriously can't sit through another Festival of REM Sleep.

After three more hours, much more unnecessary academic hoopla, and the conferring of degrees on people I don't care that I don't know, we were released again into the wild. Mom and Dad had brought a giant amount of pork barbecue and all the fixins for a dinner at Questicle's apartment, so we headed back to celebrate, making a pit stop for beer. Macy and I, dazed and hungry from camping out in the arena for four hours, made the mistake of going into the grocery store with Questicle, and we stumbled deliriously upon the chip aisle. We set upon it like buzzards on a dead lamb, eventually dragging six different bags of random-ass chips, including one made with real live olives, out of the store behind us.

What? Going comatose burns calories!

Back at Questicle's apartment we ravaged the chips and food that Mom and Dad had brought, oggling Questicle's diploma and working hard to ensure that no barbecue survived the night. Questicle and Macy were gearing up for another vodka-infused pong-fest, and were lobbying hard for me to stay another night so I could smack more of their friends' faces with stanky pong-balls. Everyone loves the party girl!

Ultimately, because I am old, lame, and nowhere close to as cool as you undoubtedly think I am, I decided to spend the night on the floor of Mom and Dad's hotel room, where I fell asleep at 10:15 watching Dr. Gregory House harass his staff into solving another epic medical mystery. I wished I could have partied another night with the Questicle crowd, but as the responsible older child, I knew I had to be back at work bright and early Monday morning.

***
Thanks for tuning in for the conclusion of the Tiger Beat Chronicles! Now I can start telling you all of the other words that have been rumbling around my head while I tried to stop procrastinating and just finish the stupid Tiger Beat Chronicles, dammit. Tomorrow. I will tell you tomorrow.

Ways To Get Fired, #76

2009-05-27T12:51:00.003-04:00

Often the attorneys will leave files for me when I'm not in my office. They place them on my chair so that I can't ignore them--or so they think, until they come in and I'm teetering on top of six pending files, perched like Grandma atop phone books in the driver's seat.

"What? I didn't see anything in my inbox!"

Anyway, the files often come with love notes placed lovingly atop them, and they are usually limited to two-word tags of affection: "See me."

I so very desperately want to write below that, "OK," and leave the files in their chairs when they're not there.

"What? I saw you. I saw you leave for lunch."

Tiger Beat, Chapter 2: Let Me See That Pong

2009-05-20T20:24:00.004-04:00

Welcome back, amigos, and thank you for opting, possibly against your will, to come back after the last chapter's epic Ode to T-Bell! Today's installment of the Tiger Beat Chronicles promises to be at least that exciting, and hopefully less nauseating.

***
After seven and a half hours of Donna Summer-themed ear rape and several verbal assaults from the haughty GPS madam who became i-freakin-rate when we turned off the prescribed Yellow Brick Road to stop for gas, Mom and I cruised into Clemson, Scarolina, home to the Clemson Tigers, Death Valley, and more Bojangles chicky-huts than I have pairs of shoes.*

We dressed for dinner and met Questicle and his girlfriend Macy, who is both tiny and fabulous, for dinner at a restaurant called The Blue Heron. Since Clemson is a small-town college joint, and since it was being invaded by at least 20,000 proud parents that weekend, we had set the bar for food pretty low, expecting glorified bar food served by mumbling waiters in restaurants crammed with t-shirt-wearin' rednecks whose crowning glory was their NASCAR belt buckles with real light-up parts. Like Applebee's with a side of cheese grits and indignity.

All my regular snarkasm aside, oh my dear Lord, The Blue Heron was one of the single best meals that I, or anyone else at the table, had ever had. And we, a group of die hard foodies, are a hard sell. At the end of the meal, my dad actually wanted to summon the chef to our table so we could (I am not making this up) give him a standing ovation. The thought of this mortal humiliation horrified me in a way that could only be eclipsed by my dad trying to give the DJ at the "Rainforest Romance" middle-school dance a standing O for his really bitchin' remix of the Macarena.

Fortunately for my reputation, the chef was busy, either cooking for other patrons or laughing so hard at the suggestion that he peed his balsamic reduction-stained pants.

After dinner Mom and Dad headed back to their hotel, and I headed to Questicle's apartment to pretend I was a college student before I would eventually crash for the evening on my air mattress in Questicle's spare bedroom. In honor of the solemn commencement rituals of the weekend, Questicle and his roommate had invited everyone they knew to show up with shitty beer and belly up to the spray-painted majesty of the plywood beer pong table that crowned their apartment.

When I was in college I was terrible at beer pong, in the same way that I'm terrible at any sport that involves throwing things, unless it's throwing bullshit at my boss, a game at which I am the office Michael Phelps. Pong always annoyed me because I was so bad that I never made it past the preliminary rounds, and it seemed vaguely inadvisable to drink beer that had just incubated a ball that had been on the floor, in peoples' hands, and in some rare and special cases, in their mouths, which had in turn usually been on, or in, the mouths of other party-goers.

Don't even try to tell me there is enough alcohol in beer to bulldoze that germ jungle.

But since I'm out of college and therefore Magic At Life, I decided I would show the students how it's really done before the night was over. While I waited for my turn at the table, I mingled with the graduates. I told Macy how much I love her, repeatedly and with the emphasis that can only be conveyed after four vodka lemonades. I bonded with Questicle, laughing about the ridiculous things we did when we were kids/last week. And in one of the greatest moments of the evening, I met my SameName! She not only had the same name as me, but was also a redhead with a wicked sense of humor. We had a great time comparing the nicknames we get from our SameName, and sharing fashion tips for what matches our SameHair.

Finally, it was my turn at the table, and for my personal World Series of Pong, I had been paired with a guy named Kevin, who agreed to drink all the pong-beer while I continued to slurp vodka lemonades. And who should appear on the other side of the table to play me for ultimate pong glory, but SameName! Oh, it was on.

And how quickly it became apparent that I was very, very off. Not only were SameName and her partner sinking balls more expertly than cheerleaders after the prom,** but none of ours were even coming close to the gold. Mine weren't even clearing the midpoint on the table. After a few airborne failures, Kevin decided to coach me.

"You've got to throw the ball higher, so it clears the tops of the cups."

"Like this?" I said, raising my elbow and preparing to cock my wrist.

"Right," he said. "And throw it harder. Like, a lot harder, so it actually, um, gets to the cups."

Across the table, SameName was talking to her partner, laughing about something. Her partner pointed out that I was about to take another failure-riffic shot, and SameName turned back to the table.

She turned back to the table right as I decided to show Kevin just how hard I could throw. And I threw hard. And I have no aim.

I accidentally hit my SameName. I HIT MY SAMENAME IN THE FACE!!! With the wet, stanky BALL!!

She was, to say the least, stunned, and not surprisingly, my ball did not make the cup. I immediately fell all over myself, partly from the vodka lemonades, and partly in trying to apologize my face off. SameName shook it off gracefully, but I suppose it's easy to overlook a minor battle wound when you beat your opponent six to zero.

*So, countless.
**I HAD TO SAY THAT.

***
And that concludes this chapter of the Tiger Beat Chronicles. As we barrel towards Memorial Weekend, be sure to check back for the next episode: Questicle's B.S.

Happy Anniversary, Grace & Lawyer Boy!

2009-05-20T17:56:00.002-04:00

Dear Grace and LB,
Wow! I can't believe you've been married for three years! Three years without a divorce or an unintended pregnancy--that's a better track record than some people have just coming out of college. Way to rock the nuptials, guys. One day, when you're mature enough to admit that guacamole and chips are not a balanced meal and that watching Family Guy is not "cultural enhancement," you'll have really cute babies, who will be good at math and have sassy mouths, which will piss you off and make you proud, respectively. But for now, stick to enjoying each other and trying to get the dog to play with the cat by the head.
Love,
Grace

Tiger Beat, Chapter 1: Road Trip Necessities

2009-05-15T20:08:00.005-04:00

And now, at long last, with great fanfare and much squealing of kazoos, I bring you Chapter One in the Tiger Beat Chronicles, an epic tale of my trip to Clemson, Scarolina to watch Questicle embark upon adulthood, drink my weight in Frathouse Special brew, and eat my Very First Ever Chicken Biscuit.

Now what, I ask you, could be more exciting than tales of the loss of my chicken biscuit virginity?*

Thus we begin on Thursday morning, when Mom arrived ten minutes ahead of schedule to collect my duffel bag, tote bag, garment bag, shoe bag, food bag, handbag, giftbag, windbag, bagpipe, and self to cart down to Scarolina. As usual, I was running no less than fifteen brain cells behind, so I fluttered about like a hummingbird trapped in a shoebox, simultaneously drying my hair, packing my makeup, and hugging the cat goodbye. Finally, twenty-five minutes and six Mango scratches behind schedule, we were off, guided by the comforting voice of the GPS who assumed, from the moment we lumbered off the curb, that we were complete morons in need of guidance, both geographically and philosophically.

All was well in the Tahoe powered by disco music and girl talk, until we both became hungry enough to consider eating at some roadside establishment whose kitchen output was rivaled only by its bathroom intake. Scanning the blue signs that littered the interstate like tattoos on a hairy redneck, I had an epiphany of epic proportions: WE SHOULD EAT AT TACO BELL.

Something I may have never disclosed, but which is a huge part of my personal being, is that I'm an obsessive foodie. There are three things in life that I take very seriously. The Three Fs. They are:

Food
Family
Fart jokes

I think about food more often than thirteen-year-old boys think about boobies, and I spend about half of every weekend playing Dr. Jekyll/Chef Hyde in my kitchen, flinging spices and hoping to strike culinary gold before I accidentally puree my own knuckles. So for me to suggest we eat at Taco Bell sounds as strange as Jessica Simpson asking Marilyn Manson if she could open for him while slaughtering a family of pigs. But when I suggested T-Bell tacos, Mom must have been delirious from watching 350 cow-speckled miles of our lives bump past us, and figured it couldn't be half bad. Or at least, we likely would not die.

And oh, it was so good, good like cheese fries on a hangover, or aloe on that sunburn that you kind of want to heal, but kind of want to peel because peeling sunburn is so grotesquely delightful. You might have lost respect for me after this Ode to Fresco-Style Crunchy Beef Tacos, but I just don't care. T-Bell and I are tight, and there's nothing you can do to come between our love, unless our love results in my contracting the herp from T-Bell's special parts.

Fueled up in an ominous way that would ensure we drove as lightning-fast as possible to our destination, Mom and I hit the road again. We had gone about a hundred miles when it became crucial that we stop again: There were forces at work that we, mere mortal women with fabulous handbags, were powerless to stop. Did the car run out of gas? Did a rock hit the windshield? Did T-Bell come roaring to the gates in a way that demanded we screech to a halt immediately and dart behind the nearest tree?

Would you believe me if I said I saw a sign for an exit that had a HomeGoods AND a TJ Maxx in one giant building, and I shrieked like a middle schooler at High School Musical On Ice until Mom pulled over out of fear for her life? Smart lady, my mom.

I don't know if you've ever been to one of these magical Meccas, but there is nothing more wondrous to me than a store where I can buy both tart pans and tarty sandals, both with matching earrings. Never mind that Mom and I had each packed six pairs of shoes. Never mind that we only had two dressy events to attend that weekend. I am powerless against the song of the Shoe-Sirens, and I've got the overstuffed shoe rack, shoe bags, and eye-rolling husband to prove it!

Half an hour later, after happily stuffing six completely necessary and in no way superfluous shoes in the back of the magic Tahoe, we were on the road again, racing against time to Clemson to make sure we'd have enough time to choose the perfect shoe for dinner.

***

Thanks for tuning in to the first installment of the Tiger Beat Chronicles! Stay tuned for our next episode, coming soon: Let Me See That Pong.

*This phrase banned in countries run by theocracies, monarchies, and common decency.

Sunday Snippet of Stupidity

2009-05-10T08:46:00.002-04:00

As promised, I will return to regale you with tales from my adventure in South Carolina, which will serve as part captivating autobiography, and part "what not to do in public if you ever want people to like you," both of which I hope will serve you well in the years to come. Someone has to learn something from my life, because clearly, I am not.

At this present juncture, howevz, I'm in a less-than-fantastic state of mind to share words with you this morning. Already today, I have:

1. Tried to stir a cup of coffee with a fork;
2. Become totally huffy and surprised when this did absolutely no good whatsoever; and
3. Lit a campfire in the bottom of my oven. Second time in a month--I'm better at camping than I thought, apparently.

Would you say that I'm a little "out of sorts" when LB isn't around...or that I'm just plain special like a three-legged giraffe?

Strawberries and Champagne...For One

2009-05-09T19:51:00.004-04:00

Well, after two days away from home, hoping to be mistaken for Questicle's younger sister so that I could play with the 21-year-olds without anyone calling me Mrs. Thoreau, I have returned from Clemson, Home of El Tigre, to the mayhem that I call my everyday life.

And Lord, what mayhem I returned to. But first, to quench your obvious and borderline insatiable thirst for tales of my fumble-tastic exploits south of the border: I have to explain all that to you in several separate posts, because frankly, there is so much that is worthy of sharing with you, my loving public/cult, that if I were to post it all at once, you'd kill me...or just not read it all, the knowledge of which would then kill me, so really, you'd kill me.

Right, so this morning began with Mom and I pounding Hampton Inn Specialty Roast and bombing our insides with gummy, undercooked biscuits from the "Complimentary Diarrhea" continental breakfast to fuel up for the seven hour drive home. Really, I just had to jack myself up enough to be more than a semi-conscious body in the seat next to her, so I could keep her company while she piloted us safely home. I had offered to drive, but since her Tahoe is smarter than I am (including one of those Harry Potter back gates that you just wave at and it closes, magic-like), we decided it was in our best interest if I just played delirious and drooled copiously in the passenger seat.

And thus began our trip back through both Cackalackies, back to the Capitol of the Confederacy. We stopped for gas at one point in a townlette best described as Trailer Trash West, and if there had been any question that we were in the Bible Belt, it was dispelled by a gas pump that tried to show us the light: The computer display had been programmed to spell out "HE IS RISEN" at the end of every statement that punctuated the transaction.

"Would you like a car wash today? HE IS RISEN"
[no]
"Is your transaction complete? HE IS RISEN"
[yes]
"Would you like a receipt? HE IS RISEN"
[no]
"Seriously? HE IS RISEN"
[yes, seriously]
"But HE IS RISEN and He really feels you should keep a balanced checkbook."
[YES]
"Thank you for your patronage today SEE YOU IN HELL HE IS RISEN"

Seven hours and six bouts of Sleeping Buttcheek Syndrome later, we arrived home. My first hint that something was wrong was that the moment I unlocked the door, Mango wasn't immediately humping my legs, so excited to have me back that he morphed into a sex-crazed teenage boy. He was slinking around, looking at me sideways like he knew what I did back in '98, and yowled like Tina Turner if I tried to pick him up. I knew something was wrong with the local LoveSlut, and so after much uneducated evaluation and discussion with Lawyer Boy* of the brutal wound to the checking account that I knew a vet visit would be, I wrestled the cat into the cat carrier, which is as much fun as wrangling Ozzie Osbourne into sobriety, and shuffled him to the vet.

Before I ran off with the cat and the bank account balance, however, I checked with our neighbors, Erin and Edward,** who had graciously agreed to watch over our flock while we were gone, and apparently Sir Bleeds-a-Lot had decided to spend Friday night outside. He had bolted when they weren't looking, and the little fatty had come back just in time for breakfast the next day, after having tried to convince the whole city, unsuccessfully, that he was a badass. Just like every other man I know.

Two hours and TWO HUNDRED FORTY-FOUR DOLLARS*** later, the vet had determined that our little furry rebel had, in fact, gotten in a fight with the neighborhood feline Greaser, and was in need of antibiotics and having a thermometer shoved up his reckless ass. So, pumped full of fluids and delightful drugs, I took him home, unhappily in his plastic cat-taxi, and deposited him inside the front door, before I realized something important: I hadn't left that CD in my passenger seat. Or that set of directions to a house on Lake Anna. Or that cup from Chipotle.

Someone had ransacked my car! And thrown all the contents of the console into the floor! And had taken nothing! HOLY CRAP WHAT?????

This happened to LB a few months ago, when he accidentally left his car open and the neighborhood friendlies opened his door, roughed up his console, and eventually walked away with the 27 cents in his cup-holder. This time, it was particularly obvious that the friendlies had just been looking for cash and not a car or black-market goods, since the car itself was unharmed and none of the contents of the console was missing. I can't imagine why. They had their pick of:

seventeen paper napkins
one used lip gloss
one Subway sandwich card with 8 stamps remaining
five tampons
one pamphlet on "How to Pray the Rosary"
one plastic rosary
directions to "Casa del McD," my friends' parents' lakehouse; and
a CD Shelley made for me composed mostly of Carbon Leaf interspersed with Alvin and the Chipmunks

Clearly these guys had no idea what was valuable!

After all that, I eventually unpacked my huge amounts of unnecessary luggage and reclined with dinner: a pint of strawberries and a bottle of champagne (because I love it, and it is cheap). I had entertained grandiose fantasies of making myself shrimp scampi and jasmine rice while LB was gone, but the utter chaos and mayhem of my actual life had rendered me incapable of doing anything other than washing a plastic container of fruit.

And for all the romantic evenings that it implies, this is the first time I have ever had strawberries and champagne together. And you know what? It is DELICIOUS.

*LB is at JMU with his family to celebrate his sister's graduation, which was the same day as the Festival of Questicle. His family doesn't drink, and yet he was good and tipsed last time I talked to him. Thoughts? I feel a coping mechanism on the rise.
**PS to Erin and Edward: It's not your fault that our cat is an idiot. I love you. Also: Can I have your children? We would bake cookies all the time.
***Apparently I love the cat extensively. That is a LOT of shoes, amigos.

Tiger Beat

2009-05-07T07:10:00.002-04:00

Well amigos, I'm off for a road trip, down through two states and countless miles of cow-speckled highway, to Clemson University, where Questicle will at long last glide triumphantly across the civic center stage to snatch his B.S.* before the registrar tries to take it back for extra verification.

We'll also drink lots of cocktails, toast lots of...toasts, and generally cavort about in a way that will allow me to pretend I'm still in college, aided by the fact that I'm staying at Questicle's apartment, which will either turn out to be the best idea ever or WORST IDEA EVAR.

Upon my return this weekend, I promise a full recap, complete with pictures and embarrassing stories of which stranger I tried to drink under the table this time.

*So true on so many levels!

My Mom, The Origin of Awesome

2009-04-29T22:32:00.004-04:00

I have a really great relationship with my mom, which I think is because I'm just like my dad--which is to say, a total goofball and only quasi-logical on the best of days. I'd have to say that my mom likes my dad, since they've been married for longer than Flava-Flav has been nailing anything that walks, and so hanging out with me is just like hanging out with my dad, if he were into shoe shopping and talking about china patterns. For my mom, I'm just like my dad, if my dad were mugged by Queer Eye.

One of the things I admire about my mom is her ability to force anything, anytime, at any store on the globe, to be on sale. I'll go over to see her, and the first thing she'll say is, "oh, come see what I got today!" So we traipse up to the master bedroom, and she whips out a jacket that costs more than my house. "Look what I got for $17.92!" she giggles, waggling a silk-lined leather mortgage payment at my googly eyes.

I examine the conquest. "Holy crap, Mom, this is a $400 Marc Jacobs jacket! Who did you con into giving this to you for $17.92???" If it were anyone other than my mom in front of me, the question would be who did you blow to get this for $17.92?, but I prefer to keep matters a bit more kosher with the one who bore me in her vessel of life.

"Well," she gears up for her victorious epic. "I had a coupon for 25 percent off, so I went over to Macy's, and they happened to be having a 25 percent off sale on the whole store! Then I found the clearance rack, and everything there was 60 percent off that--"

(I swear to God, we're already at the point that the store is paying her to take the goods, but we press on.)

"--and I found this fabulous jacket! And when I went to the register, and this is the funniest thing, I went to high school with the lady who rang me up! Well, we started talking, and it was so nice to catch up with her, eventually I told her I'd take her mother a cake, because I'd just love to see her mother, and she gave me another 10 percent off! So, do you like the jacket?"

Yes, yes, I like the jacket. You can leave the house to Questicle and my sister, but I want that jacket.

Mom and I spend a lot of time together, so it's easy for me to forget that she's part of a whole different generation, the generation that believes that chocolate gives you acne, and that only perverts hang out on the "world wide web." Then sometimes, she reminds me, in ways that bring a whole new meaning to the term generation gap.

Recently, Mom and Dad were sitting together reading the Sunday paper. Mom was deeply engrossed in the Garden section (I can only assume), when Dad interrupted her with a question about his chosen material, an editorial on pop culture. "What's 'twittering'?" he asked.

Mom looked around, baffled. She cocked her head, then looked at him, assumed he had really lost it, and replied, "I don't hear anything!"

I'm not actually on Twitter, because I don't think I'm responsible enough to nanny another social status, but to my credit, I at least know what it means. However, mom knows the meaning of bargain hunting, so I'm keeping her around.

Don't Give Notice--Just Flee

2009-04-27T22:42:00.000-04:00

Friday was a sad day at my office, as is every Friday, because Friday means that we all have to grudgingly shut down our barely-literate computers, drag ourselves in the direction of the sketchy elevators that have recently taken to bouncing down the shafts like they're dry-humping the cables, and prepare to spend 48 excruciating hours without the majesty of the law to shed its glow upon us.

Shameless plug for continued gainful employment, take 1.

Speaking of things that are actually true, Friday was less than delightful because it was the last day for one of my favorite ~~attorneys~~ real people at the firm. Since he broke up with us to become a government employee, and I'm sure the government will continue to keep us safe by endlessly Googling him, I'm renaming him Michael Scott. Michael Scott is not only a Steve Carrell creation of epic blunder, but interestingly, is also the first and middle name of a guy I used to date. Adding to the fun? Scott is my middle name too, which I felt the need to share on our second date. FYI, guys aren't thrilled you if you say, "omigosh, that's my middle name too!" It just doesn't have the same bonding potential as, "omigosh, I love Metallica and stale candy corn,* too!"

And now, back to our regularly scheduled mayhem. My coworkers and I are, to put it lightly, raucous like two teenage baboons fighting over the baboonette with the most shapely blue ass, and so we knew that we had to do something stupendous to send Michael Scott off to the feds. Classy catered lunch? Nope. Champagne toast with heartfelt speeches? Nah. Hide in his office, catch him off guard, and ambush him into dressing like a preppy Hawaiian woman? CHECK PLEASE!

Correction: We caught him off guard with six cans of Silly String, and then forced him to dress like a preppy Hawaiian woman with a hint of Groucho Marx. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Exhibit WTF:

To be fair, the preppy end of his enviable ensemble was his own doing, because fortunately, he had come to work clothed that day. (But if he hadn't--that's called going out with a dang, yo.) But bless his Hawaiian heart, he kept his party frock on for the rest of the day! Including the balloons, which he eventually tied to various part of his person so as not to lose them.

As I watched him shuffling his hula hips down the hall and asking paralegals if his boobs were on straight, it occurred to me: If I ever leave this firm, there is no way I'm giving any more than six seconds' notice before I stealthily ease out with a tote bag full of post-its and the quasi-functional lamp from my office shoved under my shirt. I'll be there, deeply engaged in the noble quest of helping people form the melting pot of the USorA, and then shazam! I'll be gone! Just like Molly Ringwald's career and parachute pants.

They'll probably find me, but I'd at least have a head start on the Silly String.

*Because it is delicious, and because it is a sound economic investment, since you will be profiting from candy corn futures trading in your teeth for at least two weeks.

Blowhard

2009-04-26T18:58:00.002-04:00

Lawyer Boy is currently suffering from either allergies, a summer cold, or the plague, which means I've been waiting on him more than usual, and have actually agreed to allow him to monopolize our only tv with "Snakes On A Plane." THAT IS LOVE, PEOPLE.

In the throes of mucus and horror, LB and I were running some errands this afternoon, buying new wine glasses and hoping that we would infect the entire side of town we dislike with his personal plague. We were stopped at a red light when out of nowhere, he turned to me and said...

...and this is a direct quote....

"Most people don't know what I'm talking about when I say this, but when I blow my nose, air shoots out my eyes. Does that ever happen to you?"

No, in fact, that has never happened to me, a fact I shared with him once I stopped laughing so hard that plain old tears came out of my own eyes. He was shocked, truly shocked, that I had never experienced the transformation of my tear ducts into fire-breathing dragons.

I really hope he gets over this plague soon.

Run Like The Wind, If The Wind Were A Loser

2009-04-21T21:45:00.004-04:00

I have never been what anyone with any remote command of the English language would call "athletic;" my greatest sports-related accomplishment as a child in Little League was striking out so many times that it was downright astounding that I still managed to be disappointed enough to cry each and every time. My parents signed me up for every single country-club popped-collar sports clinic that would enroll my damaged ass, with mixed results, but only if an alternate definition for "mixed" is "catastrophically loseriffic." A sampling:

At tennis camp, they video taped each of us so we could watch ourselves and critique our stroke. My shiny-special-star sequence was played over and over, in slow-mo, fast-mo, and all other versions of mo, so that everyone could laugh hysterically at my throwing my racket, tearing around the court like a sugared-up preschooler, and all but shedding my clothes to get away from the bee the coach told me was chasing me. IN FACT THERE WAS NO BEE.
I was signed up for "beginner gymnastics" when I was 9, and was placed with the five- and six-year-old class. Apparently my bespangled rainbow leotard with silver hearts and matching headband-legwarmer combo did not convey my inner Mary Lou Rhetton as strongly as I had hoped, and the ankle-biters leaped clear over my dreams...at least during the two classes I suffered through. Quitters R Us, cleanup on aisle 5.
And ballet. For those of you who may object to its inclusion here as it is "not a sport," I defy you to argue that with the ferocious midgets who always jacked the leading roles in our overblown, long-winded recitals. In my last recital, my capstone performance after eleven years of honing my craft, I was cast in a role that graciously allowed me to remain seated for the duration of my own performance, at the end of which I pranced, gracefully (or not) and on-cue (or not) offstage. I just can't be sure--I think my bitterness may have gotten in the way of the stage directions.
I played varsity (?) field hockey my freshman year of college, and with four games left in the season, the coach unabashedly told me that I was the worst player on the team, explaining why I had ridden the bus to a variety of Division XIV colleges only to ride the bench upon arrival. Also? We lost every single game without the benefit of my magnificent participation, so maybe the skills gap wasn't all that extreme. When your recruitment efforts consist of trolling the freshman dorm the day of move-in, asking stunned newbies if they've ever played skirt sports before, you really can't set your standards any higher than you can whack that ball.

Of course, all these rigorous physical challenges took place back in my glory days, when I could chow an entire pizza and not awaken the next morning to find that same pizza jiggling at the backs of my upper arms and battling fiercely with the waistband of my jeans. (Please note that yes, I do consider the ability to chow an entire pizza an accomplishment.) Now that I'm trapped in an adult's body, I find myself struggling to ensure that January's pot pies and February's truffles don't spend bikini season in a matrimonial relationship with my thighs. I have to do something to burn off my bad decisions, and so I run. Kinda. With great fervor, and much dying of the lungs.

It took me at least four years of running before I stopped hating it like Batman hates Joker. The only reason I kept at it, frankly, is because my college roommate/BFF/lovemuffin, Shelley, is a badass physical fitness genie, capable of running long distances in a single outing without having to bum oxygen off the elderly lady with the tank waiting for the bus. After a long evening of pounding shots, winning drinking contests, and finding our roommate in bed with the Mr. Goodbar Du Jour, Shelley would get up, spritz on her eau de Reebok, and bound off into the sunrise, only to arrive a sweaty hour later to proclaim, "I just kept running to see how far I could go, and I ran seven miles!"

Hell, I don't even like to drive seven miles, but guilt is thicker than vodka, and so I'd think to myself, "well, the worst that could happen is...I could pass out in front of the Sig Ep house, and they do have Miller on tap..." strap on my tennies, and stagger out into the sunlight, to bound approximately 10 feet before slowing to a light prance. I pranced, daintily, for about three years, before I determined that if I had the right music, I could up my shuffle to a moderate jog, and I was off! Never to run to the "Titanic" soundtrack again!

My current running playlist is a chronicle of high-energy embarrassment, but it really keeps me moving, mostly because it makes me picture the music videos full of dancer-chicks with waists like Pixie Stix and legs longer than War and Peace, and I feel the need to compete (losing is inconsequential, apparently). It's lame, and I know, but it burns off the wine. In case you're wondering, here's a short sampling of what keeps me hobbling along:

Flo Rida's sample (cover? do-over?) of "Right Round," which is either about blow jobs or stirppers, the former of which is disturbing and the latter of which reminds me that tennis shoes are always more comfortable than thigh-high plastic boots. Also, someone pointed out to me that Flo Rida is just "Florida" with a space, so I spend the entire song snickering at the grammatic goof-up.
A selection of Britney Spears songs, from her newest vocal vomit, Circus. In her latest release, Ms. Spears, with glitter-coated boobies bigger than her glitter-coated voice, has collaborated with a variety of high-end producers in order to disguise, as much as possible, the fact that she is actually singing. This doesn't bother me in the least, because honestly, were we ever really paying her to sing? I don't know about you, but I was there for the washboard abs and sex for free.
Kevin Rudolph's "Let It Rock," featuring Lil Wayne being generally and unabashedly obscene. I love this song for the dance beat, but Lil Wayne's voice is like a middle-school smartass with braces and socially awkward jeans running his teeth down a chalkboard. If this kid had a voice, it would be Lil Wayne's.

So I tie on my ipod and bound away, hoping no one notices that I'm dragging at least three loose sphincters behind me in my daily death march. If you happen to drive down Grove Avenue and think you may have spotted me, I'm the one with an inhuman amount of red hair and a stride like a dying golden retriever. If you happen to be my boss and drive down Grove Avenue, you already saw me, mid-death spiral, and then made fun of me for it the next day at the office--specifically, my pink shorts.

Just add that to my list of athletic failures, and we'll call it a day.

A WTF Moment

2009-04-11T12:44:00.004-04:00

One of the weirder discoveries of the day: a tour bus, parked in front of the grocery store closest to my house. What could the other high points on this tour possibly be? "After the Carytown Kroger, we'll swing by the home of the local crazy cat lady, and we'll finish up at that parking lot on Broad Street that every seagull, worldwide, believes to be the ocean."

I can only assume that this is a bus full of Japanese tourists. Experience has taught me that they will tour anything--including, apparently, the deli case.

Conversations with My Husband

2009-04-10T12:11:00.002-04:00

Lawyer Boy and I are a match made in white-wedding heaven, and not just because I love to cook home-style fatty things and then not eat them (because of lady-guilt*), and he loves to eat them and then not put on any weight at all. This not only solidifies our bond, but also proves that chemistry and genetics really are the tricky little bitches I thought they were in high school science class. I think a large part of our matrimonial magic has to do with the well-known fact that I’m weirder than a blow-up Santa Claus at an Easter Parade, and he’s…not. If opposites attract and relationships are about balance, then I’m the powder-blue, highly-flammable polyester leisure suit to his starched lawyerly dress shirt. The Jon Stewart to his Dick Cheney. The Gene Simmons to his Marie Osmond. (This contrast will no longer be so drastic if the long-fabled line of Gene Simmons Delicate Porcelain Whimsy Dolls finally debuts on QVC. Stay tuned.)

One thing I have noticed, after seven years of inflicting my personality on him, is that it's starting to rub off. Just like when you cook a big pot of chili and eventually everything you own, including your cat, your couches, and the grubby dollar bills in your wallet, smells like stale cayenne and digestive woes, so too has LB's personality begin to reek of Grace. He’s still a far cry from being the insanity-spewing fountain of hipster** slang that I am, but he’s becoming progressively goofier with every minute that ticks by into the Great Beyond that is the rest of our lives together. The only thing that really stands between him and the lofty goal of being my nuttier than Mr. Peanut’s pants equal is that he still sometimes struggles to keep pace with the rapid-fire lunacy that I call pleasant conversation.

Here’s a good example. Recently I had dragged an unwilling LB on some evening errands with me, out to the side of town where the SUVs are almost as big as the McMansions and the toddlers are almost as big as their Twiggy McTightpants moms. I’ve only ever known one guy to use the phrase “I’d love to run errands with you, honey,” without gagging and then ducking behind the nearest sofa for cover, so file that one under “Lies My Ex-Boyfriends Told Me,” along with “‘Come On Eileen’ is a U2 song’” and “I’m a virgin.”

I was trying to distract LB from the fact that he was about to enter the grocery store, which he hates because they won’t let him eat one of everything, so I corralled him into a conversation about his favorite topic, Our Old House. We were discussing which project to tackle next, now that Holy Shit, Mice! and Why Are The Walls Black? were under control. I suggested that we go ahead and roll into painting the front hall, ending my argument with, “Because, LBH, those walls aren’t going to paint themselves.”

“What’s ‘LBH’?” LB asked, thinking it was his new monogram--short for “Lawyer Boy Husband” or perhaps, on days when he sends me flowers, “Lawyer Boy Hottie.”

“Short for ‘let’s be honest,’” I said, amazed that he hadn’t picked this up from the 19 previous times I had used it (that day).

A word on LBH: While I know for sure that I am not the originator of this jargon-y gem, I’m apparently the only one who uses it in conversation, confusing everyone I encounter. All part of my charm, amigos.

Our trip through the grocery store was uneventful, save Lawyer Boy’s insistence that we buy the jumbo-pack of garlic cloves sheathed in what appeared to be the foot of a pair of used panty hose, storming of the bread-and-dip sample station, and refusal to allow me to buy goat cheese because, “it’s just filthy.” Wonder why I normally go alone? Ask and ye shall receive.

We got back in the car, toting canvas sacks of 16 things that I didn’t need to buy and only 3 that I did, when I suddenly remembered something I needed LB to do as soon as we slid into home base. “I don’t remember you telling me about that before now,” was his counter argument.

“I did so. I told you the other night while we were watching TV!”

Silence.

“Did you black that out?”

Silence.

“OMG, do you black out everything I say to you while we’re watching TV?” Eureka!

LB was quiet for a minute, then turned to face me, and with the definition of a shit-eating grin plastered across his face, said, “Well…LBH.”

I am not teaching him any more new words.

*Someone has to fit into all these fabulous sundresses, and you can bet your string of pearls it won’t be the cat.
**Hipsters wear aprons and revel in the creation of another perfectly-domed Bundt cake. Yup.

An Important Life Decision

2009-04-07T10:29:00.003-04:00

I have made an important decision, for when I am eventually pregnant with LB's maniac babies. Whenever I'm in public, and a well-meaning stranger looks at my belly, smiles, and asks me, "What are you having?" I am simply going to reply, "Kittens."

Snaps To You Award: My Baby Brother, Questicle

2009-04-04T22:18:00.005-04:00

It has been far too long, eons and eras, and almost long enough for Kristen Stewart to blow all the money she made from "Twilight" on weed, since I have given out the S2U Award. Today, reminding me that perhaps I'm not giving it to the right people, my mom suggested that I also give out an award to people and entities who do stupid things with zero flair and no panache, and call it "The Pork and Beans Award."

No, I don't know, either.

But I do know that for now, we'll stick with the S2U, and this week, on his 24th birthday, I know of no better recipient than my little brother Jordan, who should get the award for no other reason than the fact that he can totally rock the middle name "Quest." No one believes that it's his real middle name, but at birth, each of us was graced with a grandmother's maiden name for a middle name, and I drew the much less Questionable "Scott." Frankly, I'm shocked that it took me 24 years of being the nerdlier sibling to realize that I ought to be calling him "Questicle."

My brother and I aren't twins, but aside from his ultra-laid-back demeanor and my obsession with handicrafts, we're very similar. I kinda feel like we are twins--twins who were, by some trick of fetal magic, born two years apart, giving me the chance to solidify my position as The Responsible One, so that he could arrive fashionably late and slide right into the role of The Cool One. When we were kids, he was always the one running ahead while I watched from behind to make sure no one kidnapped him. As a teenager with my first-ever boyfriend, my lame, lame curfew was 10, and I was just stoked to be let out of the house with a boy at all. When Mom and Dad told Questicle that he should be home by ten, he'd argue until they pushed it back to 10:30; then, around 11:30, he'd start thinking that maybe, after one more beer, it was time to head home. In high school, he was the kid who always knew where and when the parties were, and which ones were worth gracing with his presence. I, conversely, was not actually aware that there were parties in high school.

You know you're perhaps not the sought-after sibling when you're the older child, and people know you by your younger brother's reputation.

Today, his 24th birthday, we are miraculously close to another major life event in The Life and Times of J. Questicle: college graduation. After six years of a long and twisty road to adulthood, which sometimes looked to be heading to adulthood, and sometimes looked like it was going to trail off into Beach Bummery or The Art of Professional Fratitude, Questicle rises triumphant to claim his slip of academic sheepskin* from Clemson U and set forth into the world of gainful employment and shitty office coffee. My dad gave me the best example to date of how laid-back and easygoing my brother is: The other day Dad called to shoot the sheeot with him, and said, "So, when's your last day of school?" Meaning his last day of school EVER. After 19 YEARS of school. Questicle's response? "Um...I don't really know. I'll ask someone!"

Despite the fact that I've painted the picture of a totally stereotypical fratalicious slacker, Questicle is ridiculously smart and, even more importantly, is one of the most well-loved people I know. Everyone wants to be his friend, and once they're in the circle, they never leave, so help them God. He's an awesome kid/man/functional human. So Snaps to You, Questicle, the best little brother I could have asked for. Happy birthday!!!!

I'm fairly confident he's reading this right now, drunk. And I'm totally cool with that--because I've taken some lessons in coolness from him.

*Not a reference to sheepskin condoms. You stop that, this is a family post!

Red Headed Slut: The Drink, or The Chick?

2009-04-03T10:00:00.008-04:00

Let me begin with a statement of fact: I do not go to bars very often. I’m married, so I’m not biting at whatever slick-smiling bait the guys might be dangling in my direction, and I’m insanely talkative (who knew?), so having to yell over a crowd and an endless loop of drunken karaoke “Livin On A Prayer” really cramps my style. That said, what happened a few Saturday nights ago does not happen very often, which is cheery good news for my girlfriends, my husband, and my liver.

The weekend before St. Patrick's Day of Drinking All Things Dyed Green and Regrettable, my girlfriends Martha, Lauren, and Melissa and I had decided to get together for a girls’ wine night, our standard celebration for all of us being in the same place at the same time, which happens less often than Joan Rivers gets laid. So once every fourteen years, we converge on Martha’s house to chow spreadable cheese products and plow through the supermarket’s finest vintage offerings—preferably the ones sold in the largest authentic vineyard jugs under the NEW LOWER PRICE sign.* Martha’s house has become my personal binge-drinking black hole: Every time I leave to head over, I say to Lawyer Boy, “I’m not going to drink that much, and I’ll probably be home early,” which we now understand is code for, “Show up after midnight with the snow shovel to scrape me off the sidewalk, and load me into the back of the car like a slaughtered hog.”

So we hug and squeal hello and OMG WHEN DID YOU CUT YOUR HAIR I LOVE IT!!!, top off our glasses, and chat about our lives, a group of lively young professionals embarking on their meaningful careers and life journeys...and me. We (they) are all busily engaged in doing productive, important things with our (their) lives. Here, let me show you:

Lauren holds a degree in Biomedical Engineering from Duke, and is currently pursuing an MBA at Darden Business School.
Martha is a CPA, which means she passed that horrid Triple Frown of an exam, which I hear is like being butt-raped by an adding machine except for less fun.
Melissa just finished an RN program and is now a nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at a big hospital. She's also planning her wedding, which we all know involves more blood, sweat, and tears than saving babies.
I, meanwhile, frequently make cupcakes.**

I started out the evening very proud of myself, because I only upended three glasses of wine in three hours, and had refrained from chugging from the chunky bargain bottle of alcoholic antics.*** I should have seen the finger-painting on the wall and gone home when the girls started talking about going out, but ever the social sheep that I am, I followed the herd through the rain to 3 Monkeys, a bar I only see the inside of when I'm too drunk to remember that I suck at bars, and usually humiliate myself in ways that embarrass my gender as a whole. Melissa, however, is really good at bars, and within two minutes of seating ourselves in a booth covered in someone else's spilled drinks and social failures, she had two random upstanding gentlemen who were in no way looking for a one-night stand, leaning over our table and begging to buy us drinks.

Immediately upon our arrival at the hooch hut, Martha had bought us a round of red-headed sluts, which taste like messy college nights spent pretending to be old enough to drink in public, and then we had the good sense to order a round of beers. By the time a dude shorter than me named Michael Doyle, Our New BFF Du Jour, was slurring over our table about buying us a round of Irish Car Bombs, I was far enough down the road to Bourbontown that 1) a drinking contest seemed like a great idea, 2) a drink that mixes beer and liquor seemed like a great idea, and 3) continuing to drink heavily seemed like a great idea. I was the only one of our pretty party who felt it necessary to try to drink a stranger under the table, so "Michael Doyle" and I went toe-to-toe with the car bombs, frantically chugging before they curdled into slippery pint glasses of baby vomit.

AND I WON. Me beating someone at a drinking contest says less about me than it says about him, and what it says about him is that he drinks like a toddler with a sippy cup. As much as I wanted to bask in the glow of my victory for the rest of the evening, the alcohol and my bud Michael Doyle had other ideas, and I spent the rest of the evening trying to pretend that I could still drink like I pretended I could in college. The events of the rest of the night are based largely on conjecture, since none of us left the bar able to remember what exactly had happened, as the Demon Liquor had stolen our memories, dignity, and my most favorite purple sweater. What I think happened was this: I beat Michael Doyle at car bombs TWICE more, I continued to gloat, I lost my sweater, we went to another bar, I bragged and drank and hopefully did not dance, and all the sudden I was on the bar floor, which is nastier than falling into a Port-a-John at a Billions O' Burritos Festival. It was at that time that the bartender casually suggested that we depart for the evening, whereby "casually suggested" I mean "told us in no uncertain terms to drag my drunken liability-laden ass out of their establishment."

One-what-the-hell-thirty in the morning found us (well, the rest of the girls and my body) standing outside the bar trying to hail a cab, stay out of the rain, and prop me up on the curb like a wasted Lindsey Lohan at an afterparty/in a club/on a movie set/in public at all. The cab drivers, traitors to my quest home, refused to take us since I looked like an ominous threat of a vomitous nature, so the girls ring-a-linged Lawyer Boy from his peaceful slumber to come scrape me off the sidewalk and load me into the car like a slaughtered hog, per my earlier encoded promise. As soon as the car began moving in the direction of home, the Mount Vesuvius of used drinks erupted all over Lawyer Boy’s car, which I tried to argue was the “upside” to the whole situation, with LB firmly insisting that his car covered in the contents of my stomach was, in fact, a “downside.” I settled the argument by proclaiming it an “upside-slash-downside,” and either the debate ended there or I passed out, whichever happened first. I stumbled into the house, fumbling as I shed a trail of failure-soaked clothing in my wake (otherwise known as my front yard).

I woke up the next morning on the bathroom floor, under a snuggly fleece blanket, wearing my socks, one contact lens, and the previous night’s makeup smeared all over my face a la “Braveheart.” I had no idea how I had gotten there, where my other contact was, or why I felt like I’d been hit upside the head with a dead ox. LB filled in most of the blanks for me, but Martha summed it up best in an email the next day: “Lauren said that when she went to your house to drop your purse off, she saw a pile on your front porch that she thinks was your shirt. Well done!”

Well done, indeed.

*Sadly, and much to my surprise, they are still not selling neon twisty-straws taped to the sides of wine bottles.

**If you know of any jobs that make use of my particularly impressive skill set, I'm also really good at making up new lyrics for songs on the fly. Favorites include my version of Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl," which is henceforth "I Kissed A Squirrel." (and I liked it/the taste of his nuts and berries/I kissed a squirrel just to try it/I hope my cat friend don't mind it/It felt so wrong, it felt so right/I might be up in his tree tonight.)

***Yes, I CAN have fun without alcohol.****

****Sometimes.*****

*****Only if you make me.

A Wee Tidbittle

2009-03-25T19:12:00.002-04:00

In the last five days at work, I've spent at least 8 of my (minimum) 9 hours at the office each day trying not to cry. Five of those five days, I have failed at that task, and also at waiting until at least 10:00 to plow through all my daily snacks. Strangely, on my recent annual evaluation, the attorneys all mentioned the gross misconception that I'm "cool under pressure." This means that either 1) I'm better than I thought at closing my door before my daily "leave Britney alone!!!"-style breakdown, or 2) They are all deaf, dumb, and blind.

Draw your own conclusion. Mine will get me fired.

Anyway, tonight's attempt to black out my gainful employment has involved barbecue, red wine, and making tepid, disinterested love to the TV, which led me to rediscover the magic of Sigourney Weaver, as the voice of Mother Nature on "Planet Earth." PE is my new most favorite pastime, largely because it's the most relaxing thing to be part of, short of getting a lobotomy or lying in a bed full of puppies. Since my puppies are on backorder till July, PE stepped up to the plate and really performed like a champ. LB and I caught "Shallow Seas," which I prefer to "Deep Seas," since it involves far fewer starring roles played by goblins or Tyra Banks. Because I'm on a never-ending quest for knowledge and snacks, I came up with a few important questions that I would like answered. Perhaps you can help.

1) How do whales reproduce? The way they just drift around like unmanned rowboats leads me to believe that vigorous sexual activity may not be within their skill set. Something I may have learned in middle school, or that I may have made up, is that dude whales leave their sperm all over the place, and then the valiant, intrepid sperms get all up on the lady whales like Perez Hilton on the Oscars, and wham! baby whales. But I could be wrong.

2) Where can I buy a herd of pygmy seahorses? Something has to occupy my time and love until those back-ordered puppies arrive.

3) I would be afraid of sea snakes if they didn't look so damn much like party streamers. With, um, fangs and death.

I'm going to go make cookies before Google stops returning results for my queries on "whale porn."

Failing the Stress Test

2009-03-15T16:13:00.005-04:00

I've missed you, amigos, and I hope the feeling is mutual. I meant to disclose about four weeks ago that I would likely be MIA until April 1, but just like my plan to do yoga every morning during Lent,* I got distracted by shiny things and forgot. April 1 is to immigration attorneys (my employer of choice) what April 15 is to accountants, and since the beginning of February I've been working long, frustrated days and weekends more busily than a ten-buck Bourbon Street hooker. My thigh-high leather boots are really starting to look rough.

I've been meaning to post something quick and dirty** to communicate the sad fact that I've been too busy to blog, but I've ironically been too busy to post something about how I'm too busy to post something. My days have consisted of actually rolling in to work on time for a change, pounding enough coffee to give me the energy to run around the office, wailing like a caffeinated banshee, for ten hours straight, and then coming home to collapse in a pile of laziness on the couch. These extended periods of time spent pretending to be a grown-up have taken a toll on my mental acuity, which, let's be honest, was on thin ice in the first place, and so even if I had the time to write, I'd probably be doing things like typing with no vowels or devoting extensive posts to extolling the virtues of moss.

I realized last Saturday that I was ready to board the mothership with the other space cadets when our neighbor Edward came over to grab a beer with Lawyer Boy. While I had been in the office all day, Edward and LB had been playing man-time in our front yard, using every tool that could saw, hack, or clip to take down a holly tree that most closely resembled a starving hobbit. When they were done, LB had gone on the obligatory Saturday afternoon beer run. Edward walked into our front hall to find LB nursing not a beer, but a strongly-mixed bourbon and coke, and turned to me. "Don't let him play with those clippers after he's finished with that!" he joked.

I looked at him like he had seven heads, unable to believe that he had said what I thought he said. I was horrified. When Edward said "clippers," in my warped little head, I immediately assumed he was talking about nipple clamps. Why does he think we have nipple clamps? Why was he telling us not to drink and clamp? Omaigod, how do I respond to that?

After fifteen of the longest seconds of my life, I realized it was much more likely that Edward was referring to the clippers they had been using all day, than it was that he was giving us S&M pointers. I revoked my own speaking privileges for the rest of the night.

If you don't hear from me again until April 1, please remain calm and continue to breathe normally. I'll come flailing back into action once I climb out of the bathtub of Chardonnay I'm planning on soaking in once the work is done.

*Despite my allegedly solemn promise to Baby Jesus, I have yet to get up and play Crouching Tiger, Hidden Moron in my living room at all this Lenten season. My bad.
**Which would be a departure from my usual ramblings only in being quick.

Snaps To You Award: My Heart, The Rockstar

2009-02-19T21:07:00.007-05:00

I've written before about my fear that my heart was going to explode at any minute, ruining my life and probably preventing me from posting for awhile, but I've never explained where this paranoia befitting a forty-five-year-old, smoking fat man originated. Well. To make Mini Me-short a story so long it makes Gone With The Wind look like a picture book, I went for a run in June, thought I had a heart attack, went to the ER, had a bunch of tests run, was poked and stuck like an innocent voodoo doll in really cute sandals, was determined to have not had a heart attack, and was told to come back in a few months for a cat scan because my aorta looked big.

Oh yeah. That's right. My aorta's bigger than your aorta. Think of my badass blood-flow garden hose, supplying blood to me and at least seven other people, next time you get winded on a run because your little twisty straw of an aorta starts to cry.

Right. So, my assbaggery aside, that's not actually a good thing. It's bad like "Snakes On A Plane." Thus, a few weeks ago, I reported for my cat scan, which would determine whether or not the docs needed to carve me up like a holiday ham to put a fence around my aorta (white picket, natch). I was pre-Oscars nervous about this, and high on the drugs I had been given to take ahead of the scan, in case I was allergic to the intravenous tie-dye. I got to the hospital, broke my cardinal rule of never sitting next to people who smell like tuna, and only then was told that I couldn't have the scan--the scan that would determine whether or not my heart was trying to assassinate my other organs--because my insurance company had decided that it wasn't "medically necessary."

I'd warn you away from this company, just to save you the money and screaming matches down the road, but in the interest of not getting sued, let's leave it at this. They offer an HMO and their name rhymes with I violate my clients from behind while laughing maniacally and eating chocolates.

The day devolved rapidly from there, culminating with my stoned mouth shrieking impotently at the "nurse" in charge of my case at Satan's lair, "WOULD YOU COVER ME IF I DIED??? WOULD YOU, PUNK??!?!??!?!????" Not my finest moment. But really, not my worst, either.

After all this, calls from three doctors, and possibly a cautionary visit from Death himself, the insurance death-harpies agreed to cover a cardiac ultrasound, to find out once and for all if my aorta had gone rogue. I was excited about this, because ultrasounds don’t involve needles, and I want to know if I’m going to die soon, because if so, I’m going to start eating a lot more Big Macs and taking more cheap shots at my boss. I showed up at the appointed tee time, and was walked to the ultrasound wing by a lovely little old lady who would probably be very impressed with my obscenely large china collection.

I never did learn my ultrasound technician’s name, but I did learn very quickly that he was highly uncomfortable using medical terms like “chest” and “please take off your shirt and lie down” with me. Obviously I was given a chic and stylish tie-back gown, but, also obviously, in order to scan my heart, he had to put the gooey laser glow-pen* on my chest. I was surprisingly nonchalant about this, especially since I’m normally a caffeinated Pomeranian when confronted with medical procedures, but really, we were there for my heart, and I had the gown--plus a sheet, a towel, and a blanket that he had given me, more likely for his own protection than mine.

Once he was able to sit still, he fired up the Doppler Hurricane Seeker 3000 and I got to see what my heart’s been up to. If you’ve never had any kind of ultrasound, I highly recommend them—they’re the coolest home movie ever. I have no idea how they work, but word on the street is that Dumbledore was involved in the start-up. I got to see my heart, busily engaged in keeping me alive, and I have to say, my heart is awesome, even though it didn’t look like I was expecting. In terms of what you’re used to seeing from ultrasounds of marinating babies, my heart looked like a fetus playing a drum set. Really rockin’ out on a drum set, actually, performing like a total rock star on my behalf.

I was so touched and mesmerized that I almost forgot to ask if my aorta was trying to stealth-bomb my loving heart. Happily, it’s not. I am medically sound (if not mentally), and cleared to do all manner of things, including running and continuing to hate yoga.

All’s well that ends well, and this ended…like a bad prom date. When he had taken adequate surveillance footage of my rock star, the ultrasound technician reminded me to wipe the goo off my neck before getting dressed again. I thanked him, and he looked at me, then looked at the ceiling and said, “I’m actually supposed to help everyone wipe the gel off…but I’d rather not lose my job today.”

At that point I was so glad my heart was strong enough for me to run like Forrest. Snaps to you, my heart, for doing your job with such style and flair. If you were a person, you’d totally be Cher.

*Possibly not the technical term.

Absence Made Your Heart Grow Fonder...I Know, Right?

2009-02-19T19:42:00.006-05:00

Amigos, I apologize for my absence. I've been crazy-obnoxious busy at work like a college-town bar, which means two things: 1) I haven't been taking a midday jailbreak to let the whole wide Internets know how immature I am, and 2) By the time I get home I'm so burnt out on reading that I want to set Dr. Seuss on fire, so banging out anything remotely funny, or even English, is not really an option.

I don't blog about work for a variety of reasons, one of which being that I like being allowed to show up every day for another installment of I'm Sorry, What?, but to paint a picture of my frustration, yesterday I spent the better part of twenty minutes listening to a client agonize over whether he should sign just his first and last names, or his first, middle, and last names. Things I Wanted To Say But Probably Fortunately Did Not Say: "Your signature looks like you got lit and tried to draw a bird. Sign anything you damn well make up so I can go get some coffee and mental stability! Is that a cockateel*?"

What I Actually Said Because I Enjoy Health Benefits: "Since I'm not the attorney, I can't legally advise you in this matter." Le sigh.

Back on the home front, the most exciting thing to happen to me so far in O'Niner happened this week: Four months after moving into our very own This Old House (complete with This Old Plumbing and This Old Dear God What The Hell Is That??!?!?!) Lawyer Boy and I finally got a china cabinet, so I could unpack the dozen boxes full of my minorly concerning obsession with china, crystal, and silver that had been sitting in the corner like a bubble-wrapped dinner party. Even better, Lawyer Boy made our china cabinet with his own two hands, and the two hands of Bill, my cousin, who's my cousin in a way that no state except Massachusetts legally recognizes. Whatever. Wine is thicker than blood. LB and Bill spent all weekend in Bill's cabinet shop--yes, this was a professional endeavor; it wasn't just LB buying a few make-your-own-birdhouse kits and nailing them together.** The end result was a beautiful Mission-style cabinet, approximately the size of a school bus. I feel dirty every time I say "Mission-style," because I worry that people immediately think "missionary-style," and we're suddenly no longer talking polished wood and beveled glass in a family-friendly kinda way. I'm still amazed that the whole thing was done in one weekend, although I'm sure that if we had wanted something huge and ornate, with curvy cabinets, carved wood, and flying buttresses, it would have been a different story. Impatience is the only reason I didn't insist on a portrait of my face carved into the center cabinet door.

I was two parts excited and one part train-wreck horrified when I saw all my china, crystal, and silver together in one place, because until that point, I had been unaware that I was thisclose to being the eighty-year-old cat lady who throws tea parties for her muu-muu-clad friends with Guiding Light on for background ambience. I almost have enough to have the entire Duggar clan of crazy over for dinner, except I object to serving Tang in my Waterford crystal. Happily, it's really useful Waterford crystal. The goblets hold twenty fluid ounces of delicious (and usually cheap) wine, which means that if you can heft it up off the bar, you've got yourself one heck of a sparkly personal party. I offer that tidbit to anyone who says that wedding registries are only for things you'll never use.

By the time I had filled the cabinet with the full load of my geekery, it was completely obvious that my dining room is officially more mature than I am. It looks like grown-ups live here! I'm so intimidated by my dining room, I feel like I have to go stand somewhere else just to make fart jokes. I don't know how to handle this: I'm so excited to have my dishes back, but I worry that this might be the end of parties involving a cooler full of vodka-infused Kool-Aid (Jungle Juice, to those of your lucky enough to be Hokies) perched in a sticky puddle next to the chili dip on the dining room table.

What am I saying? We'll just move the cooler to the backyard, where the cabinet can't judge us.

*Spellcheck tried to tell me that "cockateel" should be "cockatrice." If anyone knows WTF a cockatrice is, kindly inform me. But I have a feeling it's not an appropriate word to use in front of my dad.
**Reasons I Was Not Involved: I once bought one of those make-your-own-birdhouse kits, strapped on my mad skillz, and put it together, and even though this was before the days when I discovered wine and laziness, my avian apartment came out crooked. Carpentry was out.

Duggar Themselves Into a Deep, Deep Hole

2009-02-11T18:44:00.004-05:00

As a rule, I do not enjoy reality television any more than inmates enjoy cavity searches. I don't like watching alleged grown-ups fight for the title of Most Meaningless Asshole, and Winner Of $1 Million Which They Will Neglect To Pay Income Tax On So They Can Go On Oprah Later And Whine About Their Issues. (WOOMDWTWNTPITOSTCGOOLWATI for short, or as seen in Swedish)

I make an exception, when LB isn't looking, for shows involving babies, because I love babies when they belong to someone else and can't get their goo-goo and what-not on me. I also will sometimes lower my expectations and gag reflex, and watch shows that make me feel surprisingly normal by comparison. This is cheaper than paying to ride the city bus, which is usually the only way I feel normal when compared to other humans. It's hard not to, when you're seated between Sammy the iPod Sing-Along, and the woman who has either a lazy eye or active hepatitis.

Fortunately and for free, the Duggar Family provides both babies and squirrel-shit nuttiness on their TLC show, 18 Kids And Stop Inseminating Me Every Time I Turn Around, You Reckless One-Man Stud Shop. I don't normally spend my hard-earned free time taking fashion tips from the family that 18-handedly supports the Jean Jumper Industry, but last night I stumbled upon the Duggar Family Wedding Special and, train-wreck aficionado that I am, I handed over my eyeballs and dignity and settled in.

For those of you who missed the headlines in Bizarro Baptist Weekly, the Duggar's 20-year-old first-born Joshua married fellow Crazy In The Lord, 19-year-old Anna, in September. (Yeah, I'm behind--it's just how I roll.) This made news because train wrecks always do, and also because Josh and Anna decided to "court" instead of dating, which means their agitated, frustrated, sweaty outings to Applebee's to share Cheeseburger Sliders (but not that slippery; we're Christians!) were always supervised by some adult complaining about how his glass of Tang left a water ring on his bring-along Bible.

The weirdest part about courting is that Josh and Anna wanted their Chastity Charlie around at all times to prove that they did not kiss before their wedding. As Josh said, "We wanted proof that, yes, we did exactly what we said we would," showing the world that third graders in the back corner of the playground get more action. Well, I too have proof that I did what I said I would, mostly in the form of pictures slathered all over Facebook during college, evidencing the nights where I stayed true to my pledge to go shot-for-shot with my fratty friends, and to go home wearing at least half those used shots on my platform Candies'. (Shut up, it was the turn of the century!)

The whole day of the wedding, leading up to the Ceremonial First Kiss and Face-Mauling, poor Anna looked like a lamb being led to slaughter--probably because there was no glass of bubbly to take her mind off the fact that that night, she would be the placid victim of an extreme, but extremely short-lived, sexual monsoon. Yeah. No booze, 25 miniature squawking rednecks in short-sleeved formalwear, and at least twice that many references to the fact that Josh was about ready to nail the nearest mailbox if they didn't get this sideshow on the road, pronto. Oh, jitters!

They fiiiiiinally made it to the altar, once their 10 bridesmaids and 6 bottles of hair gel had oozed down the aisle, and they pledged to love, honor, and dress each other in poor taste so as to discourage others from looking, so long as they both should live. It was lovely and touching and when they fiiiiiiiinally went to kiss, Josh all but chowed her mouth and snapped her neck, much like I assume a kiss would go down in "Twilight," had I not been so frat-party drunk when I saw that stupid movie that I can't remember if they ever kissed or just stuck with skulking around the screen, being emo and husking, "whatever, Dad" for two horrid hours. That movie blew like a dry wedding.

Which brings me to my next point: This was a dry wedding, which I 100% believe should be illegal worldwide, so the party was basically a bake sale in the church gymnasium. Before the wedding one of the camera guys had been talking to Daddy Duggar about the party, and when the camera guy said, "So there's no alcohol?" Jim Bob Duggar (sadly, his real name) said, "Nope, no booze, no dancin', just havin' a great time!"

No alcohol? No dancing? And people are expected enjoy this? How now, church cow?

I guess I knew they didn't drink, but I had never really thought about the fact that a lot of whack jobs don't dance--I mean, clearly the mom can't dance, since it's impossible to get down with your bad self when you're constantly standing in a field giving birth. But no wedding conga line? No celebratory Macarena? I guess to be fair, I have to be real and admit that if there's no bar, there sure as hell will be no Macarena.

Watching all the Duggar merry-makers celebrate their newlyweds with pleated skirts and really bitchin' chicken salad rolls, I was reminded of my own raucous wedding reception, and I felt so blissfully normal in comparison. Because clearly you're normal if your wedding doesn't involve pleated skirts and sherbet punch, but does involve one of your aunts wandering into the garden, stripping off her "uncomfortable" panty hose, stripping off her "uncomfortable" underwear, and trying to get some of the other guests to "smoke weed" with her.

Hey man, it's all relative.

Snaps To You Awards: My Amazing Girlfriend and Vladimir Putin

2009-02-09T09:23:00.002-05:00

This week, while not Friday, I am giving the S2U to two different individuals who are so equally deserving, in ways that make my little-girl heart soar, that I couldn’t divide my love between the two. So, in no particular order, this week’s S2U Award goes to my friend Erin King, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Erin is the proud recipient of this week’s award for sending me the first wedding gift thank-you note I’ve ever received that included the word shit. Erin got married in October, and it took Lawyer Boy and me three months to remember to send a wedding gift. I kept meaning to, but then the whiney back-up dancer in the corner of my mind would be all, “lator gator,” and I’d be like, “okay, fine, let’s take a nap,” and it would get put off again. I finally celebrated the union of two souls by sending Erin and her husband a vacuum-sealing wine preserver and a set of cheese knives—both of which they registered for, by the way. I didn’t just pick random boozephenalia and ship it off with warmest regards.

A couple of weeks later, I received a hand-written thank-you note on lovely monogrammed stationery. It followed the standard my-mother-made-me format of “thanks for X, it’s really swell, and thanks for not table-dancing at the wedding,” but then veered off into nuptial originality with the next segment: “The wine opener looks really cool. We haven’t used it yet, but if I stop buying wine that tastes like shit and isn’t worth preserving, we hope to.” I love this for both the unexpected profanity and rare honesty it showcases. If newlyweds were more routinely honest with their thank-yous, more notes would read something like this: “Thank you so much for the place setting of our beautiful bone china complete with platinum etching and feathers from real angels’ wings. We will take it out of the box and use it once we grow up and stop eating frozen corndogs for dinner every night.”

The second recipient of this week’s award is Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, for being such a raging closeted ABBA fan that he reportedly paid $45,000 for a private performance by an ABBA cover band named (I am not making this up) Björn Again. As we all know, I LOVE ABBA, and I am so thrilled that someone as hard-edged and frosty as Putin shares my Nordic love affair. It really shows that there is so much more to our friendship than just a shared love of vodka, and of killing people with our bare hands on the secret orders of the government. Snaps to you, Puti (may I call you Puti?), for daring to bare your inner Dancing Queen and swaying to the Swedish beat in public. You’ll always be my super trouper.

My Papery Green Thumb

2009-02-04T14:32:00.001-05:00

Today I came into the office with a renewed and unprecedented desire to charge through my work, impress everyone with my wicked-cool productivity*, and make my office a veritable buzzing hive of legal activity and research, immaculately organized and ever prepared to address the pressing legal issues that land on my desk.

So far, all I’ve come up with in terms of real steps to help me achieve this goal is to grow orchids in my office.

Did I read somewhere that keeping plants in your office promotes better oxygen flow and thus increases productivity? No. Did I read somewhere that orchids bring the soothing calm of the Orient inside, helping to alleviate stress and promote rational thinking? No.

Did I happen to read on foxnews.com this morning that President Obama is taking flack for keeping the Oval Office** “so warm that you could grow orchids in there”? CHECK.

This off-hand metaphorical suggestion planted itself deep in my consciousness like Christina Aguilera into the annals of Hollywood’s Tackiest, and I’ve been obsessed with the idea of growing orchids in here ever since about 9:30 this morning. Probably because planning my Orchidopolis beats the crap out of answering emails, organizing files, and actually doing any of the work The Orchids would help me accomplish. I have yet to figure out how to install heat lamps or a humidifier in here without my boss noticing, but please. The day is young, amigos, and I am motivated. And also wily.

Oh, incidental to this whole scheme, I’m the Morticia Addams of gardening. If it’s not dead when I get it, it’s roots-up within a week. Maybe if plants would be a little more annoying when I don’t feed them, like the cat, they’d get their way. Squeaky wheel gets the oil, bitches.

*Apparently, just like in high school, I’m still confused as to what constitutes being “wicked-cool.”
**If I lived in the White House, I would be unable to walk into the Oval Office without announcing to anyone within a 15-foot radius that I was “going into Ovulation.”

Definition: The removal of a muffin

2009-01-29T13:32:00.002-05:00

Today I had to make an important decision. (I know, right--who let me?) I get one precious hour of jailbreak for lunch every day, and today I had two options to occupy this time: 1) Read the 647-page stimulus bill, which Lawyer Boy had already read, outlined, and emailed to me for perusal, helping me to stay informed and knowledgeable about the procedures and policies that impact my life as a tax-paying American, OR 2) Blog about names I call my cat.

Frankly, my concern in picking up the stimulation* policy was that it would be so riveting, every word gripping my imagination and pulling me through page after page till the dramatic conclusion, that I wouldn’t be able to put down the congressional Harry Potter 7 until I was done six hours later.

And thus we find ourselves here, where logic took a left turn away from reality and crashed into a swamp of dysfunction. Ladies and gentlemen, the halls of Congress!

Ahem. Onward!

I have a socially awkward habit of nicknaming everyone, almost as soon as I meet them, from the babies of people I don’t know, all the way up to my boss. After enough sideways stares and tight-lipped cautious chuckles, I learned to keep these gems to myself, except with those who know and love me, including Lawyer Boy, my family, and the pope. My favorite victim is the cat, Mango, who not only doesn’t stare at me carefully, trying to memorize my features to reproduce on a police sketch later, but who seems to love me regardless of what comes out of my mouth. Here, for your disapproval, is a short list of names I most frequently call the cat:

Mangocat
Man-o
Mongoloid
Mango Lloyd Webber
Mango Q.
Q-Bear
Mangostein
Mancat
CatMan
TallMan
SmallMan
CatFriend
Best CatFriend
Kittenduck
Duckie
Duckily-doo
Ducksworth
TankyPants McChunkyButt
Kittles
Kittles McSkittles
Muffin Man
Muffinpants
Muffinopolis
Muffles
Puffles
Fluffles
Fluffington Puffles

Additionally, my mom calls Mango “Mongolio” and my dad calls him “Magnito,” so good news! This disorder appears to be genetic. Scientists can eventually eradicate it from our DNA, just like Down’s syndrome and that gene that makes some people grody close-talkers.

Lawyer Boy, by comparison, has just one nickname for the cat: Skab, an acyonym for Shitty-Kitty-Ass-Bag.

I don’t have as many royal titles for the dogs as I do for Mango Q., but it’s only because we haven’t had them as long. I’m sure that in time, I’ll have damaged their psyches as well. For now I usually stick to derivations of the ever-endearing “Muffin,” but the other day Lawyer Boy caught me calling one of the dogs “Muffinectomy” and finally put his foot down on the madness. Apparently it was all fun and games with “Doggley O’Drools,” but “Muffinectomy” defined the line between sweetly ridiculous and frighteningly maniacal.

I’d be interested to know if other people blanket their pets with a deluge of dumb like I do. If you can give me one that beats out “Muffinectomy,” I’ll share it with everyone.

I still have some time left, so I could go read about The Stimulation, but I’m going to save that one for Saturday afternoon and a cup of cocoa.

*You totally know they call it that in secret meetings.

A Note to the Wicked Stepmother

2009-01-27T21:42:00.003-05:00

Dear Mother Nature,

Grace here. Coffee? Tea? Appletini? Please, have a seat. We need to have a little come-to-Jesus meeting regarding your first-quarter performance. First off, it's winter, which means we're stuck inside, chowing Chunky Soup like it's actually people food, and trying to force the cat to play heating pad on our Skinsicle toes. Second, I believe they make effective medications for your particular breed of schizophrenia, and Wal-Mart has both $4 prescriptions AND Milano cookies, so go get you some bottled sanity and happiness and quit this "four seasons in one month" business. Sixty-five degrees is not appropriate for January. Put your pants back on.

Third, didn't anyone ever teach you that it's mean to toy with the emotions of small children? I imagine this was a lesson they tried to instill in you around about Grade 3, along with "Build The Perfect Storm in 1,2,3" and "Religion and Philosophy: A Study of Al Gore." I just can't take your tricks any more, you meteorological minx. This morning you made my hopes soar like those ratty birds that keep crapping on my car, and then YOU MADE ME GO TO WORK.

As I was finishing up my exhaustive morning preparatory routine of putting on clothes that almost match, I heard the fizz of sleefrow (a delicious sleet-freezing-rain-snow cocktail also available shaken with Bacardi) falling on my windowsill, and my heart began to sing the praises of inclement weather. Surely, I thought, this will continue for hours, accumulate into a street-hazard Slurpee, and let me pretend that for my own safety, I must stay home and stalk people I lost track of from high school on Facebook. I glided into the office, glowingly confident that we would close within minutes, and fully prepared to check the news sites for the latest orphans of Brangelina until that magical moment.

Then, what did you do? You snuggled us close and warmed up to a balmy thirty-three degrees, just enough to thaw my hopes and dreams and make me stay at the office and read the Brangelina chronicles all awful day. We ended up with the Michelob Ultra of inclement weather, when I had really been craving a Guinness (and accompanying widget).

So Mom Earth, consider yourself on notice. If you’re gonna play, then bring your A game…or I’ll stop recycling.

Thanks for puppies,

Grace

P.S.: The Equator makes your ass look fat.

There's No Cure For Ridiculous

2009-01-26T19:52:00.007-05:00

Today I had the distinct pleasure of visiting my family practitioner's office. If this office advertised, they would really be best served by using the slogan "Total Care: From Pap Smears to Papaw's Goiter." I wasn't actually there for an exam, but to have a pricey little chat with my PCP about my completely irrational and nonsensical fear that my heart is constantly about to burst, and/or that my stomach is going to explode and shoot acid at my heart.

That, right there, I really wish I could say I made up for the sake of posting something funny. The second part of that fear, about my stomach sniping off my heart, has now caused no fewer than four doctors to bite their lips in a feeble attempt not to laugh at a patient. So feeble.

Because checking in at the doctor's office requires a full NSA background check and subsequent fingerprint scan, I was left to marinate in the cauldron of communicable disease that is the waiting room for almost an hour, surrounded by sticky, sweaty mouth-breathers oozing this season's cold. In between slathering my hands with sanitizer that smelled like Pez, and snorting the sanitizer that smelled like Pez, I observed my fellow inmates. There was the woman ten feet away, swathed entirely in black velour, clutching something that looked like a baby booty, staring at it intently, and flicking her fingers at it rhythmically. For the first few minutes, I thought she was crocheting the end of the sock; then suddenly, I realized that she was meticulously picking off one of her fingernails, bit by freakish bit. The Black (Velour) Widow looked up from her handicraft and stared me down, the sock dangling menacingly off her tusk of a hangnail. I moved on.

Next to me was a little boy, sitting across from his mother. He was of the enchanting age at which kids are old enough to hold a coherent conversation, but not yet old enough for anyone who hasn't had a lobotomy to want to converse with them. After five minutes of shrill banter that the mother finally recognized was torture commensurate with watching "The View" for everyone around them, she switched the kid into sign language. I don't speak sign language (and really, who does?) but I can read words when they're spelled out, and for a few minutes, the mom spelled nothing but s-t-o-p i-t and c-a-l-m d-o-w-n. Then, she switched to harder fourth-grade words, and the kid began spelling the letters out l-o-u-d-l-y and o-b-n-o-x-i-o-u-s-l-y as she signed them, ruining the stealth aspect of the whole game and flicking the nerves of the other captives. I desperately wanted to sign over w-e c-a-n- h-e-a-r y-o-u, but I was terrified I would get the kid's attention, and give him the impression that I wanted to converse with him. In either language.

An hour and forty-five forms later, I was finally called back. (I'm pretty sure I filled out one of the forms wrong: I either designated my husband as authorized to pick up meds for me, or I designated myself as my own husband.) Then I had another half-hour to veg on a crunchy paper-topped exam table and think of ways to freak out the good doctor.

I could be completely nude when he walked in, which would be a double surprise, since I wasn't there to be examined or sketched by art students. I could remain fully clothed, but pull the stirrups out of the rodeo table, lay down, and put my feet in the stirrups. From this position I would greet him, carry out our entire conversation, and give thoughtful feedback. My favorite idea was, at the end of our encounter, to ask, "can I have a pap smear?" in the same tone as a little kid would ask "can I have a lollipop?". I really liked this one for the unpredictable possibilities it held.

In the end, I had to rule them all out. Option 1 was off the table because it was cold, and I don't like being naked. Option 2 bit the dust because I was worried that my three-inch heels would get caught in the stirrups and I'd die trying to dismount my steed. Option 3 failed because one of the unpredictable possibilities inherent to it was the chance that the doctor would say yes, and that was a chance I was just not willing to take. Not for you, beloved readers, and not for anyone else.

Oh, and also nixing all my carnival ideas? The fact that I grew up with this doctor's kids, a block from his house, and I'm pretty sure he still golfs with my dad.

All that just to learn that my heart's fine, and that another upstanding member of the medical community knows I'm crazy.

Friday Night Recap

2009-01-23T21:26:00.002-05:00

The weekend arriveth! Halleluiah! This must be a reward for going to church on Sunday, and not at all a result of the passage of the man-made phenomenon called time. Whatevz...dawg.

A few notes:

When you're married, you do exciting things like shop for a china cabinet on Friday nights because it would totally be no fun to go to bars and meet cool people and sing along to 80s songs that you like a lot, but kind of don't know the words to. And you go to the unfinished furniture store, and you get foot-stompy like a six-year-old because, really, if they want you to pay as much for it as real painted-already furniture...shouldn't they paint it for you? Especially if they've seen your painting skills which resemble Peter Pan painting with his toes.
Also you burn two whole pans of home fries in the oven, and your husband points out that dinner was good, but maybe next time you could try not setting it on fire.
Mango has been the Shrieking Anus of the evening and has NOT STOPPED MEOWING since we came home. Apparently food and endless love aren't enough to satisfy him. Bitch wants diamonds.
Speaking of the Shrieking Anus, turn on Fox and watch "Don't Forget The Lyrics" if you hate your eardrums and want to watch a tone-deaf white chick publicly proclaim that she never wants a date again. Lifelong sworn celibacy is the only thing you could possibly win from participating in this show.
Lawyer Boy and I shared a lovely bottle of Cab Sauv tonight, which explains numbers 1-4.

Adios, amigos. Happy weekend!

Grace, stop drinking.

Snaps To You Awards: The Butterfly Gift Fairy

2009-01-22T20:08:00.006-05:00

Snaps to you, my best friend Shelley's mom, for consistently finding the most carnie-style and bizarre gifts for any and all gifting holidays (and some not, like St. Patty's Day). I've known Shelley for almost eight years now, and a garage sale at Michael Jackson's pad couldn't hold a candle to some of the gift-wrapped weirdness that's popped up in her lucky stocking. The thing about Shelley's mom is that, twenty-six years into (s)mothering Shelley, she's still not fully on board with the fact that she and Shelley are two extremely different people. Here is an illustrative chart:

Shelley's Mom's Likes:

Butterflies
Dainty flowers, dainty doilies, and other dainteries
Kittens and all manner of cuddly things
Pleated-front pants
Things that kind of do nothing except sit around and collect dust and have flowers on them

Shelley's Likes:

Running marathons
Being in the army
Being sporty and badass
Not being dainty
Cake and wine

I would have constructed a Venn diagram to make my point, but the only thing to go in the middle would have been "ovaries," so I felt like it would be a waste of my MS Paint skills.

Sometimes the gifts Shelley's mom gets her are clear attempts to get her things she thinks Shelley could use, and as an example of this, I offer The Year of the Glitterpants. Shelley's mom (who, for simplicity and no other discernible reason, will henceforth be known as Mrs. Batwing) was trying to get her, I think, fun party clothes for college, resulting in the tragic acquisition of a pair of skin-tight jeans entirely bedazzled in silver glitter. Like, so outrageously bedazzled that said pants snowed glitter 24/7. These would have been great for a fun college party, if Shelley had attended college at the Playboy Mansion, and was also RuPaul. Back they went.

Shelley's birthday is two days after Baby Jesus', so Mrs. Batwing really has to hustle and flow to bring the magic twice in one week. And oh, this year, how the magic was broughten. For Christmas, Mrs. Batwing got Shelley a tiny plate, covered in all sorts of dainty, precious baby flowers, big enough to hold a single Oreo. Shelley had no idea what it could be other than a portion-control diet plate. Apparently (and this is only hearsay) it's a plate whose sole purpose in life, its entire reason for being, is to hold a wet teabag. I have henceforth called it The Teabagger, and have not stopped laughing ever since.

For Shelley's birthday, Mrs. Batwing dug deep into the bowels of her creativity and really yanked out a winner. She took a picture of Shelley with which she is inexplicably obsessed, and did nefarious things with it. Exhibit A, the mug shot:

Shelley is completely mortified by this picture. So of course, for the sake of weaving my intricate web of storytelling, I'm sharing it with the whole wide Internet. LYLAS, chica!

Anyway, Mrs. Batwing had this Mona Lisa made into real USPS stamps, for spreading the humiliation far and wide, and in case that wasn't enough dignity damage for one holiday, she also had it emblazoned on every page of a notepad for Shelley. Outside of the envelope, for postal worker viewing pleasure: Army Shelley! Inside the envelope, visible only to the lucky recipient: Army Shelley! For a small finder's fee, I'll give Shelley your address, and you, my friend, can constitute the only time these rare objets d'art see the light of day (and thank G0d).

Capping off the festive oddities in a totally unexpected way, Shelley's mom also gave her a silver Tiffany's necklace. It really brings out the sparkle in the glitterpants, and that nice silver button on the green beret.

Walker, Texas Ranger, DDS

2009-01-22T12:54:00.002-05:00

There is nothing unusual, remarkable, or unique about my hatred of going to the dentist. I would actually be a freakish anomaly if I enjoyed going to the dentist, and even more so if I loved it so much that every time I went, I took candy (sugar-free, natch) for my fave hygienists.

Maybe if all the hygienists at the HQ of my preferred DDS weren’t Chuck Norris, I could even have a fave to begin with. When Chuck said, “I’ll see you in hell,” he was specifically referring to those beige faux-leather chairs.

Complicating the scenario like Leo DiCaprio on "Growing Pains" is the fact that I have extremely sensitive teeth, and all Chuck Norris has to do is flash any one of the dental death-picks at me to send me through the roof. Chuck Norris also has poor listening and empathy skills, so when I say in my tiniest child-bride voice, “Please be gentle with me,” he yells back “Suck it, pansy, and take it like a soldier!!” And just like any good episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger,” there is blood. There is ALWAYS blood, and you can bet your full-series boxed DVD set that it’s not Chuck Norris’.

I’m currently on the dentist’s cancellation/hit list, because I totally blacked out my December appointment. At the very moment when I was scripted to lie back, be still, and meet my destiny on the faux leather, I was working away in my office, merrily unaware of the horrific death I had skirted. The phone rang, and it was Chuck. “Grace, hi. Where are you?”

“I’m…at my…office?” I stammered, baffled as to why they cared. I pushed through my confusion and figured I’d save them the next question. “I’m wearing a pink cashmere sweater and pearl—”

“Grace, you’re supposed to be here right now.” His iron grip closed around my throat through the phone line. I saw God.

“I a—OH I AM!! Oh, shoot. I’m so sorry! I completely forgot!” I am more senile than my eighty-year-old grandmother. (I’m also taller, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Chuck Norris breathed a sigh reminiscent of the winds of Hurricane Katrina and I could hear the click-click of angry typing. “I’m putting you on the cancellation list. We’ll call you when we have an opening.” The line went dead, just like my soul.

So now I’m on their hit list, subject to the daily Russian Roulette of their schedule. They called me yesterday, and I lied and said I had a meeting and couldn’t be there. Again, the sigh that swept away NOLA, but I had to lie. It was a life-saving lie, because it gives me time to formulate another lie: The fantasy that I floss every day. I mean, I DO floss every day, but only in the two weeks leading up to each appointment. Just enough time for my gums to get used to the unaccustomed abuse and stop puffing up like a Peep in the microwave. I want to floss, but not enough to stay up to do it every night when I’m already exhausted. The only person I know who really likes to floss is my dad, but he also loves bagpipes and canned herring, so we’re removing his opinion from this selective poll.

I’ve begun flossing in earnest awaiting Chuck’s inevitable summons to the death chamber. If I can get in at least a week of good flossage, then the fact that I failed to floss for the last 26 phases of the moon usually goes undetected. It would probably go over better if when Chuck says, “So, have we been flossing every night, weak baby kitten?” I didn’t stare at the wall and focus on the abyss of infinity, before quickly replying, “Yup, every single night, ever, so help me God, I pledge allegiance, amen.” I’m not sure which penalty is stiffer: The punishment for not flossing every night, or the punishment for lying to Chuck Norris. I do not want to find out.

Word to the wise: I’ve learned that, in the event that a dentist appointment sneaks up on you, and maybe it’s the night before and you haven’t flossed since Bush 41, DO NOT floss the night before. Your gums will go all Peeps on you, and they’ll see through your feeble tricks. Wait and floss right before you go. Your gums will be clean, and won’t have time to figure out what the hell you just did to them. WINZ!!!

Snaps To You Awards: The Frat-alicious Network

2009-01-18T09:42:00.004-05:00

First off, snaps to you, procrastination, for being so addictively delicious that I'm continually tanked off your lazy goodness. The Snaps To You Award will be issued every Friday...or as close to every Friday as my slow ass can get with it and rub two brain cells together till I make a fire.

And now, the real star of the show! Snaps to you, DIY Network, for blatantly ignoring the obvious Freudian connotations, and televising, for my viewing pleasure, a nightly segment called "Nailed At Nine." I can't quite remember, but I'm 99% positive that I attended a frat party by this same name in college. Therefore, I can only assume that "Nailed At Nine" involves matching t-shirts, Solo cups full of warm crappy beer, and roofies.

This is a fitting and appropriate addition to the DIY Network, which already bandies about the words "screw," "stud," and "male-female adapter" frequently enough to make me giggle like the eleven-year-old boy that I kinda still am, but with cuter shoes and the ability to frost a cake.

DIY Network: I'd totally be willing to do a 60-second tribute commercial to "Nailed At Nine," heralding their receipt of the S2U Award. It would do wonders for their viewership, AND I'd send you cupcakes. Well, roofiecakes. It's only fair.

Will Work For Fun

2009-01-13T18:16:00.011-05:00

Generally speaking, and generally disregarding the days when I try to strangle myself with redaction tape, I enjoy my job. I work by myself, I get free herbal tea, and I have my very own office, complete with a real working door that opens and closes at my whim.

It should be noted that I would perform much less savory jobs, including “examiner of whale bladder function,” “Yankee Candle wax taste-tester,” and “personal assistant to Paris Hilton,” as long as I was guaranteed my own office.

Most of the people at my office are smiley, bland, and dazed enough to keep me on the functional side of spazzed out, but when the more aggressively ridiculous cubicle clowns ding my nerves one too many times, I can just close my aforementioned door and work in peace, prepare important legal documents, and bring forth a new creative masterpiece. Behold, legal work product!

I'm so glad that instead of troubling myself to learn Power Point (The Devil) or Excel (The Devil When Power Point Is Unavailable), I dedicated myself entirely to the mastery of MS Paint. Just the other day, proving that my employer had hired me for a reason other than to provide a continuous supply of cupcakes and pointy shoes, my skills finally paid off: The firm had put together a team to run a 10k this spring, and was taking suggestions for a design for a t-shirt we could all wear.

Alright fine, maybe they weren't actively soliciting suggestions. Maybe I just saw an opportunity to flex my creative muscles and bring joy to those around me. Whatever. I had a great idea for a t-shirt design, so I submitted it to the powers that be:

It was denied in favor of "Running From The Law." Clearly the committee needs to learn some MS Paint.

*While I did add the words to that picture, I did not create the picture itself. It came from the funniest blog ever written.

The First Weekly (Ever) Snaps To You Awards!

2009-01-09T09:24:00.002-05:00

Snaps to you, Pakistan, for finally jumping on the bandwagon and issuing typewritten passports—as opposed to the handwritten, handicraft-style passports that were still issued out the back of a rickshaw as of 2008. We're so proud. Also, thanks for papadums.

If Turkey could please take note, and stop issuing passports with vital information spread over seven pages in eight colors like a bizarre children’s picture book, I’d appreciate it.

Secondary snaps to Pakistan, also, for winning the inaugural (both of 2009 and ever) Snaps to You Award, as designated by me. I’ll issue this award every Friday in celebration of things that make my life easier or generally delight me, that I feel you, my loyal/four readers, could benefit from knowing. I will not include people, places, or things that are already heralded worldwide, such as Dame Judy Dench, the iphone, and orgasms.

If you’d like to submit yourself or someone you’d like to publicly embarrass for the Snaps to You Award, I am open to bribes. I love jewelry, homemade muffins, and suitable-for-framing lolcat prints. Please be warned, though, that should you happen to submit your request the week that Helena Bonham Carter finally chooses to shower, you will automatically lose. Bribes are non-refundable, void where prohibited, nonredeemable for cash, and should be issued in small, unmarked bills/lolcats.

Should you be chosen as weekly recipient of the S2U Award, you will gain immediate fame, glory, international acclaim, and my permission to link to the prestigious award on your resume. Actually, my abject begging and pleading to link to me on your resume.

Please?

Stay-Puft Sinuses

2009-01-07T15:42:00.004-05:00

Demonstrating that 2009 desperately wanted to come in with a bang and show me how awesome it’s going to be to live out the next 358 days, I have been smacked down with a cold in the first week of the New Year. I’m pretty pissed about this, and not just because it involves the inevitable debate between “suffer at work, thereby saving vacation days for something more fun than blowing the entire Amazon River and its fauna out my nose,” and “throb on the couch at home, blowing the entire Amazon River and its fauna out my nose, watching TV and wondering when TLC and HGTV will partner so that those fashionistas on ‘What Not To Wear’ can work their spangly magic on Suzanne Whang and Karen McAloon, who have not been told that no one wants their house decorated by someone wearing hammer pants or aloha prints.”

I’m pissed about this because I get every single cold that comes my way, where by “comes my way” I mean “is smeared on me by the secretary who deploys a mass offensive against humanity in the bathroom, doesn’t wash her hands, and then pretends nothing happened.” I can’t protect myself from having the rhinovirus practically air-gunned into my nostrils, but I feel like I do an above-par job of making sure my inner army is trained and ready to fend off invaders. Or at least making sure they’re not drunk all the time. I eat lots of fruits and vegetables (case in point: the pineapple incident), I choke down a multivitamin that tastes like Flipper's groin, and when I don't come home feeling like the workday sat on my head and farted, I manage to clock in some exercise.

My fruits and vegetables are many and varied, and sometimes I even wash them. I try to make them organic, except organic produce consistently and violently angers me. Here's why. When words are put in front of product names at grocery stores, it's all for one reason: To say "I am more tasty!" Fresh spinach. Crisp pickles. Hot bread. Get my drift? They are eager little children of adjectives screaming PICK ME I TASTE NICER!!! So when I see ORGANIC splashed across displays of arugula and apples, smugly crowning a price tag rivaled only by the GDP, I assume "organic" means "tastier," dig a little deeper, and cough up a lung to pay for the organic goodness.

Then I get home, and instead of tasting like rainbows and sunshine like I had assumed it would, the organic produce tastes like mediocre supermarket disappointment. And I want my lung back.

So I do what I can to keep myself healthy, and Mucus, Fatigue, and Achey still come to visit. Mid-way through a conversation with one of my bosses today, she realized how sick I was, and said, "Oh God, everyone's a petri dish right now." I almostalmostalmost replied, "And I made tender love to your keyboard before you got in this morning," but I didn't, of course, because I have no balls and also I like having health insurance.

Battlestar Galactica: Now In Polish!

2009-01-07T15:38:00.002-05:00

In the course of stumbling through the drug-hazy coma that I’m calling my workday, I just had to type into a form that someone is from a place called “Subcarpathian Voivodeship.” Subcarpathian Voivodeship, Poland. I swear I’m not making that up. In reality, I wish I COULD make up something that funny. It sounds like the sequel to Battlestar Galactica. “Battlestar Galactica: Subcarpathian Voivodeship”!!! Thus, I put a note on the form assuring the reviewing attorney that I had not made that up; that it is in fact, a real place with its own culture, traditions, spirited folk music, and maybe legalized weed.

If I’m the only one who finds Subcarpathian Voivodeship hilarious, it’s because I have a cold and am hopped up on enough Alka-Seltzer cold to kill an elephant, or at least make him hallucinate Pixar movies for a few hours. Here, as a winning example of my current mental state, is the entire body of an email I just sent to my mom:

"HAPPEH BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your present from us is cool. What are we having for dinner tonight? I have a cold."

I’m gonna be so much fun at dinner tonight. "Happy Birthday, Mom! Sorry I sneezed on your cake and made rhinovirus the party favor."

Flakey McFlakenstein Reporting For Duty

2009-01-06T12:34:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, my first day back at work after my ten-day sanity hiatus/Christmas vacay, will go down in history as one of the longest days of my life. The only thing that can possibly compete with it for most interminable duration is the entire televised run of “Little House on the Prairie,” only with fewer bonnets and more profanity.

Before we proceed, let’s just for a minute picture Pa Ingalls dropping the F-bomb.

I know, right?

While on sanity hiatus, I had gotten a new cell phone. It’s a vast improvement over my old one in that it takes video, has a QWERTY keyboard, and actually makes and receives calls. In hoping that someone would call me so I could relax to the soothing sounds of my new rainforest-creatures ringtone, I had kept my new child on my desk all day. No one called except an apparently misguided yet psychic computer at the drug store, to inform me that a bottle of a drug I no longer take was waiting for me. Our conversation was deep and meaningful, but all too brief to offset the mind-numbitude of the rest of the day.

By the time I called it a draw at 5:30, my little brain was beyond fried. I hurriedly grabbed my coat and purse, and vacated the premises with my friend Gray (of Christmas Party Pâté Challenge fame). I had locked my doors, buckled my seatbelt, and effectively safeguarded myself against any remaining vestiges of the workday, when I realized I had left my precious, shiny new child on my desk. By itself. IN THE DARK!

I froze. I choked back panic. I struggled to breathe—but that was most likely a side effect from the fact that I was breathing into a plastic bag to try to alleviate the panic. Manic thoughts raced through my head faster than hippies fleeing a bath. What if someone stole it? What if someone tried to call me and I wasn’t there to be soothed by the rainforest creatures?

Happily, I came up with a solution by the time I was driving out of the parking deck. It was actually NOT to walk back and get the phone. Please. It was a two-block walk in cold rain, and I knew that Lawyer Boy and the cat were eagerly awaiting my arrival. Also my cute, cute pointy shoes felt like aliens were sitting down to a cheerful family dinner of my toes. I decided I would call Dan, one of the attorneys I work for, who was the only person I could think of who would still be chained to his desk at that hour, and I would ask him to put the phone in my desk drawer for protection. I knew he would do this for me, but not before he had plastered a post-it note that said, “this is NOT cute” over the phone’s front screen, a digital picture of the cat in a cardboard box. Whatever. I could deal with him hating on my cat in return for the safekeeping of my shiny baby. I had a plan! Hurray! Long live my mad skillz!

So I reached over and fumbled in my purse, looking for my phone, so I could call Dan…to ask him to put my phone in the drawer. It took me a good 10 seconds to realize the only way I was making that call was if my wallet spontaneously picked up a signal.

A Thoreau-ly Bizarre Christmas

2008-12-30T18:12:00.001-05:00

A recap of the Thoreau family holiday celebrations, spanning two states, several species, and a dozen bottles of wine, shall be presented in a seasonally-appropriate Twelve Notes of Christmas format, so as to combat my desire to ramble, and ease your ability to comprehend the insanity. And thus, we begin.

1) Twas the night before Christmas, and it was not a mouse, that my aunt and uncle showed up with at my grandmother's house: It was actually a Labrador retriever, a stray cat, and a profanity-spewing African Gray parrot. That's right, for a one-night stay, my aunt and uncle insisted on traveling with their very own menagerie, as if the zoo-like atmosphere created by my family wasn't enough of the animal kingdom for the eve of the birth of Christ. The dog was pretty tame; the cat created minimal havoc beyond attacking and conquering all holiday foliage placed around the house; and the foul-mouthed parrot actively tried to assassinate my brother Jordie throughout dinner. He sat on top of his five-foot-tall cage (the parrot, not my brother), and whenever Jordie would walk by, look at him, or take a bite of his own food, the parrot would rear up all Dracula-like, spread his wings, and shriek obscenities at him, not unlike my boss. Apparently he understood the meaning of the middle finger, because Jordie's sole response of flipping him the bird would send him into a renewed parrot frenzy. It was not festive.

2) My aunt and uncle, who are awesome people but who are loud beyond the human range of hearing, became so raucous during our Christmas Eve Greek Feast that my dad began singing "Away In A Manger" and NO ONE COULD HEAR HIM. I could see his lips moving, and see him swaying to the beat, but he may as well have been Milli Vanilli-ing his chosen carol. It was at that point that Jordie texted me "we have to get out of here N.O.W.!!1!!!!!!"

3) When we finally departed the menagerie (the literal and figurative menageries), Lawyer Boy and I were unable to exit my grandmother's neighborhood due to the fact that the police had blocked off the only road out in response to a shots-fired incident. Oh yes. Baby Jesus, away in a manger, no crib for a bed, and while the angels are singing hark! SOMEONE STARTED A GUN FIGHT. We didn't know what was going on until we realized the police officer with the megaphone was yelling, "DROP THE GUN AND GET ON THE GROUND!" not "Merry Christmas to all! And to all a good night!" They were not, in fact, a blue-clad caroling group out for a holiday stroll-and-sing. However, if they had been, I would have fit in perfectly in my shiny blue cocktail dress. (It should also be noted that my grandmother's neighborhood is more suited to shiny blue cocktail dresses than gunfights, so we had not brought our Kevlar vests that evening.)

4) My favorite Christmas present was the Miley Cyrus Christmas card my brother got me, which plays a real recording of Ms. Cyrus herself singing "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" whenever I open it, which is extremely frequently. It lives on our fridge and I think if I open it one more time, the cat is going to take it to his litter box and do nefarious things to it. I'm summoning all my will power and trying to prevent this, so that in 18 months when pictures of Ms. Cyrus with a crack straw in her nose surface, I will have a real live Hannah Montana artifact. And bleeding eardrums.

5) The day after Christmas, LB and I packed up and made the six-hour drive down to Charleston, SC to visit his family for the holidays. The only noteworthy event from the trip down was when we stopped for gas in Emporia (aka Armpit Township, Virginia) and at a red light, sat behind a giant truck with the license plate CLETUS. The CLETUS plate sat proudly atop a trailer ball crowned by a shiny silver skull with glowing red eyes. This was immediately before we stopped at an Arby's noteworthy only for its musical selection, which sounded like a circus monkey raping a pipe organ while humming "Carol of the Bells." I somehow feel CLETUS was responsible for this.

6) My sister-in-law's husband surprisingly showed up with her for Christmas, and also surprisingly, was a pleasantly festive presence. This is surprising because for the last three years, he has hovered on the spectrum of humanity somewhere between "manic asshole" and "eternal douche," so even a journey into the territory of "marginal dillweed" would have been a welcome improvement. But since he all but candied his own yams and built keepsake toys for the wee ones, we were all happy. To quote Clark Griswold, that epic Christmas elf: "If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I would not be more surprised than I am right now."

7) When we arrived in the rather boring, rural suburb outside Charleston, we were forced to pile into the family Tribeca to take a suburban tour, at night. AKA, in the dark, AKA, after we had just driven for six hours. Apparently when LB told his parents repeatedly, "Grace gets carsick," what they heard was, "Grace loves to be folded up like an origami swan with seven other adults in a car that claims to seat seven, but only if those seven are Snow White's dwarves, to drive around East Jesus in the dark to glimpse the occasional Craftsman-style porch lantern. Also she likes to barf on your shoes/upholstery/children." That trip was not a merry dash through the snow.

8) The majority of our Christmas presents were gift cards to Lowe's or Home Depot, owing to the stupendously ugly nature of our house right now. On "Christmas morning" with his family, LB opened a Lowe's card that had a hammer festively attired in a red bow on the front, and his five-year-old adopted brother Tyler became so excited that he shrieked, "Mommy! LB got a HAMMER PRESENT CARD!!!!!" We have henceforth referred to all gift cards as Hammer Present Cards, and so it shall be forevermore!

9) A grand debate ensued around the Christmas tree when my youngest sister-in-law began debating with her mother whether or not her bee-hind was a Medium, per what the underwear my mother-in-law had bought her stated, or whether it was an Extra-Small, per the fantasies dancing like sugarplums in her head. This was an uncomfortable debate for everyone involved, including a moment when my mother-in-law challenged, "I dare you to get one buttcheek in an extra-small once you wash those!!" It culminated in all of us agreeing by secret ballot that the bee-hind in question was, in no way, an extra-small. Despite the conclusion, it remained awkward.

10) Speaking of bee-hinds that are no longer extra-small, in retaliation for having been abandoned to the care of the neighbors for a traumatic forty-eight hours, the cat chewed three holes in his bag of Meow Mix and devoured approximately four times his own weight in Mix in two days. We returned to find him awash in a sea of his own greed, yet thoroughly pleased with his exploits. Consequently, we have yet to be able to pick him up comfortably since. He could easily feed a family of twelve.

11) In the ten days I have been on vacay from work since Christmas, I have managed to stare at, rearrange, and kick around our bedroom (literally) the same overfilled basket of clean laundry, without ever putting them away in my closet or drawers. I couldn't be more proud of my own laziness if I had laid on the couch until my joints grew moss. I'll save that task for summer vacay when the higher humidity will facilitate quicker spore growth.

12) My New Year's resolution is to be more green, and reduce, reuse, recycle. Based on the amount of alcohol bottles that have already accumulated in the shiny new recycling bin, we may be getting a call from Central Virginia Waste Management regarding a possibly more productive resolution: AA.