Happy Is The New Angst

2009-08-14T15:51:00.008-02:00

Almost three years to the day of moving in to our little shack, I'm tickled pink that our bedroom is finally done. It's gone through many stages since my arrival: from an ugly, hairy caterpillar adorned with peach walls and a rustic wallpaper border to a chryssalis with hastily painted tan walls and album cover artwork to a baby butterfly full of more shades of blue than I ever thought possible, and then finally it's final form.

It's been a labor of love. We refurbished my Grandma's old bedroom set from the 1950's , painted the walls, stripped the carpet and had new flooring installed, opened up the closet area by removing the door and hanging linens, purchased a new bed and bedding, and spent hours looking for just the right accessories.

I'm really happy that I finally have fully completed room (others are close, and all are vastly improved, but this is the only one that I can look at and not see anything that needs to be changed/repaired/destroyed), and we did it all for under $1000 (not including the bed itself, which was expensive but crucial to my happiness.)I really haven't wanted to do for the past couple of days, except curl up on my bed with a book and sneak in an afternoon nap. In case you were wondering, Cooper seems to approve.

We Took The Bait

2009-08-07T21:18:00.002-02:00

We Took The Bait came about one lazy summer night in a fit of boredom mistaken for brilliance. After suffering through numerous late night infomercials and consuming copious amounts of cheap domestic beer, we (Jeremy & Jessica) decided that we owed it to the world to buy and review all the television order products that seem too good to be true. Yes, we realize that many of those late night commercials are designed for suckers, and we’re volunteering to take the bait so that you fine people don’t have to.

If it chops, mops, slices, dices, or can solve a home repair crisis, we’re going to buy it, try it, and then private eye it. Bet you didn’t know we were such talented freestylers too, eh?

Just a disclaimer- we are in no way affiliated with any of the companies that manufacture, produce, distribute, or market the products that we review, so you don’t have to worry about us being biased in any way. Although our reviews are intended to be humorous and are often delivered tongue-in-cheek, we don’t assume we’re going to hate the products we order. In fact, we’re both suckers for the glowing drone of the late night commercial, which is why we’ve decided to take those as-seen-on-TV goodies for a test drive.

We rate the products we review in three areas: quality, delivery, and overall experience. The more hooks a product receives, the higher we recommend it. We’d never tell anyone not to buy a product that we review, even if we think it’s about as useful as a round fork. On the contrary, we provide links to the product page and encourage all our readers to make up their own minds about the junk, I mean items, that we try out.

I'll still continue to update here as well, as I wouldn't want to dissappoint my reader (hi Mom!), but check us out if you have the time!

Twihard. With a Vengance.

2009-07-28T20:25:00.013-02:00

I never, in a million years, thought I would ever read the Twilight books. I'm a voracious reader, don't get me wrong, but I'm kind of snobby about it. Actually, I'm really snobby about it. When I first started dating my now husband and I saw how many Mary Higgings Clark and James Patterson books he owned, I was aghast. Shocked! Revolted! Well, maybe not revolted, but I made it a secret mission to expose him to as many of my favorite books as possible. Gee, honey, I have no idea where that awesome Dan Brown paperback went! Here, why don't you read this lovely little Donna Tartt book instead?

It was devious, not to mention pretentious on my part, and I eventually realized the error of my ways. The man likes what he likes, and if what he likes is to curl up on the couch for a rainy weekend with a best seller from five years ago that he picked up at a rummage sale, who am I to stop him? Still, I would never succumb to the thrill of a quick, mindless read. I have Joseph Conrad and Milan Kundera running through my veins! I am a literary woman! I am - what? Twilight? Yeah, about that.

My almost thirteen year old niece started our family down that path of obsession that eventually sucked both her mother and another aunt in. Grandma is in the process of reading the books but isn't quite as gung-ho as the others.

When the movie came out, I started to see why so many women were crazy over Twilight. Edward Cullen is one sexy vampire. There's just something about Robert Pattinson's sleepy looking eyes and brooding good looks that I find attractive, despite those jack-o-lantern eyebrows of his. Seriously, can he do something about them?

British hunk or no British hunk, I was firm in my resolve not to fall into Twilighysteria. True, I had felt the same way about Harry Potter until, after I couldn't contain my curiosity anymore and asked for all seven books for Christmas, I devoured them all in a month and declared my love for them. But Harry Potter was a horse of a different color, right? I mean, it was a quick read, entertaining. It had legions of obsessed fans, so that should tell you something right there. It was a fantasy novel, but sort of Fantasy Lite. More universal than Tolkien or Piers Anthony, and it had elements that people of all ages enjoy.

Which started to sound pretty much exactly like Twilight. Soon enough, I found myself at my in-laws in the company of my aforementioned niece, who graciously offered to lend me the first two well-read installments of the four part series. I accepted, but still resisted as long as I could. In fact, we went on vacation to the mountains last week, and I didn't even bring them. Instead I finished the second half of Richard Russo's Empire Falls (great), struggled through Bernhard Schlink's snorefest The Reader, and read the entertaining (if not extremely predictable and frustrating) Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe.

Come Saturday, we were home and I had nothing on my plate to read. Jeremy fell asleep on the couch during the Phillies game, and my mind turned to the books my niece had given me, snug in a shoebox in the spare bedroom. I figured I'd give it a chapter, and if it was more drivel that I could stand, I'd stop reading.

48 hours later, 9 of which I spent at work, I had torn through the first book and was almost half way through the second. Without even knowing it, I'd become sucked into the world of teenage vampire angst. The horror.

Now, I've read various articles about Twilight. I know that some feminist scholars say it's misogynistic and anti-feminist and I know that others think it's nothing more than a veil for Mormon or Christian propaganda. The books definitely have some religious undertones- sacrifice, redemption, and betrayal, but none of these seem to strike a chord as much as the book's rather obvious moral message: abstinence.

Edward the Vampire and Bella the mere mortal don't do the deed- at least not for a couple books(they do in later novels, once they're married, from what I understand.) The author, Stephenie Meyer, wrote the tale in such a way that the passion between Edward and Bella is sometimes palpable, but although he secretly spends the night holding her while she sleeps, they never do anything more than kiss, and even then just barely. The idea is that the brute force of Edward's vampiric love making could hurt, or even kill Bella. Is that an allegory for the soul-blackening consequences of pre-marital, teenage sex from a Mormon/Christian conservative standpoint? Maybe. But let's not forget that the target audience of Twilight are teenaged girls. Is abstinence really the worst subliminal message we can be pumping into that age group?

Don't get me wrong, I cringed every time the book went out of its way to mention Bella changing into her pajamas safely in her bathroom and out of Edward's gaze (we get it already! No humping!) and every time a paragraph explicitly drew out the electricity between E & B as they brushed cheeks or traced the outlines of each others mouths with the tips of their fingers, I secretly thought to myself GET IT ON ALREADY! But that's just me. **Edit: Just me and the hundreds of other people who've loaded the internet with dirty Twilight FanFiction, apparently.**

Is Twilight anti-feminist? I don't think so. I think there are a lot of strong female characters in the book, and even though you could argue that Bella fulfills the "typical" female role (cooks for and takes care of her father, remains utterly helpless in nearly every situation and needs constant rescuing, pines over a guy who toyed with her, admitted he was dangerous to her, and then abandoned her, etc.) she also refuses to go with the crowd of her peers and settle for nice, predictable guys like Mike Newton. She doesn't care about prom, isn't into gossip, and drives a beat ass old truck, not to mention her little stint with the motorcycle.

I love cooking, I'm anal retentive about cleaning and decorating my house, pined like crazy over my first teenage love, and *gasp* I even find a certain amount of machismo to be sexy. I can assure you that I'm not anti-feminist either. I have a lot of faith in the upcoming generation of women readers. I don't know of anyone who converted to Mormonism or wasted away their youth trying to find an unobtainable, perfect love after reading the Twilight series. I think the notion that teenage girls, en masse, would get so swept away by a book that they'd allow themselves to be in a controlling or hurtful relationship is the sort of anti-feminist notion that detractors claim to rally against. Let's give these ladies some credit, shall we?

I guess it goes without saying that I'm enjoying reading the books. I put the movie at the top of my Netflix queue (jack-o-lantern eyebrows be damned, I'm ready for an hour and a half of Robert Pattinson's face, if nothing else), and I'll happily admit that I was wrong about the way I was looking at literature. Stephenie Meyer is no wordsmith, but what she lacks in writing style she makes up for in entertainment value. Sometimes that's all we really need out of a book in the first place.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go read the shit out of New Moon. I mean, uhm, something really cerebral from a back issue of McSweeny's. Yeah, that. Cough.

inside, out of love, what a laugh, I was looking for you

2009-07-12T00:12:00.005-02:00

When you live in a state like Delaware, you learn to accept that you just won't be able to enjoy some of the same luxuries that people in other states do. For example, you'll never be able to go see a professional sporting event without crossing state lines. When you travel outside the country (and even to some parts in the country), you'll never be able to say you're from Delaware without then having to explain that it's north of Washington D.C. and south of New York City. And, sadly, 99.9% of the time, you'll never be able to see a band that you really like without taking a ride into Philadelphia.

Most of that doesn't bother me. We have a minor league baseball team (the Wilmington Blue Rocks) that my husband and I are really fond of. We get to watch the Phillies from home and then catch weekend Rocks games with free parking, cheap beer, and fun theme nights - this year they even had a Big Lebowski night. As far as explaining where our state is, I couldn't tell you the geographical difference between the Alberta and Saskatchewan territories, so I guess we're even. But - not being able to see music locally? That hurts.

That's why I was thrilled to find out that Wilco would be coming to Wilmington for the second year in a row, and this time playing a show at Frawley Stadium, home of our beloved Blue Rocks. A band I love, in a ballpark, on a summer evening? Heaven.

I had high expectations, and Wilco didn't disappoint. They played every song I was hoping to hear, and with twenty-three songs played over a set and two encores I went home happy and hoping they make it back next year. Although it was a little disconcerting to see my office building lit up in the background (who wants to think about work at a time like that?) being a local proved fortuitous when it came time to leave and I zipped out through a shortcut and made my way down the interstate.

Having this show in Wilmington was such a big deal that the mayor taped a welcome message that was shown prior to the band's performance. We often get bypassed due to the fact that we're so close to bigger cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, and even New York, but this is a city that is going through a serious revitilization. There is an effort to Light Up The Queen , the birth of The Riverfont is in full swing, and we're actually getting a Fringe Festival in the city, starting this fall.

But, enough about Delaware. More about Wilco. I wish I had brought my camera, but as luck would have it I was rushing out of the house and only had my cell phone. Here's a picture of the stage from where we were sitting, behind what would have been home plate. I'm sorry that it's granier than a rice field. Why can't I have an iPhone like the rest of you?

The Secret Life of Inefficient Food Shoppers

2009-07-09T21:22:00.007-02:00

I've come to the conclusion that I'm an incredibly inefficient food shopper. Give me a specific menu for a specific day, and I'm fine. Give me a shopping cart on a Monday afternoon and ask me to buy food for the week ahead, and I'll end up with $100worth of snacks, an assortment of fresh veggies and fruit that will inevitably spoil before I get a chance to eat them, and not enough groceries to create meals with any actual substance. Never before has this been any more clear to me than this morning.

I recently decided to challenge myself to bring food into work for breakfast and lunch every day for the rest of the year. With a few exceptions (things that keep me sane like birthday lunches with my office girlfriends or my monthly sushi excursion with Jay) I am vowing not to spend any of my hard earned money in the cafeteria in my building, the sub shop down the street, or the little coffee shop next door that makes incredible breakfast paninis. I'm estimating that I'll probably save well over $1000 from now until the end of the year, which should give you an idea of how much I've been throwing away on lattes and overpriced salads.

Although my intent is good, I really need to craft my shopping skills if this thing is going to work, and I've got to start planning ahead a bit. Case in point: menu. With two minutes left before I had to rush out the door to catch my bus, I had nothing in my bag to eat for the day ahead. Panicking, I started opening cabinets and rooting through the fridge for some grub, and I ended up with this menagerie of carbohydrates:

Yes, a bag of Pepperidge Farm cookies, a Kashi bar, chocolate fudge Pop Tarts. God help me when I have children, because they may be 300 pounds and diabetic by third grade if the responsbility of packing their lunches lies solely on me.

However, hope was not lost. In my rush, I'd also managed to grab the following items: a bag of shredded cheese, a few hamburger rolls, and a carton of egg whites. Honestly, I think they were the first portable items I saw upon opening the fridge, which was fruituitous, as they became my breakfast. I call this creation the Ghetto Egg and Cheese:

Mmmm. Microwaved egg whites with shredded cheese served upon a hamburger bun that the office toaster burnt to a crisp, served on a paper towel. I never thought my palate would experience such lows.

I was saved from a Nantucket cookie lunch binge followed by a Pop Tart chaser when I found a frozen Healthy Choice meal I'd stashed in the freezer a couple of months ago. I was actually excited to find out that I was only seven minutes away from reconstituted broccoli (that I smothered with leftover cheese to make it somewhat edible), a chicken patty served over limp noodles and smothered with artifically sweetened tomato sauce, and some unidentifiable apple concoction for dessert. I am going to have heartburn for the next three weeks or so, but it was better than the alternative.

Yeah. It tasted only slightly better than it looks.

I have a half day of work tomorrow since I'm scooting out early to get myself ready for the Wilco concert at Frawley Stadium (whoo!), so lunch won't be an issue. I have some cereal for breakfast - although I don't have any milk. Naturally. Looks like I'll be starting my day off with another Ghetto Egg and Cheese!

Next week I'm going to the market with a plan of attack. This madness must end.

Come and knock on our door (but not until next week)

2009-07-06T22:50:00.005-02:00

Our house's back door, the one leading from the backyard into the kitchen, probably should have been replaced twenty years ago. In our defense, we've only been renovating for the past 18 months or so, so we haven't be putting it off for that long. Considering the amount of things on our to-do list that absolutely had to be done in order to make this shanty inhabitable (like reparing big holes that exposed the kitchen to the outside world, getting rid of dead and dangerous wiring, replacing the broken toilet, swapping out the oven that had been used as a home for a rat) it was pretty low on our priority list.

Now that the kitchen is nearing completion and we're ready to bring in the troops to refinish the cabinets and hopefully put in counters and a backsplash, it's become clear that the time has come to replace the door that I've affectionately started calling Big Fugly. Here she is, in all her fugly glory.

Doesn't it look like something that belongs in a mental hospital? I feel like it should have some sort of metal opening for a food tray to be pushed through. It's impossible to close without slamming it, and impossible to open without using two hands and a considerable amount of force, making it difficult to bring food out to the deck when we're eating outside. Trust me, if you could get close enough to notice how it sits unevenly in the frame and is so warped that it hovers a good half inch over the bottom door seal - well, you'd probably want to turn it into firewood too.

The problem is finding a door that I like enough to have installed. I want something with lots of windows, but a french door seems impractical because it would leave the house too exposed. I'm not one of those people who covers every window with black out curtains (on the contrary, I crave natural light) but we have neighbors and I need to maintain at least some small semblance of privacy.

On the other hand, I don't want a Grandma Door - no wood grain, no oval frosted windows, no fancy cutouts. It's not our style and won't mesh with our little ranchalow. I've been driving myself nuts trying to find the happy medium between those two extremes, and I think I'll be making another trip to Lowes tomorrow night to bug the salesman and browse through catalogs.

Oh, who am I kidding. I love this stuff, and the thought that another project is getting crossed off the list is making me giddy. I'm so easily pleased.

2009-07-01T22:38:00.005-02:00

Holy crap, what happened to June?

I'm pretty sure that a couple of weeks ago I was still scraping ice from my car windshield in the morning, and all of the sudden we're days away from the 4th of July? When I was a kid it seemed like summer was hundreds of days long, and now that I'm an adult I blink and it's almost halfway done.

It could have something to do with how insanely busy I've been - which, incidentally is why I haven't updated here as well. Apologies to all four of my readers. In fact, in between work, ghost tour season getting into full swing, working on an exciting new writing project with Jeremy (more on that to come!),watching my beloved Phillies chip away at their dignity one game at a time, and stuffing my face full of beer and yummy grilled viddles every weekend, I completely forgot to post a little tribute to my Dad on Father's Day. So, even though it happened quite some time ago, here's one of my favorite picture of my Pops and I, even though he'd probably killing me for posting a picture of what we affectionately refer to as his "flesh colored yarmulke." We both bawled our eyes out all through our dance together on my wedding night.

And, for good measure, here is a vintage shot of my awesome Pa, who passed away in 2006 at the ripe age of 83. Although I miss him like crazy each and every single day, I have more than enough happy memories of him to last another 83 years.

Okay, now that I'm sufficiently filled with teary wedding day and childhood nostalgia, I'll wrap this up and return to normal blogging tomorrow. Happy belated Father's Day to all you daddies (and future daddies) out there.

About the time that old lady almost ran me over at the market...

2009-06-15T20:57:00.001-02:00

Some people are just naturally lucky. I’m not talking about winning the lottery lucky, or discovering buried treasure while walking down a deserted beach with your metal detector lucky, or the weird supernatural luck of people who narrowly avoid being hit by lightning on a regular basis. That kind of luck is rare, and somewhat disturbing. I’m talking about people who have the good fortune to consistently make the right choices during their day to day routines.

I am not one of those people.

If I am driving on a highway, I will always get into the slowest lane. Other lanes can be whizzing by at 70 and my little lane will be just moseying right along at 35. When I dare attempt to move into another lane to get out of the slow crawl, that lane suddenly becomes the slow lane. Did the slow car a mile up suddenly exit and let everyone behind them return to normal speed? Did the slow car a mile up suddenly decide to get into my lane at the exact same time I did? IT IS MYSTERY.

Another place I have absolutely no luck in is the market. If I decide to bypass the traditional checkout lanes and rock out the self-check, the machine either: a) breaks; b) runs out of receipt paper; or c) refuses to scan my items no matter how gently I scan the barcodes. In either of those scenarios, it undoubtedly takes approximately 17 hours for a clerk to come over and help me, and when they do they give me a curmudgeonly snarl like I was responsible for the machine’s mechanical meltdown. Now, if I chose the regular checkout line, I will always be directly behind That Old Lady. That Old Lady is at every supermarket in the country, I’m sure you’ve seen her. That Old Lady is somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred years old, and yet she is shopping unassisted. Now,this is not a knock on the elderly. I love old people, I do! And not just my grandparents – most people with wrinkles and sweaters and cookies and lots of stories are alright by me. But, I know that there comes a certain point in everyone’s life where they need some help with some activities. Shopping is one of them. By the time I fight my way down the aisles and search the shelves for the exact item I need and push my ever growing cart from here to oblivion only to stand in line waiting I feel exhausted, and I’m only 25.

That Old Lady lets all her groceries reach the end of the checkout counter without bagging a single one, even though we’re in the self bagging lane. The clerk takes pity and stops ringing in order to bag her items, and load them into her cart. An item scans, and That Old Lady thinks that she was charged the wrong price. She is positive that the item was on sale. So the clerk stops ringing again, and pages someone for assistance. Five minutes later a 15-year-old stockboy arrives, That Old Lady pleads her case, and Stockboy is off to the aisles to see if it’s on sale. He comes back in a few minutes, announces that it is definitely not on sale, and so That Old Lady decides she doesn’t want it, or the five others just like it that have been previously rung up without her noticing. The clerk goes back and voids all the items, which needs a manager’s approval. Of course the manager has to be paged and who knows when we can expect her. In the meantime, I’m trying to plan an escape route, but there just isn’t one. There are already four other people with carts queueing up behind me, and 75% of my cart has already been unloaded onto the conveyor belt. I contemplate crawling into my cart to take a quick nap while we wait for the manager, but there is a big bottle of laundry detergent and a 24 can pack of Diet Pepsi thwarting my plan. Oh well.

When the manager finally arrives, the transaction is voided, and we are now sooooo cloooooose to finishing up with That Old Lady and moving on to me. When everything is rung up and bagged, That Old Lady presents her fistful of coupons which – miraculously – are deducted without incident. Although my ice cream is now starting to melt I am given a renewed sense of vigor and a smattering of hope that I will make it home before my chicken defrosts. When That Old Lady reaches into her handbag, she cannot seem to find her wallet. It has disappeared somewhere in the 45 square feet of pleather she is carrying on her shoulder. Searching in vain, she starts pulling things out of her purse to get a better view. Out comes an eyeglass case, out comes a hairbrush, out comes a Cuban refugee, out comes – A WALLET! We all breathe a sigh of relief. “Oh,” That Old Lady says, “that’s the wrong wallet.”

I now have to pee really, really, bad. I consider pretending to run my foot over my my cart, hoping that my fake injury will let me slip out of line and leave my shit at the checkout. I can come back tomorrow. Just then, That Old Lady finds her wallet. The right one. She pulls out a card and hands it to the cashier. The cashier points to the self swipe box and tells her to run the card through and follow the instructions on the screen. She may as well have been told to build, launch, and fly a space shuttle. After a few exasperating minutes of the clerk and I trying to help her get her card run through, we discover that it is an ATM card. As in ATM. Only. Back to the drawing board. That Old Woman digs through Monster Purse once again, searching for money to pay for her order. She hands her the wrong amount, TWICE, before realizing she doesn’t have enough and uses her credit card instead. The card goes through. That Old lady signs the slip. WE HAVE COMPLETION! Someone behind me claps, loudly. Although I had been contemplating suicide just moments before as my only alternative, I can’t be mad at the old bird. She tried, and that’s all we can do in life.

I was done fairly quickly, and wheeled my cart out of the store in the direction of my car. I stopped, looked both ways twice, and then proceeded into the crosswalk. Who should come speeding around the corner in her rusty blue 1983 Datsun? Why, That Old Lady, naturally! She blew the stop sign, completely ignored the brightly colored Yield To Pedestrians signs, and came within inches of making me roadkill. I was about to yell my standard “Watch where you’re driving, numbnuts!” when I realized who was behind the wheel. I bit my tongue. See, I believe in karma, and I know I’ll be old one day. I’m sure she didn’t intend to nearly impale me with her hood ornament. Accidents happen, and I am willing to give all oldies the benefit of the doubt. Still, next time I see her at the market, she is someone else’s problem. I’ll come back later.

*previously posted in October of 2007 on some old blog I used to write in.

Vacation, all I ever wanted

2009-06-05T01:48:00.008-02:00

Without a doubt, one of the best aspects of summer is the fact that vacation is imminent. My husband and I spend a lot of time during the cold, depressing winter months planning our summer getaways, and the fact that those days are approaching makes me so happy I might blow up.

Our first mini-vacation starts tomorrow, with a three day nostalgic jaunt to Fenwick Island , where my brother and I spent a significant part of our childhood summers. My parents and my brother are going as well, and we're all staying in the inn that my family has stayed in for decades. There is something extremely comforting about donning your swimsuit and waiting for your Dad to pick you up at the crack of dawn, and anticipating visiting the restaurants and beaches and boardwalks of your youth.

I can still remember being four or five years old, walking to the town's post office, which consisted of nothing more than a very old woman selling stamps out of a window in a clothing store. Buying groceries for my family from a farmstand - fresh corn and tomatoes and cucumbers. Riding bicycles down main roads without the fear of cars, and finding bits of three hundred year old shipwrecks on the beach during our morning walks. I can remember hurricanes passing close to the edge of the peninsula, and being forced to evacuate, driving through the Eastern shore of Maryland and seeing twisters spawning from the storm.

I can remember visiting my other grandmother, who lived in what is now a heavily populated area of Rehoboth, but at the time was a rural, peaceful, and beautiful. Situated on the water, her home was always full of family. My cousins and I (there were 12 of us at the time, but there are almost thirty now) would swing on her hammock, bait crab pots on her dock, shuck corn on the back porch, snap beans for dinner and pick wild flowers to put in our hair. We would take her paddle boat down the causeway, into the inlet, and sometimes into the ocean.

The summers of my childhood, in my mind, are full of honeysuckle, my Dad and his four brothers playing Bruce Springsteen on the hi-fi, and bonfires and adventure.

Tomorrow is the start of our summer vacations. At the end of July we'll head to the northwest corner of Virginia, for a week of rafting, horseback riding, and fun on the Shenandoah.

The mere though of floating in a tube down the river, with a mojito in my hand has kept me going through many a recent work week.

The last week of August, we'll be celebrating my 28th birthday with a five day camping trip and kayaking adventure. There is nothing better than proping a tent, starting a fire, roasting some marshmallows, and spending an evening under the stars.

Oh, summer.

People are people, so why should it be...

2009-05-28T20:31:00.003-02:00

I was going to blog about our awesome Memorial Day weekend barbeque, full of friends and family and copious amounts of grilled things, but there is something I have to get off my chest first, and barbeques (as much as I love them) seem kind of small and unimportant compared to this. Most of you reading have probably heard me say this exact thing in some form over the last few days and months and years, so my apologies, but with everything that's been happening over in California the past few days, the power of equality compels me.

Most people seem to be opposed to same sex marriage for one of three reasons, or a combination of both.

1: It weakens/destroys/belittles the institution of marriage.

2: It is anti-Christian, not natural, and will piss off the big guy in the sky.

3: It will destroy families, communities, and life as we know it. Three year olds will experience the horror of being exposed to alternative lifestyles! Teachers and doctors and police officers who are men could have husbands at home! Your female co-worker could bring her wife to the company Christmas party. Ocean will rise. Baby angels will cry. So on and so forth.

Is it possible that all these things could happen? Well, anything is possible. One of my Dad's favorite replies to our childhood "what if" questions was "What if Martians land on the roof?" Still, I can't predict the future, but I'm going to guess that none of those things will transpire, because they're all ridiculous.

So how about this: let's give it six months. Hell, how about a year even. One year for the 18,000 same sex Californian couples to live their lives married.

We give it a year and we take a look a round, and we see that marriage is still as awful and wonderful as it ever was and we heteros are doing a good enough job sending it to hell in a handbasket anyway.

We'll figure out that God hasn't smote us all to smithereens yet.

We'll figure out that the private lives of people who love each other is neither any of our business or anything to be concerned about. Then Californians can say, to the slight majority that voted for Prop 8: "Hey look, you were all wrong! Everything's okay. Gay people are still the same as they always were and life is the same as it always was. Let's vote again!"

Then they vote, gay marriage becomes legal, equality triumphs, and our grandchildren look back on this era like we now do on the time when black people and white people couldn't drink from the same water fountain: with disgust at the sheer ignorance of the situation.

I'm not seriously advocating that the marriage equality battle be put off for six months or a year, because I think this issue should be pushed on to the highest courts of our nation as soon as possible. I'm just trying to apply a scientific method to this issue, since logic and humanity don't seem to be getting through to some. If you're a person who honestly cannot accept that same sex couples should marry because of some personal moral issue, you are entitled to your opinion. If you think that some awful harm will come to our families and our nation as a result, here's your chance to see that your hypothesis will be proven incorrect. Soundly. If you discover that the facts don't support the sky-is-falling fear mongering that's being perpetuated, aren't you then forced to rexamine your initial opinion?

I'm just sayin'.

There are a lot of issues that I have extremely strong opinions on, and I've never shied away from debating someone who supports an opinion different from mine. I can honestly say that with almost every single issue - the death penalty, abortion rights, the war in Iraq, you name it- the person with the opposing viewpoint has always had an argument that (for at least a moment) caused me to pause. I've often thought to myself "Damn, that's a good point. I can see why this person believes what they do!"

The exception to that rule is, and always has been, same sex marriage. Not one person has ever presented an argument that gave me pause. I know many same sex couples, some of who are married. I know that marriage is about love, not bigotry. I know marriage is about committment, not fear in a lifestyle different to one's own.

I can only hope that one day we are all able to embrace that idea, and that as our nation sheds its propensity towards the idea that separate but equal is just or fair.

oh, bop, fashion.

2009-05-20T21:06:00.007-02:00

I got tagged by Kate of Passyunk Palance and Wooly Bully fame to give my 5 fashion Always and Nevers, so I will happily oblige. Starting with my Nevers, because we might as well get those out of the way, eh?

- Shorts. I don't have anything against shorts on (most) other people, but when you're built like someone Peter Paul Rubens would have immortalized in a painting, they just don't work. Also, although at five foot seven inches I'm not by any means a short woman, I'm 80% torso and my legs and rather stubby. Shorts make my gams look like two really pale sausages coming out of their casings. Not a pretty sight.

- Pantyhose The necessity of pantyhose has always been lost on me. I will rock a pair of nice black tights in the winter if necessary, but nylon stockings are a whole other issue. In addition to itching the crap out of my thighs, they always seem to look too shiny and tan for my taste.

- The Tiffany's chain link bracelets I know a lot of people who have these bracelets, and if you are one of them, I'm sorry to say this, but I think they're so ugly. They look like something Criss Angel would wear around his neck, or something a junkyard dog would be chained up with. Not for me.

- White high heels No. No. No. Not after Memorial Day. Not before Labor Day. Just no.

- Any shirt that is shaped even remotely like this one:

And now for my Always:

- Flip flops. Once February rolls around, I'm ready to replenish my flip flop collection. Considering they're 2 for $5 at Old Navy, it's not too difficult or costly a task. If I need to step it up a little, I slip on a pair of these:

or my absolute favorites:

- I have to go with Kate and second her love of sundresses. Anything lightweight and breezy,knee length, preferably sleeveless with a v-neck, because boatnecks aren't very flattering on me.

- My disdain for shorts covers the typical capri as well, because I always seem to picture them tapering off just below the knee and giving my lower half a cello-like shape. Instead, I like 3/4 length pants, or pants that end just above the ankle. I think they have a classic summer look to them and they make me want to take a stroll down a beach on Cape Cod.

-Kate, I'm with you again on cardigans. I have several no-frills cardigans in enough colors to match pretty much everything. No pockets, no weird ruffles. Just a bunch of small buttons and infinite possibilities. I love to pair them with sundresses when it's still a little chilly in the evening, and they're great for work attire too.

-Bobby pins. I'm trying to think of a way to describe my hair in its natural state, but I just hate being mean. Without considerable manipulation, it's 1/3 straight, 1/3 way, 1/3 curly, and 100% out of control. I know this is my father's fault, because my Mom is a friendly Irish lady with silky straight blonde hair and my Dad is mountain stock from questionable ethnic genetics. Please see photographic evidence, below:

Although I usually take the time to tame the beast with cremes and flat irons and sheer WILLPOWER, most weekend I let it do it's thing and use an assload of bobby pins to manipulate it into some semblance of style.

2009-05-17T18:24:00.009-02:00

Egads, my updates are becoming rather sporadic, aren't they? I'd love to say that I haven't been posting because I've been outside, enjoying the weather by sitting on our new patio set and using my new citronella candles and eating dinner off my new outdoor plates and outdoor placemats and drinking a mojito out of my new outdoor tumblers, but sadly this isn't the case. All my awesome new outdoors-related stuff has been untouched while the weather continues to be craptastic. Oh well. Maybe next weekend?

On a happier note, The Great Bedroom Remix is slowly crawling towards the finish line, thanks to my acquisition of several hand screen prints from Jen Skelley's Etsy shop. It was hard to narrow it down to just a couple pieces, because all of her work is so adorable. My bird obsession reached new heights with the exotic bird Gocco prints, so although I intended to order just one, I ended up with three. Please forgive the sloppy photography. My battery was on death's door, and I really wanted to get these pictures uploaded.

And did I mention that I also got a monogram to boot? How cute is this?

In other bedroom related news, during the span of a week I also picked up two white ceramic trays for the nightstands, because I hate when our books and things are just thrown around all willy nilly. I'm sorry, what? OC...what? I have no idea what you're talking about.

Anyway, one of these trays set me back twelve bucks at Homegoods, while the other was picked up for me by my savvy mother-in-law for a quarter at a garage sale, and they're both exactly what I was looking for. God, I love bargains.

And since I've already clogged up your screen with pictures, why not one more? Here's our new bathroom faucet, which my husband bravely installed himself last weekend. It turned out to be a bitch of a project, because our home's previous owner unnecessarily crazy-glued the crap out of the fixture and all it's nuts and bolts. After a few hours of faucet-hell, I started hearing words that I thought were reserved for that poor little girl in The Exorcist, but it's done now, and it's gorgeous.

About that time Crystal Pepsi made me popular for a day

2009-05-16T03:51:00.008-02:00

In 1993, I wasn’t exactly the coolest kid on the playground. I was eleven, and I had horrible pimples, big glasses, crusty braces decorated with pink and purple rubber bands,and a giant nose that grew before most of my other body parts. The frizzy remnants of a home perm my Mom gave me were still visible on my nappy head. I went to Archaeology Camp in the summer and read novels during class that I carefully concealed inside my textbooks. I spent my free time writing a newspaper that I distributed for a dime to friends of my parents. I tried unsuccessfully to start a neighborhood library out of my father’s toolshed. I went to roller skating parties sponsored by my school, just to sit at the snack bar and secretly hope my crush would ask me to skate. I was a nerd. You get the picture.

Miraculously, one day in the cafeteria, I became the center of a lot of attention.

This time it wasn’t because I spilled soup down my blouse or started choking on milk that came out of my nose. No, that day was different. That day my Mom packed Crystal Pepsi in my lunch.

Kids that hadn’t acknowledged my existence for four years suddenly asked to hold my unopened, light blue can. My Mom had wrapped the crap out of it in tin foil, and I made unwrapping it part of the melodrama. My classmates anxiously waited my first sip, and once I finally obliged, everyone wanted to know how it tasted.

I remember taking advantage of one of my few moments in the public eye, and adding a little saoir faire to my sip. “Ahh,” I said, licking my lips, “it’s even better than regular Pepsi!”

In my mind, I envisioned myself as part of Crystal Pepsi’s latest commercial – Van Halen playing in the background, my metal-glinty braces smile lighting up the screen, a satisfied “AHHH!” being my trademark slogan.

My fame was short lived. Within a few days, everyone who desired it had their own can of Crystal Pepsi at lunch, and I returned to spending lunch laughing on cue at other people’s jokes to make it look like someone was talking to me.

Eventually, Crystal Pepsi was gone forever, a victim of poor sales. Let me state for the record that I was a huge fan, and I probably would have spent a shitload of cash on the stuff had I not been eleven years old with no discernable income. I thought Crystal Pepsi was the jump off, but apparently very few other people shared my opinion. Pencilheads.

The scary part is that some of the people who liked Crystal Pepsi ten years ago still have a hard time getting over its demise. In addition to numerous fan pages, there is also a petition to Pepsi to bring the beverage back on the market and (get this) you can also buy bottles of Crystal Pepsi on E-Bay. I’ll bet that'll make a tasty snack. If I won one, I’d be sure to eat it with a thirteen year old bowl of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Cereal.

Tubular.

Let's all get up and dance to a song that was a hit before your mother was born...

2009-05-10T13:09:00.007-02:00

Isn't my Mom just too freaking cute? It's entirely possible that I was dropped off at the doorstep by gypsies, because I don't see how this tall, blonde, slim, tan, graceful woman could have given birth to my plump, kinky brown haired, pasty white ass. On this Mother's Day, I salute the woman who spent countless hours in labor to bring all ten pounds and nine ounces of me into the world. Yes, you read that right. Ten pounds. Nine ounces. I was sort of like a little gurgling holiday ham. With hair.

My Mom is the absolute greatest, and although everyone thinks their Mom is the bees knees, I hope that when I one day have my own kids I can be everything to them that my Mom has always been to me. She was the Mom that would open up the backyard to all the neighborhood kids, serving popsicles and telling stories, complete with character voices. She was there cheering me on when I attempted to play soccer (badly), dance ballet (out of sync), play basketball (again, poorly),and learn piano and violin (disasterously). She was there in the audience for school plays and awards cermonies and mock trial rounds. She encouraged us to be creative and kind, she would put little notes in our lunches telling us she loved us and hoped we were having a great day. She would draw hearts in open faced peanut butter sandwiches and take us to parks for picnics. She took us to libraries and musueums and movies and nature centers. She taught me everything I needed to know about life and unconditional love, and then she let me free into the world to find my own way, all the time without judgment, but always there with a shoulder to cry on.

What I'm really trying to say is that my Mom has been the inspiration for the kind of woman I've wanted to be for the last twenty-seven years. Even though she's a thousand miles away this Mother's Day, she'll be on my mind the whole time. I love you Mom. Here's to you.

* Adorable photo of my Mom taken by my cousin Scott on Mom's last trip to Texas. Scott has Angelman Syndrome and is showing the world his point of view through the lens of his camera. I'll try to post more of his pictures in the future. They're fabulous!

On Top of Old Smokey

2009-05-08T20:00:00.004-02:00

That sweet little angel food that I made for my hubby's 32nd birthday last week is about the most exciting thing that's happened since I last posted. It has rained for the past nine days, and it is beyond the point of depressing. Our backyard looked like the depths of Papua New Guinea, and while I'm sure it's a lovely and exotic place to visit, it's really not ideal for a nice suburban rancher.

This morning, I woke up to the sun, and immediately got worried because I thought maybe it was the Apocolypse. What is this bright burning bulb in the sky? How did it get there? How long will it stay?

Not long, unfortunately.

Jeremy mowed the rainforest this morning, and I ate lunch in the park across the street from my office. Everyone I encountered seemed to be in such a good mood, and can you blame them? Friday! Sunshine!

I was psyched enough by the sunny afternoon to skip out of work a couple hours early, planning to come home and have some beers on the deck with my husband - the man who has put up with my rainy day blues this whole time.

So, I pull into the driveway, get changed, grab a beer, open the front door, and get greeting by a gust of wind and a cold drizzle. The sun, the source of my myth-like admiration just hours ago, has now dissappeared behind some stormy gray clouds. Of course. OF COURSE.

So I'm here on the couch, watching the Game Show Network. I'm still having that beer, because at this point even something as serious as liver disease couldn't keep me from this beer, but I'm back to being somewhat surly as I think about how much my ass misses that porch chair right now.

On a happier note, I'll leave you all with a conversation I had with my husband last night as we were falling asleep. This is why I love this man.

Me: Did you ever make prank calls when you were a kid?

Him: Sort of.

Me: What do you mean, "sort of?"

Him: Well, I used to call up QVC and play "Amazing Grace" and "On Top of Old Smokey" using the keypad on the phone.

Me: Seriously?

Him: (like this is a normal thing that everyone does) Yeah.

Me: How old were you?

Him: I don't know. Ten or eleven. Or twelve. I don't know.

Me: Why?

Him: Because I was bored.

Me: Didn't you have any friends?

Him: No. No I didn't.

2009-04-27T20:44:00.003-02:00

It's another breezy, gorgeous evening here in the Heights, so I'm going to take my lawn chair and a book and go spend an hour or so reading in the shade instead of blogging in doors. Instead, I'll leave you with a repost of something I wrote about a year ago and posted on an old Myspace blog that I've pretty much ignored since then.

Also, I finally organized our house related photos and uploaded them to a Flickr account, now available for your parousal: here .

On The State of Women’s Bathrooms
Ladies, this one goes out to all of you. It’s about our bathrooms. Not the ones at home that we make sure to keep sparkling clean and filled with scented candles, triple ply toilet paper, and Plumeria scented Bath and Body Works Moisturizing Hand Foam. I’m not talking about the bathroom that we buy a multitude of products just to keep clean - the tile cleaner for the shower, the blue stuff for the toilet, the glass cleaner for the window, the scrubbing bubbles for the sinks…. I’m talking about the ones we use while we’re at work. Or at the mall. Or anywhere else where we can do our business in relative anonymity and not be in charge of cleaning.

See, it seems that as soon as we women get a change to pee somewhere where the level of cleanliness doesn’t directly reflect on us like it does in our own homes we lose all sense of etiquette, descend into filth, and adopt a group mentality where lack of class is acceptable as long as someone else is dealing with the aftermath.

When I was a little girl, my Grandma Loretta and I used to hang out while my Mom was at work. Okay, actually she was babysitting me, but it never really felt that way. She was a lot of fun and loved to go out so we’d often spend our days walking around the mall. We’d buy little trinkets, throw pennies into the fountain, gobble up free samples of cheese and summer sausage at the old Hickory Farms store, and eat ice cream cones while sitting on benches and watching people go by. Then we’d usually meet my Pa for lunch and sometimes catch an afternoon movie. Since I was a wee little thing with a wee little bladder, I often had to… well, wee. Loretta hated public bathrooms. She knew it was inevitable that in the course of a six hour day spent at the mall I’d have to go at least three times, but she hated it none the less. If she knew my Pa was coming soon she’d wrinkle her nose and squint her eyes and plead "Can you hold it just a little bit longer?" Most of the time the answer was no, and we’d march over to use the Food Court john.

My Grandmother had her bathroom procedure down pat and she never deviated from it, not for any reason. She would grab a bunch of napkins from the Arbys near the bathroom entrance and use said napkins to open the door as well as to push open and lock the door to the stall. She would throw that napkin in the toilet, grab a fresh napkin, wipe the entire seat with it, and then dispose of it. Then, even though she had wiped the seat, there was still no sitting to be had. I learned the Art of the Squat when I was very young.

1.No part of he body may touch the bowl. This includes not only heinie cheeks, but also the back of the thighs that are in danger of coming too close to the bowl.

2. Pants must not touch the floor. This means that while squatting one hand must always be holding up your drawers, but not holding them so close that you risk getting pee on them. This can pose a challenge.

3. During the squat you cannot touch the walls of the stall. Envision the walls as being made out of fire so that you’re not tempted to use any part of it for balance.

Leaving the bathroom was similar to entering it - your hands didn’t touch a single surface, not even the knobs to sink or the little crank on the paper towel dispenser. I did not dare break any of the sacred Rules of the Public Bathroom. The way my Grandma carried on about it I believed that there were colonies of germs that lived in every crook and crevice just waiting to spread horrible things like Ebola, Leprosy, and Beri Beri. If my arm grazed the dispenser while I was reaching for toilet paper I half expected it to fall off sometime later that day.

Now that I’m older, I’m pretty sure that while all bathrooms (yes, even the ones in our own homes) are swarming with germs and bacteria, women’s restrooms are much more disgusting and bacteria ridden then they need to be. Why? Well, have you been in a public restroom lately? They’re often stinky (which really can’t be controlled and I’m not suggesting we all carry Lysol in our bags just in case we plop something offensive out…), dirty, and in a condition that we would NEVER leave our own bathrooms.

When you’re at home, do you pee all over your toilet seat? If you were to accidentally do so, wouldn’t you wipe it off so that the next person to enter the room doesn’t have to look at your sprinkles? When you’re in your own cozy little powder room do you sometimes forget to flush after you do some nasty business? Probably not. Do you ever flush but realize that it hasn’t gone down and then just walk away from it? Of course not, because you’d be embarrassed if a guest at your home went into the bathroom and came face to face with yesterday’s lunch.

So, why are these things done in public bathrooms? Why is the sink area always so slopped with water and soap remnants that anything placed on the counter will immediately absorb a few pints like a sponge? Why are paper towels left on the floors? Why are things a lot worse than paper towels left in the bowl? Why are disgusting, used feminine hygiene products not properly wrapped up before they’re haphazardly placed in the little box (if they’re even put there at all)? NO ONE NEEDS TO SEE THAT.

Even though I no longer fear getting Ricketts from the door handle of the mall bathroom, I understand where my Grandma was coming from. I don’t want to sit on a pee splattered seat covered in someone else’s crusty butt germs. It’s gross. That’s why I am challenging every woman who reads this blog . Yes, challenging you. Let’s make a little bit of an effort to keep our bathrooms clean. Aim. Wipe. Flush. It’s really not that difficult. Let’s re-claim our bathrooms from clogs, filth, and apathy! Let’s put the ladies back in Ladies Room! Let’s have a heart and realize that someone has to deal with that mess every day, and even if you’ve never met him or her that doesn’t mean you should treat the space they clean any different than the space that you clean.

After all, if it’s difficult to squat while holding your bag and your pants up while trying to balance without hitting the wall imagine how it is going to feel when you’re 80.

The Luckiest

2009-04-26T12:19:00.004-02:00

One year ago, I married the greatest guy in the entire world. Bring on the next fifty years. Hell, bring on the next sixty. We're ready.

Here is a litle something I wrote, shortly after we were engaged in February 2007. Oh, memories.

Mawaige...is wat bwings us togever today.

I'm getting married.

As many times as I've said that in the past few days I still can't get used to it. In fact, just seeing it written up there and knowing that it applies to me is making me tear up a little bit. I never thought I would be one of those somewhat sappy ultra-emotional brides-to-be, but I would be lying if I said I couldn't include myself in that category just a little bit.

Because I am a hotbed of emotion, I do have to get pretty mushy and say some things about Jeremy. Those of you who know him (which is a majority of you...) already know most of what I am about to say. Jeremy is one of the best people I have ever met. He is thoughtful, intelligent, kind, and genuinely cares about each and every person who comes into his life. He is the guy who makes everyone smile. It didn't take long after I met him for me to know that Jeremy was the person I wanted to get old and wrinky with I can't imagine anyone else that I would be happy turning pruny around. I am so honored to have him in my life, not only as the man I'm going to marry, but as my best friend forever. I, my friends, am the lucky one in this relationship.

The proposal was so classic Jeremy that it was perfect. I came home from work and he had ordered sushi, and had set the table with tea light candles and two dozen red roses. I was instructed not to read the card with the roses until after dinner, so I scarfed everything down and I am pretty sure I swallowed at least one or two California rolls without even chewing. When I finally opened the card, it said only the crypic phrase: "Look in the dryer." So I did. There I found a valentine instructing me to look under a towel in the bathroom, where I found yet another valentine telling me to look elsewhere in the house. This continued until I had found 60 (!!!!) hidden valentines, scavenger hunt style. These valentines were hidden on top of the kitchen ceiling fan, between specific pages of books on the bookshelf, behind smores flavored Pop Tarts, and a ton of other places.

The last valentine (although I didn't know it was the last at the time) was hidden behind a picture of us taken a couple of years ago at my cousin's wedding. This valentine didn't lead me to another place - it said "Will you marry me? Circle yes, no, or maybe." I started crying the second I saw the word "marry," and when I turned around he had the ring. I was so overcome and couldn't stop hugging and kissing Jeremy that I think it was a minute or two before I said yes. I have not stopped smiling since.

So there you have it. Planning is still in the very early stage, obviously, but I have already started obsessing over bridal guides and overpriced bride magazines, so I'm sure it won't be long until we have some details. As of right now we would like to have the ceremony in late April of 2008, possibly the 26th if everything works out. I'll keep you posted!

The Failure

2009-04-24T23:21:00.007-02:00

I am pretty much at the end of my rope when it comes to training the dog, and I think it's time to call a professional in. Group dog training was unsuccessful at best, and although it was handy to get Winston to sit (which he does, he just can't master the stay command), it didn't begin to address the main issues we're having - namely his playful (but constant) nipping and licking, his insane barking at other dogs and people, and his Houdini-like knack for escaping from the backyard.

We adopted Winston when he was about seven months old, and we have no way of knowing what kind of training he has before coming to live with us. Most of his behavior issues were apparent right from the get-go, and we only have ourselves to blame for not nipping them in the bud. He was, and is, the first dog either one of us has ever had, and we probably treated him too much like a child and not enough like a dog. As a result he thinks he has he run of the house, and it shows in the way he acts.

We've taken a lot of big steps over the past few months. He is crated each and every time we leave for the day (which, because of our overlapping schedules is for about five hours), and he is crated at night instead of sleeping on our bed, waking up in the middle of the night, barking at nothing, and jumping all over our sleeping heads. Since we started making this a rule instead of an option it seems like his separation anxiety has improved. I hope that this is only a temporary situation, and that once he realizes that although he is a dog, he's not the Alpha Dog, we can go back to nighttime snuzzles.

Still, just when I think that things are on the upturn, another setback occurs. Last month, Winston escaped between the slats of the backyard fence, ran out through the neighborhood and onto a main road, and caused an accident. With new fencing pretty far down on our list (that shit is EXPENSIVE!), but realizing that the dog needs fresh air and exercise, we took a garden pole and securely fashioned a leash to it so long that it stretches to the boundaries of the fence without allowing him to go through it. It's rather unsightly and far from ideal, but it's been working like a charm. Until today.

Most of the time either Jeremy and I are in the backyard with Winston, playing fetch or reading a book while he runs around chasing dandelion puffs and whatnot. Still, in this little house there are times where he just needs to be outside. Like tonight, for instance. My brother was over, graciously installing a new overhead light that I bought as a big first anniversary surprise for Jeremy. Winston kept running into the bathroom and I was afraid he would ingest a drill bit, so into the backyard he went, hooked up to his ingenious leash contraption.

A half hour later, my neighbor called, asking if I was missing a dog. Sure enough, I was. Winston had somehow unhooked his collar (I'm telling you, if I knew when these things would happen I could make so much loot off of my magical escape dog), which set him free of the ingenious leash contraption. Since he's so tiny, he wriggled his way through the slats in the fence and took off. Born free, as freeeee as the wiiiiind blows.

Luckily, my neighbor was able to entice him into her house with a treat, where I promptly claimed him and cursed the gods, because I have no ideas left for how to contain this little monster. I am incredibly frustrated, and I don't have any more tricks up my sleeve. I watch TV, people. I see Cesar Millan LOOK at a dog and it behaves from the rest of its life. What am I doing wrong? If we can't even keep a thirteen pound dog in check, how the hell are we going to manage having a kid one day? How will Winston react to a baby in the house when he greets people by jumping on them and then nipping their fingers?

I think tonight was an eye opening event because I am more sure than ever that we need professional help. I want to be able to enjoy having a dog, and I want my dog to be the happiest he can possibly be, so it's really my only option at this point.

What can I get for one doll-ah? Any-ting you want!

2009-04-16T22:03:00.008-02:00

Long before all this recession business started cramping my spending habits, I was a huge fan of our local dollar store. I live in Delaware where we have absolutely no sales tax, so everything there actually costs a buck, as opposed to $1.06 or $1.09, and there is serious satisfaction involved with going into a store with a Hamilton and coming out with ten useful items.

Please don't misunderstand - I'm not one of those people that buy bacon from the freezer case or weird foreign version of Aquafresh and Dial soap. I have a complete fear of putting anything on or in my body that could very well have been refused for sale at a Mexican grocery store due to exposure to scorpion larvae or botulism. Call me crazy, but I am a firm believer that most name brand items being sold at the dollar store are there for a reason. Maybe they're too close to expiration date, maybe the label was printed incorrectly, maybe they're simply overstock. I'm still not taking my chances.

I also realize that there is a ton of junk at the dollar store. Stinky off brand perfumes, those little parachute men that you throw into the air and watch plummet down to Earth, can openers that may or may not last through a single night of drinking. At yet, there are gems amongst the piss poor quality plastic goblets and possibly contaminated Turkish cookies.

Here are a couple of things I've picked up in the last month that I am not ashamed to tell you I got for one dollar. ONE DOLLAR!

I snagged BOTH of these brown and tan ceramic planters for a single greenback. As soon as my garden sprouts this Spring, I'll do a quick transfer and have a perfect set of plants for my living room.

I am a freak about using coasters on the coffee table, but my naughty puppy snatches the fabric ones and uses them for a chew toy. Solution? These white brushed metal beauties. Goodbye, soda can rings!

We lined the top of the toy piano in our bedroom with these awesome votive holders for the cost of - you guessed it - ONE DOLLAR.

Our dollar store is pretty much the hotspot for cheap picture frames. Yes, there are plenty of frames targeted at the 9-14 year old market, and plenty targeted to the 70-100 year old market, but you can find some treasures if you take the time to look. I bought a bunch of these antique looking frames to fill a blank wall in our bedroom with photos of Winston, pictures of my alma mater well as my husbands, and shots taken around both of our home towns. We printed the photos off on high quality paper from our very own paper, making it a really affordable and fun project.

Speaking of picture frames, these simple black 4 X 6 frames are a staple in my house. I love the way they add a classic, finished look to my photographs. Here's a skinny sliver of wall in my living room spruced up with photos from Europe hanging happily in dollar store frames.

So, lest you think that Goodwill is the only place you can pick up cheap decor items, go check out your own local dollar store and spend some time digging through the junk to find your own gems. Just don't buy the bacon.

3-2-1- Contact

2009-04-10T23:32:00.005-02:00

Pretty much every time I start a new project related to the house, I garner a new arch-nemesis. The list of Things That I Absolutely Cannot Stand grows exponetially every week or so and ranges from the truly benign (tubes of bathtub caulk that for some ungodly reason refuse to dispense themselves in an even manner) to the kind of stuff that will really put your panties in a bunch - things like giant tree roots that invade plumbing like they're part of a Blitzkrieg.

This week's arch-nemesis is...wait for it, this is exciting...CONTACT PAPER! Yes, contact paper. The stuff that you apply to the bottoms of drawers or cabinet shelves to make them look pretty and/or serve as a buffer between your junk and the vessel that your junk lives in. It's terribly exciting, eh?

I had always poo-pooed the idea of contact paper, although I'm not quite sure why. It may have something to do with fleeting memories I have of the drawers in my childhood bathroom. While it's probably not possible to describe them as well as I'd like to, let's just say that they involved red, blue, and yellow blocks accented by a steady stream of Aquafresh toothpaste. That was fine when the bathroom was red, blue, and yellow, but once we moved past the primary color decor and on to a more mature color scheme, those stinking drawers were still rocking the pre-school style. I'd have to check to be sure, but I am almost positive that paper is still lining those drawers.

Although I've ignored my mother's not-so-subtle hints that no kitchen is complete without kitchen cabinets that look like a decoupage project inside, last night I actually bought some during my weekly expedition to Lowe's. I was looking for wooden bed risers (our new bedskirt is awesome, but unusually long) and found myself in the contact paper menagerie. The usual suspects were there - including faux wood contact paper, which scares the hell out of me because I can't even fathom all the scary uses people find for it. I'm imagining faux wood countertops, shellacked to hell with contact paper. Shudder.

Then I spotted this. Ain't she a beaut'?

I snatched up a couple of rolls and spent the short drive home in a state of fluttering excitement, thinking how amazing the paper would look not only in my current kitchen, but even with the cabinets and paint color that will hopefully adorn our space by the end of the year.

And then I got home, and my silly little dreams were destroyed, one by one. I struggled with measuring the depth and width of the shelves. I struggled with keeping the damn thing from curling back up into a tube shape while I was cutting. I struggled with cutting the paper in a straight line. Yes, a straight line. It's not as easy as it seems, okay?

In the end, I resorted to removing the shelves from the cabinet, sitting on the floor, and stretching the paper out over the surface with one leg holding down the paper (to keep it from curling) and cutting around it like a pie crust, all the while cursing my inability to complete simple tasks.

In the end, I completed about half of the cabinets I intended to paper, and my self esteem had been stomped down a few notches due to undeniable home improvement ineptitude. The worst part is that I still have the most difficult cabinets left - the corner unit, the small cabinets over the fridge, and the double cabinet (with permanent shelves that I can't even take out and straddle out of sheer desperation) over the stove.

And yet, tomorrow is another day. Full of contact papering joy. I wish you could feel the apathy oozing out of my pores right now. It's intense.

and I will stand here no more, and I will stand here no less

2009-04-01T20:28:00.005-02:00

My backyard has finally recognized that it's Spring. If only we can get this pesky weather situation to cooperate, we're in business. I'm already planning the menu for our first cookout of the season, and least you think I'm joking, you should check my laptop's browsing history. I've made the ten day forecast my start page,and I check it obsessively. As soon as a Saturday pops up with a temperature that starts with a seven, I'm busting out the lawnchairs and serving spritzers.

On a completely unrelated note, can I just take a moment to say how amazing the album Desire and Dissolving Men by The Wheel is? You don't have to take my word for it. Download My Hanging Surrender. You will thank me for it a thousand times, I promise.

Warning: Bodily Functions Ahead

2009-03-30T21:32:00.004-02:00

ARRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH.

That made me feel a little bit better.

ARGUGSDGJHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!

Okay, I'm getting there. Yes, I in such a crappy mood that I've taken to screaming into the Internet to feel better. Today just started off wrong, and slightly hungover due to my brilliant idea to have a Sunday evening beer and Wii marathon with my husband. Despite my best intentions to go to bed early, I ended up staying awake until nearly midnight anyway. Probably due to the mass quantities of Guinness I'd consumed, my sleep was fitful and somewhere around four o'clock became completely non-existent.

There aren't many things in life worse than laying in bed and watching the clock, trying to will your body to take advantage of the mere hour it has to get some sleep - especially when you're already suffering from a self-induced beer headache and crazily parched throat.

Once I finally got out of bed and showered, the only thing keeping me going was the thought of sneaking a nap on the bus. Although I have all of a twenty-five minute ride to work, I catch an inter-county bus with gorgeously plush high backed seats. The kind of seats made for nappin'. I call my bus the Prince of Motorcoaches, because unlike the rank local buses that smell like urine and force you to park your ass on a plastic half-seat, this bus is Relax City. As a bonus, most of the riders are coming from downstate and have an insanely long ride, so at seven in the morning it is also gloriously quiet. Usually.

This morning, some yahoo decided that he'd bless us all with his loud cellphone conversation about...wait for it...his cellphone. Yes, he was talking to someone about the very phone he was talking on. I now know all about his warranty, his text messaging plan, and his goddamn accessory case, but I didn't get a wink of sleep.

I call people like this fine gentleman "Chatty Johnsons". Male, female, old, young, black, white. Doesn't matter. Chatty Johnsons have absolutely no qualms about their annoying voices being the only sound that forty-five other people are forced to listen to. Chatty Johnsons do not realize that they are the asshole that everyone is cursing uner their breath. Chatty Johnsons do not belong on my Prince of Motorcoaches, I'll tell you that much.

So I get to work, grumble some good mornings, start my computer, and go to make my morning cup of tea. So far, so okay. About an hour later it's Cheerios time. Surely, Cheerios will make me happy, despite my throbbing head. I keep a half gallon of milk in the work fridge at all times for the express purpose of tea and Cheerios. Although I write my name on it with a big, black marker, I know that people take a little nip out of it every once in awhile. No big deal. This morning though, between my tea and cereal it looked like someone had drank at least half of my remaining milk. Not cute.

I brought the milk back to my desk, poured it liberally all over my cereal, and devoured the whole bowl, hangover style. I was thinking about going for Cereal Part 2when I glanced over at the milk and realized something was very, very wrong. No one drank my milk this morning, I was drinking out of an old container that I neglected to throw away before putting in my latest jug. The milk that was now sloshing around my digestive system had expired six days ago.

Although the milk wasn't exactly lumpy, it clearly smelled off. Apparently the battery-acid hangover taste in my mouth had masked the putridity of the milk as I was eating. I immediately felt like I was going to puke, not from the affects of the milk necessarily, but from the thought of consuming a vast quantity of spoiled milk. I ran to the bathroom and locked myself in the handicap stall, where I splashed water on my face and somehow willed myself not to be sick. It was not a pretty picture.

Fast forward to the bus ride home. I've already managed to spill chipotle lime dressing all over my boobs during lunch, run over my toe with my very own chair, and do something to irritate my Old Lady Shoulder, which is inexplicably sore for no obvious reason every couple of weeks. I board the Prince, ready to close my eyes and nap, praying that no one dares to sit next to me. The bus gets a couple stops from work when all of the sudden there is a rumbling in my stomach. Oh no. I've got to go. I've really got to go.

I'm too far from work to run back at this point. That's okay. I can do this, I think. So what if my intestines are twisting with a combination of Guinness and spoiled milk and chipotle lime salad dressing (not the best choice, all things considered)? I take a couple of deep breaths, in through my nose, out through my mouth. Slowly. It won't be long until I'm back at my car and then home. The bus pulls onto the highway - and straight into a wall of traffic. We sit, and sit, and sit some more. I am curling my toes, scooching in my seat, practically hyperventilating. This is how they should interrogate war prisoners. Forget pulling out fingernails! Give them a laxative and make them sit in a public bus, stuck in traffic.

Needless to say, I didn't poo my pants or anything, but I don't ever want to be that close again. Seriously. I didn't even have time to take my coat off before running to the bathroom and making my day a little happier. With the door open. Thank god we don't have children.

Sleep Dog Lullabye

2009-03-27T20:34:00.002-03:00

Winston is the reason why every pillow in my living room is concave when I come home from work, but isn't he just so stinking cute?

The Mysteries of Brownleaf Rd.

2009-03-25T14:36:00.006-03:00

I have probably just been watching too many episodes of The Mentalist lately (god, that show is so easy on the eyes), but I've noticed some odd things that have been going on around the house. I'm sure most of it can just be blamed on my poor memory or my scatterbrain tendencies, except that I don't really have any of that. I can remember the first and last names of kids in my pre-school class, and I am my family's premier multi-tasker. I just don't have an explanation for any of the recent weirdness, and the fact that it all occurred over a single weekend is...well, weird. Hey, I didn't say I was my family's premier vocab champ, did I?
So, here they are, in rough order of occurrance:

1. The Spoons - We received a gorgeous everyday use set of flatware for my bridal shower about a year ago. Like everything else we received, I took really good care of the flatware because it was the first time that I ever had a complete six person set of nice silverware. And then, suddenly, my spoons dissappeared. When I say suddenly, I truly mean that one day I opened the drawer where they've been for a year and there were only two left. I still have 6 of everything else - knives, soup spoons, dinner and dessert forks. But two teaspoons. Jeremy and I grilled each other over their possible whereabouts, but neither of us could think of any reason we would have used, and subsequently lost, four spoons in a single night. They're still missing to this day.

2. The R - So, remember how about a week ago I wrote about my Mom eerily finding a picture of her grandmother (that she's never seen before) on her kitchen floor? This weekend I walked into the kitchen and found a tiny scrap of paper near the chair I'm sitting in now. I turned it over, and it contained nothing but an old fashioned looking typeset letter R. I know that doesn't sound too out of the ordinary, but believe me when I tell you that I have no clue where this scrap would have come from, and the fact that I'd just posted a similar story days before and my great-grandmother's name was Rose... I don't know. It didn't look modern. It wasn't something that came out of a glossy magazine or anything like that. I'd post a picture of it, but my husband, who believes that there is very little legitimate weirdness in the world, made a joke about a ransom note puzzle and threw it away.

3. The Violin- This morning around ten, my husband and I were both waking up (in my defense, I'm not feeling well)when we heard a sound I only describe as three notes being played very loudly on an out-of-tune violin. We both gave each other the "what the hell was that look?" and I got out of bed to investigate. Before I got out the door, we heard it again, slightly different, but still sounding like a very old violin. Both sounds seemed to be coming from our home office, but of course there was nothing there that could have made the sound. Jeremy made a joke about the Symphony Orchestra being lost and needing directions to the Opera House, because, once again, the man can't admit to himself that disembodied instrument sounds aren't normal things.

So there you have it, three unrealted but unexplainable things just in the past week or so. After the violin incident, I kind of wished I was at work today instead of home by myself, where my mind will surely be playing tricks on me in my search for more unexplained mysteries. I'm so leaving all the lights on tonight until my husband gets home.

The Great Bedroom Remix- Day Three and Done

2009-03-23T19:35:00.011-03:00

Okay, I lied. Almost done. We still need to adorn the walls a bit more, and clutter up every surface with our junk so it feels more like a bedroom and less like a display in the Museum of Freshly Painted Bedrooms, but we're those are things that will likely be done little by little during the upcoming weeks. All I have on tap for tonight is curling up in bed and watching a movie, with a really strong candle lit to drown out some of the paint fumes. Yikes.

In other news, our new TV stand thingamajig arrived today - damaged. Lurking inside one of the two forty-five pound shipment boxes was Middle Shelf C, with a seismic crack in it. Boo. Honestly, if it was just a tiny little knick I would have just said to hell with it and started assembling. Sadly, Middle Shelf C is a support shelf, and a crack that size would compromise the structural integrity of the whole unit. Luckily, The Company Store can ship just the replacement shelf to us, saving us from having to fight with sending everything else back. The bad news is that it'll take 3-5 weeks for this to happen, which will put us well into the two month mark of the Great TV Stand Debacle of 2009. First it took me forever to find a piece the right size and color, and now this. Meanwhile, we're still using our TV/VCR combo straight out of 1988. Ha-cha-cha!

I should have known better to assume that the Bell household could order a piece of furniture and have it arrive unblemished. Still, I pouted over it for a couple of minutes, but quickly cheered up when my sweet husband offered to run out and get us a pint of ice cream to share. Oh, I'm so predictable, aren't I?

The Almost Completed Bedroom Remix: Day Two

2009-03-22T19:45:00.007-03:00

Oh, the joys of sleeping on the couch. Not only did I sleep in fits and wake up with my back feeling like it was afflicted with a combination of sciatica and scoliosis, but I got to share my space with Winston all night. I love my dog, I do. But when he's perched on your stomach and stirs at the tiniest little sound, there's not much sleeping to be had.

I still made out better than Jeremy. He graciously volunteered to sleep in the chair, which I think increased his grumpiness tenfold.

Yeah, sleeping on the couch is the pits, but we'll be back in our bedroom tonight! That's right, we pud the pedal to the metal and came out way ahead of schedule. In the span of one very, very, very long day, we accomplished the following:

- 2nd coat of primer and both coats of color
- primed and painted a 5 drawer dresser and two nightstands
- moved all the furniture back into the room in proper fashion
- hung a brushed nickle rod for the sheers that will cover the open closet
- got about 75% of the decorating done

All I'm waiting for is the buzz of the dryer, so I can hang up my freshly washed curtains and make the bed up. Poor thing's been naked all weekend and there's no decency in that.

Even though painting walls absolutely sucks, painting the furniture was surprisingly fast and stress free. Here are a couple of before pictures of our 55 year old faded olive green bedroom set, waiting to be beautified.

For good measure, here is an after picture of the main dresser, although I'll kindly ask you to ignore the missing nob about half way down. It's currently somewhere in the expanse of the back yard, and will probably be located as when Jeremy runs it over with the lawn mower. I usually listen for cursing and then run out to see what treasures he's found.

One more trip to Lowe's tomorrow morning (I bought extra lightswitch plates and not enough outlet covers, oops), a couple pictures that need to go up on the wall, another good vacuum, and we're pretty much done.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I am in desperate need of a cold beer.

The Neverending Bedroom Remix: Day One

2009-03-21T20:25:00.011-03:00

Day One of the Great Four Day Bedroom Remodel is coming to a close, and the labor train is chugging along right on schedule. I still have paint in my hair despite a good scrubbing in the shower, my right eye is still recovering from an unfortunate dripping incident this afternoon, and neither one of my arms can be lifted above my head without considerable pain, but we're ON SCHEDULE, so who cares?

Just to give you an idea of what we're working with, here is our bungalow's main bedroom, in all its non-glory.

In a mere three days, this bedroom will go from zero to hero, with a freshly cleaned carpet, new paint job, new bedspread and decor, and refurbished furniture. I, on the other hand, will likely end up with more bumps and bruises than a month old banana.

Today's accomplishments range from spray painting a wicker baker's rack that I plan to reappropriate as a media center for our little TV and DVD player to priming the walls and giving the carpets the first of two planned steam cleans. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that our bedroom carpets are so grody that they need two full-on cleanings, but it's the sad truth. It's not totally our fault - the carpets are just old and dingy. You know how when you cut down a tree, you can count the rings to see its age, and find the ring that represents an important historical moment like the first shot of the Revolution or the first flight at Kitty Hawk? I think the bedroom carpet is like that as well. That splotchy brown stain near the closet? That can be traced back to a day in 1975 when someone spilled shoe polish. That murky, yellowish stain near the foot of the bed? In 1957, someone dropped a mustard covered hot dog. Eventually, we'll replace all the bedroom carpets to match the wood laminate we have through the rest of the house, but for now it's just not in our budget, so I obsessively steam clean every few months instead.

I completely destroyed two Magic Erasers cleaning the grooves of the old windows and scrubbing the sills and door jambs while getting them reading for spackle and sanding. Spackle, I am convinced, is the Devil's Frosting. I never seem to put the right amount on my scraper and end up with a spot the size of a dinner plate covering a nail hole.

The entire house is in a state of disarray even though we're only painting a single room. We moved most of the furniture into the office, but due to overcrowding (as in, the office is so packed with crap that the door won't shut), our mattress, box spring, and bed frame are all sitting in the middle of the living room. I should have just kept the sheets on and moved the whole bed out here so we'd have a place to sleep, but as it stands now we'll be camping out on the sofa. If it wasn't so chilly out tonight I would totally get some use out of our tent and have a little backyard camping experience. Maybe tomorrow night, who knows?

At the butt crack of dawn tomorrow I want to be back in the bedroom, applying either the second coat of primer or the first coat of color. I don't know that the rule is on that one - if you're painting over a dark color, which is better: two coats of primer and one of color, one coat of primer and two of color, or two of each? We've only worked off of white walls or new drywall thus far, so I guess I've never had to think of it before.

While the paint is drying, I want to continue working on the furniture, probably tackling the night stands. On that note, I'll leave you with a picture of me, modeling the latest in refurbishment couture. Old "PEACE" t-shirt, ratty purple hoodie, greasy, unbrushed, paint splattered hair, sexy face mask.My glamorous life is the envy of the neighbors.

The Sixteen Most Important Albums In My Life

2009-03-21T00:09:00.003-03:00

Since it's a chilly first day of Spring and I'm stuck indoors instead of out in the yard nurturing daffodils or something, here are the sixteen most important albums of my life, in no particular order:

Arcade Fire- Funeral:

I first heard this album courtesy of an old friend on a lonely Thanksgiving Day, far from home. It was the only one I've ever spent away from the people I love, and I think for that reason this haunting and innovative album has been a favorite ever since

Guided By Voices - Under The Bushes, Under The Stars:

Oh, 1996. What a confusing and wonderful year you were. This album reminds me of the better parts of my teenage years, and is an awesome album from the gods of lo-fi.

Pavement- Wowee Zowee:

I bought this album when I was thirteen, and it opened my eyes to a whole genre of music that I fell in love with. I still rock out whenever Grave Architecture comes on my iTunes mix.

The New Pornographers- Mass Romantic

I discovered this album about five years after it came out, around the time I met my now husband. All of their albums remind me of the first few months we dated - the beginning of the happiest times of my life.

Kings of Leon- Aha Shake Heartbreak

This album is just pure, unadulterated fun. We all need that in our lives. It reminds me of Marilyn, who I really miss and wish would come visit. Hint, hint.

Operation Ivy- Energy

I know, I know. The black sheep of my album list. Let me explain it this way: in 1993, middle school angst was at an all-time high. This album was the perfect compliment.

Wilco-Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Summer. Even better, college summer. House parties, street faire, my first apartment, the feeling of absolute freedom on the cusp of adulthood. This album still reminds me of starting to find myself.

David Bowie- Changes

David Bowie is the man. Even though his heyday was well before I was born, I still think of him as a god amongst men. This is the quintessential Bowie collection, except for the fact that it doesn't have Queen Bitch, my favorite song of his. What is THAT about?

Belle and Sebastian- The Boy With the Arab Strap

Belle and Sebastian are perfect for dreamy winter evenings or summer nights on the porch with a cold mojito. This album reminds me of winter during my senior year of high school, and its soothing string arrangements fostered many a dream about the future.

The Shins - Oh, Inverted World

Perfectly crafted, this album takes me back to senior year in college- beers with good friends on the porch of my old apartment building, working at a coffeeshop, the excitement of graduation. Oh, to be 21 again.

My Morning Jacket- Z

Another album that reminds me of meeting my husband. I first heard My Morning Jacket at the University of Delaware's radio station, where I had a show in college. I saw them live at the Stone Balloon, the venue where my parents met. I saw them again through the years, most memorably at Bonnaroo in 2006, at midnight. This album is still my favorite of theirs.

The Smiths- Louder Than Bombs

Yes, it's a compilation album. In my defense, The Smiths released a lot of singles not included on albums, so this is the definitive Smiths album for me. And oh, how I love The Smiths.

Spoon- A Series of Sneaks

For reasons I won't go into, this album brings back memories of New York City, Lolita, long walks from Jersey City to Pavonia/Newport. I listened to this album in a lot in my late teens, on the last cassette tape I ever owned.

Tori Amos- Under The Pink

I'm not a huge Tori fan, but this album sort of came out at the right time. I can remember early in my morning, before my first day of high school, listening to this album as I got ready. I was going to a new school, a private school where I knew only three people, two of whom I didn't even like. Tori's soothing voice still brings me back to the sheer trepidation of that day.

Hefner- We Love the City

Oh, Britpop, you were a staple in my teenage years. Blur, Suede, Pulp, Elastica, and my beloved Hefner. Beth and I were both really into this band, and this album is fantastic. Hefner may be the most underrated band of the 90s Britpop invasion.

Gerry Rafferty- City to City

Hello, childhood? Childhood, can you hear me? One of my fondest memories is dancing to Right Down the Line with my Dad.

How about you guys? What albums shaped who you are?

Hello, risotto.

2009-03-19T20:07:00.003-03:00

The beautiful risotto to your left is this evening's masterpiece - a delicious, perfectly creamy dish that I made in about a half an hour. In my microwave. Thank you, Everyday Food.

I can't find the recipe online to link to, here's the recipe from the April 2009 issue, which arrived just in time for me to use up all those mushrooms I had left over from last weekend's pizza extravaganza.

- 2 tablespoons butter
-1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
-10 oz. button mushrooms, trimmed and quartered
- coarse salt and ground pepper
-1 cup Arborio or long-grain rice
-1 (14.5 oz.) can of chicken broth
- 3 cloves of garlic, sliced
- 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan

I substituted Shitake for button mushrooms, and I think they worked out well. First, the butter and thyme are nuked for about a minute in a microwave safe container with a lid that fits on nice and tight - this will be essential later when the rice tries desperately to escape while cooking. I used an 8 quart round Pyrex dish with a lid and it worked out perfectly.

Next, throw the mushrooms in with your herbed, melted butter, cover, and microwave for about 8 minutes. If you use a thinner sliced mushroom you may want to cut that time back a bit. I learned that the hard way when my Shitakes came out almost as crisp as bacon. Transfer the mushrooms to a plate to me used later, and combine your rice, chicken broth, and garlic, along with however much salt and pepper your heart desires. I didn't use reduced sodium broth, so I skipped the salt all together. Microwave for 9 minutes, covered.

Next, add 2 cups of water to your semi-plumped rice, and microwave for another 9 minutes. The recipe then calls for you to add the mushroom and microwave for another 2 minutes. Although the instructions don't specify, I microwaved without adding the mushrooms, with the dish uncovered because my risotto was looking a bit watery.

After the two minutes were up, I added the mushrooms and Parmesan, gave it a good stir, and I had an awesome, no-sweat risotto without even turning on the stove.

One more tip - Everyday food claims that this recipe serves four people, but I just don't see how that's possible, unless it's served as a side dish only. I planned for this to be the main course for my husband and I, and panicked after I saw the amount of risotto the recipe produced. The picture I posted above is roughly half of the total yield, so you may want to consider increasing the ingredients a bit if you have an appetite greater than a bird. Luckily, I had some thin-cut chicken breast in the fridge that I threw in the oven. It was a nice compliment to the risotto, but it held up dinner by about 15 minutes, and risotto is a dish better served immediately. I probably would have been pissed if I was making dinner for guests only to find out that I barely had enough for two.

2009-03-18T21:34:00.008-03:00

I wish you guys could see me right now, because I have this goofy, shit eating grin on my face that only happens when I've purchased the absolute perfect something for the house.

Today, I purchased two absolutely perfect somethings for the house, one of which I've been searching for for well over a month: a TV stand with the perfect measurements. Man, you should really see my grin.

Behold our current entertainment center:

Outdated in almost every imaginable way? Check.

Collection of random board games inside the display cabinet because we really have nothing to display? Check.

Flawed design feature that requires unsightly wires to be plugged in to the front of the unit instead of the back? Check.

Teeny tiny television with a BUILT IN VCR? Yeah, we've got that too.

But not for long! We have a nice, normal, modern television sitting in the spare bedroom just waiting for the arrival of something much simpler and elegant:

The dimensions will hold our new television perfectly, and it'll fit snugly under that pesky living room to kitchen wall cut-out. Oh, gods of online shopping, you have finally decided to look down upon this house favorably.

That oddly small picture is the bedding set I ordered for our master bedroom, which also means that we'll spend this weekend doing one of my least favorite things: painting. We need to paint not only the walls and trim, but also our bedroom furniture, which is a light olive color set from the 1950s that was one of the first things my grandparents bought for their house. In a way I hate to alter it, but on the other hand, isn't that the beauty of hand-me-downs? I'm excited to give it a new life - one that will surely include new hardware. Don't worry - those diamond shaped retro knobs will be recycled in another project - eventually.

I was thinking of going with a deep cream color for the dressers and something from this palate for the walls, maybe Ounce of Silver?

I honestly don't know how I'll occupy my time when the house is finally finished. I guess I'll let you know in twenty years - give or take.

About that time that a psychic gave me a message from my great-grandmother

2009-03-16T19:28:00.002-03:00

I was working in the cafe of a bookstore in New Jersey soon after moving there after college. I was in that stage of my life where I had no idea what I wanted to do and was perfectly content with working for peanuts and talking to people about books and coffee all day. Like any other coffee shop, the cafe had a regular morning crowd, a regular mid-day crowd, and a regular evening crowd. It was kind of comforting to have regularity day in and day out, especially because I was hopelessly homesick.

I’ll always think of New Jersey as being my own personal Pit of Dispair , but that job wasn’t half bad. I got to talk a lot, and we all know I love to talk. I talked to college kids, dog groomers, stay at home moms. I talked to a woman whose father was the founder of a cult that she would never tell me the name of. She changed her name, got a Phd, and has recently solved a very important mathematical theorum. But she is not the focus of my story.

The woman I want to write about is named Sarah.* Sarah worked close to the bookstore and came in around mid-morning for a latte nearly every day. She was bubbly and sweet and loved to talk, so we got along swimmingly. Around Halloween she told me she was participating in an all-night paranormal investigation at a local private residence, because she had recently suffered a long illness and emerged as a sensitive medium. This was years ago, before I ever could have dreamed that I'd one day be leading tours myself as part of Delaware Ghost Tours , and before I'd ever met other people interested in the paranormal, so her statement took me by surprise.

I've always been a believer in the paranormal, and I know people who are incredibly sensitive themselves, but at the time I'd never had anyone talk about it so openly - especially someone who was essentially a stranger. Not wanting to be rude, but not really having time to think of anything to say I just kind of nodded and said “Wow, really?”

Now, let me take a break in the story to let you know that “Wow, really?” is the quintessential thing that I say when I have no idea what else should come out of my mouth. It’s especially useful when listening to someone with an accent so thick that you have no clue what they just said. Usually people just respond with a “yes” and you move on. And we did just that. Several weeks went by and she never mentioned anything about ghosts or psychics, and I never brought it up. One morning, she came in as she usually did, we made small talk, she paid for her drink, and then turned to leave. Before making it out the door she stopped, turned around, and came back over to the counter.

“Would you be uncomfortable if I told you something that is coming to me from a paranormal source?”

Would I be uncomfortable? The first thing that came to my mind was: please don’t tell me I’m going to die. Is she going to tell me I’m going to die? But what came out of my mouth was “No, not at all.”

“Well, okay. I’ve been wanting to tell you this for quite some time,” she started. Please, please, no death, no death, I thought.

“I’m not going to talk about death!”

Now she had my attention. Was it the look on my face that gave me away, or was she really picking up on what was running through my head? “First of all, I need to know the connection to the rose.”

The connection to the rose? Where do I begin? Well, for starters, Rose is my middle name, I explained.

“Because from the first time I met you, I’ve seen roses all around you and I don’t think it’s just because of the name. It’s connected to the older woman who I sometimes see hanging out near you.” Now I was spooked. Rose is the name of my fabulous great-grandmother who is sadly no longer with us. For most of my life, I’ve felt that Rose was indeed still hanging around me, but more on that later. I explained the connection, and Sarah nodded. She mentioned a few other, more personal things that she claimed were messages from Rose, and then a bunch of commuters with caffeine jitters started queing up behind her, and she squeezed my hand and left.

I didn’t know what to think for a long time. The Rose connection was eerie, but I wasn’t completely sold. She could have heard me talk about Rose, she could have heard me mention my middle name. Hell, I could have told her my middle name and just not remembered the conversation. Still, it always stuck in my mind because - well, how could it not?

The connection to my great-grandma Rose and myself has three and a half other quick stories, each one of them kind of eerie. The first happened when I was very young. We were on vacation during the summer, and I was asleep with the bedroom window open. At some point during the night my Mom came to check on me and discovered that a trail of big, red, fire ants had made their way in through a small tear in the window screen and were all over the headboard of the bed I was sleeping in. As she ran over to grab me, she swears that she heard Rose’s voice saying - clear as day- “Don’t worry gal, I didn’t let any bugs get on our baby.” Sure enough, there wasn’t a single bite on me, even though the ants were all over the pillow and the bedsheets.

The second story happened when our family first moved into the new home my parents built during the 1980s. I was at school and my Mom was putting away laundry. She walked upstairs into my room and as soon as she entered the threshold, she smelled her grandmother. Sometimes there really isn’t an accurate way to describe the way someone smells. It’s a mix of shampoo and perfume and laundry detergent and body chemistry, but after awhile it becomes familiar. She knew what it was, and she got the feeling that Rosie was checking out the new house and making sure everything was okay.

The third incident also involves my Mom and the house. A few months after the second experience, she was walking through the kitchen and noticed a yellowish square of paper on the white linoleum floor. My Mom is kind of nuts about being clean, so she picked it up on the tip of her finger and flicked it into the trashcan. Hours later, there it was again on the counter. She picked it up on her finger once again, flipped it over, and discovered it was a photo. Of Rose. It was just Rose’s face, and it was a photo she had never seen before. The shape of it and the lack of centering made it implausible that it was cut for a locket, but there it was all the same. This time, she put it safely in her jewelry box, where it stayed for several weeks until one day it suddenly wasn’ t there anymore. We still have no idea where it came from. Maybe it was just Rose’s way of letting us know she was still checking up.

The last story is the one I call the half, because I’m really not sure if it was related to Rose or if I just want it to be. In late June of 2004, I got into a really bad car accident on my way to work. My car was hit by an 18-wheeler on a highway and completely totaled. There wasn’t anything left of the back seat of the car, the windows were all smashed in, and yet I walked away without a scratch. If there is someone watching over me, then they brought their A game that day.

In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, I was making small talk with the driver and discovered that he was originally from Jersey City. He grew up on Hutton Street, just a few houses down from the little red rowhouse where my great-grandmother, Rose, had lived for most of her life. It's a small coincidence, for sure, but a quarter million people live in Jersey City at any given time, and moments after I walk away from a crushed car, I meet someone who, as a little kid, knew the woman I consider to be my guardian angel.

*Name has been changed, and this entry is edited and reposted from an old blog.

About that time my brother wanted to be a grave digger...

2009-03-15T02:35:00.001-03:00

My brother was the kind of child who was easily influenced by things he watched on television or read in a book. For example, when he first saw Karate Kid, he became obsessed with making up his own form of kung-fu and practicing in his room wearing a pair of pajamas that was made to look like a karate outfit, complete with a black belt. Considering I was the target of many of his newly invented moves (such as the jump-from-the-top-of-the-bunk-bed-and-beat-the-shit-out-of-your-sister-while-saying-HIIIIYYYAAA! move) this was a rather bleak time for me.

When Back to the Future came out, he immediately started begging my Mom for a jean jacket and a padded vest, a pair of sunglasses, and those old school white Nikes with the red stripe on the side. If memory serves me correctly, he got at least the jacket and vest for his next birthday, and although he had already moved on to imitating characters from other movies, he would still put on his get-up every time we watched the movie.

My parents always indulged our imaginations, and I give them a lot of credit for that. They never told me that in all likelihood I would not grow up to be a professional ballerina during the day and an astronaut at night. I was never discouraged from writing love letters to all the members of the New Kids On The Block and planning what Ralph Maccio and I would name our future children.

Just for the record, it would have been Ralph Maccio Jr. for a boy, and Laverne Shirley Macchio for a girl.

Although we were encouraged to dream and create to our little hearts content, there were times that we clearly took it over the limit. One day, my own children will be complete jerks, just like I was. This is probably my Mom's one wish in the world.

One summer my Mom was out in the backyard hanging laundry on the clothesline to dry, when she heard giggling and scampering feet coming through the kitchen. Seconds later, the screen door leading to the backyard popped open and there stood my brother, with most of his exposed skin covered with hair. For a few moments she was probably unable to grasp exactly what kind of catastrophe she was witnessing, until my brother made his hands into a monster’s claw shape, howled, and exclaimed “Look Ma! I’m a werewolf!”

Inspired by watching Teen Wolf on cable, my brother had taken scissors to his head, cut off huge clumps of hair, and then pasted the hair all over himself. A buzz cut and a stern talking to later, my Mom gave us both large cardboard boxes decorated with felt and filled with various crafting items like pipe cleaners, pom-poms, buttons, and construction paper. I think she realized that if we weren’t given a proper medium for expression she was probably risking waking up one morning to find us covered in homemade tattoos that we’d inked from a ballpoint pen and sewing needle.

Still, my brother continued to be extremely effected by all forms of media, which was especially evident in the myriad of career choices that his youthful self planned for the future. One day, when he and his friend Gregory read a children’s book about a graveyard on Halloween, they decided that there was nothing they wanted more in life than to one day become grave diggers. They weren’t at all interested in dealing with the mortuary end of things - the embalming or the funeral arrangements, the soft spoken condolences to the family of the deceased- no, Greg and Mike were blue collar men. They wanted to wear coveralls and bandanas, they wanted dirt under their fingernails and calluses on their hands.

Ambitious and eager to perfect their skills at their future vocation, the two boys started digging. Starting in our sandbox, they soon realized that it lacked the depth a real grave would surely have and became dissatisfied. Using child sized shovels made out of hard plastic, made it was difficult for them to break ground in our newly thawed backyard that Spring.

So, after breaking their entire arsenal of sand shovels and Little Tykes Gardening Set instruments, my Dad reluctantly took one of his own small metal shovels and sawed down the handle to make it more appropriate for his three foot, seven inch frame. Then he took a rubber grip off of an old mop and fashioned it to the handle, and cut the fingers off of an old pair of batting gloves he had in the garage. The gloves were still a little big on my brother, but they gave him the satisfaction of feeling like a real gravedigger.

It didn’t take long for Dad to regret modifying the grave digging shovel for Mike's practice digs. Our backyard was soon becoming pock-marked and unsightly. Mounds of dirt full of wiggling earthworms sat next to shallow holes, abandoned when one of the boys encountered a tree root or got tired of standing in the same place for too long. After a day or two they were ordered to fill in all the holes and relocate to a park down the street, where they spent most of their summer.

The grave digging ambition continued for some time, although the practice decreased in frequency once the boys started school. Mike would doodle headstones and grave markers on his sketch pad, trying to make designs he thought fit the personality of those near and dear to him.

For example, he wanted to make a pink heart for my mother's headstone when she died, and on days when he was feeling particularly mean to me he would threaten me with a promise to forget to close my coffin during my burial so that worms could crawl inside and eat my nose. He took his chosen profession very seriously.

To this day,I'm afraid to cross my brother.

In Defense of Rachael Ray

2009-03-11T19:58:00.004-03:00

Today is the first and only day this week where I can come home from work, put on some comfy clothes, and veg out on the couch. I have absolutely nothing planned, with the exception of tuning in for Lost tonight at nine. As an added bonus, dinner was waiting for me in the crockpot, courtesy of my husband. It was sausage and cabbage, which I happen to like, but even if it was a geoduck and Casu Marzu casserole I probably would have had seconds, because I was famished. Slow cooked cabbage makes a house smell vaguely like a prison laundry room, but it's so worth it.

I watched 30 Minute Meals with Rachael Ray while eating, and as she was making a jiacama and carrot slaw with an orange sauce and cilantro, she said something to the effect of people either loving or hating the taste of cilantro - there's no in between. I stopped imagining myself eating jiacama and carrot slaw long enough to realize that she could have said the exact same thing about herself. Doesn't it seem like people either love or loathe this woman? Rachael, you are the cilantro of the Food Network.

I was just having a conversation about her the other day, in fact. Most of the other people in the conversation talked about how annoying she was and how they just couldn't stand her and so on and so forth. I honestly don't get it. I watch 30 Minute Meals almost daily, and not only am I not put off by her personality, but I've gotten a lot of good recipes and tips by tuning in.

Yes, she's perky as hell, but wouldn't you prefer someone who giggles at her own jokes and talks to turnips over a strict, schoolmarm silently chopping vegetables and scowling at her unseen audience?

Okay, she also gives unnecessary abbreviations and nicknames to pretty much everything. I don't think there is a single person in the world that doesn't develop a little of their own vernacular. When you get together with your best friend or your significant other, don't you start saying things like "Let's go to Carlito's to grab a bite of some yum yum bump bump grub?" No? Okay, that's probably just me. How about "Please take the dog out before he does a poopski on the floor and I go berzerker." Oh. Just me again?

Anyway.

A lot of people seem to have a beef with Rachael Ray's lack of training, but as someone who loves to cook, I think it's refreshing. She measures tablespoons by filling the crook of her palm. She doesn't use terms that you need a culinary dictionary to understand. I can't stand watching a cooking show and hearing someone call egg whites "albumen" or some freaking raw celery and onions "battuto." I like the fact that her show isn't shot in soft light with dramatic closeups of manicured hands slowly kneading dough while fusion jazz plays in the background. I want to learn how to cook, not watch food porn. Giada de Laurentiis, I'm looking at you.

She makes food accessible and fast, and trust me when I tell you that there are days when I feel like putting a PopTart in the microwave for dinner will take too long. There are days where I long for the day when the Food-A-Rac-A-Cycle from The Jetsons is invented and I can push a button and have all my culinary desires satisfied.

I've heard the criticism that many of Rachael's 30 Minute Meals can't be replicated by the average home cook in thirty minutes. I don't doubt that's true. She uses a lot of pre-washed veggies, and she has stellar knife skills. This woman is like a perky little Edward Scissorhands, and she unleashes a fury onto the cutting board. I know I can't chop things as quickly, so it'll take me some more time. I also don't have a cooking show stovetop that can accommodate huge pots and pans simultaneously or an oven that miraculously heats to 400 degrees in the time it takes her to chop cauliflower, and I certainly don't have whatever magic pots Rachael cooks her pasta in to make it cook completely in a three and a half minute commercial break, which I think is often the result of some crafty editing.

But still, her meals are mostly made of fresh, healthy, non-processed ingredients. Thirty minutes is a concept, not an exact measurement of time. The point is that if you can make yourself or your family something flavorful and not full of sodium and monoglycerides and you don't have to spend an exorbitant amount of time slaving over the stove, then why not give it a try a couple nights a week? Considering a Stouffer's family sized lasagna takes an hour to cook in the oven, I'm not going to split hairs over an extra ten minutes.

So, to all the foodies who think that starched whites and exotic ingredients are the only route to culinary success, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Yum-O!

The dirty young wives turn to dirty young mums in the Springtime

2009-03-09T21:02:00.008-03:00

I know it's only the ninth of March, but can I just say how ready I am for Spring to make its permanent arrival? It was almost gorgeous this weekend - in the upper 60s during the day, but overcast with gray clouds that threatened to dump rain at any minute.

Even though we're a few solid weeks or more away from the kind of weather I want, I'm eeking out every ounce of Spring humanly possible. For one thing, I started carrying my lemon yellow bag and switched to my blue lightweight waistcoast. Today, I paired them with pink shoes, because once the warm weather bug bites, I refuse to give it up even when it's back to 40 degrees. That's right, atmosphere. Can't nobody hold me down.

I added some new foliage to the house in anticipation of all the planting I want to do once the ground thaws enough. Meet Veronica, my new plant of an undetermined nature. Yes, she is sadly undernourished and about a quarter of the size she should be, but that's where I come in.

I've also gotten into the mindset where I only want to wear flip flops when I'm not at work, as you can see from the picture below.

Yikes. I should get myself into the pedicure mode as soon as possible.
I also decided that some snazzy pink finger nails could perhaps will the gods of Spring to get on with this warm weather thing already.

Okay, maybe the pink fingernails are a little cheesy, but you know what is entirely awesome? When my cat and dog decide to be friends, even for a minute.

See, Springtime is for lovers after all.

2009-03-06T13:32:00.004-03:00

I cannot believe what happened this morning!

I'm home sick from work today because the head cold I've been fighting with for the better part of a week has disquietly settled into my chest and is now creating a bevvy of unpleasant symptoms.

When I woke up this morning, I let Winston into the backyard so that he could do his business and run around a bit, now that the snow is finally melting. He had a history of getting out between the slats of the fence when he was smaller, but since we put up some temporary garden edging as a reinforcement, he's been fine. In fact, all this week I've let him out in the hard for up to a half hour to frolic in the snow, with absolutely no issues.

After a few minutes, I asked Jeremy to go call him in so he could eat his breakfast and get warmed up, and Jeremy said that he was just kind of playing and didn't seem interested in coming inside, so he let him be. About five minutes later, he was gone. He must have crawled under the edging and out through the fence. Jeremy ran out front, but didn't see him, so he came back in to get his keys and take the car around the neighborhood to look for him. As he was doing that, I looked out the window and saw three people chasing my dog, who was coming from the direction of the main road that our neighborhood is off of.

Jeremy ran out and managed to wrangle him in, but as it turns out he had already caused an accident, when a van stopped short to avoid hitting him, and a car plowed in to the back of the van.

With the dog safely in the house, Jeremy went down to the fender bender, made sure everyone was okay and that the police were called, and then gave our name, address, and phone number to both drivers in case the police needed to talk to us. That was a couple of hours ago, and we haven't heard anything since, but I suppose their insurance companies may want to confirm the story with us.

I can't even believe this happened. I feel like a horrible dog mama, and a horrible person. What is Winston had gotten hit by a car? What if anyone in those vehicles had been seriously injured or killed? At a minimum, our dog caused a major headache in these people's lives and caused damage to their cars. I'm so thankful it wasn't worse than that, but I still have this awful feeling in my gut, like I was responsible for a horrible thing.

The people involved in the accident were very nice and understanding. One woman just kind of smiled and said "That's life!", and I know it could have been a stray cat or a deer or one of the geese from the pond that wandered into the road and caused the same result, but it wasn't. It was our dog, under our watch, and it just feels so awful.

The Progress Chart

2009-03-04T21:45:00.005-03:00

What is it about weekdays off that make them infinitely more productive than weekends? I feel like I get nothing done on your typical Monday through Friday, but when I take a day off during the week, I get this urge to run non-stop for twelve hours until I can check everything off of my list.

I suppose it has something to do with the fact that I don't have to wait until six thirty or seven at night to start doing things that need to be done. And the fact that I haven't just put in a nine hour workday, schlepped my ass home on the bus, walked the dog through the freezing cold night while begging him to poop before my hypothermia sets in, begrudgingly cooked something healthy for dinner when all I want is stuffed pizza from Ciao, and then tried to put in 40 minutes of Wii Fit without the dog freaking out at my flailing arms and legs and trying to bite my toes, which is pretty much my typical night. Who wants to head back out after all that jazz? I'm generally perfectly happy on the couch, getting some writing done or researching graduate programs with a mug of hot tea in my hand.

I sort of have a self-righteous entitlement issue going on with weekends. I feel like I've worked hard and deserve that Friday night Happy Hour, and I deserve to blow off all of my responsibilities in order for Jeremy and I can rent six movies that we watch in our PJS over the course of two days, and I totally deserve a piece of that stuffed pizza after all, because everyone knows that weekend calories don't count since can easily burn them off with a Saturday afternoon bedspread romp.

Jeremy and I both took a vacation day on Friday, giving me a three day weekend and inadvertently giving him a four day weekend because the sissies at his office closed due to the "snowstorm" that blew through on Sunday night. Having a weekday off did wonders for my motivation, and we got a ton accomplished on the house.

Now, those of you who (like the two of us) bought what was essentially a junky house and are renovating it a little at a time on a limited budget with absolutely no experience in these sort of things know that real life is nothing like HGTV renovation shows. For one thing, I don't have a highly qualified staff of hotbodies with an unlimited set of tools and energy to whip me up some crown molding or built in bookshelves. I also rarely, if ever, have 24 obligation free hours to string together and get projects finished immediately. Everything is piecemeal, frustrating, and often chaotic.

However, when we're hot, we're hot. This past long weekend? We're about 90% done with the home office - we just need to hang some curtains and frame some of the larger paintings of our good friend and talented Philadelphia-based artist Den Cob. We have several pieces from his Freaks collection that I can't wait to get up on our walls.

My piece de resistance of the weekend is that I regrouted the tiles on the bathroom floor! I can't lie - it absolutely sucked and took a few solid hours, but it was so worth it. No amount of scrubbing and bleaching was doing the trick, so I took matters into my own hands.

As I stood in the doorway of my tiny bathroom, armed with my grouting tool, I felt like a character in a Sergio Leone western. I stared at the tiles. They sat, staring back at me. I gingerly placed my hand on the grouting pen and squinted, considering the delicate balance of regrouting versus drinking a beer and reading on the couch. A tumbleweed blew by. The shrill vibrato of a pan flute rang out into the air. The sun gleamed off a single tile, daring me to make my move. I made my move, and four hours later my sore knees and aching back were the only indication that my bathroom floor had once been a the scene of some of the nastiest grout this side of the Mississippi.

Here's the midway point. The finished tile is at the top of the picture, although I hope that's rather obvious.

Here's the finished product. Please ignore the carnation pink shower tile, AKA the bane of my existence.

It's not perfect, but I think I did a damn good job for someone with absolutely no handyman skill set and a spotty track record when it comes to motivation. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to ignore the dishes in the sink so that I can eat Girl Scout cookies and watch Lost.

Dinner

2009-02-19T21:11:00.004-03:00

Instead of being Negative Nancy again tonight and blogging about things I don't like, I'm going to focus on the positive and share the recipe for an awesome cold pasta salad, courtesy of the latest edition of Everyday Food Magazine that I made for dinner tonight. It's easy, super delicious, and it made me feel like I was at a summer picnic, instead of sitting in my kitchen on a ridiculously cold and windy February night.

I can't find a copy of the recipe online, so here's what I used: a pound of shrimp (raw, not frozen), about three quarters of a box of medium sized shell pasta,an entire English cucumber (halved and thinly sliced), about a half cup of finely chopped fresh dill, and a sauce made of 2 tablespoons each of lite mayo, lemon juice, and olive oil with a teaspoon of dijon mustard - seasoned to taste with salt and pepper.

I was leary about making this dish, because although I love most of the ingredients, I loathe mayo and mustard. I was one of those kids that ate sandwiches dry and stuck to ketchup on my burgers. Now that I'm older, I use it in cooking but s
till sometimes gag at the smell of it alone. I think it was the lemon and dill combo that drew me in. Double yum.

First, the pasta is boiled in salted water about six minutes, until it's al dente. Then, the shrimp goes right into the pasta water and cooks with it for another 4-5 minutes until all the poor little decapods are pink.

While the pasta and shrimp are doing their thing, I chopped up the dill and the cucumber. I love English cucumbers. For one thing, they're not waxy like their common cucumber bretheren. They also have smaller seeds, which reduces the bitterness, and supposedly they're also easier to digest. Bonus!

Next, I mixed all the wet ingredients together. The sauce itself is a little bitter, but I promise you that once you add it to the other ingredients (especially the dill, which balances everything out perfectly), it's very mellow and subtle.

Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Pictures are forthcoming, as long as Snapfish decides to cooperate and accept my mobile uploads sometime relatively soon.

Things I've Tried To Like, But Just Can't #2 - Led Zeppelin

2009-02-16T21:46:00.003-03:00

There is a lot of really shitty music floating around the world at any given time. In fact using an array of extremely scientific measurements, I've come to the conclusion that for every really great band in the history of the world, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 456,876 horrible, wretched bands attempting to drown them out.

Led Zeppelin isn't one of those bands. They're not too sexy for their shirt. They don't wanna sex u up. They don't think it's fly when the girls stop by for the summer. For the summer. I'm pretty sure they've never wanted to see anyone's thong.

I just don't like them.

I've always been a fan of what we now call "classic rock." Yes, I was born in 1981, but my formative years were also spent listening to music with my Dad, who was, and still is, a 60s/70s rock devotee. Rolling Stones, Allman Brothers, Warren Zevon, Springsteen, Hendrix, Cream, Creedence, Pink Floyd, BTO and ELO - that's the stuff I was raised on.

My Dad used to put on In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida to get my little brother pumped up before little league football games. And you know those infomercials for the Time Life 70s music collections? I could have written that shit. I am well versed in the era's music, lest you think I'm just some youngin' who is incapable of enjoying a band before my time.

That being said, I just don't like Led Zeppelin, and I'm not really sure why, just like I'm not sure why I don't like lima beans or PT Cruisers. I've tried to like them, fully aware of their place in music's history, but at about the 30 second mark of every song I've just had enough of the repetitive guitar riffs and Robert Plant's over-affected voice dragging every note out until it implodes.

I've gotten into discussions with Led fans who just cannot believe I don't like the band and try to convince me that I should just give them another listen. If you're one of those people, please rest assured that I just listened to a medley of their songs, and I am sorry to announce that I still hate your favorite band.

Things I Have Tried To Like, But Just Can't #1 - Birch Beer

2009-02-12T20:51:00.005-03:00

1. Birch Beer - I am a thirsty lady. It's possible that I'm part camel, as I've never done my full family genealogy, but I have a constant need to be well-hydrated. At work I go through three or four 36 oz. cups of water a day, plus my morning and afternoon tea, which is so sophisticated of me. When I get home, I'm ready to pollute my body with various carbonated diet sodas, because they're kind of like drinking water, if you accidentally dropped in some bicarbonate and artificial sweetener and food coloring. Hey, I'm a flawed human.

My weapon of choice has traditionally been a nice can of the fizzy stuff, mostly for the portability factor, but also because it eliminated washing a glass at the end of the night. I know, my sloth takes on new and desperate forms by the day, doesn't it? Anyway, although we recycle I still realize that a case of soda contains a lot of wasteful packaging, and they're nowhere near as cost efficient as bottles are, so I made the switch to 2 liter bottles at Jeremy's urging. In an effort to get me all gung-ho about saving money, he even bought me a cute little mini-jug to drink my soda out of which solves at least the portability issue. He also took advantage of our local Acme's 10 for $10 sale on 2 liter soda bottles, giving me a menagerie of options that I never explored when I was strictly an aluminum type of gal.

I breezed through the Coke Zero and Diet Sierra Mist and all of the other run-of-the-mill varieties, but I purposely ignored the bottle of Pennsylvania Dutch Diet Birch Beer. For one thing, I didn't like the way the bottle looked. It's a ridiculous reason, but this company has clearly not redesigned their label since the 70s. I was secretly nervous that this was a forgotten bottle of soda, left on a truck somewhere in Lancaster for three decades until someone discovered it and tried to unload it during Acme's 10 for 10 sale. I was also nervous about the slogan - "Old fashioned taste, old fashioned goodness." How, I wondered, does old-fashioned taste? Like dust? Mothballs? Senior citizens? I shudder to think.

Also of concern was that, from my limited understanding, a birch is a tree. It is not a tasty treat. I think they make toothpicks out of birch pulp, and not only are toothpicks not a weird reddish color, but they do not have bubbles. I took a quick look at the ingredients - carbonated water, caramel color, natural and artificial flavors, aspartame - run of the mill soda stuff, but no birch. So, I cautiously open the bottle and pour some into my little jug. It behaves like normal soda. So I take my first sip.

Oh. My. God. All the sudden I'm Colonel Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. THE HORROR! THE HORROR!

Birch Beer is the Devil's Nectar. It is one of the most foul things I have ever tasted in my life. Birch Beer tastes like someone took a perfectly good vat of Root Beer, and then dissolved a couple hundred beef bullion inside of it, liberally sprinkled some Mrs. Dash, and then shook the whole thing up and sent it to Amish Country, where it was re-packaged as this Birch nonsense. I'm not exaggerating when I say that there were flavors that hit my taste buds for the first time, and those flavors made my taste buds very angry.

For those of you that enjoy the Old Fashioned Taste, more power to you. Personally, I'll stick to nice watery domestic pilsners - the kind of beer that actually rewards me with a nice buzz for putting up with its mediocre taste.

Tune in for the next installment of - Things I Have Tried To Like, But Just Can't - Led Zeppelin!

If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet

2009-02-08T09:53:00.004-03:00

Today is absolutely gorgeous. It's not even eight in the morning yet, and it's warmer than it's been in months. By "warm" and "gorgeous" I mean that it's hovering around 50 degrees, but I'm at the point in the winter where fifty degrees makes me feel like wearing flip flops and opening windows.

Don't get me wrong, I love living in a climate that has four distinct seasons, it's just that midway through each of those seasons I get so sick of it that I count down the days until it starts to change. Spring and fall are okay for the most part, but I start wishing for warm cider and sweaters around late August, and flowers and sunshine around this time in February. In a perfect world, we'd have a white Christmas and then the next day it would just start to hover around 65 degrees.

My lack of updates hasn't just been laziness, although that's certainly part of it. We're in the process of renovating the spare bedroom where the computer lives, and since we haven't joined the modern age and bought a laptop, my husband's computer is precariously perched between a desk turned sideways in the middle of the room and a small printer table in the corner. We've moved out some unwanted furniture, gotten rid of my defunct computer (victim of a nasty virus that left it nothing more than a really big and expensive word processor), and will hopefully start painting next weekend. I'm excited to get another room crossed off my list, and even more excited that our bedroom is next up. Adios, nasty faux Berber carpets!

I started doing our taxes this week using a couple of online programs, and I was shocked at the number I was getting for our return because it was significantly lower than I expected. I brought everything over to my Dad yesterday for him to double check, and it turns out I was right. Our sharing a residence but unmarried. I understand the concept, obviously. Although our credits and deductions are roughly the same, as a married unit our income puts us into a higher tax bracket, thus we pay more. There's no use complaining about something I cannot change, but I'm going to do it anyway. It sucks.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why it's necessary to fund organizations that act for the greater good. I am a Democrat for crying out loud. And while I don't like everything that our tax dollars are allocated to and I hate the fact that because I work in city limits I pay city taxes (none of which I am eligible to have refunded) to a city that can't control their crime or clean their sidewalks when it snows, I'm not Thoreau here. I trust that by electing good government officials, my tax dollars will (directly or indirectly) be going into programs that are necessary and efficient.

But COME ON! We have the same bills and responsibilities that we did last year. We have the same house and mortgage and all other things considered, and yet our refund was halved just because we're officially married. I did some research online and found other people questioning this flaw in logic that penalizes newly married couples and discovered that it's been a hot topic of debate for years, so far as that in lower income brackets there are measures in place to counteract the difference. That's great, and that should happen, but what about the middle level brackets? We're not rich by any means. We live in a 900 square foot house and clip coupons and spend responsibly like every other family. Stupid.

In happier news, today is my Mom's birthday and I'm proud of myself for making her favorite dessert, Banana Split Pie. My Grandma used to make it for her, and it's been years since we've had it. I felt bad that Mom always takes the time to bake cakes for all of us, and then we throw a candle on a store bought cake and call it a day. I think this will be a nice surprise. Here's the recipe, if you're curious.

1 stick of margarine
2 eggs
1 3/4 c confectioners sugar
5 medium sized bananas
1 tsp vanilla
1 square of grated baker's chocolate
graham cracker pie crust (I used pre-made, but if you're ambitious you can make your own)

I mixed the margarine and sugar on low and incorporated a single egg at a time in about 2 minute intervals. Then, I added the vanilla and 4 of the 5 bananas and turned that sucker way up for about 10 minutes. Added the chocolate as the last step and the poured everything into the crust. Refrigerate overnight. Garnish with slices of the reserved banana before serving.

Two notes: I just checked the pie and it's still not 100% set yet. I won't be serving it until around 6pm tonight, but I may have to pop it in the freezer for a half hour or so before.

Also, yes, this pie has raw eggs and is not baked. If you're pregnant or have immune system issues you may want to skip this one. I'll admit that it gave me pause as well as I was making it, but our family has been using this recipe (and others containing raw egg) for decades. If you've ever eaten raw cookie dough or had eggs sunny side up, this really isn't that different.

Più Formaggio, Meno Rapidità!

2009-01-28T00:08:00.003-03:00

I learned two important things about cooking Italian from scratch tonight.

1. There is no such things as a thirty minute tomato sauce. Pureeing the shit out of tomatoes in a food processor to speed up the process is not the answer. It will only result in watery sauce, indifferent palates, and serious heartburn. Somewhere out there is an 80 year old Italian lady, laughing at my futile efforts to Rachael Ray-icize her blood, sweat, and tears.

2. Cheese can fix everything, especially fresh mozzarella. Some mistakes require more cheese than others. A lot more cheese. But it can be done.

Fear and Loathing in Pajamas

2009-01-26T15:49:00.004-03:00

I don't know if it's a byproduct of the dark and dreary winter or what, but I have been in a serious funk for the past few days. Self-pity is really a slippery slope, because once you find something to bitch and moan about you kind of open the floodgates to more misery. If I'm already sulking around about one thing, I may as well at several other things to my list as well, and before I know it I'm on the couch all weekend in my pajamas with knots in my hair and holes in my socks, watching Lifetime movies for twenty straight hours.

I don't think that I suffer from depression by any means, and I know it's a serious disease that many people deal with every day of their lives. I've known some people with those kind of issues, and I wouldn't want anyone to think I'm making light of it. My issues are small, comparatively speaking. My stupid computer became infected with some bizarre Trojan type virus that wiped out all my music, photos, and writing that I hadn't gotten around to saving anywhere. My fault on that one. Our heater is having issues with the sensor or some other such nonsense and it's been in the 50s in here for most of the weekend. I'm terrified that we'll be hit with a $5000 bill to replace some ancient parts. Our kitchen pipes keep freezing and we need to replace the fridge, washer, dryer, and back door sooner rather than later. My job is wearing me out, mentally and physically, and I just keep questioning whether or not it's worth it to feel so unfulfilled for so many hours a week. When it comes down to it, there are a thousand things I can think of I'd rather do, but with the economy being how it is, I'll grin and bear it for as long as necessary.

I just think I've reached a point in my life where I second guess myself about everything. I question nearly every decision I've ever made, stupidly in fact, because it's far to late to change what's done.

I think a lot about that time after graduating college, and my decision to follow my then-boyfriend out of state, and how my move made me feel horribly alone and isolated in a place that seemed foreign to me. I think about all the hundreds of things I could have done instead, and what paths they may have taken me on. Why didn't I ever pursue a career in radio, despite the fact that I loved it and was damn good at it? Why didn't I stay in Delaware and spend more time with my Grandparents while I could have, or look into opening a cafe like I thought about, or gotten more serious about writing?

I know it's natural to reflect like this. It surely has something to do with the proverbial quarter-year crisis, which I'm probably too old for now anyway. I know that I have an amazing husband that I wouldn't trade for the world, and maybe it's true that if I had chosen another path, I would never have met him. Maybe it's true that all paths lad to Rome, and I would have met him regardless of what job I held, or where I lived. I'll never know for sure.

We talked a little this weekend about just selling the house and joining the Peace Corps. As a married couple we'll be able to serve together, and we'd be doing something outstanding with out lives. We kind of agreed to go to an information session, but I just don't know if the Peace Corps is the answer to my funk. For one thing, I'd miss my family like crazy, and with my Grandmothers getting up there in age I don't know that I can commit 27 months overseas. It would also push back our plans of having a baby, and although I'm still well within my fertile years, I don't know that I want to wait that long. We'd also come back with nothing really, other than an exit stipend you've given to return home with. Not enough to buy another house with, that's for sure.

I think maybe the way out of my funk is to start doing more of the things that make me happy. It seems simple, but at the end of the day, coming home at six pm after leaving the house a seven am, knowing I have to walk the dog and make dinner, the prospect of doing much of anything seems daunting, especially because my husband works late and I'd be doing these activities alone. My closest friends live far away so it's not like I have the best girlfriend that I call up every evening to get a mug of tea and gossip with. I wish I did, and maybe that's part of the problem.

I need to make a thorough list of things I want to try and then actually follow through with them. There's no reason why I can't join the radio station as a community member again. There's no reason why I can't grow a pair and start submitting my writing for publication. There's no reason why I can't take a pottery class alone, or join a book club alone.

In fact, I think I'm slowly talking myself out of my funk and onto the track of self-improvement. I'm giving myself until Monday to make not only my list of things to change, but an actual plan of attack on how to change them.

True, it's still gray and freezing and dreary. And I'm still typing away on my husband's computer for lack of one of my own, and my house is still old and falling apart before my very eyes. But I have a good life, and I have all the potential in the world to make it even better.

O

2009-01-20T21:36:00.003-03:00

I don’t usually get political when I blog, because most people reading know me well enough to know my political affiliations. Posting about how happy I am to officially have President Obama take office would be just about as obvious as posting “ I sure like breathing, it makes my lungs feel good!”

Still, I’d just like to take this opportunity to say that today feels like a good day for our country. It feels so good, that I'm going to resist spending ten minutes carrying on about the giant bow that Aretha Frankin studded up with her Bedazzler and stuck on her head. (Although that thing was absolutely horrific.)

Today somehow feels lighter than yesterday, and not just because we have a new President, but because we have a new start.

We had an opportunity to make our voices heard, and we did so on Election Day, in record numbers. We had an opportunity to show the world what our values truly are, to chose hope over fear of the unknown, and to fight for something we believe in.

We had the opportunity to put our often spotted past behind us and canvas together, phone bank together, march together, rally together, cry together, cheer together, and vote together.

We did so not only because we were unhappy with the road our country has been traveling down, but because we were so full of hope and excitement about all the roads that are possible.

We are white, black, men, women, foreign born citizens and people whose families have hundreds of years worth of roots on our soil.

We are students and oil workers and doctors and artists and convenience store clerks. We are people who refuse to give in to fear-mongering, war-mongering, jingoism, and bigotry. We are a people acutely aware of what change means, and how desperately we need it.

We are America, and this is a good day indeed.

(Obama print brought to you by Deroy Peraza at Hyperakt.com . Free color prints are available for download!)

our house, is a very, very, very small house

2009-01-16T21:13:00.000-03:00

I have to be honest. When I was a little girl and I imagined the home I would one day live in with my husband, I pretty much imagined living in a mansion. A hundred room mansion, to be more specific, preferably one nestled on 1000 or so acres of lush rolling meadows full of wild but friendly horses. My garden would rival the one at Versailles, with hedges trimmed into mazes and flowers of every color and ilk filled with butterflies where I could set up an easel and make my living painting wildlife. I would most certainly have an indoor/outdoor heart shaped pool, possibly with a water slide, and a garage full of DeLoreans and Lamborghinis.

Inside of my mansion, all the bedrooms would have giant King sized water beds and every bathroom would have Jacuzzi tubs. I’d have a marble foyer with a double staircase and several Grand pianos, white of course. I’d have fireplaces in every room, even the bathrooms, and a library with floor to ceiling shelves and one of those sliding ladder deals to help me navigate through my collected literary works.

In short, I wanted to live in an amalgamation of Buckingham Palace and the Winchester Mystery House. Is that too much to ask?

Of course, as a little girl I didn’t know about things like salaries, and mortgages, and carbon footprints. I didn’t realize that not only could I never afford a hundred room mansion, I’d never really need one either.

Our house, our little one story bungalow, is small. It’s just a little over 900 square feet, and in those 900 square feet is a living room, kitchen, small utility room for laundry, three bedrooms, and a bath. Each of our bedrooms are small. I think we could knock down the walls between them and combine the area into a single bedroom and still not equal some of the bedrooms being built into McMansions today. Maybe it’s not for everyone, but it works for us, and I think it has a lot of charms.

For one thing, living in less space is incredibly energy efficient. We don’t waste water with ridiculously long showers, because our tiny utility room doesn’t allow for a humongous hot water heater, and there is nothing worse than rinsing the conditioner out of your hair with chilly water. Don’t get me wrong, a giant Jacuzzi tub bath every night would be the THE BOSS, but I have an eco-conscience now, and I don’t know if it would ever let me use 100 gallons of water just to get myself clean. Another bonus is that we spend a fraction of what friends pay for heat and electricity, which makes me feel good about the minimal effect our lifestyle is leaving on the planet. If I lived in a hundred room mansion with 12 foot ceilings, chances are I’d be wasting a whole lot of heat, and a whole lot of money.

You know what’s really cool about living in just the right amount of space as opposed to way more than you’ll ever need? It kind of humbles you. Or house was built in the early 1950s, when people didn’t need space for computers or TVs in every bedroom (or at all). I complain that my kitchen doesn’t have enough counter space and then I realize it’s because I’m clogging it up with things that a family in 1952 didn’t own. A gigantic, multi-faceted electric mixer, a microwave, a coffee grinder and pot. No one needed to make an espresso right in their kitchen. They put the pot on the stove and percolated the heck out of it. Couples in this house raised two, three, maybe four children here, and they did their dishes like I do them now – with soap and water, in the sink, and then into the rack to dry. Our house has never had a dishwasher and unless we were thinking about putting it in the backyard, probably never will.

I’ve also been cured of any latent pack-rattery I may have possessed because we have no basement, and only a single closet in each bedroom (and by single I mean both the size and the quantity), and a coat closet in the entryway. I don’t buy things I don’t need, and when things have outlived their usefulness, we donate them.

This is the house that caused me to redefine my idea of living space - and how much I actually need. I can't host a dinner party with twenty people without us resting our plates on our laps, and when my husband and I are bugging the living shit out of each other we can't just hole up in different floors of our house and put each other on ignore. But isn't that better, in a way? Don't large houses tend to become impersonal?

I don't know if we'll live here forever. The day may very well come when we upgrade to something a little bigger, but for now this cozy, intimate little place suits me just fine.

You can't say 'pass the biscuit' or 'where's me hand grenade?', they just shrug.

2009-01-13T20:43:00.003-03:00

Every once in awhile, I become complete fascinated with something for a bit of time. Actually, I’ll be honest, it happens almost constantly, sort of a revolving door of little enamorations. I think it’s completely possible that I am one of those people with a predisposition to obsessions, and I mean that less in a stalker-ish way and more in a fancy-free way.

For example, I’ll be completely gaga over an album for about a month, and I’ll listen to it so often that I bore of it and put it in the shelf to get duty for another year until I pick it up again. It’s not as if I stop enjoying the music, it’s just that something else moves in and fills up the warm little spot in my heart where it used to live. It doesn’t happen to every album, mind you, just the ones that I call little obsessions.

There are tons of things that have been life-long as opposed to fleeting obsessions. Things like writing short stories and putting ranch dressing on nearly everything. Things like the pair of brown and orange Sauconys that I’ve been wearing since college despite the fact that they’re no longer hip and it’s questionable as to whether they ever were in the first place. And, I’m still bug-eyed crazy about my husband, even though years ago, when we’d only been dating for four or five months, I was so starry-eyed that I told him we should run off and get married. And I was completely serious.

I think maybe it’s healthy to have these little obsessions in my life. If nothing else, it keeps things interesting and gives me a chance to explore avenues that I may not have crossed before. Like the time I saw a documentary on the history channel about Lizzie Borden and found it so intriguing that you would have thought I was aiming to be the world’ biggest Lizzie Borden expert. I checked out everything I could find in the library and read message boards and rented films until I got bored and moved on. Still, if there is ever a situation where you need to talk to someone who knows a lot about the Borden murders, you can totally call me! I could be your lifeline or something!

There was also time that I fancied becoming a jewelry maker and bought tons of beads and earring fasteners. I totally had this idea in my mind that I could be this bohemian hand crafter, making and selling earrings out of my tiny little studio filled with mosaics and incense. I could literally picture myself sitting at a workbench wearing one of those long flowing hippy robes threading beads onto a wire loop.

The problem was that after I made about three pairs and realized I sucked at it and that furthermore I really hate those hippy dresses and patchouli makes me want to gag. I tucked the supplies away into a deep dark spot on my craft table where they still are today. Now that I think about it, most of the items in my craft room are the results of my LOs. Soap making, scrapbooking, magnets, decorative boxes? Again, if you needed some wire or taupe colored yarn or organic perfume fragrance in a jiff, I’m your woman.

I’m hoping that maybe blogging about my LOs will make them stick a bit. Turn them from passionate but fleeting little loves into something more permanent. I made a sort of lose resolution for 2009 to follow through with more plans and ideas, so if nothing else maybe this will help clear my head a bit in order to make that happen. So, without further ado, here is this Tuesday’s edition of my five current little obsessions.

1. Lush Handmade Cosmetics. I am absolutely nuts about this stuff, and given how awesome my skin has been looking since I introduced my dermis to Lush, I think I’ll be riding out this obsession for years to come. They sell all- natural, cruelty free products for face, body, hair, and all the other parts I want shiny and healthy. Fresh Farmacy is a little chunk of pink heaven for day to day use, Angels on Bare Skin is a good twice a week exfoliate, and thanks to Enzymion, I’ve finally found a moisturizer that doesn’t make me look like Acne Amy of Garbage Pail Kids fame . Plus, their store smells awesome and you’ll leave with free samples and goodies each time you visit.

2. James McAvoy. I know, I know. I am WAY too old (not to mention married) to have a crush on an actor, but I just can’t help it. I loved him in The Last King of Scotland, and Penelope and over the weekend saw him in Atonement. I honestly don’t know what it is about him. He had a horrible 70s hairdo in Last King. He’s rather short. He has a slightly large nose, and although I’ve always thought big honkers were rather charming, he’s not classically handsome. That’s probably why I find him ravishing. Maybe it’s his accent, or his tousled hair. Maybe it’s his piercing blue eyes that stare STRAIGHT INTO YOUR SOUL, but he’s got something. There is this one scene in Atonement, and I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it, but he delivered it with so much passion that it gave me chills. And it wasn’t even a sex scene, so how about them apples?

3. Owning a bed and breakfast. So, being a boho jewelry maker isn’t going to work out for me, but I’ve always imagined myself owning my own business, or at the very least getting away from the 9-5. Most of the time I’m dead-set on my idea of a quaint little bookstore, but recently I got the B& B ownership bug. From a vitamin commercial of all things. The commercial shows a middle aged couple, owners of this huge Victorian B&B, as they cook breakfast and laugh together and chase peacocks through the hallways. The husband says something along the lines of “We have responsibilities, but we don’t have stress. Being here has added years to my life!” And for some reason I couldn’t stop thinking about J & I owning our very own bed and breakfast. How awesome would it be to spend time together instead of working almost wholly opposite schedules? We could make chocolate chip pancake for our guests and I could bake turnovers and serve tea and host Monopoly games in the parlor!

Just for fun, I Googled east coast B & Bs for sale, and nearly crapped my pants. There was nothing, and I mean nothing, for under $500K. I’m sure I could find a dump in a sheriff’s sale, but it’s taken us years to fix up our little bungalow and we’re still not done. How much time and money would it take to renovate a 15 room Victorian?

So, in short, if I win the Powerball tomorrow, I’ll be blogging to you on Thursday from a B & B I purchased somewhere in New England and filled with Lush toners and life sized cut-outs of James McAvoy. Heaven.

2009-01-08T20:47:00.002-03:00

I seriously married the best guy in the entire world.

I came home from work to find the house filled with an amazing smell of dinner that he started this afternoon before leaving for work. In a lot of ways, my husband is a better cook that I am. For one thing, he's fearless when it comes to trying new things, and patient enough to let the meal do its thing whereas I poke and prod food I'm cooking so much that I probably give it anxiety.

Now the man who lived off of one pound family sized Hungry Man dinners through most of his 20s cooks me a supper of lamb, new potatoes, and peas in a dijon lemon sauce. Apologies to my vegetarian readers, but lamb is a damn tasty meat. We don't eat it often, and in fact I've never even tried to cook it myself, but when I do eat it I pretty much melt into a puddle of happiness.

As you can see, it was cooked perfectly. He's so thoughtful that he even put a place setting at the table. In true guy fashion, he used a paper towel as a napkin, and I thought it was so cute I just had to get a picture of it.

Please excuse the fact that our fruit bowl has zero pieces of fruit and is instead filled with three giant onions and more tomatoes than you can shake a fist at. That's just how we roll. But since this post is less about food, and more about how awesome my husband is, I'll leave you with a picture of him, chose at random by Flickr.

It was taken on a boat somewhere off of North Carolina. He's either doing the running man, about to pimp slap someone, or just caught really off guard.

2009-01-06T21:10:00.002-03:00

God, I love food. I literally sit on the bus on my way home from work, trying to read over the growling of my stomach, anticipating whatever yummy concoction I'm dreaming up for dinner. This is why reaching my weight loss goal for the year, also known as Fit and Fine Two Thousand Nine, is going to be so difficult, like walking a tightrope over a vat of acid teeming with sharks. Acid proof sharks. Apparently.

It's going to take a little bit of finagling and a lot of culinary inspiration to see me through the next 359 days. If there is one thing I know about my love of all that is edible, it's that I can't deprive myself. I know that people lose a ton of weight cutting out carbs completely, or eating microwaved pre-portioned meals, and I think that's fantastic. I would just make me pull my hair out, which would make the fact that I was skinny mean nothing. Because I would have all these weird patchy hair spots. And possibly no eyebrows.

Nay, I say.My mind may know I'm on a diet, but if my taste buds get a hold of that information, we're in trouble. I know that the key for me is going to be substitution. Instead of greasy three egg omelets dripping with gobs of cheddar cheese and bacon, I'll have egg whites scrambled with a little lean ham and veggies. Instead of my afternoon Snickers pick-me-up I'll have something entirely nutritious and chocolaty like... those little 100 calorie pack chocolate muffin bites. Or, you know, some other nutritious thing I can't think of right now because I'm too busy drooling over the idea of a Snickers bar. Ohhh, nougat. I'm gonna miss you, buddy.

Yes, my friends, this will be a long and hungry path to travel, but I'm up for the challenge. My MO for this year is to make healthy meals that don't lack on flavor and can be prepared QUICKLY. Isn't that such a major reason why people eat total crap? Because it's cheap, fast, and convenient?

Tonight's dinner was a slam dunk, and it was actually something I'd made before, with just a few ingredients cut out to cut calories. It's a warm shrimp and wilted spinach salad that tasted even better than it smelled. Which, by the way, was freaking AWESOME.

Obviously, you can't capture taste in a picture, but this entire dish took me twenty minutes, start to finish. And that included peeling shrimp. Just saute about a pound of shrimp,two cloves of garlic, and one large shallot in a little bit of olive oil and then add a bag of pre-washed raw baby spinach until it wilts to your desired preference.

A side note for those of you not watching your figure (you lucky bastads, you) - try it sometime with the ingredients I cut out - namely, loads and loads of yummy, fatty pancetta and fresh mozzarella. Gah!

You can't see me now, but I'm totally kissing my fingers and flicking my wrist in the air like a cartoon chef.

Voila!

Who Left the Lights Off, Baby?

2009-01-05T21:13:00.003-03:00

So, it's been almost five months since I've posted, and naturally a lot has gone on but nothing's happened. Here's a quick review with some photos so we can get that whole "catching up" thing taken care of, and move on. EDIT: I have no idea why my photos are acting so wonky. The entire picture is showing up, but with an annoying white area to one side. Weird.

September:

Threw my Mom and Dad an awesome surprise 30th Anniversary party. After most of the guests left, we moved the keg to their back porch and spent the evening catching up with old friends. Dad further surprised Mom with a trip to Ireland that they're taking this summer.

October:

Came and went, believe me, I tried to hold on to it as long as possible. Autumn is my absolute favorite season and I wanted to take advantage of every minute of it. We took some walks by the river, went to the orchard, carved a pumpkin, drank hot cider, and hoped against hope that a strong breeze wouldn't blow away all the beautiful leaves on the trees in our yard.

November:

Started to get holiday-ish. Perfected an awesome roasted sweet potato recipe. Finally got new living room furniture, slapped on a coat of paint that turned out to be a lot lighter than the beige raffia paint card promised, and ripped up the nasty old carpet to install wood floors.

And of course, we Baracked the vote. I stayed up late drinking beer and marking my maps with red and blue sharpies. My electoral college tally fell by the wayside as the beer continued flowing and the states kept turning blue.

December:

Decked the halls, volunteered to bring tidings and joy, and discovered the tree we bought a couple years ago didn't store well crammed into a little box in the attic. In fact, it was downright sad looking.

So we got a new one.

This all happened around the time of the Great Living Room Remodel, so I currently have no idea what to put in the corner that the tree has occupied. Which is one of the reasons it's still standing there. It's only January 5th. I have time before it's considered trashy, right?
We celebrated our first Christmas and New Year as a married couple, and tried unsuccessfully to take some picture to commemorate the occasion.
This was supposed to be a nice picture of us in front of the tree, but the dog jumped in front of my face and my husband put on his best Creeper face.

This shot was no better.

Whew.

How have things been in your neck of the woods?

We didn't plant the ivy. No we didn't grow it, but we're gonna mow it.

2008-08-13T22:33:00.009-02:00

Say, for whatever reason, you ever get the urge to go out into your backyard, tear most of it up, and plant an assload of ornamental bushes, creeping English ivy, and mutant weed/plant hybrids. Maybe you enjoy gardening. Maybe you don't like mowing the lawn. Maybe you're trying to create a habitat for small to medium sized jungle creatures.

Whatever.

It may look nice for a little while. It may provide some much needed privacy around the perimeter of your yard. It'll look great when it snows and you want to take some pictures to send to the family. You may even look out your kitchen window from time to time and admire your handiwork, bless your green thumb, and wonder what your life was like before all those glorious green things made their way into your world.

The problem is, you will eventually want to move on. You'll put your house on the market and skedaddle, leaving your home and all its little bush-like friends sit vacant for a year or two. Maybe more. One day, a nice young couple will finally make an offer on the house, move in, and make it their own.

Too occupied with minor in-home details such as - oh, replacing the pipes and appliances, getting rid of the mildewed wallpaper, and tearing carpet that's about as comfortable to walk on as AstroTurf - they will completely ignore the landscaping. They'll spend winter snuggled inside painting and grouting and scrubbing and being in love, completely oblivious to condition of the Chicksaw and the Spirea.

And then, as it is known to do, Spring will come. One of the new occupants will notice a daffodil growing along the fence and call the other one out to see it. It is then, after a long cold winter indoors, that they will take a cursory and exacting look around the backyard.

And then they will almost shit their pants.

The rain and sun have turned what was once a smattering of plant life into a full blown jungle. Someone will say, "We should cut down that tree," and point to an eight foot growth spreading its leaves across the fence line. The other will respond, "I'm pretty sure that's a weed."

And they will be correct.

They will buy books and scour the internet and try to figure out exactly what is germinating and why. They will look for estimates from landscapers and immediately get heartburn once they realize how many months of their salary it is equivalent to. They will buy tools with funny names and ridiculously angled rotating blades. They will beg everyone they know to help them tame the beast before the county issues them a summons.

Why are there wild strawberries growing around the patio? How do I kill these mushrooms? Is this poison ivy? What the bugger is ground cherry? For the love of all that is holy, what just bit me?

In the end, they will decide to scrap it all and start from scratch. The Crape Myrtles and the Lilac are manageable and by a stroke of luck, salvageable. The Sycamores and the Catalpa will stay, because it would cost something comparable to a new Kia to have them removed. Other that that, it's a weed/plant liquidation sale - Everything. Must. Go.

This is where the blood, sweat, and tears come in. Before or after long days in the office, the couple will pull, dig, cultivate, and weed. They will dodge gigantic spiders living under uprooted plants, scratch mosquito bites, and sweat so badly they can barely see. They will lose toenails, gain blisters, suffer through sunburn and dehydration. They will spend Sunday afternoons smelling like soil and salt as they strain to listen to the baseball game on the portable radio and simultaneously free the side of their home from ivy with roots as thick as as three fingers.

They will hope against hope that at some point their shovels will hit buried treasure, which they can then use to pay for that landscaper they talked to last Spring.

They will break saws. They will break skin. They will break the record of single day utterances of "fuckery" and "bullshit."

And then, eventually and quite suddenly, they will break the invisible spirit of the weeds. They will see changes for the first time in months. They'll see holes where stumps once were and grass where dirt once was. They will see their neighbor's house and pool and dog and wonder where it all came from. They will stand in front of a four foot pile of yard waste in awe, with goosebumps running electric down their arms because they will have discovered a new dynamic between themselves and their surroundings.

They have discovered progress.

Maybe not this year, but just possible the next one will be their year. The one where they can make lists of plants for the new butterfly garden and sketch plans for a new fence or fire pit. They'll be able to drink a beer outside on a hot summer night without getting snacked on by the resident mosquito population.

Until then, progress will have to suffice, and piles of god knows what, like the one pictured above, will have to serve as a reminder that the grass is always greener, literally, when it's not being suffocated by giant weeds.

New Music For Old Souls

2008-08-10T06:53:00.003-02:00

Today started off brilliantly, teetered around alright, and then turned into awesome.

I woke up late, with the windows wide open, and for the first day in a long while it was beautiful outside. Very low humidity, bright blue skies, and plenty of sunshine. A normal person would have taken the opportunity to get outside and have a picnic or something like that, but I'm not a normal person. My husband was at the office, and I was too in love with the way the sunlight fell on my bedroom floor. Therefore, I spent a good six hours laying on my bed, in my underwear and a tank, watching my beloved Olympics.

Lying around in a pair of panties, as amazing as it may sound, can get quite boring. I had watched beach volleyball, sculling, and swimming. I'd marveled at the fact that a skinny little kayak-ish vehicle could move so quickly across the water, and that the women's beach volleyball players wear such tiny bikini bottoms. Then I was kind of done with the games. At least for the afternoon.

Jeremy soon came home, and Missy and Jon came over, and we traveled to beautiful Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the Chameleon Club where we saw Hoots and Hellmouth open for Grace Potter and the Nocturnals .

That was a lot of links, and I apologize, but the show was amazing. We missed our chance to see Grace and the band a couple of years ago at Bonnaroo. My Morning Jacket played the night before at midnight, and we got incredibly drunk and stayed up until four in the morning. Combine all that with the 95 degree Southern Tennessee heat, and you'll get someone who wants to sleep for fourteen hours.

I'm glad we didn't miss her this time. Hoots was amazing, as always, and we drove home through Amish country with bellies full of beer and heads full of whispered words and corkboard stomps.

What more can you ask for, really?

Sweet Thursday is calling me back up to Monterey

2008-08-07T20:19:00.005-02:00

So, my brilliant idea to post pictures of happy things to get over each dreaded Wednesday was completely thwarted last night by Michael Chabon- and the sweet lull of Pat Sajak's voice.

I intended to post, but made the mistake of laying on my bed to read a few chapters of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh while Wheel of Fortune was on the television, volume turned down almost to a whisper. The next thing I knew, it was after ten at night and Jeremy was waking me up. I think I managed to stay awake for another twenty minutes, and then I nodded off again. You'd think that today I would have hopped out of bed, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, but apparently the 10.5 hours of sleep I got weren't enough, because I managed to oversleep by about twenty minutes.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

I have this grand plan to get myself on some sort of a schedule, hopefully starting Monday. I've never understood how I can be so organized in most aspects, so completely Virgoan that it's almost sickening, and then be so hopeless in other ways. I long to be one of those people who goes to the market every Monday, with a list of all the ingredients I'll need for each night's meal. I want to have a set number of days that I go to the gym, I want to be that girl who walks into the coffee shop and hears "Oh, it must be Tuesday at six! Large decaf latte?"

I want to be predictable, how awful is that?

If I don't get some sort of schedule working soon, I am going to be looking at a long series of 7:45 bedtimes, which will make my life just about as interesting as spending an evening cleaning out your mouse with a paperclip and one of those aerosol cans full of air.

Anyway, since I missed my Wednesday pictures, I'll leave you with another Winston picture, which means that in addition to falling asleep earlier than my Grandmother, I'm also turning into Crazy Animal Lady Who Acts Like Her Pets Are Her Kids.

Awesome.

Please notice that Winston is wearing a bra. He has a thing for them, and pulls them out of the hamper or the laundry basket to play with. This particular bra was in a bag of clothes earmarked for Goodwill. He got himself a little tangled in it. We eventually got him out, but not before I'd snagged a few pictures.

Please also note that the hairy knee in the picture is not mine. Just had to get that out there.

sometimes you're a tourist with a camera, stealing souls for scrapbooks

2008-08-04T21:05:00.003-02:00

Some people thrive on adernaline, seeking out opportunities to push their physical limits- jumping off of clifts, skydiving, diving into shark infested waters with little more than a snorkel and a prayer.

I am not one of those people.

It's not that I don't like adventure, because I truly do. It's just my kind of adventure is the type that comes from long road trips into unchartered territories, experimenting with unfamiliar cuisines, and the bittersweet conclusion of a novel in which I've invested ten days trying to find out who killed so-and-so. The occasional flat tire, raging indigestion, and possible book related paper-cuts not withstanding, I prefer the safe kind of adventure.

I undoubtedly inherited this from my mother. It's not that we're not risk takers, because we are, in an esoteric kind of way. That's why I'm still not over the shock that she and I (along with dear old Pop) went white water rafting this weekend.

Apparently, when she was a teenager in California, my Mom and her family took a road trip to the Grand Canyon. Rafting wasn't incredibly popular at the time, but she somehow got the itch to try it. Thirty years later, she actually did.

We had an incredible time. It was a long day, and we were on the water for a good four hours, so it was physically exhausting. I even got thrown from the raft for good measure, when we unexpectedly hit a flat rock. I wasn't able to get back to the raft because the current was too strong, so I had to float my chubby ass down a few hundred feet of the Lehigh. I was terrified at first, because although I'm a strong swimmer the first few seconds after hitting the water are incredibly disorienting. For one thing, you've just completed an unintentional and unexpected backwards somersault into water that could be anywhere from 6 inches to 6 feet deep. Once your head finally emerges, you're surrounded by spray and moving at a fairly quick pace away from the point you want to be. Trying to stand or swim against the surf is futile, so all you can really go is flop on your back, keep your head above water so that you don't lose your sunglasses, and hope your lifevest isn't defective.

And, if you're me, you get to do all this while hearing the faint laughter of your parents and raftmates as they double over in laughter so exreme that it's inhibiting your rescue.

At the end of the day, I was wet, battered, achy, sunburned, and exhilirated. Not only was our river trip a great bonding experience and a chance to explore a beautiful part of the country, but it was the kind of adventure that required me to sign a waiver, and I did it. I look both ways before crossing one way streets, people. This was big for me.

I wish I had pictures to post, but my Mom took them on one of those disposable waterproof cameras, which means that somewhere around Thanksgiving she'll finish the roll and develop the prints and I'll share them. Until then, I've got my memories, fading bruises, and new appreciation for adrenaline rushes.

A Scene Badly Written In Which I Must Play

2008-07-30T20:39:00.008-02:00

We're halfway through the work week, and holy crow, do I have a serious case of the Wednesdays.

Wednesdays are the absolute pits. Some people don't do Mondays, and I get that. It's always tough to come back from work after a weekend off, but at least I'm still relatively relaxed and hopeful for the possibilities of the upcoming week. Tuesday is a special night with The Old Boy, Thursday is close enough to the weekend to be bearable, and Friday is...well, Friday.

The way I see it, Wednesday is like the stinky old uncle with armpits stains and ear hair that no one wants to get stuck talking to at family functions. Wednesday chews on toothpicks and picks its butt. It wears a Members Only jacket, reeks of Musk for Men, and uses pick-up lines. Wednesday is evil, trust me.

Wednesday? Can't think of a single redeeming quality about it.On the contrary, I can think of many reasons why, due to its position on the calendar, Wednesdays completely blow.

For one thing, I do most of my housework on Saturdays, which means that by Wednesday all the little smudges start appearing on the glass door and a thin layer of dust creeps onto the entertainment center, driving me apeshit. Trash gets picked up on Thursday mornings, making Wednesdays the de facto Stinkiest Trashcan Day. Days removed from his weekend car rides and park romps, the dog starts to get cooped up, and thus berserk, and days removed from their weekends, people in the office tend to get a little cooped up and berserk as well.

Today, counsel for another company actually yelled at me, via email, by USING CAPITAL LETTERS. Wiener.

Yes, on days like today, it's all I can do to muster up every last remaining drop of energy in order to microwave a hot dog and call it dinner, and then flop haphazardly onto the couch in my pajamas to watch the Game Show Network all night.

I want to change that.

Each Wednesday, starting today, I'm going to resist the urge to turn this blog into a harbor of electronic anguish by posting about three things that make me happy. Simple, and hopefully effective. It's not going to get my house clean or make me feel less guilty about tearing up this pint of ice cream, but it's something, right?

Straight outta '74 color scheme? Check. Ridiculous 3-D mushroom pattern? Check. Happiness? Check.

My Grandma made this awesome canister set in a pottery class back in the day, and now a few of them sit in my kitchen. They're out of style, and kinda fugly, but I adore them, because I know how proud she must have been to make them. Besides, it's nice to have a little piece of her with me.

There are two gorgeous Crepe Myrtle trees in my backyard, right up against the house. I don't have to trim them, water them, or fawn over them, which makes me like them even more.

My wedding pictures. Somehow, those ten hours seemed to last twenty minutes. Looking at my wedding pictures brings everything back, and reminds me just how lucky I am to have The Old Boy.

Happy Wednesday, ya'll.

Fido, Your Leash Is Too Long

2008-07-28T14:13:00.000-02:00

Yes, that is my adorable little puppy, Winston. Yes, he is chewing on something he's not supposed to, because that's how he spends somewhere between 85-90% of his waking hours. Yes, it is a tampon.

Obviously, it's not a used tampon, because that would be downright disgusting. I heard a little but of ruckus out in the hallway yesterday and caught him red-handed. He apparently got into the bathroom closet and pulled one of these badboys straight out of the box, and then drug it into the hall and went to town.

He is probably responsible for for 99% of my current stress, lack of sleep, and aching muscles, but I dare you not to want to snuggle with him.

I'm taking the next bus outta here, I'm gonna head for Box Elder, M.O.

2008-07-24T19:19:00.000-02:00

Today when I was out weeding the front flower bed (also known as the 6 X 3 dirt put with a smattering of mulch and three hanging baskets of Vinca and Clematis), I noticed an abundance of red beetle type bugs. They almost reminded me of aphids, but with an intricate pattern on their backs.

I'm not one of those people that freaks out when she sees a bug, but there is something about red insects that automatically makes me think: BLOODSUCKERS!

This clearly goes back to my childhood. You know those tiny red bugs about the size of a pinhead that leave a splotch of red when squished? Someone, and I can't remember who, chose to permanently damage my psyche by telling me that those little bugs crawled into your body through your ears and nose and sucked your blood straight out of a vein.

I don't know what mental sadist came up with that story, but it was probably the same person who invented the tale that if a kid got too close to the drain in the bathtub as the water let out they would be sucked into the sewer.

Anyway, I did some online detective work (AKA Google Image Search) and came up with this:

Thanks, Royal Albert Museum of Canada. They're Box Elder Bug nymphs. In addition to getting the opening chords of Pavement's Box Elder stuck in my head, I learned that these bugs are both harmless and annoying, as they have a tendency to enter homes en masse and can leave red-tinted excretement on various surfaces.

Excuse me? Red tinted excretement?

Later this evening, as I was walking around the yard and picking up branches felled during yesterday's barage of thunderstorms, I noticed more of those suckers on the debris.

I am now constantly and frantically scanning the walls for smears of red poop, but at least they don't actually suck blood.

So I got that going for me. Which is nice.

In the morning all will see, just how crazy young love can be

2008-07-23T23:32:00.000-02:00

One of the reasons, if not the major reason, why I put off starting a personal blog is because I always feel so awkward writing the first post. I’ve already been staring my keyboard for the last couple of minutes, hoping that the letters will jump off the keys and form words on their own accord so that I don’t have to.

It hasn’t worked so far.

I’ve been writing online in some form and off for the past decade. I first jumped on the personal website bandwagon, armed with a grainy webcam capable of still shots, a rudimentary and nearly obsolete grasp of
basic HTML commands, and a burning need to show anyone that cared to visit how cool I was. Although I shudder at the thought, I can guarantee you that there is still a page or two of mine floating around in the void somewhere, chock full of pretention, lists of my favorite song lyrics of 1998, and probably some flashing GIFs.

From Angelfire and Geocities, I moved to online journal communities like LiveJournal and basked in the satisfaction of instant gratification. I could write things, and people would READ them. What’s more, people would comment on what I’d written. Places like LiveJournal and Diaryland is that they create little microcosms of likeminded people, which is simultaneously awesome and rather narrow in scope.

Which brings me to this blog. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t the first I’ve tried to stick to, and I can’t guarantee it’ll be the last. I’ve made the mistake of going gimmicky- trying to write really witty Sedaris-esque vignettes, or focusing only on quirk tidbits of pop-culture and movie reviews.

All of that was fun for what it was worth, but I think I’m ready to get serious with a brand spankin’ new blog, filled with whatever I want. If I want to write a review comparing different brands of after dinner mints, I’m gonna do it. If I want to write a rant about how my husband refuses to carry a proper wallet and thus constantly leaves a trail of change throughout the house, I’ll do that too.

I decided to call this blog Happy Is The New Angst in part because all of the really good titles I thought of were taken, but also because I've reached a point in my life where I'm ready to focus on all the good stuff. I'm a newlywed, and that may account for the glowy, gushy, la vita e bella feeling I've had lately, but I'm going to roll with it for the time being.

So, now that the first post is out of the way, let online blogging, take 35, begin.