Thursday, May 31, 2007

A la Ruffles potato chips!

You know how you sometimes get an overwhelming desire to eat Rold Golds or Lays or Cheetos or Fritos or Doritos or Tostitos or Funyuns or Pringles or Goldfish or Smartfood or something equally, deliciously retrograde and start going through the cabinets of your kitchen hoping the perfect salty snack will just magically appear, even though you know it won't because you never actually buy that stuff for the house?

Well, behold my magic potato chips! I just conducted the requisite snack search and totally forgot that we had some Ruffles left over from our weekend hot dogs-with-all-the-fixin's binge. I once declared (on my wedding day) that I never cry when I'm happy, but I may have to change my tune on that front.

Know how else I know the chips are magic? They just disappeared.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Summer's sneeze, makes me feel so not fine

This weekend was shaping up to be a real corker. I ignored my computer. I went to the park with the dog. I spent copious amounts of time hanging out on our new roofdeck, doing what I imagine all roofdeckers do (read an A.M. Homes book while the hubby plants an herb garden). I watched the Red Sox extend their lead over the Yankees to about 2700 games. I consumed: 1 hamburger, 2 lobsters, 3 ice cream servings, 4 hot dogs, 5 chicken wings, and (1)6 beers.

And then I had an allergy attack. And I don't have allergies.

I've always been a bit of a Republican asshole when it comes to allergies. Deep down, I've always felt that allergy-prone people bring it upon themselves, and that if they would just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and finally stop blaming mites and pollen and dander for their problems and admit that the problem lies with them, their allergies would go away.

But now I know their pain. I've been walking around for three days looking like I broke up with my boyfriend and cried my eyes out and then ate a raw onion and cried some more. I've also sneezed sneeze-juice over every available surface in our apartment. I didn't do ANYTHING to deserve this, and it totally sucks, and I want the government to pay me for my pain!

Or at least reimburse me for my Claritin, which as over-the-counter recreational drugs go is only fun for the first hour or so. After that, it turns you into a rude crank who visciously rejects a hubby's attempt to get a little Memorial Day lovin' (sorry, babe).
Sunday, May 20, 2007

Is it a coincidence that he's now a psychiatrist?

A little more than eight years ago, I went to a party hosted by my ex-boyfriend. My mission was two-fold: work up the nerve to talk to the chap I'd been crushed out on forever, and make the ex-chap jealous in the process. So I threw on my leather pants and headed out.

Alas, me being me -- shy and insecure even in leather pants -- I was very slow to tackle my evening's assignments, and so I spent the first chunk of the night chatting with safer foils.

At one point I began talking to a guy we'll call J. Somehow the conversation rolled around to insults, and I boasted that I was a master insulter. The guy asked me to prove it.

"How?"

"Give me your best shot."

"No no...."

"No, come on, just do it. I can take it."

"Okay." And so I did. J.'s face immediately fell, he muttered something about getting a drink, and then he quickly got away from me. I felt like an ass, but soon thereafter I found myself actually talking to the chap I liked, and so I quickly forgot about the insulting exchange.

Flash forward to this past Saturday night. I am now married to one of the aforementioned chaps, and it was his 10-year college reunion. We walked into the reunion venue, and lo and behold, J. was one of the first people we ran into.

My hubbby reintroduced us. J. gave me a rather wan smile and said, "Oh, sure, I remember her."

Crap, I thought. He remembers. But then I told myself I was being silly. Silly! Twas eight years ago, after all. Stop it with the self-centered paranoia.

We followed J. and his wife to the bar. J. placed his order and then turned back around to me.

"So I've never gotten over what you said to me. It crushed me to my core."

"Oh, SHE'S the one?" his wife asked, as my hubby laughed hysterically.

So let this be a lesson to all of you: never, ever tell someone you don't know very well that he is a "nonentity," because it may hit a nerve, leave a deep psychological scar, and cause you untold social embarrassment almost a decade later. Although the way J. remembers it, I actually called him a "nonfactor," which is just absurd. I'd never be that mean.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

If for no other reason....

-- and there probably is none -- you have to appreciate the late Jerry Falwell for giving us headlines such as the one currently on CNN.com:

"Falwell's legacy -- faith, hate or Teletubbies?"

Shifts 'n' wiggles

Like so many other liberal, East Coast, middle-class, childless, self-satisfied, vaguely self-aggrandizing, "Gore in '08" couples gone by, the hubby and I have recently purchased a Prius. She's a lovely vessel, strong and true, fit for humans and hounds alike.

And she needs a name. My mother bought a white VW when I was in high school, and she put me on naming duties. I came back with Whitey Bulger and Honky as the two most viable monikers, and she promptly decided the car should go nameless. But my mom had planted a seed, and so I've since always driven in named cars. The crusty old Acura sedan my sister and I shared after college was named Fletcher, after my grandfather; the black Miata I drove in California was named Clyde, after my favorite Pac-Man ghost and as a shout-out to my sister, who named her car Blinky; and the Toyota I've shared with the hubby over the last year is named Mr. Hammond, after the plumber who unclogged the toilet that Dan's friend Scott clogged in exactly the way you would imagine, at the house of some cute girls they were bunking with and trying to impress in New Orleans during a cross-country trip. (Needless to say, top to bottom, I was not a part of this.)

There are some obvious naming options for a hybrid: Kermit, Dennis Hastert, or if you go with my no-fail stuffed animal-naming formula, Hybridy. But yesterday I was inspired by my 6-year-old neighbor. She and I were digging around the dirt outside her home, looking for crystals and diamonds, when she found a small green caterpillar. We decided to name it.

Me: "He's wiggly. How about Wiggles?"

Her: "Wiggles is a good name. But he's tiny!"

Me: "Okay, how about Mr. Tiny Wiggles?"

Suddenly appearing hubby: "Mr. Tiny Wiggles is an excellent name for that caterpillar."

Her (silenty): "You guys are weird. I'm glad you're not my parents."

So I plan to make the push for Mr. Tiny Wiggles, because I think that's just an all-around great name. Well, maybe not for a penis. But otherwise, a great name.
Thursday, May 10, 2007

No hippie chick

The hubby and I have recently stepped up our greenie efforts. We replaced all 32 lightbulbs in our house with fluorescents (do NOT ask the cost), we've taken to unplugging all electronics not in use, and we're going to start air-drying our clothes. Well, we're going to start thinking about air-drying our clothes.

So when I was shopping recently, I decided that I should be a bit better about what sort of body products I buy. I headed over to the eco-aisle in our neighborhood grocery store and found an all-natural, biodegradable, herbal body wash. The packaging was boring, but not in a scary-culty Dr. Bronner's Castile Soap sort of way, and one of the herbs listed was lavender, which is one of my favorites. So into the basket it went.

The next morning I showered with the body wash without incident. A few hours later, I was sitting at my desk when I found myself becoming unusually nostalgic for my days as a poor but noble environmental organizer. What's going on? I wondered. I'm never nostalgic for that time. I was broke and exploited and worked 100-hour weeks and had no life! What the he--

Patchouli. Fucking patchouli. Fucking goddamned patchouli was one of the four herbs contained in the body wash, which I would have known if I had read past the word "lavender." But I hadn't, and so I reeked of patchouli, and no amount of scrubbing with my lovely but distinctly unbiodegradable grapefruit body scrub that night made it come off. So I spent the next few days skulking around, too embarrassed to even leave the house, smelling like hippie.

But let us be patently clear. Yes, I used to work as an environmental organizer in Santa Barbara. Yes, I employed a number of hippies in my office, including a hippie from Kentucky who had ended up in Santa Barbara because his VW van had broken down there. Yes, that hippie ended up sleeping on my couch for $100 a month after his other hippie friends repaired the bus and drove off without him in the middle of the night. Yes, the hippie ended up choosing a closet over the couch and slept in the closet each night and would emerge Jesus-like from the closet each morning, evoking obvious Real Genius comparisons that no one seemed to make but me. Yes, the hippie started inviting other hippies over, until one day one of the other hippies started stashing stolen electronic gear in the apartment and my other roommates and I told our hippie roommate that the other hippies were no longer welcome. Yes, our hippie then ditched his job and ditched the apartment without warning and stuck us with a huge phone bill. Yes, that hippie was eventually replaced by two other hippies who came to Santa Barbara from Boston by hopping a train. Yes, those two new hippies showed up with fleas. Yes, the two new hippies then clogged our showers and sinks with hippie goo when they bathed for the first time in however many days, costing me my security deposit.

BUT. I. am. not. a. hippie. Or as I put it to the hubby a few weeks' back when we were watching a documentary on the Altamont Free Concert:

"Man, I would have made the worst hippie."

"Why?"

"Because I hate crowds and I hate hippies."

And people wonder why I never went to Burning Man.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Does Chuck E. Cheese do limo valet?

Don't ask me how or why I came across this today (okay, fine, my birthday's coming up and I can't decide what I feel like doing), but this is from a few-months-old Time article about kids' birthday parties:

"Ask a parent about birthday parties and you'll probably get a sigh and a description of the last party their kid went to — limousine service, a petting zoo or Ferris wheel, and definitely elaborate goody bags — followed by their despair at having to organize their own equally expensive party for their child's birthday."

First Time names all 5 billion of us the Person of the Year, then they craft a lede and story that all 5 billion of us can relate to. Truly the magazine of the people.