Another typical a.m. conversation between Mr. and Mrs. P.


Me: “So I was watching the program about Jack Paar…and Bill Bradley said, no, not Bill Bradley. Who’s the guy who’s like a white Bill Bradley?”

Mr. P.: “Bill Bradley *is* white.”

Me: “Oh. Then who am I thinking of?”

Now wendywoowho has got me in a Dolly Parton frame of mind. So it’s time for a quick survey (sorry no buttons - having trouble getting 'em to work at work). Which movies would you choose for a Working Girl movie night?

9-to-5 – Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin
Working Girl – Melanie Griffith
The Shop Around the Corner – Margaret Sullavan OR You’ve Got Mail – Meg Ryan
Bachelor Mother – Ginger Rogers OR Bundle of Joy – Debbie Reynolds
Mister Mom - Michael Keaton, Terry Garr
Others??? (I just KNOW I am missing some great ones…)


Give us your choices, discussion and suggestions in the Comments!

Not only did you scrape and dent my quarter panel, you also busted the pressure-gauging cap on my tire, which gave me a flat tire. Which I had to change. In my work clothes. In the sun. When it was 97 degrees out.

You are a coward and a knave.

And I hope get poison ivy in your underpants.

Happy Birthday, cetan!!!

We're so glad to have you on the planet!

Have you ever noticed, the wrappers on the straws at Starbucks say, "Not recommended for hot beverages".

Because, you know, they're not the BOSS of your DRINKING. If you want to put this flimsy piece of plastic into your piping hot Cafe Oh Pay, they can't stop you. Oh, they want to. But they can't.




Thank god they don't make traffic signals.

That was his jovial cry from the next room, as I puttered away in the kitchen, snipping the ends of green beans, and hunting in vain for a can of kidney beans that never appeared.

He put away the groceries, I cleaned up the dinner fixings, and, while I was at it, decided to put up some bean salad. It was almost midnight, and I was cooking.

Well, "cooking" is maybe not the right word. "Preparing cold foods"? "Mixing things"? "Getting distracted"? Yes, that last one seems about right.

It was the beginning of summer and I was, as usual, in love with fresh foods all over again. I'd also somehow fallen in love with refrigerator pickling. I'd already proven that no cucumber was safe, and now I was going after the beans. When the kidney beans came up missing, I went for chick peas, my mother's standby for 3-bean salad. I added the meager allotment of green and wax beans I'd brought home from the farmers market, along with chopped pieces of a beautiful sweet red pepper my husband had brought home the day before.

Marveling at my own lack of fussiness, I threw vinegar, water, sugar, and oil into the jar with reckless abandon. Lately, I found myself cooking less and less based on to-the-letter recipes, and more and more on instinct and "that feels right". And you know what? It was working! Meats came out splendidly when I followed my hunches and didn't hover. My yen for fresh fruits and vegetables was spot on, and I enjoyed the best produce our area had to offer, and wasted less than ever by buying small quantities of what I was certain we'd eat right away.

And did I mention the pickling? One minute I'm looking at a pint of shockingly familiar "pickling cukes", their dusted, bumpy exteriors bringing back a wave of memories --- Grampa in the garden, the feel of the vines under my fingertips, peeling in stripes to make "fancy" cuts for salads --- and the next I'm up to my elbows in fresh dill and inspiration.

This is what summer does to me. Even when it's too hot to move (and dear gods, it's so often too hot to move), my mind is moving. I'm imagining recipes, combining ingredients...the Farmers Market is a world-class bazaar and my kitchen is playground, theater, and living room all in one. In short, I'm happy. Life is rich and full of color and flavor -- my own personally perfected mix of savory and sweet --- and I'm eating it up.

I grab the camera to capture my homemade moment, then wander into the library to coax my love with those sweet summer words...

"Want a pickle?"

I can't remember who asked, so I'm posting it here.


Our Periodic Table of Elements shower curtain came from the clean and informative people of Simple Memory Art




And our oversized plush germs came from the clever fuzzy folks at Giant Microbes.



Enjoy!

You know, there's nothing like a 35-mile bike ride (half of it in a thunderstorm) to bring a couple closer together.

Of course, we were already on a tandem. If we were any closer, we'd be on a unicycle.

1) I was SO ready to take pictures and post them each day, to fully illustrate the coolness that has been this week

2) Our camera chose this most inopportune time to become busticated. So, pictures will have to wait until the ever-gracious cetan_feed can send to me the pics we took using his camera.

3) And by "we", I mean, "the pictures he took while I harangued him and said, "Oooh, could you take a picture of THAT for me?" "Could you get a picture of THOSE?" "How about something over THERE?". Patient, patient, man.

4) I always think carrieb doesn't quite like me but doesn't know how to tell me and then we hang out and play in the pool and talk about books and crafts and I'm all, "She is so fun --- we just live too far apart!"

5) Did I mention my great sadness at the bustification of the camera?

6) Because my flowers are So. Beautiful. And no one will believe me. But we are talking mountainous geraniums and prolific petunias, here!

7) helloheather, cetan_feed and Nate the World's Most Beautiful Pretend Nephew are leaving today. Oh, the sadness.

8) The kitchen floor needs washing.

9) Memo to me: when ordering delicious edible, (read: perishable) treats to be delivered to one's father on the Saturday-before-Father's Day, it is best to make sure one's father will actually be in town on that day.

10) I sure hope my brother likes fresh, chocolate covered fruit in artful arrangements. Eat up, bro. Eat up.

These kids just about make my heart sing....


The Carribean PVC Marimba Children's Orchestra

The story of the delivery of our brand new (500 ton) mattress and boxspring today can be summed up with five little words:

A Kid And His Car



A. KID. And. His. CAR.


I swear to goodness, if we didn't need that damn thing todaythisminute, I would've sent his scrawny ass right back to House of Cheap Sleeps.

"Delivery"! Why I oughtta.....!

Ganked from just about everyone I lj-Love, it's the Album Meme

1 - Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

If you want to do this again, you'll hit refresh to generate new quotes, because clicking the quotes link again will just give you the same quotes over and over again.

3 - Go to flickr's "explore the last seven days" http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it all together, that's your debut album....


My band: Canal+ First

Our debut album: TO SEEK IT ELSEWHERE

from sonrisa_78.

Finish the sentences....

1. I've come to realize that my first kiss... was just a foreshadowing of things to come.

2. I am listening to... airplanes, light car traffic, and Mr. P in the shower.

3. I talk... as often as I'm allowed.

4. I love... the way the garden smells, the taste of purple grape juice, and used books.

5. My car is... a purse on wheels.

6. My life is... worth talking about.

8. I hate it when people ask... why don't you put your name or photo on the internet?

9. Love is... always worth it.

10. Marriage is... not like I thought it would be; and better than I thought it could ever be.

11. Somewhere, someone is thinking... today's the day I tell him about his bad breath!

12. This weekend... is already wonderful and strangely Swedish.

13. I have a secret crush...on someone I worked with one time, as long as he didn't talk too much. Talking just spoils it.


14. I can't...seem to learn to a) like eggs or b)accept teasing.

15. My cell phone... has an irritating extraneous button and several fantastic pictures I can't seem to extract.

16. When I wake up in the morning... I wish I were still sleeping. Mmmmmm, bed!

17. Before I go to bed I... shower.

18. Right now I am thinking about... how to finish this and get in the shower at the same time.

19. Babies are... tiny humans covered in a layer of protective slime. I learned the slime part from hilhas1

20. I get on Facebook... because of Scrabulous.

21. Today I...found a 1962 copy of the Valparaiso University Women's Guild cookbook.

22....where is 22? I lost 22!!

23. Tomorrow I will... meet sonrisa_78!

24. I really want to be... better at swimming.

25. My heart is... getting stronger.

26. My friends are...geographically dispersed.

27. My family is... complicated in communications.

28. Someone that will most likely repost this is... Heather.

So this morning I was talking to Mr. P while simultaneously trying to calculate, in my head, how long I have had boobs (since I was 17, for those of you playing the home game) and I was getting the math all wrong so I said, "For a long time!" and then I realized I'd gotten it even more wrong because I was basing it on a number that was not even my actual age. Then there was this pause of horrified realization, and I said,


"I'm thirty-three. Fuck!"



And Mr. P said "you should post that on your blog."

Manhattan at the beginning of this month was brought to you by the letter D...

For Dog Park





And Dumplings





And by the number 2, which is the number of shows we saw.

Tim Minchin made me laugh so hard I actually choked (and then he made me laugh by commenting on it).

August: Osage County made me laugh and cry and groan and shake my head and gasp and squirm and laugh and cry some more. Where else can you get T.S. Eliot and the words "Mom's cooch" in the same play?

Throw in a couple of bags of roast nuts, and what more do you need? NYC never disappoints.

So, at work today, I sent D this message:

"Only 340?! Struggling to make it to five. At work with no Diet Pepsi. Might die."

And she wrote back:

"No DP? Where are you working? The gulag?"


And that is why we're friends.

I could say a lot about a lot of things today...but I think my Mom would like it if I said the following:


It's okay that you haven't gotten in touch with that person you've been thinking about. Don't feel guilty. Don't beat yourself up. Forgive yourself.

And once you've done that ---

Call them.

Email them.

Write them.

Get in touch with them.




Don't wait.

Nothing more dangerous than unexpected sunshine, a day off, and a trip the nursery....

A friend of mine recently quit her job, sold all of her stuff, and moved to a new state to start a new adventure.





Let's take a quick show of hands. How many of you read that and thought it sounded wonderful?




What is it about the idea of "getting rid of all this stuff" that so compels us, intrigues us, attracts us? And yet so few of us do it. We have a yard sale now and then but somehow we seem to end up with more than we had when we started. We spend hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours managing our Stuff. Rearranging closets. Upgrading kitchen cabinets. Cleaning the garage. You know, I'm waiting for the day when Realtors stop saying, "Comes with a 1-car garage" and start saying "Comes with a 25-RT (Rubbermaid (R) tote) garage". What have we got in there, anyway? And why is it so important?

In our garage you can find, among other things, the following:

two bicycles, a milk crate full of items categorized as "paint related", two boogie boards which were meant to go to a friend of ours but I had them in my car for a month before I realized we hardly ever see each other so I put them back in the house and then he came over three times and we forgot to send them home with him; two each of important garden tools and at least one each of unimportant garden tools; fifty pounds (and about 100 feet) of random lumber scraps that "might come in handy one day"; four wooden chairs we are selling on Craigslist and which we thought would be gone right away but which are slow in the leaving ("For Sale: Four solid oak kitchen chairs. Slat-back with turned legs. Dark stain. Keywords: country, colonial, kitchen, desperate").

The one thing you don't see on this list is my car.

My car sits in the driveway, staring at the garage and wondering, "What did I do wrong? Why is Shop Vac in there and I'm out here??". My car is its own repository of Things That Made Sense at The Time --- one bag of maps complete with I don't know how many expired, worn out, broke down, out of date documents, which, if I ever actually tried to follow them, would have me following a wagon trail across the Dakota Territory; a box of clothes to be returned at the Outlet Stores (which sells more stuff), but which has no time limit, which means it may never, ever happen; a box of Cup o' Noodles, chicken flavor, for me to take to work, except I gave up meat for Lent, so I've been driving around in a sort of Cup O' Noodle limbo -- I mean, it's not as if it's actually chicken in there, right?; four hundred bungee cords (experience dictates that five will usually suffice); two crushed boxes of tissues; and an apple-scented candle from Yankee Candle Company because of that time the cat peed on the floor mats.

None of it seems like much by itself. But somehow, someway, our spaces, our lives, end up packed to the gills. (Do spaces have gills? That's a question for another posting) We like our stuff. We value our stuff. We feel...Comfort? Satisfaction? Convenience? Happiness?...in our stuff.

But could we walk away from it? And should we?

That's the part I'm still figuring out. I know I could. But should I? Should I wait for a Big Life Decision or should I just say, "This is my life. Now. I'm not sitting around waiting for something to happen to me. Life is happening right now. And I don't need to be bogged down by so much stuff. Especially if it gets in the way of the Life thing."

What do YOU think about it? And, perhaps more importantly, what do you DO about it?

You can leave your answers in the comments. I'll read them later today. It's Tuesday, time for a recreational trip to the thrift store.

So I went to Starbucks today for my "breakfast". Near the door, I spotted a kid asleep in a chair with a coffee cup in his lap. From his shaggy haircut, professionally faded jeans and size eleven gunboats, I brilliantly surmised he was a local HS student on a free period. I felt a near overwhelming urge to bang on the glass next to his head and yell "Get to class!!". As I was leaving, I overheard a woman say dryly to her companion, "Ya think somebody should wake that kid up and tell him to go to school?" I told her, "I was just thinking the same thing!".

As I walked away, muttering to myself about what the County is paying for if not for this kid to sit on his ass in a coffee stained armchair all morning, I realized that any sentence that includes the words "my tax dollars" automatically means you're old.

So I let him sleep. Who am I to judge?