Ok, So I Love Tina Fey...

So I was watching "30 Rock" last night and there was a very funny bit about Tina Fey's character, Liz Lemon being an exchange student.... Check it out. (The video quality blows, but whatever).



Wow, it is so fun to watch someone play a real dork on tv. (This coming from a COMPLETE dork. Make that a clumsy, computer nerd, glasses-wearing dork).

That joke in the clip just kept making me giggle all day long. "30 Rock" was a nice surprise for us this year, since we HATED the first couple of episodes. I mean, I love Tina Fey (we should totally hang out and um, do stuff), but the first two episodes featured bad acting and rather stilted writing. I suspect now, having seen more episodes, that it was just the fact of the series finding its feet- perhaps also finding the characters as they were written, too. So, thanks for keeping it on, NBC. Way to go. Seriously.

And Tina, if you read this? I listen to NPR and I too dress like a small town, liberal arts college lesbian. See, we could totally hang out.

Signs That Give One Pause... Or, On A Lighter Note

"Marge & Gina's Live Hair Shop"

Um, ok. "Live"? I get that it means not wigs, right?

"Scissor Hands"

This one was just confusing until I saw inside and determined it was a salon. Although still sort of creepy.

balance...

I need to remember this: you will not give yourself the chance to write something good if you don't write anything.

I have a story that I'm working on. Extremely slowly. I can write on my lunch and for a few minutes after Peanut goes to bed (like right now). That is, if I'm not completely bushed. Which is usually the case.

I am trying very hard to hear the characters whispering to me as my own self-doubt works overtime trying to shout them down. So I need to remember that all I can do it try to write. To let myself write.

I have been really thinking a lot lately of balance. Remembering long ago when I took gymnastics classes. Specifically, the balance beam. Four inches across. You learn at first just to walk across, Then you progress to walking and bending your knee so the foot not touching the beam dips below the surface of the beam, alternating as you walk, up and down, up and down. You grow slowly familiar. For the girls that got good at the balance beam, that four inches could seem like a lot more. Because really, you don't need more than that four inches to stand or jump or cartwheel or whatever. It's possible. Your mind just tells you that you need more. You just think you do.

The best balance beam couching I ever got was to imagine, as you stand on the beam, that you are being suspended from an invisible string that is attached to the top of your head. You can imagine that invisible string pulling you up so your head is lifted, your chest is held out and you cannot possibly wobble because of that connection, that balance you are maintaining.

I feel like my life is like that now, sometimes, except that on my grownup version of the balance beam I hold a number of fragile eggs in my hands. I hold R and the small universe that is our marriage, I hold Peanut and my responsibilities and commitments to her in my role as her mother and I hold my job and I hold our home and somewhere in this daily struggle, that fight I fight everyday to find that elusive balance? I hold the thing that is simply me.

Wine and a Mild Concussion...

So, I have to check WebMD. Do wine and concussions go well together? Like, say beer and chips?

Um. So I whacked my heat something fierce on the Peanut crib (R calls it Peanut Prison) while reaching down to pull out an errant sock from below it. OWWW! I blacked out a little and started crying. Yeah, Peanut fell down tonight and bonked her head and just kept playing. Mum does and just wails for a few minutes. Hmmm. Hopefully my brain won't leak out my ears when I go to bed.

I am quite pleased that Blogger has the autosave feature now. Safari just quit for about the four hundred thousandth time. I even installed the recent updates. Ack Ack Ack. Oh, Apple, you tease. You promise and seduce me with your gorgeousness and usability and then you stop calling me and stop providing timely patches and updates. I see how it is. You get all popular and suddenly you're out with the iPhone.

Rain, Rain...

Went away on its own. We're still here. We battened down the hatches and we're still here. It howled and blew and poured last night, but we're still here.

I went to breakfast with PA this morning, to the Starling Diner, over on Third St. I had the Broiled San Francisco Stuffed Toast. According to the menu:

"Have you ever tried French toast stuffed with creamy Mascarpone and Crème Fraiche? We love it. It’s French Toast like you’ve never had it before. Not only is it beautiful to view but your stomach will click its heels with glee. We broil instead of frying it-which gives the flavor a deeper dimension. You have your choice of custom tailored toppings:
Fresh Seasonal Berries and Whipped Cream or Caramelized Apples in Brandy Butter" YUMMMM! I was in a sugar induced haze while we walked back to my house and I showed her how to update her blog. So we'll see what happens there.

In the afternoon, we went over to Pioneer and shopped at the Farm Fresh market in Little India. They're at: 18551 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia, CA; 562-865-3191. No website, but a good selection of produce, spices, frozen Indian foods and some British items, like McVities digestives and Tango soda. Yeah. Good stuff.

We continued our world wide trip by visiting the Holland America Import Store in Bellflower located at 10343 Artesia Blvd, Bellflower, CA 90706, 562) 867-7589. I bought some Dutch goodies for my mom's birthday- stroopenwaffles, black licorice and a bag of Radenmaker Hopjes. (I may have purchased a bag for myself, too). I also got a yummy item I last had when I was about 8 years old- De Ruijter toast sprinkles! I can't wait to have toast!

Peanut was up almost all day, with only a couple of very short naps. This is going to be awesome. She's been asleep since 9, so she'll be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Argh. But I will have toast sprinkles! Yay!

R is making Chicken Tikka Masala in the kitchen and begging me to turn off the heater. I guess. I've been parked in front of the wall heater for a couple days now.

Well, my hands are aching, so I'll sign off for now. I will be making a better attempt to update here a little more often than once a month this year, so we'll see.

Happy New Year and Stuff

So that's nice. Oh, is it 2008? Ah. Well, you see... yours truly conked out just before midnight while feeding the baby. R woke me up and midnight and I drug myself off to bed. My normal sleep schedule is bed at 11, wake with the baby at 12:30, sleep, wake with the baby at 3, sleep, wake up for work and feed the baby at 5. So midnight was a little too late for me. Although we slept until 8! AM! on New Year's Day. HOORAY!!!

Peanut is into EVERYTHING now. So I spent New Year's Day trying to make our house just a little more childfriendly. There aren't Elmo posters on the wall, but I swept up most of the broken hypodermics and rat droppings. Our living room has basically devolved into the play room anyhow, but we managed to rearrange so R has somewhere to keep his computer other than the couch. Peanut enjoys smacking expensive electronics, vomitting on stuff, and eating leftover pine needles from the Christmas tree. Oh, and chasing kitties. (They LOVE that, by the way, and have developed these incredibly sad meows that seem to say, "But WHY mom, WHY? What did I do to deserve this!"- to which the reply is "Years of cleaning cat yarck off of EVERYTHING" But anyway....)

So I don't really have any major resolutions. I'm going to take one class online this semester to see how I manage. I'm also going to try to write more. Maybe next year I'll try to send stuff out again. I haven't been feeling super confident about writing lately. I have been thinking about a story recently though.

I want to just, I don't know, try harder this year. So we'll just see, I guess.

Flight of The Conchords..

Thanks....

for the car accident. So, R got rear-ended (I don't know if that is really a hyphen, but I am oh-so-tired) and we are getting up the courage to face our families for the annual family time. Oh joyous day. I think there are about 20 people due at my mom's. Blarghedy-blargh. Ack.

So, R is ok, and he was driving our old car, so no harm no foul. But he did tell off the lady, yelling that "I don't know what I would do to you if my daughter was in the car!" Awwww, it's so cute to see him be so overly protective of Peanut. I mean, she was about 11 miles away at the time. So, yeah....

We went to the LA Zoo a couple weeks ago.
It was pretty fun.

Peanut is a little rock star.

She loves her new Fisher Price toy.

She is growing sooo fast. It's just amazing...

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us!

Oh yum....

I made dinner, for once. The Barefoot Contessa's Lemon Chicken with Croutons, so yummy... And I even made her Vegetable Tian.

Anyhow, the time change is kicking my butt, so I really need to go to bed.

I really meant to write a little something about how cool it is that Peanut is growing up. And how I feel sad that she's really not going to stay small forever (someday she will actually drive! And stuff! Ack!). I will write again soon, and post a pic or two of her as Princess Leia for Halloween. I mean, Peanut Leia. R keeps calling her hardcore Peanut- P*NuT.

There was a kitty-cat related crash from the bedroom. Gotta run.

Acres of Books Is Under Attack

Acres of Books, that Long Beach landmark, is under attack by the City of Long Beach, which seeks to tear it down and redevelop that block. You can sign petitions here.

You can read more about it at The District, the newish LBC weekly paper.

F*ck redevelopment. That's bullshit.

Long live Acres of Books.

If Love is A Red Dress...

Why does it have to be so hard...and the world is on fire.

So, we have a new car seat. Peanut is a happy kid now; she has room to stretch and squirm happily. She used to cry EVERY time she was placed in her car seat. Now she cooes and makes happy raspberries. So, I hope the ridiculously expensive seat is really worth it, but so far it seems as if it is so.

I promised in my last post to discuss the child care debacle, so here goes. We interviewed for day care in July, because I had to go back to work in August. We met with the woman, I'll call her Ms. D___. She seemed mellow and nice. She'd been licensed for over 10 years and she seemed to really care about the kids. There was an unstructured feeling at her home, which we liked, since we wanted to have Peanut in a place that felt like a home, not an institution.

Then it began to go wrong.

Ms. D___ took Peanut with her to get fast food. She'd never mentioned taking our daughter anywhere in a car. She acted as if we were crazy for being unhappy about this.

Ms. D___ had people dropping in and out of her house all the time.

Ms. D___ put Peanut to sleep in a small pack-n-play on a pillow- on her tummy. That's how SIDS happens- at least it becomes more likely. When mentioned by us, she acted as if we were being silly and overprotective.

Finally, Ms. D___ gave me papers to tell me that the State of California had found her liable in being negligent in a child breaking his leg at her home while in her care. She then tried to cast aspersions on the child's mother, as if bad parenting caused the accident, somehow. The same papers stated that there were allegations that people were drinking at her house while children were in her care.

So we took Peanut out. We scrambled to find care for her. My sister, my step mother, friends, flexible scheduling at work... We managed to juggle it all for two weeks.

We finally ended up with two interviews. A chain of childcare providers that I'll call "KinderScare" and Mrs. H___, a grandma that takes care of a friend's child.

"KinderScare" was AWFUL. I've never been to a Romanian orphanage, but that is close to what I pictured. A three month old baby lay on the LINOLEUM floor crying while a staffer stood over her, chatting with another staffer. My husband said in the car that he was getting so stressed out that he nearly picked up that baby. Peanut didn't smile the entire time we were there. Neither of us could picture leaving her there- I'm sure that it is generally a safe place, but so completely clinical that I couldn't imagine it not impacting Peanut's social development. I would quit my job before leaving her in a place like that.

Then there was Mrs. H___. She wanted to cuddle Peanut right away. She had pictures of her grandchildren all over. She has a big backyard and a sweet chocolate lab. Her grandaughter and my friend's child were playing happily in the backyard with the dog keeping a watchful eye on them. It seemed just right.

And now we have Mrs. H___, who is a kind grandmother who has watched a friend's two children since their infancy. She always wants a last hug with Peanut everyday. And Peanut smiles at her in the way that she smiles at all of her grandmas. So all is well once more in Peanut-ville.

Except the part about half of Southern California being in flames. My throat is raw from all the smoke- and I was inside all day, except for when I was walking from buildings into my car. Our house smells like burning. We are miles from the fires, but the Santiago Canyon fire looked like hell when I drove south to work this morning. I was driving along, towards the bank of smoke obliterating the sunrise this morning and I just thought, why am I driving TOWARDS it? It is just such a nonsense thing to do, don't you think? You're supposed to flee, or something.... Right?

28 and a Quarter...

Inches long. M was 21 and a half inches long when she was born. So she has grown almost 7 inches in 6 months. She's tall for her age.

The fun part? Now we need a new car seat. Because hers is for babies up to 29 inches long. Yep, I thought we'd get to keep it for a year, but I was wrong.

So, a new car seat. I think I want this one:
The Britax Marathon Car Seat. Ok, so it is very expensive. But it should last us through a couple of kids and until about 65 lbs worth of kid. And I do have a coupon. And it's on sale. And....

And it is pretty cute.

It does cost a little more than half what my first car did, though. I could buy her a little more than half a 1981 VW Rabbit of her own for the price of this seat. Weird, huh?

Anyhow, we've been dealing with the aftermath of our flaky childcare lady and the resulting State of California investigation (which I will blog about soon, as it is so much trauma and drama), and now we finally have a replacement that was recommended to us by a friend and that costs HALF what the flaky lady did. So yay, we can swing the expensive seat.

And I am reading an excellent book (on my breaks at work- who knew that would be the only time I EVER have to read anymore?)- John Irving's "A Prayer For Owen Meany". I'm not through yet (at this rate I should be done around M's birthday).

I have also decided that I am just going to call M what we call her at home: Peanut. I am aware it is about the least original nickname, but I have never been a nickname gal. She's just our little Peanut, though.

Oh yes, friends who have e-mailed me- I will be writing you back this weekend- I promise! I will do it even if I have to sacrifice blankly staring at the wall while the baby naps!

My First Museum

So M is so very cultured. She went to her first museum, the Zimmer Museum, with our friend V and his four year old, F. M had sooo much fun, even though she's too little for everything. She squealed and blew constant raspberries at all the bright colors and the children. I think it was probably the most fun she's ever had in her life so far. Pretty cool. Here's M playing with the challah table.

Here's M and her Papa.


Here's V and M having fun together, too.

So many fun things at the Zimmer. M had a blast. She was so happy she cooed all the way home. I really think that was the best day ever for her.

Bleh

I feel so bleh. My back is killing me, I am still getting over the plague that my inlaws gave us (um, thanks), and the baby decided that the past three weeks (my first three weeks back at work) would be a great time to STOP sleeping through the night. Except on weekends, when I could potentially sleep in. Sigh.

So I am sitting here, waiting for the tylenol to kick. Woo. Party. Excitement. What else would I do on Friday night?

A Big Pile of Suck

Ok, so I'm going to preface this by stating that I do not advocate brunk dlogging. I mean, ha ha, drunk blogging.
But even so.
Teeth.
Not my teeth. They are, knock on wood, fine.
M's teeth. Or, to be more specific, her little gum nubbins where teeth shall someday be.
We did not make it to bed until 5:30 AM yesterday. We slept until 8 AM. Then we got up, so as to enjoy the 89 degree weather more completely. Oh, yes. 89 degrees AND teething.
Blargh.
Double blarcgh-blargh.
So, thanks to the Fisher Price Jumperoo (I wish they made them for grownups) and some Baby Orajel, we have a temporary detente between the teeth and M. It is a fragile truce.
The wine is making me warm.
I just read my friend's blog where I am linked below Alternadad. She makes me feel so much cooler than I am.
So here's my Alternadad-type moment for the week:

...a funny thing that R said to me today when the baby had a cat hair stuck to her face:

"oh, she's got a kitty pube on her cheek..."

I said, "Eww, it's just a cat hair..."

he said, "how do you know?"

Ack.

Sleep.....

Um. I'm still awake. As if I am waiting to hear the baby wake up. It was 91 degrees today. Right now it is supposed to be 73 degrees. Baby hates the heat. Baby can't sleep. Mama can't sleep.
Global warming sucks.
I blame the Bush administration. Everything else is their fault, so why not this? I live 1/4 of a mile from the ocean. 91 degrees just isn't right.
Well, at least the forecast for tomorrow is only 87 degrees. That's downright comfy.
Blech.
I have to go back to work next week. I'm going to be waking up at 4:30 AM to feed the baby and get ready for work. Baby thinks that we should stay up until midnight every day.
Did I mention that it was 91 degrees today? I want to move somewhere with reasonable weather.
I'm going to test the kid and try to go to bed...

Why English Class is Important...

I know everyone has the little things that bother them. I work at a credit union, so the phrase "checkings account" bugs the absolute hell out of me. IT IS NOT PLURAL!!!!! Ack. Anyhow, at my hubs job, there are a few Grammar Offenders that come up with some doozies.

So. You know the word "scapegoat"? Overheard: "You know, I hate it when my boyfriend tried to make like I'm his escape goat..." Can't you just picture it? A stealth goat that is used to escape dangerous situations? He'd probably need a goat sized mask. Maybe even a cape...

One gal thinks that the word "remind" means "to tell you something for the first time". As in, "I need to remind you that this is our new policy that you've never heard of before"- she thinks that is how you use it.

Another one- instead of condescending- condomsending. Uh, yeah. I'll leave it alone.

So Lame...

Ok, so Wired.com has an article about how geeks make the best lovers. So I have no real argument with the statement- it is so immaterial to me, anyhow, but the reasons they listed are so stupid. One of them is actually "Geeks understand multi-dimensional relationships". I mean, LAME. Geeks may be the best lovers but not because they "understand multi-dimensional relationships."

Ack. I need to get some sleep.

Randomness...

So... I just got some spam e-mail with the subject beginning, "Hope or Lightheadedness..." Doesn't that so completely sound like an album title or a novel title? Craziness.

Sigh....

Summertime...

And it is getting hot. I always seem to forget how quickly the pleasant May weather (mid 70's, nice ocean breezes) evolves into that back of the leg sweat kind of hot- you know the kind, when your jeans actually start to stick to your legs, or if you're wearing a skirt, the sweat just drips down the back of your legs....
Anyhow, this past weekend I went up to Highland Park to the Oilcloth International sale (next one is in November), and it was just HOT. I was sweating and carrying M around was so warm. It made me remember the weekend last year that I found out I was pregnant with M. I was in Highland Park, visiting my friend and her husband, who had recently found out that they were expecting. She teased me that I was probably preggers too, since I kept sucking down water and peeing constantly. I thought to myself, hmmm. I suppose I could be..., as I stood in their kitchen with sweat dripping down my legs and soaking the heels of my cork espadrilles.
So, the sale was relatively successful, though I thought the selection wasn't as good as last years'. I still managed to part with a few dollars.
The interesting part, though, was that as I was walking from the porch of my friends' bungalow into their living room, I got stung by a bee. Now, I suppose the more outdoorsy stypes are totally unimpressed by this, but I have somehow made it to my late twenties without being stung by anything. I felt like maybe my diaper bag's corner was stabbing me in the arm, so I looked down and there was a BEE on my arm. I have a serious phobia about flying inspects in general, although honey bees have actually never been on the list before. I was holding M in her carseat, so I finally managed to flick it off of my arm and get into the house. I closed the door, and asked my friends- what do you do to get the stinger out? I was never a girl scout, and I have never earned any sort of outdoorsy knowledge contest. I Google, therefore I am. I just know how to look things up online- so when I have no laptop in front of me, I become basically an idiot. I called R at work and asked him, since my friends didn't seem too sure. R was a boy scout, so he probably had earned a badge for something like this in his childhood. He told me it didn't matter how you get the stinger out- just to do it fast. I borrowed a pair of tweezers and pulled it out, then cleaned it with an alcohol swab. I watched it for an hour to see if I developed any kind of crazy reaction (just a dime sized welt and a red splotch on my arm around the area) and put on a Strawberry Shortcake bandaid on it.
I mean, I am running up on thirty- doesn't it seem possible that I should have been stung earlier- like when I was a kid running around playground in the spring time? Barefoot, for crying out loud? Not just walking into the house! That just seems lame.
Writing this down makes me somehow remember when I was in fourth grade, our house became home to a colony (is that the right word?) of carpenter bees. They made a nest (hive?) in the corner of our roof that met at an angle, and my mom had to pay some guy to trap them inside with a metal mesh thing. The trouble came when they found their way out through our attic into the only was out they could find- the small crack between the top of our kitchen ceiling fan and the actual ceiling. My friend, S, who I've mentioned just caught up with me via Google, and I were sitting at the kitchen table doing something together when a half dead carpenter bee fell onto the middle of table, writhing with I am sure the agony of being halfway torn apart in the act of pushing through the crack. It was completely terrifying. We screamed and ran, and I suspect my grandmother must have been the one to seal up the ceiling and dispose of the bee, because I don't remember anything else happening...
Odd, then, that my phobia of flying insects is restricted to moths, butterflies (they are really just fancy-colored moths), and grasshoppers. Yuck. Even typing the g-word gives me the willies.
Well, I have to run and get things done before M wakes up. I should probably peel off my Strawberry Shortcake bandaid and get moving.

A Funny Thing Happened to the FCC

I love Mark Morford.

Melty Melty Goes My Heart

So M can now make raspberries in response to my raspberries. Awwww. And she can suddenly hold her head up like, way high during tummy time. She's growing up so FAST! Next thing you know she'll be writing how much she hates me in her diary. Which will be on some sort of electronic gadget I'll be too dumb to understand. Sigh.

Ok, so Bobby Brown has problems. I don't really think that Osama is his main one, though...

I'm excited- I'm going to the oilcloth sale in Highland Park this weekend. Yay! Cheap stuff! I'm gonna get me some stuff, wholesale and even cheaper! Check out some of the stuff that this company makes for Land of Nod: splat mat, bibs, aprons...

Last summer at their last sale, I got a few bibs (all very cute- I gave away some as part of a shower gift) and a KitchenAid Mixer cover. So cute- it has strawberries on it, and it keeps the dust and schmutz off my mixer. This time I want to get a few cosmetic bags with zippers to use for Peanut's diaper bag- for her spare outfits and one for dirties. And I have small diaper packs in the stroller baskets, which I would like to put into oilcloth bags. Also one for my Hooter Hider would be handy. I also want to get a couple of splat mats, if they have any. If not, then I think I'll buy some yardage to make my own. We have crappy wood floors that don't need to get any more crappy, and the splat mats are cool for picnics and for crafts, too. I mean, once M can sit up on her own and eat solids. Eventually. :)
I am excited about the fun stuff they are gonna have, which is OMG so cheap. I need to resist the cute aprons- they almost got me last time. But I have a ton of aprons and the only one I ever actually use is the red Williams Sonoma one I got for my anniversary from my aunt- it is so thick and lovely and washes up so nice. Also good for baby bath time, actually. You can see what kind of stuff they make on their website, OIlcloth.com. Click the "Sewn Products" section to see pics of their goodies. Which reminds me, I want to get a couple of totes to add to my reusable grocery bags supply. It's funny, but at the healthy organic markets (like Trader Joe's) the baggers always smile at your reusable canvas bags. At Stater Brothers, they just look at you like you're annoying and should bag your own shit if you want to use hippy bags. Well, it's late (as always) and I think I need to make my way to bed.

Deep in the Heart of Texas....

Is a town called Bullard where we might end up moving if R's job ends up there. I could be a stay at home mom, which would be cool. BUT.....In FREAKING Texas. I am an atheist liberal nut job. I hate guns. I hate the President and all his nonsense. So.... Texas? Yeah, Texas.

Ack.

I gotta look into a pickup truck that'll fit a car seat, maybe.... Do they make decorative gun racks? You know, to hang your umbrella from or something?

Oh, yeah. I think Bullard, Texas is in a dry county. It just gets better and better.

R said I could get a pony, though. Hmmm...

I've Been Googled...

Well, my best friend from growing up has found me again. Via Google. I have been Googled. Huh.

I probably kept her up far past her bedtime, babbling on and on. She is the one friend that I can fall into an immediate rhythm with, no matter how long it has been since we've talked. (I think it has been at least three years). We were pregnant at the same time, which is weird. Even weirder is that she had her baby on Valentine's Day. She is the third person I know who had a baby on Valentine's Day 2007. That's weird. It was her fifth baby, and she says she's done now. On the phone, it sounded like barely controlled chaos- in a very fun way. It was neat to catch up with S.

S said that she found it difficult to picture me as a mom. I am considerably less willing to completely let go in front of people than she is- I am definitely the prissy one. So, I was telling her about my "mummy moments"- those moments I would never have imagined before M. For instance, once during a diaper change when M had her diaper off and sneezed- she shot little poop-bullets three feet out of her little butt. She almost hit the wall opposite her changing pad. Or, the first time I actually saw poop being squeezed out of her little butthole. I had never seen a human butt in action before. (Call me sheltered). Or when she farted on my finger as I was putting on some diaper rash cream. She vibrated my finger with her butt. In all cases- I didn't have a breakdown or cry. I just laughed.

Yes, I am officially a mother.

Method Baby Laundry Soap

Ok, so I've been to three different Targets looking for the Method Baby laundry soap and they're out, or they aren't carrying it anymore. The smell of that stuff is like crack to me. Apparently, I'm not the only one who feels this way. It is sort of an amazing scent, as that blogger wrote- very hormone inducing for some reason. Between that and the smell of Johnson & Johnson's All Over Baby Wash, I'd let R knock me up every summer. (Don't tell him that).
I hope that the people at Method aren't planning on discontinuing it. I haven't smelled anything like it before.

Reading My Old Posts....

I was just reading a little bit of a couple of my older posts, and I was smiling over my pre-M posts, where I was describing cooking French food in 80+ degree weather. It made me remember how gianormous my ankles were at that point (which continued until about 10 days after M was born). When the swelling went down I felt so much thinner right away, even though it had nothing to do with my own efforts at losing weight. I need to remember how big I was before M was born so I don't feel as yucky about how big I still am. I'm working on losing the baby weight now, and I need to remember exactly how big I was so I don't feel as big now. I know (logically) that I've lost a fair amount of weight, but it's hard to see myself in pics now (such as during our recent trip) and not feel bad.

I just had to get up and prevent my hubby from drinking cold coffee from the fridge at 1:35 am. He woke up (he has to work tomorrow at 8, so he has to be up at about 6:30 in the morning) and went to grab something to drink. He pulled out the glass pitcher of coffee that I chilled to make iced coffee with and began to pour. I asked him what he thought it was and he answered "brown juice". I'm not sure what juice would be brown, but I would think that soy milk or water would be more appealing, but whatever. I should have let him drink it. That would have been sort of funny when he woke up wired in an hour. But mean. So I didn't. I gave him a cup of o.j. and sent him back to bed. He's occasionally like a really big toddler. M seems to be staying asleep so I think I am going to risk going to bed.

An old friend e-mailed me today. Oddly, we have babies that are about a month apart in age. How weird is life, huh?

Sleepy-time and the vote for antichrist...

I'm up waiting to see if M is really going to sleep or if she is just messing with me. I find that if she sleeps for more than 30 minutes at night, she really means it. She literally just squeaked over the monitor as I typed this. Maybe she really loves Cuba Gooding Jr., who is making his entrance onto Late Night with Conan O'Brien right now. I really hope not. Is good taste genetic? I hope so.
Watching Conan makes me feel sort of nostalgic- I used to watch him when I first moved out on my own, when I worked swing. I'd get home at 11p, make dinner and watch Late Night. Then I got a day job, couldn't stay up as late. Andy Richter left, and it hasn't been the same since.
M decided to wake up again; I think she's beginning to teethe. She's suddenly drooly and obsessed with eating her own hands. Poor little Peanut. It's now 1:42 am. Hopefully this bed-time is for real.
Mark Morford over at the SF Chronicle explains why Lindsay Lohan might be the antichrist and why John Stewart isn't. Very funny. Although I would like to nominate the Justice Department for antichrist, if I may. Oooh, let's do that- kind of like voting for homecoming queen, except for antichrist being just a little more mean and less about being pretty and slutty, right?

Sick Kid....

I think M is getting sick. I feel really tired from this past weekend and M is beginning to cough and sneeze. She threw up on me last night and today the cats threw up on the bed. Welcome home! Vomit! Yay!


And now I need to bundle up the sick kid and go to the store so we can have food for dinner tonight. Argh. But R got a promotion and a raise, so there is a bright side. The bad side is that he's going to be working a lot more. So we have balance, I suppose. Well, I'm off to Trader Joe's.

Seattle...

Well, we made it back from our first family trip to Seattle. On Memorial Day weekend, no less. M was awesome. She hardly noticed that she was flying- no crying or anything! Wow, and she's only 2 months old! Our baby rocks!

Seattle was super cool. I wish we had had more time to see more of the city. Our hotel was on Lake Union.





I felt it was a little too far out of town for my tastes- I would have preferred Queen Anne or something, but hey- it was free. Our family reunion was at Tony's.





The pic is one R took- it came out pretty... Sunday we met with friends and got Thai food in Capitol Hill at Jai Thai.





Pretty fun. We'll go again. R is ready to pack it up and move there.

Breastfeeding...Gasp! In Public!!!

So, I am breastfeeding. I actually didn't really intend to originally, but there came a point during my eighth month of pregnancy that just made me feel like I needed to do whatever the little bean needed from me - and that included breastfeeding. I don't feel particularly political about breastfeeding, per se. I actually am a little creeped out by the La Leche League. I'm not really a joiner, though. Of course, I am an atheist liberal Californian, so I know that I am generally not exactly the majority, but I have never really thought much about women breastfeeding in public one way or the other. Apparently quite a few people feel rather strongly about it- especially about a woman remaining "modest". I don't care about other women's modesty, to be honest. I don't think it's brazen to bare a boob in public to feed your kid. I do care about young girls being sexualized by our culture from a very young age, but that is an entirely different can of beans and has nothing to do with seeing a breastfeeding mother feeding her child. How weird our country is. It is so strange that we can be so Puritanical still. I think it is even more interesting that our culture has been so influenced for so long by baby formula companies that we see breastfeeding as something somehow shameful. (I don't want it to sound as if I am judging moms who feed their babies formula- breastfeeding isn't for everyone, and it's a choice each mom has to make herself, for her what's best for her family. Breast may often be best, but every family is different with different needs and moms have to make their decisions on what is best for their own family, not some ideal textbook situation.) For my family, it's right, and it's worked out really well. I am glad I tried it, because I feel like I would have missed out on spending this special time with my daughter.

Over at Suburban Turmoil, the discussion has begun about whether it is ok to breastfeed in public. I can't help but feel the "Left Coast" influence on me- I can't even think of a time when anyone (so far) has commented on my breastfeeding my baby in public. In fact, all through my pregnancy people (including complete strangers in Target) wanted to know if I was going to breasfeed. I couldn't understand why they cared, to be honest, but in the beginning I was answering with "formula" and getting disappointed "oh"s. I didn't even tell anyone other than my husband that I wanted to breastfeed, but now when people ask, and I say that I breastfeed M, they are just so approving. What a bunch of hippies, huh?

I am actually more embarrassed about breastfeeding in front of my in-laws than in front of complete strangers. I can't seem to keep a blanket over M, so I bought a Hooter Hider from Bebe Au Lait. (Which, my stepmom showed me in a magazine, Mira Sorvino also uses- I have aqua, she has pink).

I guess that all of this current discussion originated from Maggie Gyllenhaal breastfeeding in public. I should say, daring to breastfeed in public. (Who knew she was such a rebel?) She was completely naked in her film Secretary, so I am sort of surprised that anyone can work up any excitement over her seeing the top of her boob over her kid's head.

I am so more interested in her stroller- it is so cool.

Exercise

I'm trying to exercise right now. I'm officially ok'd by the doctor to begin to exercise, so I took out the jogging stroller this week and got out there. I didn't really jog so much as walk kinda fast, but it's a start. M seemed ok with it.



I know I'm biased, but how cute is she.

Baby Makes Three

So. I am a mummy. R and M and me. Baby makes three.

April 3, 2007. M (our new addition) was 8 lbs. 13 oz.

She's pretty neat.

Au Pistou...

The French version of pesto that caused my husband to determine that we need to have the same soup again tonight (which is ok, cause we have a lot of leftovers). With "pistou", and some crusty French bread, Ina Garten's Provencal Soup is really very good. I had two bowls last night.

So more culinary adventure tomorrow night. For tonight, I catch up with the dishes and reheat yesterday's masterpiece. Despite the fact that it is 81 degrees outside.

Stranger Than Fiction

Well, we watched "Stranger Than Fiction" last night on DVD, and I have to say, I was very pleasantly surprised. It was well written and well acted, and truly very funny. Will Farrell is perfect as Howard Crick, and the supporting cast is all very good as well. Much better overall than I thought it would be.

We went to the farmer's market this morning down by the marina and bought some produce in the sunshine. I think we're going to try and make Ina Garten's Provencal Vegetable Soup with Pistou. I am sort of obsessed with The Barefoot Contessa right now. Everything she makes is so tasty. The Lemon Chicken with Croutons was delicious for two separate meals- once as a simple roasted chicken and a second time as sandwiches. Mmm. I think I'm getting hungry.

We also bought this apple juice (perhaps cider?) at the market that is like crack- it is so good. I actually hate apple juice, because it is so sweet and syrupy, but this is like the essence of all that is apple in liquid form. I may have to kill people to get more. It's from Johna's Organic Orchard, from whom we also bought some organic Fiji apples. Richard is claiming that I shouldn't drink the juice because I'm pregnant, but I think he's just trying to get more for himself. It is sooo good.

Anyhow, I need to go bleach the kitchen sink since R just cleaned our turtle's tank. Waylon has a lovely clean home now, but I probably have all kinds of bacteria in my sink, so Clorox to the rescue.

9 Months+ and counting...

Well. I'm officially on maternity leave. So I've got time to do all the things I have put off for lack of energy and motivation for the past months. My hands are swollen and I look pretty close to one of the hippos from Fantasia, but I'm slogging along.

I've been trying to sort out what to do with myself while I'm waiting to have this kid. So, I've decided to cook. I've picked up the lovely copy of "Barefoot in Paris" that my husband bought me a couple years ago and I've tried a couple recipes.

Thursday was Lemon Chicken with Croutons (you roast the chicken in an obscene amount of butter and stuff it to bursting with lemon wedges on a bed of fried onions and serve it over homemade croutons from a loaf of French bread) along with a Vegetable Tian, which is basically another bed of fried onions covered with zucchini, tomatoes, and potatoes, sprinkled with Gruyere. Yum. So I basically only screwed up by roasting the chicken upside down. Which isn't too major, I guess. It still tasted great, and R ate the skin anyhow, so oh well.

Last night we had Gruyere, Tomato (ok I had them, R didn't), and leftover chicken sandwiches on French bread along with Winter Squash soup, which is butternut squash and pumpkin puree as a pureed soup- it turned out really well. Although I would like to invest in a food mill, the food processor worked fairly well. (I made a righteous mess in the kitchen last night with this one- I haven't even dared look at the pile of dishes in the sink).

I think this weekend I'm going to try Filet of Beef au Poivre along with Ina's Garlic Mashed Potatoes. Maybe tomorrow night- I think we might need to eat something lighter- like Ina Garten's Broccolli and Bowties (which is a great light meal if you add chicken sauteed in olive oil with a tiny bit of lemon juice.

It's probably my last chance to cook anything fancy for a while- kids are not notorious for loving complicated food. Besides, I'll be sleep deprived and mentally unstable, so I probably won't make anything that requires more than the microwave- which is why I froze the remaining Winter Squash soup for after le petit enfant terrible comes along. Maybe I should make some chicken stock today..... It's always good to have something easy in the freezer!

Well, I just checked and a food mill at Crate and Barrel is only $19.99, and I have about $15 on a gift card there, so I'm off to Crate and Barrell for a food mill. (Which in theory could even be used to make our own baby food, so it is totally a practical purchase)....

TV for Smart People- Studio 60

Let me start by saying that I didn't watch The West Wing. I just want that out of the way. I did watch Sportsnight. I do love a lost cause.

Please, please, please don't cancel Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I am sure it is going to come up soon. It's a good show. A really good show. Great, witty writing. Solidly funny performances. So much potential.

There is no good drama on TV right now. I used to have Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, 24. 24 and The Sopranos are on hiatus and nothing has really come to take their place. Brothers and Sisters had potential but it is extremely heavy handed. The writing isn't even in the same universe as Studio 60. Desperate Housewives is getting, well, sort of desperate. (Really, the love child and baby's mama? A coma? Please).

TV, in general, is pretty slim pickings right now.

So NBC, I beseech you. Please don't cancel Studio 60. Don't be that network. If you cut too much I'm just going to quit watching altogether. I can Tivo, you know? I don't have to watch your sponsors ads at all if I don't want to. So please remember that I buy laundry detergent too. Even if I am a California liberal, I still shop. I can still buy just as many tires or sleeping pills or whatever it is you're selling. So keep Studio 60. Because not only can I Tivo, I can force friends into watching reruns on said Tivo. Sometimes I even get friends to switch laundry soap.

The Miracle Man

My grandpa is currently amazing Long Beach cardiologists by watching three baseball games per day, roaming the hallways and complaining about the lack of salt in the food. 

The nurses keep asking him if he's the 83 year old that they've been hearing about. The doctors are talking about letting him come home tomorrow. (His original release date was to be sometime this weekend). He just had heart surgery on Monday! Aren't you just totally impressed? 

He has pink cheeks. He hasn't had pink cheeks in ages. He sounds, I don't know... chipper? It is very very very cool. 

Sickness and Health

It's all just so frustrating. You know?

I just hope I die quickly and never get some debilitating illness. I'd rather get hit by a bus and be done with it.

Sigh.

Waiting

It has been one of those weeks. I've been forced to examine the concept of waiting. My grandfather went to the hospital with chest pains. He has to have open heart surgery to open his five blocked arteries. It has been a little stressful, to say the least.

I'm waiting, we're all waiting. This somehow reminds me of a day some years back when I was working as an extra (or the fancier term "background artist") on some show on location at a high school in Hollywood. It was a day in late May or early June and the sunlight has this sort of t.v. quality to it. Have you ever seen real movie lighting? The complexity of it, the sheer quantity necessary to emulate simple daylight? The rigs, the stands, the gels? It was the kind of light an art director would flog a team of 30 guys to get on tape. It was just sort of clean, with a hint of gold. It was one of those rare hot days in Los Angeles where there’s no smog yet, but there is a siren call from the ocean that you just want to obey without question.

I was sitting in the shade by myself (I burn rather easily), a little bit away from the other extras. Just waiting. And I felt that pull; that desire for time to push forward, to zip quickly by. To get to whatever it is you are waiting for. But I wasn’t waiting for anything in particular. I was just waiting. Sitting in the shade of that day, waiting in that perfect light. Watching the dew evaporating from the grass. Waiting.

I’m pregnant. That’s kind of the ultimate form of waiting, stretched out for nine (actually count ‘em, ten) months. You can’t hurry it up; you can’t open this present before the birthday. You just have to wait. (The kid is about 4 inches long right now, per Babycenter.com).

Last week my grandfather went to the hospital with chest pains. He is scheduled for open heart surgery on Monday. He is a prisoner in his house, chained to his pill bottles by the doctors orders. Waiting to have someone crack his chest cavity. My dad, my sister, me?

We’re waiting to see that he’s going to be ok. That we’ll all be ok.

I’ve been so lazy with this blog and so brain-dead lately. This will end up being my longest post in quite a while, I am guessing.

I just read a rather entertaining article about how conservatives are out-procreating the liberals. It’s called “Attention Liberals: Please Breed. Conservatives are outbirthing libs by a wide margin. How soon can you get knocked up?” You can read it at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/09/29/notes092906.DTL. (I tried to make the link happen but it didn't want to work. You'll have to be industrious and copy and paste it).

Very funny stuff. I particularly like this sentence: “I am here to inspire the resistance, to propose solutions to this disastrous fertility gap and to help get liberals into the sack sans protection so they may go forth and multiply the number of people who adore "The Daily Show" and read actual books and think Aaron Sorkin is some sort of god.” (Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle). Has anyone seen “Studio 60”? It makes me miss “Sportsnight”....

My boys in blue won tonight. We may actually make it into the playoffs. Very very very cool.

More soon.

Tony Won!!!

There was apparently a contest for the "The Office" television program wherein fans were to create promos for the show. My friend Tony won! His promo can be seen at: Nbc.com. It's called "Playing at Work." It's very funny. Yay for Tony! It will be on after "The Office" either this coming Thursday or the following Thursday. We're so very proud....

And Then There Were Three....

Well, I haven't posted in a couple weeks. I've been feeling rather brained by the heat we've been having. My handy Apple Dashboard Widget says that it is currently 95 degrees in Long Beach right now, down from a high of 97. 

My other excuse is that I'm pregnant. Surprise! 

The following are the answers to the questions everyone keeps asking me:

Due in the latter half of March. 

We'll be happy with a boy or girl, but I find myself wanting a girl a little more. 

Yes, the husband is quite pleased with himself. 

I am about five weeks along, brain cells malfunctioning more and more- although that may be from quitting smoking and caffeine (my two most favorite vices) and drinking. 

Yes, it is 95 degrees and not even a Red Stripe to console me. Even my very first rejection letter can't make me that upset, though....  

Happy 4th...

I guess. Woo hoo freedom. Drunk drivers and illicit (in Long Beach) fireworks. June bugs smacking into my screens- someone needs to let them know it is actually July. I have a mosquito bite on my ankle after 5 minutes outside. Ahh, summer. 

I played tennis today, for the second time in a week. My sister and I now have a two time per week date to play incredibly bad tennis together. The Williams sisters we are not. I smoke a pack a day and generally prefer to be sitting in front of the air conditioner with said cigarette and laptop. But we try, so that's ok. 

I bought the Oprah magazine July edition to read Harper Lee's letter about the love and necessity of reading. I can't say that it is all that satisfying. I want fiction from the woman, as does the rest of the world. But good for Oprah, anyhow. 

I like Oprah in a sort of way that involves never watching her television show or buying her products. (I avoid novels with "Oprah's Book Club" stickers). I think I just like the idea of a woman media mogul. President Oprah and VP Barack Obama, anyone? She could easily be the one, I am just saying.... I want a female African American president and a Chicano female VP, but I'd settle for Obama. Or Edwards- I love a Southern Democrat with a drawl. I miss hearing Bill Clinton speak, that's all. An intelligent politician. With that adorable Alabama accent.... Sigh. 

Why do I have absolutely no direction in my posts? I can't even control it when I know what I want to say....

Sending it Out... and other things...

I've sent out another story. I hope and hope. I wait and wait. 

I miss writing. I haven't been at the keyboard that often recently. Although I've an idea percolating....

On a completely unrelated subject: my right hand has been hurting a lot. I've been having trouble sleeping. It aches and aches and aches. I think I might resort to that primitive thing- the doctor. I believe in never going, it that gives some sort of idea. I believe that blood belongs inside of me, not in a vial. I hate hospitals. The phrase "ICU" gives me chills since the three days I spent watching my grandmother's still frame under the watchful eye of beeping electronics. She died after useless intervention and the prolonging of my families' pain and useless raising of hope. I am no longer trusting. I hate the smell of those places. 

One of my friends is pregnant with her first child. Hospitals. They make me worried, those places. They are inherently frightening, full of chemicals and things I know nothing of. 

The sight of blood, indeed the thought of blood, makes me lightheaded and prone to fainting. I worry about friends entering those halls. 

I take Aleve every day, almost, to help with the pain in my hands, avoiding the doctors still. I hope that I will be able to avoid hospitals in my lifetime, whenever possible. The thought of the end of ones' life in a place like that... It doesn't bear thinking about, really. 

I wonder, occasionally, how exactly I will die. I don't mean this to sound as if I am hastening the day, merely that I wonder how it will happen. Inevitably one turns to the seminal "Six Feet Under" series, with their haunting opening scenes and the macabre and hilarious deaths. Shall I be the one to trip and impale my head on a sharp metal object? The one who runs into traffic, mistaking lost blow-up dolls for angels? The one who dies by skillet to the head? So many possibilities... I hope I have a moment to savor the situation and understand what it happening. That's all I really want from death. 

I am not quite sure how this post devolved as it has. 

A Game of Chance

Friday night. The weekend stretching in front of me like the cat when he wakes up from his nap. It's truly a beautiful thing.

The California lottery is up to 82 million this weekend. I may buy a ticket, just to be able to dream for a few hours. I actually know someone who won an obscene amount of money in the lottery. A couple years ago, a former co-worker won over 60 million. At age 25.

He got to quit work and travel as much as he wanted. I think he even eventually bought a new car (he drove a decade old car with oxidation eating away the paint on the hood). I was jealous, except for the happiness that kept intruding on me. He was a really really really nice person. (Who even quietly voted on the side of the angels -amazing in the OC). If I could have nominated someone, I could not have made a better choice. A good person, with a solid head on their shoulders, who would really have a great life and do some actual, measurable good. For a long time.

I did field a bunch of questions about him, afterwards, and the question came up over and over again. What would you do, if you won?

I can't ever seem to quite make up my mind. It is hard to imagine what you would actually do if something like that happened to you. What if your life changed, in some permanent, but generally good way- tomorrow?

What would you do?

It's interesting to reflect on what each person says they would do. I think that the generally more honest people tend to say things about trips they would take, where they would live. People who want to seem somehow morally above everyone else (this is a common response) tend to say things about how much money they would give to the homeless, or more often (again- the OC) how they would give money to their church. How they would keep working. (I can't see anyone I work with actually sticking to that one- I sure wouldn't).

It's the church one that gets me, ever the atheist. The church I went to didn't even have a soup kitchen. Nothing ever went out of that church into the community except condescension and occasionally, scorn. What exactly do they do with all that money? Convince people in Africa that sex is evil and abstinence is the only way to prevent AIDS? Send zealous children to convert the heathens?

I'd rather hear that they would buy a swimming pool and a BMW, to be honest.

I think I would go to Gombe, to go out into the forest and see the descendants of Jane Goodall's original chimpanzees. I would have to suck it up about the freakish bugs in the rain-forest, but my gosh. Chimpanzees in the wild. Sigh.

Vietnam. Pho eaten from bowls. The greenest trees. I've never been. But I would if I could.

The little town in Norway that lies half-way between Oslo and Bergen that I visited years ago with my grandparents. It's literally unspellable for me, but you say the name something like Soj-nya-fjord. There's a little train that you can take up the mountain there, that stops so you can stand on a rickety platform and feel the spray of the unexpected waterfall on your face, and watch the rainbows flicker in and out of sight. You can't hear anything above the noise of the water, and I remember thinking that it was so beautiful. I'd take my husband and see if I remember right.

Help Koko the gorilla (fine animal gorilla) go live in Hawaii. Probably a lot of research into where to send money. Mainly to help chimps. Maybe some to help people. Probably.

There are a lot of things I would do, I suppose. I'm no different than anyone else, really. Except that there would be a big contribution to the Socialist Party in my particular list. Maybe a house in Sweden. Or Canada.

It's fun to play pretend, for a little while. Sometimes I even think it's worth a dollar.

It's been a long time (almost a month) since I last posted here. Well, I found out I didn't get into Squaw. (I'm on the waiting list, which is good and bad- I didn't think there was really a waiting list until it was confirmed by others- so I just considered it a flat out rejection). The nail on the coffin was finding out that literally everyone else I knew who had applied was accepted. So I felt a bit pathetic. I still feel a bit pathetic.

But I'm doing better now. I mailed out a story to a literary magazine today. I'm getting back on the horse. I have decided that once I hit one hundred rejections I may then re-examine this whole writing thing, but it would be silly to act as if this particular rejection was the end of the world. I am actually getting a little tired of thinking about it at all. It is a bit hard since one of my friends was accepted, so I have to keep hearing about the d**n thing.

I was having a hard time wanting to write anything since I heard. I've since begun writing other things again, so I felt that now was a good time to rejoin the blog.

Sorry if this is a bit self indulgent, but I was thinking that I needed to write a bit about this, just to get it out of my own head. So I am officially finished with worrying about it.

I didn't even win the lottery this week. Can you believe it?

A Pox on Houghton Mifflin

My brand new copy of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri is missing about 30 pages. (There is a duplicate section, instead). Thanks, Houghton Mifflin.

Now I've got to get back to the bookstore and hope they've got a copy with all the pages. Bah.

It's good so far. Up to page 164, that is, where my copy jumps to page 197. Although I think I prefer The Interpreter of Maladies. Of course, it had all of its' pages, so I may be slightly biased.

Lame.

Laurie R. King's The Art of Detection

Laurie R. King's book, The Art of Detection came out today and I've just finished it. She's a California author whom I've enjoyed for some time. You can read an excerpt of the first chapter on her website. 

How many mysteries have you read that feature a lesbian detective in San Francisco with Sherlock Holmes? 

I'm guessing not many. Buy a copy and read it- it's a good read. You can locate a signed copy by e-mailing Crossroads Books, the address is available on her website.

Or, if you prefer to follow clues and feel a little lucky, you can check out her most recent blog entry.

The Case of the Bloody Pawprints...

A couple weeks ago, my husband called me on my lunch hour to tell me that he hadn't gone to work. It seemed odd, as he had been awake when I left for work that morning, and for all that I knew he had absolutely intended to go. The strange thing had detained him was not that he had fallen ill, that our house had burned down, or our car had broken down.

No, what had prevented him from going to work was a trail of bloody paw prints tracking across the white cement of the sidewalk in front of our house. They are still there, in fact, although the blood has since dried.

My husband is a man who has an extreme affinity for animals. He loves animals and takes unfriendly creatures as a personal challenge.

He could not walk away from a hurt animal, evidenced as it was by the wet blood leading down our street.

He followed the paw prints.

He ended up on a strange sort of journey, on that warm May day. He followed the prints and eventually ended up on the front yard of our former neighbor's house, a few miles from our house, that she shares with her girlfriend, who happened to be home. (We've not been there before- nor did we know where they live). He hunted for over an hour and a half, until he lost the trail through an alley. By this time, he was tired and it was hot, so he took a bus back home.

Sitting on our front porch, he spoke to others who added to the story. People walking their dogs, or pushing their strollers shared pieces of the story. One woman said that a dog walker, the dog walker that the swanky people, the rich ones, use had lost a dog. The dog leapt from a window of the dog walker's van, she said. He injured his paws and ran in fear.

Later this theory was called into dispute, as others among our neighbors believe that dog was dragged from the van, and then wrenched free- the blood from his paws seeped for a couple miles. This theory has gained prominence among our neighbors.

We didn't hear anything more until last week. One of our neighbors came with a photo of the dog, recovered by his owner.

An oddly satisfying ending to the story- Richard never found the dog, though we did finally find out the ending to the story when the photo came to us. The dog was hit by a car, whose driver took him to a vet. They called the dog's owner who came to claim him. He is doing well, although all four paws were bandaged in the photo that is being passed around those animal lovers in our neighborhood.

Strange, to see genuine concern in a stranger's face as they tell this story again and again. There is no blame, in most of these faces. Simply concern, for the dog and his owner. Strange to feel part of a community in this rather odd way.

Woody Guthrie

There's a good article on Woody Guthrie over at The Nation magazine's website. The good ole U.S. of A. is making me depressed this week, as well as increasingly paranoid. 
Why, exactly, is it ok for the government to track everyone I call? 

Here's a quote for today:

"If sex and creativity are often seen by dictators as subversive activites, it's because they lead to the knowledge that you own your own body (and with it your own voice), and that's the most revolutionary insight of all."

-Erica Jong 

The President

"A fanatic is a man who consciously over compensates a secret doubt."

-Aldous Huxley

Punk Rock in the LBC

When I was younger, I loved punk rock. I loved the screaming, the swearing, the freedom. I was raised in a Baptist family with a Catholic dad. My mother listened to classical music and christian music. We didn't watch very much television. I read a lot. I was the oldest kid. 

When I discovered punk rock- a friend made me a mix tape of Dead Kennedys, Crass, the Subhumans- I wore out the tape in my 1981 Rabbit's tape deck. I would drive down PCH to go surfing at the cliffs with my sunroof open, the windows down and I would scream along with the music. 

Last night, a friend and her husband invited us to see a punk rock show in our own hood, at the Que Sera, famous former lesbian bar (they are very nice- with a charming sign on the desk where you pay your cover that says, "The Que Sera is not a lesbian bar- everyone is welcome" and the girl who says cheerfully, "Give me your little paws" as she stamps my hand). 

I haven't seen or heard punk rock recently- my punk rock phase was relatively short and long ago. (Although I did buy a couple Crass CDs a year ago- nostalgia). It was strange; I felt as if I was watching my younger self bounce around screaming along, as I sipped my Guinness and played pool in the back. It was fun, although I felt about a million years old. Everyone was wearing black, so I stood out. Actually, all of my friends stood out- none of us were dressed terribly punk rock. There's something kind of poignant about punk rock to me, something kind of amazing and lost- that ability to stand and scream what you feel to a rocking drum beat and thumping guitar. It's hard to give words to the feeling... But I felt something akin to nostalgia. 

So I sit here in my house and my ears are still ringing. It makes me remember myself back when, and I feel a little sad to lose that girl. The girl who wanted to scream along with the punk rock. 

Interesting Idea....

One of my favorite writers, Laurie R. King, was selected as the Santa Cruz County Artist of the Year. As part of the festivites, she's has elected to write a story live, in front of the world. She was given a prompt this morning, and the results are being published live online at the same time. Her blog has a bigger description of the event. 

You can read the results at: www.scparks.com. 

This is a little strange to read, as it is really nothing like her normal work. (The prompt was something about a middle schooler...) You can read more about Laurie at her website. I began reading her when a friend's father, who was in the habit of giving her a box of used paperbacks per month that he had read, included "The Beekeeper's Apprentice". Click here to read a portion of the first chapter. I was immediately engrossed; an intelligent female, Jewish, who befriends Sherlock Holmes. It doesn't sound as if it would be a good book, but I've found that books that defy description are the ones I love the most. I'm not a huge mystery novel fan, however, I really have enjoyed LRK's Mary Russell books. 

A Beautiful Obituary

Don't we all have a wish to be be remembered well after we are gone? The people I admire and love the most are the people who ask difficult questions, who struggle with life. A friend of mine asked me recently to write her obituary. (She's not dying, nor is she elderly). She said, "I just want to see what you'll write." 

I am honored and yet I feel a sense of trepidation about the entire thing. How can one write an obituary for someone who gets to read it? What should be included in a good obituary? I have a lot of questions about the entire endeavor, honestly. 

I was reading CNN.com today, as I often do, and I came across the write up of the death of former U.S. poet laureate, Stanley Kunitz, at the age of 100. You can read it yourself by clicking here.

It is a beautiful summing up of a life well lived. Born in tragedy, (his father's suicide when Kunitz himself was still in his mother's belly), he became a writer who valued community in the arts, won a Pulitzer for his work, shared his love for the arts with others, and was a man who stuck by his principles. 

How can you ask for more in an obituary? Or a life?

Finis

Je suis finis. I am finished with this semester, for all intents and purposes. Hurrah! Huzzah!

This shan't the longest post in history, simply a jubilant little message to tell the world I've taken my last (real) final for the spring semester. 

All I need to do now is crank out a few critiques and find a good first line from a book for workshop. Simple enough, considering the past weekend (le weekend dernier) was spent writing two papers, editing said papers, finishing French homework, and cramming for the French examen finale. 

I am just so happy to be done. C'est finis, and I am so excited I might even be able to drum up some enthusiam for the summer semester. Which, thanks to the brilliant minds in charge of scheduling at IVC, begins next Monday. (Lundi prochain).  Some break, huh? I have a grand total of three days rest before beginning anew...

My brain is melting a bit, due to an overdose of conjugating. I am glad that the fall semester schedule hasn't been posted yet; the idea of thinking about what to take makes me feel a bit dizzy at the moment. 

So, I will take my meager pittance of joy and spread it all the way until Monday night- my first class for the summer semester. (I was fighting the urge to spell that "semestre"- that's when you know you just need to stop for a while). 

As Edward R. Murrow used to say, "Bon nuit, et bonne chance."

Salut!

Wasting Time...

I'm pretty accomplished at wasting time. I can manage to spend at least a few minutes doing pretty much anything. 

Today I wasted three hours and eight minutes. Doing what, you may well ask? 

Watching Peter Jackson's "King Kong". A terrifically dull waste of time. I should have mopped or cleaned the bathtub instead. At least those activities could possibly have some sort of payoff at the end. 

May I suggest, that the next time Peter Jackson decides he simply must make a movie someone somewhere explain the concept of editing and revision to him?

All I can say: dinosaurs? Really? Since when was the giant ape and creepy island not enough? Jurassic Park meets King Kong wasn't really what I signed up for. At least at my house I can smoke and turn it off. All those poor people who paid to see it in the movie theatre... I feel truly sorry for all of them. 

I simply wanted a break from writing papers. I should have just stared at a wall for a few minutes. More entertainment in that than this nonsense. By the way, why did Naomi Watts sign up for this one? She's really not bad enough to be doing this kind of tripe...

The Friends of the Library Bookshop....

I had a lovely drive today, along Pacific Coast Hwy on my way to the Huntington Beach Central Library. The salt in the air, the herons in the Bolsa Chica wetlands to my left, the waves pulsing against the sand to my right.

It ceased being a lovely drive when I turned onto Goldenwest, a street that used to be flanked by grassy hills, yellow with flowers each spring, populated by equestrians with their mounts, navigating the small valleys.

When I was in elementary school I was mad for horses, and in fifth grade I managed to convince my grandparents that I needed riding lessons. My patient grandfather would sit in his car, watching me ride a tired plodding pony around in a circle. This lasted a couple years, until I was thrown from a slightly more feisty retired race horse in my jump class. My grandfather leapt over the railing and I was safe in the front seat of the car before I could even get the breath in my chest to protest. (My grandfather may have been looking for a reason to give up the long drives to the stables; however, I think he was mostly terrified that I could potentially break my neck, as one of my distant cousins had the year before.). The riding lessons stopped, and eventually my mania for horses dissipated.

The residents of Huntington Beach lost their affinity for the scrubby brush and sandy dunes of this area; the hills are covered by the type of housing development popular in South Orange County; the houses all identical, the walls high. The only reminder of what it used to look like is west Central Park; the hills unmanicured, the brush high and bright with spring flowers. It made me a little sad. I'd loved those hills as a child.

In any case, reverie aside, I found some joy in the library bookshop. A 1958 edition of H.W. Fowler's "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage". This is when you know you are truly a geek; I clasped it to my chest as if there were others trying to get to it before me. It's true- I got actually excited about a dictionary.

I also found a little happy surprise in the "literature" section. A copy of the Santa Monica Review, Spring 2003. And whose name should be on the cover? Eugene Ipavec. The SMR joined Fowler in my bag, along with a couple criticism books about Flannery O'Connor, a copy of both of Alice Sebold's books, Amy Tan's "The Bonesetter's Daughter", a couple of Richard Ford books, another by Ann Patchett "The Magician's Assistant", "Veronica" by Mary Gaitskill, and a collection of stories from the Iowa Writers Workshop.

A stack of books to read. What more can one ask?

Delivered

The postal service website says:


Delivered, May 04, 2006, 10:42 am, NEVADA CITY, CA 95959


So they didn't get lost in the mail, which I found myself half hoping today. 

Well, not bad delivery time for priority mail, I guess. I posted the envelope on May 2 about 2 PM, so really not bad. 

At my job today, I came back from my lunch to find a bunch of co-workers using a piece of pipe to destroy the effigy of a white man, with fake money taped to his hands. Normally, I'd say this was an odd development, but I presume it was meant to be a pinata. 

In Orange County, one never knows. 

Happy Cinco de Mayo.

***

(As a little side note, I love that Mexico declared their independence on September 15 and this website states that May 5 should be their independence day. That seems like such a very GB thing to say.... Please also savor the line "Americans never forget who their friends are..." towards the bottom of the page. Forgetting, of course, the current situation with our Mexican "friends". -{Do Republicans have friends?}- Obviously written by an astute student of American foreign policy and immigration issues).

Quote for the Day

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."

~Cicero

Submitted...

I submitted two stories for consideration for the Squaw Valley Community of Writers workshop. I mailed them. Today. 

I'm a bit at a loss- I've been slugging away at editing them for the past week, shifting commas, removing pronouns, adding an "s" to "Thursday". The same old stuff. 

Now I can't make any more changes- they've already been sent out. This is kind of a crazy day. I've never done that before, in any way. No submissions to magazines, nothing. Not even to the literary journal of which I know both editors. So this is strange. I'm nervous. 

I suppose it doesn't matter, I'll get in or I won't, but still... The US postal service has my stories speeding off to be read by someone. 

It's still a bit disconcerting. 

A Belated Happy May Day....

Workers of the world, unite. 
Especially now, in this particular time, this particular place. 

I just realized that I went home sick from work on the day one was supposed to stay home; join protests to support our immigrants, our people. Maybe my brain did on purpose. The mind is truly a mysterious organ.

Just a thought. 

Hildegarde of Bingen

Hildegarde of Bingen and I have something in common. You may be curious what a modern day atheist and a Catholic nun famous for her visions (and her infamous description of the female orgasm) might have in common. 
We both suffer from migraines. Hildegarde is widely regarded as a migraine sufferer, that her so-called visions were actually the effects of migraine. 
I was wondering yesterday, as I sat drugged and stoic, what it would be like to have migraines without modern medication. My migraine medication is expensive (about $30 a pill), but it is so completely necessary to me. 
I had two migraines in my life before I discovered what was happening. The first time it happened during a period when I didn't have health insurance, (which I do now), so I didn't go visit a doctor. 
I thought I really wanted to die. I felt like someone was beating me, mashing my soft tissue, pummeling the inside of my skull. I took a shower, something that has always lessened the effects of a headache for me. I took ridiculous amounts of painkillers, hoping for the pain to abate. It did, after about twelve hours of agony. 
It began at work, with numbness in my fingers, an inability to speak, and spots of light in my vision. Now I can recognize these symptoms and take my medication before the really bad part begins, but back then I had no idea what had happened to me. No one in my family suffers from migraines, so I really didn't even think of it until I had the second one. Now, when I see the little circles of light, I run for the medicine cabinet. I carry one pill with me all the time. I spend about six hours not able to complete a simple sentence- the medication is that powerful. I can only sit, staring at nothing in particular, sensitive still to light and sound. 
After experiencing a fair number of these, (I seem to have more than one "trigger"), I wonder about poor Hildegarde, attributing that intense pain to her god. After the medication wore off yesterday, I sat, thinking about what kind of faith she had, what kind of person she was. Who would choose to love a god that could do that to you, then claim that the pain were visions from that same god, a gift? 
This is the kind of thing that comes to my mind after the euphoria (from dodging a migraine) begins to ebb...

OpenOffice Hates Me. Technology Hates Me.

I don't know enough about X11 to know why OpenOffice on Mac OS X doesn't allow me to cut and paste from other apps.  I'm sure there's something incredibly simple I have to do to be able to do that- I just don't have the time this weekend to sort it out. 
It is indicative of the way this week has been going, so I can't feel altogether surprised that its not working too smoothly. C'est la vie, mais quelle horreur. Off to the Apple Store tomorrow, (wait, today, it's after midnight), to get myself a copy of AppleWorks. 
I've kept OpenOffice installed, though, so I can mess about with it when I have more leisure time available. (By the way, thanks for the recommendation/link, Jonathan). I have to write two papers (with research and whatnot), attend a party, and somehow entertain friends (that my husband invited over) tomorrow evening, despite the drifts of paper covering every available surface in the house. I thought we had a rug in the living room, but I can't really be sure right now...
Oh, and I have to decide what to send for Squaw Valley, and read a friend's comments on
one of the potential submissions. Once I actually get the stories to a place where I feel happy, I'm sure I'll send them out and find a slew of things I detest about them. Sa toujours quelque chose. 
I could be writing right now, actually, therefore I think it is officially time to finish this entry. It seems to have devolved into a to-do list, for which I apologize. How very type A of me. 

The iBook is dead. Long live the MacBook Pro.

My iBook died an agonizing death this weekend. In the midst of its death throes, I managed to back up almost everything. So not too bad, considering. I'm not even sure what I've lost yet- haven't had time to parse through the backup.

Replacement options. iBook part two? Or a MacBook Pro?

I had to go with the MacBook Pro, so I am now typing on a lovely 15 inch widescreen MacBook Pro. It's very pretty, but incredibly doesn't come with AppleWorks any more. There is no actual word processing app on the silly thing. So now I need to decide whether I should break down and actually pay for AppleWorks (this seems somehow wrong) or I can seek out an acceptable alternative. I'm just a little baffled that Apple wants more money out of me after I just shelled out about $2k for this little beauty. Wouldn't it be nice if they could just give me what I want?

I guess that's life.

School is going famously. I have far too much work to do in far too short of a time. (This resulting from this past weekend's desperate attempts at rescusitation of the now infamous iBook, creating a vacuum in which my scheduled homework time was sucked into, therefore creating a pile to get through this weekend, unfortunately coinciding with the L.A. Times Festival of Books).

Random list time. Three books I read this week:
Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett
Assasination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell
High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby

Thoughts- Nick Hornby seems overrated. Sarah Vowell is very funny- she seems like she'd be fun as a road trip partner. Ann Patchett's Bel Canto was good. I was, however, put off by the description of one of her other novels. Am I the only person who recoils in horror when reading the following words in a book description?

"A journey of self discovery..."

I feel a little sick right now, just thinking about it. I am aware of the strangeness of this. I just can't imagine how this is supposed to make me want to read anything such a hackneyed phrase would describe. But Bel Canto was pretty good...

Why My Name is Lame

My name is so dumb. I hate that this title rhymes. Whatever. 
I just searched myself on Blogger.com, thinking it would be interesting if my actual blog came up. The first, I don't know, say, 10 entries were sort of dirty. Why is my name used in porn so much?
Is "Jaimee" such a popular name for ladies involved in such business? If so, thanks, Mom. 

Buddhism and the Cat Named Evil

It's been a strange week. It just keeps getting stranger.
Tuesday morning I was driving down 3rd St., as I almost always do, avoiding the traffic on 7th by the high school. My windows were misty from the morning fog. My windshield was mostly clear, though.
I'm driving along, and suddenly a Buddhist monk, scarlet robe, saffron sash, sport sandals steps out from behind a parked car.
I swerve, missing him, but not by much. The rest of my far too long commute I couldn't think of anything else. What if I had killed a Buddhist? A holy man, no less.
As a side note, I have to say I'm not sure why all the monks I see in my neighborhood wear sport sandals, but there you are.
Now, if you're reading this, you can see from the Einstein quote that I am a gal that believes in no gods at all. However, I really think that even an athiest has to at least respect Buddhism, for the sheer fact that they're just nice. There's never been a bloody Buddhist crusade. The Buddhists have never woken me up to share the good news of a Saturday morning. There are no Buddhist televangelists. All of this adds up to my favorite kind of religion- the be nice to people and don't bother them kind.
As a result, I feel rather kindly towards the residents of our own Belmont Shores monastery, the beautiful building on Ocean and Redondo. I was horrified that I'd almost murdered a representative of the religion I find least obnoxious.
This thought rattled around in my head: if I believed in hell, I would probably be thinking that would be my new final destination. So that night, in a fit of cocoa fueled insomnia, I sat down to write, instead of laying in bed trying to make out the ceiling fan without my glasses in the dark. I was thinking of this week's brief for my writing class. Intertwine two seemingly unrelated stories with similar elements, based on a T.C. Boyle story that ran recently in Harper's.
So I began to write, and what do you know, one of my characters actually hit a monk with her car.

A cat named Evil.

The story of Evil (our name for him- not his real name) begins early last summer, when our neighbor began letting her new young cat out of the house to terrorize the neighborhood's outside cats. We've got probably at least 10 cats that live on our block, including the most filthy but sweet little gal named Ping. Ping greets people walking along our street with a crusty sounding meow and follows jauntily behind, trotting to keep up. Ping likes to visit our house, because we leave out food and water for her and other semi-homeless kitties on our block. She greets me, most days, perched on one of our fence posts by our gate. She's an extremely outgoing little kitty, and she gets along perfectly well with all the other cats.
Evil began systematically chasing Ping. In fact, Evil began fighting all the cats in our neighborhood. The open windowed summer nights began to ring with pained yowls and we began to be unhappy about our neighborhood's new bully.
Our kitties, accustomed to hanging out on hot summer nights in our tiny fenced front yard, began to suffer ninja like attacks from Evil. He would sneak up to the outside of the fence, wait for a kitty to venture near, then he would leap over the fence to scratch at any part of our kitties he could get his claws into. Our kitties became wary, watchful. They got nervous, even in our house, when they would hear Evil yowl out in the dark somewhere.
Then, in August, our girl kitty (we have two Siamese cats) Honey began to avoid having her booty scratched. She's always loved this- she's an addict for rubbing her face on anything, and she'll lay down the front half of her body and push her rear end way up into the air when you scratch the base of her tail, even tipping over sometimes. So when she shied away from this favorite, we decided to capture her and take a closer look.
We found a lump on the left hand side of her hip, up by her tail. We were horrified that we hadn't seen it before. The vet (the awesome guys over at Cats and Dogs on Redondo- weird little shout out, I guess) proclaimed it to be an infection, caused by a scratch that had healed quickly (as cat's skin often does, apparently) and trapped bacteria that had caused an infection. Please note that this is probably an incredibly inadequate description from a total ignoramus on vet stuff.
The vet had to keep her overnight, to make a drainage hole to allow the pus out of the wound. This gets gorier. He had to stitch in a piece of medical tubing in the wound, to keep it open. For a week she walked around our house in her little blue collar, looking for all the world like a cat dressing up as a flower for her school play, merely happening to have a three inch long Frankenstein wound along her shaved bum with a tube hanging out. I should also mention that she was drugged, for the pain of her surgery, to help in preventing her from pulling out her tube after the first time she pulled it out. (Sigh). She would walk around our house running into furniture with her little daisy cone and stopping, because the medicine made her too dumb to back up. I cried so much that first week. She looked so incredibly pathetic. I would sit and pet her and she would sit in my lap, purring this sad drunken little purr.
It was a traumatizing week. But it got worse. On our one week return to the vet, to get the tubing taken out (we were very happy about this development, in vain as it turned out) only to find that now we had to take a plastic syringe and shove it into the wound and pump this disinfectant in the top of the hole. Because it needed to run out the bottom of the wound, washing the pus out.
I don't know if I can write about this part. I'll make it short. Honey crying from pain and what I assumed to be bewilderment. Pus dripping. A multitude of filthy, pus dotted towels. Twice a day. For about three weeks. It was as close to I will ever come to running away from my life. It was hideous, awful, guilt inducing. Crying twice a day over my hurting pet. I don't think I could do it again. It was really, really, really bad.
And it was all because of the neighbor's cat. Evil got his name that August.
We began to chase Evil away from our house and keep the kitties inside all the time. They were sad. What do kitties know? They just knew we were somehow punishing them, not letting them roll on the hot cement and lay in the cool wet grass.
We petitioned the neighbor to keep her cat inside, pointing towards Honey's shaved rear end and her white scar. She said she would try, but she really said no. Evil still roamed our neighborhood. So the kitties stayed inside.
Evil still wanted to murder Honey, though. He took to leaping up to the windows where she slept, soaking in the sun, and scratching through the screen to get at her. R. started squirting Evil with the kitchen sink hose through our kitchen window, trying to keep him away.
I wanted bad things to happen to Evil. I really did. I was angry about the way he constantly made trouble. The way he'd made Honey suffer for the entire month of August. If I saw him outside I would stomp towards him and yell. I would make hissing noises and growl at him. I really began to hate that cat.
Then, a couple months later, after R. got a water gun to squirt Evil with, I just didn't care as much anymore. Our kitties were safe inside and Evil mostly stayed away, although we could occasionally hear him hissing at our cats through our screen door.
Then, last night, R. called after I got out of class to tell me that Evil was run over by a car. His voice was flat and somehow lonely. I asked him if he was ok, and he said, yeah, in a toneless kind of way.
He said that he'd been the one to spot Evil lying in the street, motionless, in a way that R. knew meant he was dead. He said that our other neighbor, M., told Evil's mom. R. and M. ended up cleaning up the spot in the street where Evil had been run over. He said, Do you remember all those times I said I'd never shed a tear for that cat?
Yes, I answered. I do.
I lied, he said.
Today, as I was driving to work, I was thinking about Evil, and how much I had wanted harm to come to him. And how that feeling had faded with time, and how I hardly even thought about him anymore. How sad I felt for Evil's mom, because it is a hard thing to lose your pet this way, and it is even harder to tell your four and five year old boys that their kitty has gone away. It's hard to drive past the stain on the white concrete of our street and not feel sad for the cat we didn't like. I told people at work who remembered Honey's ordeal and they said, good, that bad cat deserved what it got. I wondered about what I really felt about Evil now. How I felt like I was glad he was gone. How I was glad the other kitties could return to peacefully wandering about the neighborhood. How Honey could go outside to eat grass again. How the neighbor boys didn't have a kitty anymore.
I came home from work in the newly restored sunlight of seven o'clock. I parked my car, sitting for a moment to listen to the radio, catching the little glimpse of ocean at the end of our street. I opened the car door to see a Buddhist monk walking down the street, smiling. I said Hi.

Love and Marriage

My sister in law is engaged. And, as of two days ago, she was getting married at some unfixed point next year. Today, she's got wedding rings and the date is set. The big wedding is on hold. The little wedding is in Las Vegas. On April 15. 

So fast, but I guess I'm not surprised. She wants to get married. So she's getting married. In 12 days. Instead of 12 months. 

So now we are making plans to get to Vegas. Hotel. Carpool buddies. The whole shebang. 

R made me cocoa. Mmmm. 

Crushes

I develop crushes with a particular rhythm. It has happened again.
I'm married. I should say that. This is not a blog about affairs. This is about ridiculous, hopeless, silly crushes. I had one on Liev Schrieber after he played Orson Welles in "RKO 481". I got one on Vince Vaughn after he was the serial killer in "Clay Pigeons". (I don't know exactly what that says about me). I got one on Neil Gaiman after I read the Sandman graphic novels. I had a crush on Rivers Cuomo after "Pinkerton".
My newest crush is Ira Glass, host of "This American Life" on NPR. I am aware that many women (and probably men) have crushes on Ira Glass. I am just that kind of dork. I like stories. He likes stories. I don't think this is a particularly emotional crush- just a passing one. His voice should be used to read bedtime stories. It's just so calming.
I didn't realize until a few weeks ago that I wait each week for the hour when "This American Life" is on each week. I've been listening for a while, I just didn't get that this was something that I was kind of obsessed with. I usually listen to music when I drive home, but I don't even turn on the iPod on Fridays.
So, I guess this is a thank you to National Public Radio, for bringing me entertainment, news, and Ira Glass.