comida of errors

I'm back from six days in Albuquerque, and am most proud of what I managed to eat in that time:


- 3 breakfast burritos
- 2 dinners of enchiladas (one homemade, one not)
- pepperoni & green chile pizza
- a pile of green chile brisket
- 1 green chile burger
- 1 frito pie smothered in green chile
- 2 sopapillas
- and one taco party!


We returned with 20 pounds of roasted green chile. Tonight, Ben made a pork and chile stew with it, which has left my mouth burning and the baby, who will be called "Rolo" or "Rolette" until we come up with a real name, doing backflips. This kid better love chile. I know she's going to love Rolos.

Things that comfort me

(or, things that make me feel like maybe the world isn’t going to hell in a handbasket)


- Thing #1: Driving at night past a municipal sports field and seeing a neighborhood softball league game or practice in progress beneath the unearthly glow of stadium lights


-Why: The sight of an otherwise unaffiliated group of grown-ups (so, not a school or pro team) gathered together voluntarily to play a game that will have no bearing on anyone else in the world, combined with the knowledge that the bright, artificial lights illuminating a well-manicured field are kept on at the will and shared commitment of the people (i.e., taxes), are, to me, what living in a society is all about. Even if some of us are lazy slobs on our way home to eat chocolate chips out of the bag as we write a blog, who would be mortified to have to play softball.


- Thing #2: That rare occasion when two cars are approaching each other at an intersection with no traffic signal and simultaneously, in perfect synchrony, both turn left at the same speed. It’s even better when a really cool song is on the radio like “Kyrie Eleison” by Mister Mister or the crescendo of a power ballad that swells just as you both sail off into the night, a smoothly executed maneuver like a Russian figure skating pair doing perfect side-by-side double axels. 


- Why: I don’t know why. It’s the antithesis of road rage, the “every man for himself” nature of a 4-way stop, or some jerk in a BMW (isn’t it always?) who weaves in and out on the freeway and refuses to let you into the right lane even though you just want to get over so he can pass you. It’s like: we don’t need traffic laws or the presence of cops with radar guns to drive safely! We’re civilized people who can negotiate the road using our own grace and common sense. Our turns complement each other as we both glide along down the road that we must travel (through the darkness of the ni-igh-igh-ight).


I realize that I sound like I’m on painkillers, and I’m not, so I’m going to stop now.

my new role model

www.scarymommy.com


Not really, but I did just discover this blog, and it seems pretty awesome! I know what I'll be doing for the next few days. (Reading past entries and hating myself for abandoning Super Fit Mama, then becoming too insecure to write my own blog.)

What I hate about the internet, part I

The internet can be a force for good. For example, today I set myself four goals: do the thirty-minute circuit from “Super Fit Mama” (my latest attempt to avoid becoming a complete sloth), have no more than 50 percent of my diet come from sucrose, decide which child seat(s) to order, and start the process of getting little Julia on a wait list for day care. This last goal was easily accomplished, thanks to the internet: I learned all about the university’s day care centers, how much they cost, and even that there are “lactation rooms” complete with hospital grade breast pumps scattered throughout campus! I guess I’ll be carrying a cooler around along with my laptop. Great.

And, amazingly, I was able to resist the siren song of my backlog of sewing projects and new Parent Trap DVD enough to do the entire circuit. I made sure to close the blinds first, lest the construction crew across the street think that my pelvic thrusts in their direction were some sort of invitation. (If you could see me, I make quite a sight doing this workout, especially since I refuse to buy maternity workout clothes, so there is now a ten-inch protrusion of bare skin between my waistband and sports top.)

But when it came time to make a decision about the carseats, I found myself caught in a vortex that spiraled down from mild indecision, to increasing confusion with dangerous hints of questioning my suitability for parenthood, to utter panic and despair accompanied by heart palpitations. 

That vortex is known as “online reviews” at Amazon.com, which then leads one to the even more terrifying and dangerous world of forums and message boards, from carseatblog.com to a site for Subaru Legacy owners that includes multiple conversations on which carseats work best with the Legacy. And I thought I was a dork. There’s a whole subculture of guys who think the Legacy (granted, the turbo version with a spoiler) is the hottest thing on four alloy tires.

[Skip this part if you are not interested in the details of my carseat dilemma--so, if you’re not a parent. Or if you are NOT suffering from severe insomnia, or are not a masochist. You know, there is absolutely no reason anyone should read this. I’m just writing it for myself.] You see, we get a free carseat from Ben’s employer (which we refer to as “Sabre” when we wish to keep its identity anonymous, as I shall do here since it’s inevitable that I’m going to want to slander it sooner or later), and can choose anything made by Britax, a fairly expensive brand. If we’re going to get a $350 carseat for free, I want to make the most of it, so I want to get a convertible seat that will last until the kid is 70 pounds--so, if she’s anything like me, until senior year. Then, we’ll still need an infant seat, and there's only one seat on the market compatible with the fancy-schmancy stroller that my sister is handing down to us. So you’d think would make this an easy decision: buy the cheap Graco seat for the stroller, and the best Britax seat to use for the years beyond. Easy!

Oh, ho, how foolish you would be to think that. An easy decision? For me? Me, who won’t go out for a scoop of gelato without poring over all the Yelp reviews of all nearby gelaterias? No, I must do my research, in my quest to make the perfect decision that I will never regret. There are 300 Amazon reviews alone for ONE model I am considering, many of them paragraphs long and written by engineers who go into the physics of why the Marathon 70’s headwings are superior to those of the Advocate’s, or whether the side-cushion technology of the latest Boulevard will protect your baby’s head in a crash or wrench it from its socket, even explaining why Consumer Reports can’t be trusted because of how they’ve revamped their testing procedures. Then there are the reviewers like “Braeden’s Mommie!!!” who get on to write a typo-ridden rant about how a piece of the headrest broke off for no reason, and it turned out to be made of styrofoam, or that the chest clip broke and nearly punctured poor Kaighleigh’s lung. Some babies fall asleep instantly in the seat, they love it so; others shriek in pain during every car trip, causing their parents to rue the day they ever chose this despicable seat. Whom do I trust? Even the Graco seat (which isn't really a choice--we have to get it if we don't want to buy a new stroller) has rave reviews and claims that its straps are impossible to adjust. Judging from these reviews, a trip of any distance with a baby needs to be engineered more carefully than a space shuttle launch. Yes, we are going to have our seat installed by the certified carseat technician at our Subaru dealership, but even then, how will we ever move the seat from one car to another? Will I have to personally drive my child everywhere she ever goes until she’s big enough for a booster seat?

Turns out there are a million little sub-decisions that must be made before you can make the big decision of which seat to buy: convertible or not? Will you use it with a stroller? Move it between cars? Take it on a plane? Use it front- or rear-facing? Will the harness be too high for your baby (whose size you can't predict)? Who will be sitting in the passenger seat, since they may not be able to recline? And then which fabric do you want? Dark, to cover stains, or light, so it doesn’t absorb heat and burn your baby in the summer? 

I decided to take a break from this madness and make an easier decision: which baby carrier (like, an Ergo or Baby Bjorn, etc.) to buy. Even THAT led me down the primrose path to review-scouring. There were reviews by women who bought ten different carriers (seriously) before they found one that would work for them. That’s like $1000! How will I ever deciiiiiiiiiiiide?! 

I took a deep breath, and---okay, I ate five squares of Swiss milk chocolate and a bowl of Cocoa Krispies, and went on to surf from Gawker to The Nation to reviews of books I’ve recently read to see if the critics agreed with me (another shameful pasttime of mine). Hours later, I did have a potential epiphany: Somehow, whether in an Ergo or a Pikkolo Catbird wrap or a Moby sling, I will be carrying my baby around in three months. I’ll use my bare arms if I have to! 

And somehow, we will transport this baby to visit her cousins and aunts and uncles and, eventually, her little friends (whose parents' profiles I will meticulously research online beforehand). No! That is not who I want to be! That was the whole point of this post: we have access to too much information. At some point, it stops being useful and becomes a hindrance--to authentic life, to being in the moment, all that mumbo-jumbo. (Namaste.) From a practical standpoint, this glut of opinion steals from us; it steals time, energy, and trust in our own instincts. It makes us see ourselves as nothing more than consumers, and it perpetuates the false belief that we can create our own happiness by choosing the right products. When the truth is, if our carseat turns out to be a pain in the ass, so what? We already live with many pains in our asses, but we're fortunate that they are only figurative, and not, you know, colorectal cancer. My world will not turn on whether I can get the baby into the car in three seconds versus three minutes.

I’ve always had a terrible time making decisions. I tend to think that if I just do enough research, think logically, and seek enough input from others, I can determine precisely the right choice, and thus control the outcome. But maybe there isn’t always a right choice, with baby carriers or the many more important decisions that we’ll have to make in the coming years (when I’ll look back and laugh at myself for giving it this much thought). Maybe Julia/Maeve/Gracie will be better off if I spend hours each day doing something besides learning what 398 people thought of her carseat. Like eating a danged vegetable once in a while.

baby's first manic sugar fit

Today was my glucose challenge test for gestational diabetes. I had to fast overnight and then drink a bottle of icky, dextrose-laden "fruit punch" before getting my blood drawn. When I got home, I flopped down to watch some Good Morning America, and the baby was kicking like she's never kicked before. She was going crazy in there, flipping around every which way, fluttering her feet, doing kick-ball-changes or the Charleston. I could actually see my belly rippling. I then fell asleep for 2 1/2 hours.


Wonder how much sugar was actually in that stuff?!


Anyway, in case I do end up diagnosed with the 'betes, I'm living it up now with some brownies and iced coffee. Probably not the best snack after having more sugar than anyone needs in a day, but what the hell. I'm dutifully avoiding soft cheeses, runny eggs, lunch meat, soft serve, alcohol, sleeping on my back, cleaning products, standing in front of the microwave, drinking from plastic cups, and teeth whitening toothpaste. A girl's gotta have some pleasure in life!

What a maroon!

Sorry for the current ugliness of the blog. I followed Blogger's suggestion to switch to the new template, believing its promise that I could easily switch back to my old design, and now I can't figure out how to! Nor can I figure out how to get rid of the dumb highlighting behind the text of my last entry. Maybe I should type out my blog on my Royal typewriter and make mimeographed copies to send to interested friends using the Pony Express. Geez.

Look what I found!

After years of searching the children's section of countless used bookstores, I've finally gotten a copy of one of my most beloved childhood books! Powell's has a feature where you can sign up to be notified if a used (even out-of-print, like this one is) book ever becomes available. As I've written about before, the image of a sand-colored round cookie has haunted me for the past twenty or so years, and with the help of some faithful readers, I was able to remember the title. With shipping, it cost about $10--so, about a 1000 percent inflation from its original price--but once I opened up the pages, the feelings of nostalgia evoked were well worth it.

Isn't it just. Seeing this round, crumbly-looking cookie goes a long way toward explaining my lifelong obsession with cookies. Sometimes I lie in bed and dream about these butter cookies that my grandma would give us. They came in blue tins decorated with little Dutch girls, which I used to make tin can stilts (the cans, not the girls) inspired by Ramona Quimby. But they were shell-shaped, and too buttery to match up to how I imagined the cookie in the book would taste. I'm also on an eternal quest to find these tiny Japanese cookies that I think were called "hitokuchi", which were the size and shape of Japanese coins, with holes in the middle, and tasted like coconut.

Gah, this image kills me! I can feel the lazy afternoon, the boredom mixed with mild contentment of lying curled in a laundry basket (we didn't have any metal tubes like this in our neighborhood, sadly, and if we did, they would've been rusted and scrawled with "Honeygirl wuz hea") while Neil Diamond's "Song Sung Blue" plays on the record player, eating some sweet or other and contemplating whether to play with my Little People or make a miniature golf course out of toilet paper tubes.


And finally, here's one for my friend and soul sister in book lust (you know who you are):

Off I go to craft a papoose board and bunting so I can recreate this image in a few months! Just kidding.

The Wisdom of Crowds?

Ben’s been bugging me to write more charming anecdotes about him, and I have to admit, there have been several gems lately, most involving practical jokes at my expense or goofy jokes about the baby. But unfortunately, as I have proven to be prone to every stereotypical pregnancy symptom from insomnia to inexplicable weepiness to an obsession with sewing useless-but-cute baby crafts, my “pregnancy brain” has forgotten most of them. 

It’s embarrassing, but I now see everything through the lens of impending parenthood. Where I used to smile goofily at babies in the checkout line, now I ogle the stroller or Ergo carrier housing them, wonder if they’re wearing cloth or disposable diapers, and covertly notice when the mother is buying a bunch of wine. I’m also paying attention to parenting practices, and have made some vows that will probably prove to be foolish in the months ahead, like A) We will spend a night away from the baby by the time she’s one year old, and B) we will have dinner at a grown-up restaurant at least once a month. By the way, who wants to babysit? 

One thing I’m on the fence about is whether I’m cut out for taking family trips to events like Zoo Tunes, a series of outdoor concerts at our lovely neighborhood zoo, or any of the music/cultural festivals that Seattleites seem to love so much. We went to a Zoo Tunes concert recently to see The Be Good Tanyas and Carolina Chocolate Drops, and while the music was great, and I loved the fact that we could walk a few blocks, pick up pastrami sandwiches at Dot’s Deli (Hey, how about “Dot”?), and stroll into the concert without using the car, I think Ben and I might be too meek to navigate such events on our own, let alone with a baby and its gear in tow. 

The scene: Ben and I on our folding, low-profile camp chairs (cheap knock-offs of the Crazy Creeks everyone had in college), taking up about six square feet of grass, trying to balance our Mexican sodas between our knees while everyone else had spread out king-sized bedspreads to mark their space after nearly crushing our sandwiches with their BOB jogging strollers and wheeled coolers full of quinoa salad. With every passing Be Good Tanyas song--which we couldn’t hear because apparently people go to these concerts to run into their neighbors and swap tips on vaccine avoidance (okay, now I’m just projecting), not to listen to the music--our space shrank inch by inch, as more and more people arrived to join the groups on the bedspreads. Soon, we were completely hemmed in by people passing around tubs of hummus, bunches of uncut broccoli, jugs of echinacea-infused lemonade--and that was just the group of twenty-somethings next to us! At one point, a six-foot tall man’s barefoot leg was so close to my own that I could feel the breeze ruffling his blond leg hair as it glinted in the sun.

As I moved my chair over in one-inch increments, only to be followed by the hairy leg as it stretched itself out in the grass, Ben became more and more amused by my rising ire, which I expressed in eyerolls and tiny sighs (carefully hidden from the encroaching hippies--or were they yuppies? It’s so hard to label people these days), until he finally leaned over and whispered:

“Neville Chamberlain made the same mistake, you know.”

“Huh?” (I couldn’t hear him over the sound of everyone crowing to each other, “I love the Be Good Tanyas!” as they proceeded to drown out their entire set.)

“When Hitler invaded. Chamberlain just kept on retreating until it was too late.”

So true, Ben, so true. In the game of life, we are the Neville Chamberlains, even the Neville Longbottoms. While sometimes I think I need assertiveness training--or, failing that, to avoid situations where my passive-aggressive nature will not be tested--I’d rather be a Neville than an obnoxious, space-hogging, junk food-unappreciating stroller conquistador. We are the meek, we shall carry our baby like a kangaroo in large crowds, and we shall revel in our Neville-ness. We shall also spend our nights at home listening to the Be Good Tanyas on the stereo, if anyone wants to join us. I promise not to serve quinoa salad.

Neatest Penmanship Award

While trying to decipher some of my recent journal entries, I started to wonder, "Is this Mom handwriting?" My mom, both my grandmas, and even my dad, all had/have perfectly even, symmetrical, flowy cursive handwriting, the kind that doesn't vary from one word to the next, so that any corn chowder recipe card or one sentence note is immediately recognizable. (As if the Post-Its that accompany my dad's mailed checks--"Here's a little spending money. Go out for a Mexican dinner with margaritas"--wouldn't be recognizable even if glued in cut-out ransom note letters. Thanks, Dad. I’ll be very popular at the bar with this $500!)

It’s yesterday’s news that cursive is a dying art, but as a member of Generation X whose elementary school devoted more time to cursive than to geography (hence my long-held belief that “New England” included all the original 13 colonies), I have no excuse for the way my handwriting has devolved steadily from its pinnacle around senior year of high school, when I exhaustively outlined my AP History textbook from beginning to end and kept the notes organized in my meticulous Al Gore binder. Even today, one half of my grocery list might look like it was penned by a completely different person than the second half, indicating that my identity is even more inchoate (less choate?) than it was in the days when I experimented with imitating the penmanship of every Baby-Sitters Club character. Except for overly flourishy Jessi and boring Mary Anne. 

What I’m trying to say is, HOW THE BLEEP AM I GOING TO BE A MOTHER? Even seeing the word “mother” in this context (me) is weirding me out. I could barely contain a giggle fit a few weeks ago when the ultrasound tech squirted the gel onto my stomach and the bottle made a farting noise. Maybe my inability to form letters like a grown-up is just a symbol of a much deeper immaturity that will put our daughter (eek, the weirdness!) at a great disadvantage next to the children of professionals who lease cars, have investments, and bid on items at silent auctions. 

Let’s examine this rationally. Virtually none of our friends here have children. My close friends from college and high school are just starting to have babies now, too, but that’s because they’ve been busy establishing impressive careers. So it makes sense that Ben and I are in utterly alien territory; while many of our unknown peers are well into (or beyond) the world of car seats and parties that end at bedtime, our social circles have continued to revolve around finding the cheapest happy hours, watching six-hour marathons of Deadwood and The Wire, and Sunday afternoons playing bocce and drinking wine from sports bottles. It’s like we’ve been in grad school for the past seven years (which we kind of have). 

But then I think of something my mother said to me years ago, when I was still in college and she’d just had several serious health scares. One day, perhaps on a drive to Long’s Drugs, she mused that all her life, she had been living and thinking as if she hadn’t started her “real life” yet, and maybe it was time to reconsider this approach to life. This shocked me because of how similar it was to feelings that had dogged me ever since I’d realized the dreams of my adolescence (ending homelessness AND being a doctor AND an influential journalist AND a famous tap dancer) were not to be realized. And here she was, fifty years old, still feeling this way?

Looking back on this now as I start to dream about what kind of relationship I hope to have with my daughter, I admire the humility and candor that allowed my mother to share this with me, her selfish and moody mooch of a daughter, and the fact that she has never lost this childlike spirit, however grown-up her handwriting (and permed hair, and Rockport shoes) seemed when I would wish for a younger mom. I’ll try to remember this when I’m feeling anxious about being an Old Mom--that it’s never too late to change. Maybe I’ll add some daily handwriting practice to my schedule.

impatience (pt. II)

I just finished my last pre-requisite for OT school! Now all I have to do is wait one year (in which I'll have a baby and be at home with her for nine months), then finish 2.5 years of school, and I'll be ready to start on my new career! I wish life had a fast-forward button. That is, when I'm not wishing I could stop time by touching my fingertips together like Evie in "Out of This World."

I am my own worst editor

After reading a bunch of old entries, I’ve compiled this list of words and topics to banish henceforth on this blog:
- aging
- wrinkles
- Botox
- exercise
- macaroni and cheese (yes, we all know I love it and want to marry it)
- Craigslist
- Old Navy
- Facebook
- blithely
- Orwellian
- Rachel from Friends (seriously, why do I mention her so much?)


Preemptively, I will try to avoid these:
- maternity clothes
- Mom jeans
- craving
- fat
- uterus and other gross pregnancy words
- types of wine that I wish I were drinking (Here, I’ll get it over with: Sauvignon Blanc, unoaked Chardonnay, Gruner Veltliner, Torrontes, Pinot Gris. What? I miss wine.)
- brands of over-priced baby stuff that seem to be mandated for mothers in Seattle to carry around


However, some topics and motifs are sacred to me, and I shall not forsake them:
- making fun of other people’s grammar and spelling mistakes
- complaining about stupid social trends, the decline of manners, and kids today
- waxing nostalgic and listing foods, TV characters, and song lyrics from the ‘80s
- things that scare me about raising a child (this could be a spin-off blog of its own)
- ridiculous baby names (my friend who’s a doctor said someone in the hospital named her baby MECONIUM!)
- the evil nature of plants
- old juvenile fiction and children’s books that I’m trying to find
- how many cupcakes I've eaten this week (3 so far)- Keanu (ooh, potential baby name?)
- Theo and Levi
- Ben

A flip through the old scrapbook

It is July 18th, and 54 degrees in Seattle. Residents are beside themselves with excitement that it is expected to break 70 today. I know I should be grateful, considering the heat waves wilting the rest of the country, but I find this depressing. I miss Hawaii!

http://missymussy.blogspot.com/2005_10_01_archive.html
Look at our old house, with its never-ending profusion of plants! (Forget about how I cursed those plants and declared them evil when it was time to do yardwork.) Look at me, blithely sipping a Cosmopolitan in my sleeveless dress, which I probably had accessorized with rubber slippers, and wore year-round--without a cardigan, I might add. I’ve had to wear a Mom-like cardigan over all of the cute maternity tank tops I foolishly bought on the one warm day we’ve had so far this summer. Look at my hair, so curly and shiny in the tropical humidity. Look at my face, before 3 years of teaching etched a deep worry line between my eyes.
Yes, if we lived in Hawaii, I would forever be 28 years old, drinking a never-ending cocktail, and I wouldn’t have to spend the entire day studying for a chemistry midterm and watching YouTube videos about valence electrons.

Impatience

From the day I found out I was pregnant (around April 7th, I believe), I’ve been constantly calculating: my age + 9 months, my age + 18 years, that scary number compared to the ages of other people I know who already have kids. What that number might have been if I hadn’t spent the last two years being marginally employed and watching The Wire twice all the way through. In terms of the baby as a milestone, I am 15 years behind some of my peers, 20 years behind my former students who had babies while in my 10th grade class!

The age thing doesn’t bother me so much as the fact that I’m three years from starting my career as an OT (the University of Washington agreed to defer my admission by a year so I wouldn't deliver a baby in the middle of a final exam). If only the baby were already here, I could get a head start on its first year of life, so instead of having a nine-month old when I start grad school I’d have an 18-month old. Actually, if time travel is on the table: If only I had gotten pregnant during my first unemployed stint two years ago! If only I’d visited the Career Center in college back in 1998, and learned how useless my English degree would be fifteen years sooner! If I had made different choices, I might be an OT with 10 years of experience and a growing retirement account. I know it could drive me crazy to think like this about everything, but every once in a while it hits me how far behind I am. I will be an old mom. There’s no getting around that. I will be taking my kid to preschool with parents who are ten years younger than me, yet are ten years ahead of me in their careers, home ownership, and establishment of a polished mom “look,” while I still wear the shorts I bought at Target in 1996 and scour Craigslist to furnish my rental apartment. I don’t feel middle-aged, but I almost am!

But back to the time machine. The benefit of having watched countless ‘80s movies and sitcom episodes centered on this very trope is that if I could go back and alter the trajectory of my education and career choices, I probably wouldn’t have met Ben, or many of the friends I’ve found along the way whom I now treasure. If I hadn’t moved to Albuquerque in 2000, before which I foolishly turned down several jobs because they didn’t meet my idealistic liberal arts snob standards for “doing good in the world while being intellectually fulfilling,” I wouldn’t have met the Willi (more on them in a future post). If I hadn’t dropped out of my PhD program at Duke in 2003 and moved back to Albuquerque in 2003, I wouldn’t have met Ben. And that would bring us, ultimately, to the disappearance of little Cletus/Cotton/Beaux-Rhys from the fading photo I would be clutching in my own disappearing hand as I tried frantically to cling to existence while Doc tried to fix the Delorian.

Maybe I should embrace my future status as an Old Parent (henceforth to be referred to as an OP), and start planning the many ways in which I shall mortify my child and eventual teenager. She will probably have friends whose parents weren’t even alive in the ‘80s, so imagine their delight and wonder when I pop in a VHS of Troop Beverly Hills at her first sleepover! It will be an anthropologically educative experience, as will carpool rides when I play my Backstreet Boys or Dave Matthews Band CDs. (Yes, CDs. I just can’t get the hang of my iPod.)

vanity

A strange confluence of events has led me to contemplate aging with much greater frequency lately: preparing to attend a wedding and see old friends, and realizing that it's been almost ten years since I first stomped the grounds of Albuquerque; mainlining Season 3 of Sex and the City over a period of a few days; attending the actual wedding, and comparing the creamy, unlined complexions of 25-year-olds with my own sheet-creased face (and those creases stay in for an alarming length of time after waking up); and now, the ultimate horror, looking at endless photos of the events in the Facebook vortex. I suppose it's inevitable in this age, when even my two-year-old nephew insisted on taking digital photos at his brother's gymnastics show yesterday, that we'll be confronted with ever more images of ourselves. But as I pored over my pores and rued the power of Lucrecia's flash, I couldn't help but wonder: Is the digital revolution, which makes it impossible to avoid ultra-clear images of yourself at every turn, making it impossible not to be vain?

[That was a nod to Carrie Bradshaw's super annoying habit of asking that exact same question in EVERY SINGLE EPISODE.]

So I don't know if I should blame the show's implicit ageism and obsession with appearance, the fact that I work with high schoolers and am immersed in youth culture, the internet, or my addiction to The Superficial, but I have been thinking a lot about adapting my life goals to include the following:

- Research an anti-aging diet, which will probably require me to quit drinking alcohol, drink two gallons of water a day, and eat things like kelp and acai berries instead of cupcakes for breakfast

- Start sleeping ten hours a day (instead of my current six) on a satin pillowcase

- Do whatever it takes to get my allergies under control, as I'm convinced they are the cause of my red eyes and perpetually chapped nostrils

- Find a gym and work out for two hours a day

Okay, I realize this (along with preposterously expensive cosmetics and the occasional "procedure") is the reality for many of my peers. It just hurts to realize that I either need to let go of my newfound vanity, or drastically change my lifestyle. Since I can't afford to have ass-fat injected into my face, I will need to either adopt the time-consuming DIY alternative, or accept the fact that I'll become a fat housecat instead of a cougar. Any bets on which one I'll choose?

exercise as a metaphor for life

Reading the comments on my last post, I realized that mixing "walk on water" with "walk through fire" goes further than just that lady on 48 Hours Mystery. One of my favorite songs from Body Pump is "Walk on Water," which goes:

I would walk on water
just to be with you
Walk on water
just to be with you...

You get the idea. I never questioned the logic, through the thousands of lunges that I've done to the strains of that over-dramatic dance track at the Club in Kona.

Which makes me think: I have been neglecting more than just this blog; I've been neglecting the trivial (to you, but to me they were my world) things like exercise, and crafting over-wrought dishes like vichyssoise along with over-wrought sentences.

*** News break: A contestant on The Biggest Loser just said, "I'm nineteen-years-young" as part of her plea for why she should win as the audience favorite. This fits nicely into my theme of bozos mixing metaphors and idioms in popular media. __ YEARS YOUNG ONLY WORKS IF YOU ARE OLD, YOU DIMWIT. ***

Back to my exercise metaphor. After scrutinizing various district documents about how they solved the budget crisis, I'm not sure if I was fired or laid off. Either way, I have decided that, since I was "reduced/eliminated/non-converted/substitute choice of Orwellian language that hides the fact that I was screwed over," I will now devote at least half the time I have routinely been devoting to lesson-planning to exercise instead. That works out to about two hours on weekdays, five to eight hours on weekends. I am going to so buff by the time school ends, it will blow your mind.

I forget how I was planning to work that into a metaphor for life. But, as history has shown, that doesn't matter. Planning leads to elimination. Exercise, leisure pursuits, and cooking are the only true paths to happiness, and those paths shall I take. I'm off to shop for new running shoes online. (A gym membership will have to wait until I get a cushy job through the stimulus dollars I'm still awaiting.)

I'm returning to this familiar (to me, anyway) pink page because I realized that I've been using my Facebook status updates as an outlet for thoughts that I may not want people like Ben's colleagues or my fourth grade nemesis to read. Also, I hate the thought of people blocking me from their news feed because they are sick of hearing about my latest complaints. Finally, I have so many things that I want to preserve for posterity, like my newfound love of homemade pickles.

They really do pep up any dish.

The tipping point was last night, as I watched 48 Hours Mystery (to the sound of Ben's grunts of disgust coming from the other room). The best friend of the murdered couple was trying to wax poetic about their supposed "story-book" romance (man meets woman 20 years his junior, man leaves wife, man and new woman fulfill lifelong dream of living on a yacht), and mixed her metaphors like nobody's business. Here are the gems I remember:

"He would have walked on water for her."

"It was like a fairy tale. He got down on his hands and knees and proposed."

It reminded me of when the parents of a young girl who was being treated for leukemia or something said on the news, "She's not out of the woodwork yet, but the doctors are very optimistic."

Long live my tradition of making fun of people who don't deserve it!

I guess I didn't mean it!

I posted my wedding dress for sale on Craig's List about a week ago, fully expecting to never hear from anyone.

Now someone wants to come try it on.

What should I do?!

anywhere but here

Nothing's more depressing than driving home from a job interview that you bombed (one of 4 so far), while the SUN SETS AT 4:30, knowing you have a 10-inch stack of papers to grade and no plans yet for tomorrow's class, only to have Hawaiian music come on the radio, followed by a mariachi band from Albuquerque.

Well, to me anyway.

My sit-down

I'm taking a break from cramming for today's job interview, and again, I feel like Sarah Palin. Memorizin' catch phrases, stringin' words together into subject-free sentences, feelin' like a fraud and wonderin' what the heck to wear. Let's hope fifth time's the charm with this Interview Dress I bought in August and have been trying to keep seasonal by adding tights and a cardigan.

At my last interview, the woman ahead of me was wearing a nearly identical outfit. I wonder if she was hired instead.

This job is full-time, so I could actually accept it if offered. I was actually offered the last one (eventually, after probably being the third choice), but had to turn it down because they hours were way more than half-time, while being paid as such.

In other news, Goodwill and other thrift stores in Bellevue are awesome. Here's a sampling of what I've found in recent months:

* Laundry by Shelly Segal jacket
* Theory pants (though I couldn't buy them, because they were from back when a 0 was really a 0.)
* BCBG sweater
* Banana Republic shirt
* Ann Taylor pants

I'm not a slave to brands, but it's nice to know that my $7 blazer probably cost its original owner at least a hundred bucks. I'm all for labels when they're cheaper than new stuff at Old Navy!

Off to get costumed up and practice reading off the teleprompter!

Unlike my cynical husband, who came home on election day with a new button that says "If voting could change the system it would be against the law" over a picture of a fat ass sitting on what's either a ballot box or a toilet, I am among the breathless Americans who choked up when they saw Oprah and Jesse Jackson crying in the Grant Park crowd. In fact, I tear up a little when I think of it now, or of the way I felt when I was driving in my hand-me-down 1996 Corolla, battling a sinus infection and with a box full of papers to grade, and heard Neal Conan announce that NPR had called the race: absolutely amazed, exhilarated, and de-familiarized with my surroundings. It felt like an out-of-body experience, to think that more than enough of my countrymen had finally wised up. 

In that spirit of renewed idealism, tempered with caution for the backlash that the RNC is surely hatching, I'm sharing this essay by Pico Iyer. I doubt if Obama had an Obake-busters tshirt, the true badge of a Gen-Xer from Hawaii, but I still feel he embodies some of the Hawaii ethos.