mother hides the pearls

i'm open to suggestions on what to do with a blog that i pretty much ignore but like the name too much to really ever give up...

2011-01-07T14:13:00.001-05:00

hi blogland, happy new year and all that. i kind of miss you, but then i get busy again and forget about you for a while. but then i find myself thinking about bloggy folk in my real life and it makes me want to pop in and say hi again. it's a vicious cycle.

i have a few gems that i've been saving up in case i ever wanted to write a cohesive post any time soon, but i don't think that's going to happen. well, at least not this week anyway. so instead maybe i'll share them in list form, because let's be real, who doesn't love a good list?

ok, so here it goes:

things related to my recent move back to my hometown-

1. if you live in a really scary part of town, it's ok to walk your big ass rottweiler on an orange extension cord and pretend it's a leash.

2. if you have a motorized wheelchair/rascal or equivalent type of ride, and you obey the same traffic rules as a motor vehicle, it's ok to drive in the road as opposed to the sidewalk like the rest of the wheelchair-bound citizens of this town.

3. a trip to home depot with your spouse does not count as a date when you bring a wiggly toddler, but if you bring snacks and drinks in your bag like you're going to the movies it comes really, really close.

4. the days of running errands in pajamas are long gone. you will inevitably run into no less than three people from your past every time you set foot outside your house, requiring real grown-up clothes at all times lest you become the loser who just moved back into town and can't get her shit together.

things related to work-

1. getting bullied by a kosher caterer who talks to you like you're not even good enough to be the shit on his shoe is a valid reason for waving a knife around in a kitchen full of people.

2. please, please take my word for it, don't EVER eat or drink anything at the roseland ballroom in nyc unless it comes in a sealed bottle or package that you open yourself. that means no ice in your drink either. semi-related, robert de niro must have a stomach of steel.

3. can there be a season of project runway where all the designers make fashionable chefwear and then they give it all to me? i'm all set with the pants that come all the way up to the bottom of my bra and the polyester jackets that stay square no matter how long i wear them.

and that's all the original thoughts i have at this time. stayed tuned for some more of the same at some point this year.

spanks!! (yes, i am single-handedly trying to bring back spanks to replace thanks)

guess what i'm gonna be for halloween!!

2010-10-20T22:26:00.000-04:00

a big fat fattie that's what.

i can't stop eating halloween candy.

or rather, my two year old is making it really hard for me to just enjoy a casual piece of candy without having to hear her squeal 'CHOCO PEAS!!!' incessantly so i end up binging as soon as her little head hits the pillow every night.

i might need an intervention, but not the weird kind where people just write letters and read them and cry and make ugly snot faces.

i want the kind of intervention where i get to bathe in enormous mounds of candy and oompa loompas come and sing to me about getting a bellyache and then i wake up the next day and i don't want candy anymore and i'm magically skinny again.

or would that be hypnosis? whatever, make it happen. i love oompas.

on another note, i'm thinking about bringing my monster to a pending craigslist exchange.  i can't decide if that makes me a) super paranoid, no one is going to rob me for $50 over a used carseat, or b) wise and well-prepared, internet people are weird.

if nothing else, giving monster a chance to think he's protecting me by barking really loudly at a stranger might just make him feel a little better. he's been having some anxiety about the upcoming move which has manifested in a strange habit of chewing the fur off of his hips.

my poor smelly mutt, maybe i should give him some candy too....

just another day at the office...

2010-09-24T22:38:00.000-04:00

i couldn't possibly write anything funny enough to accompany this video:

they're called boundries people, use them

2010-09-16T13:16:00.000-04:00

do you start random personal conversations with people you barely know?

i don't, but i'm also kind of out of touch and i'm not sure which side of normal i fall on this one.

as a general rule, i save my detailed personal info for people that are routinely updated on my life.  but what do i know, maybe i need a lesson in socialization skills. maybe i'm contributing to the self-centered mindset that many people claim is taking over our population.

maybe my need to protect my small and insignificant matters is seen as an unwillingness to participate in regular society. who knows.

what i do know is that my neighbor ambushed me in the laundry room yesterday as i had my head in the washing machine to warble in an oddly undulating squeak "i just found out my sister-in-law has breast cancer."

and i should be clear, i don't know this woman's name or much about her other than what you can infer from seeing someone walk to their car once in a while.

this gut punch of a conversation starter had an exquisite effect of unfolding emotions on me. first there was anxiety, 'does this crazy lady really want me to do this with her? talk about someone elses boobs and cancer?!'

next there was sympathy, 'ugh, this poor lady probably has no one else in her life to talk to about this and it must really be bothering her.'

there was also a distinct sense of insensitivity, 'how can i be polite and at the same time get the hell out of here to catch that 12:46 train this afternoon?'

as i tried to find the appropriate tone for my 'gosh i'm sorry' and 'oh' and 'uh-huh' responses, she began talking about sharing this news with her church congregation and how she was asking for prayers.

this ignited yet another intense emotion for me which i almost can't even name. being raised as a (barely) practicing jew, i have never in my life felt comfortable with churches. even the mention of activities inside churches are enough to make me squeamish to the point where i want to shed the conversation like you would wet clothes.

as her monologue drew to a close, i felt the most overwhelming sense of relief.

unfortunately, that relief has not lasted. i am still going back to that conversation in my head and asking myself 'was i wrong to not offer more genuine consolation?' or 'was she completely crossing a line by trying to incite my involvement in her emotional well-being?'

truthfully, i cannot imagine reacting any differently should this scenario occur again tomorrow.  call me the crazy one, but that is exactly why i would never put a stranger in a position like that.

i'm only blogging because i ran out of packing tape

2010-09-08T13:38:00.000-04:00

on a scale of one to ten, ten being the most unusual, how weird is it to show up to work on a steamy summer night in brooklyn only to be told your parking spot is now reserved for the penguin guard?

i gave it about a six.

i mean, it is important that the forty or so penguins residing in the walk-in refrigerator be well protected with their own security detail from vandals and other such types who might wish to cause them harm or distress.

i can't begrudge them that.

it also helps that the past few months have been so insanely busy that i have become so much more easy-going than i ever thought was possible. i think it suits me well.

i've found life is easier for me if i roll with changes instead of attempting to enforce my rigid plans to achieve a desired outcome.

now, don't get me wrong, i think i might have a mental breakdown if i couldn't make lists anymore. but letting smaller things go, in general, has been quite exhilirating. it's almost like giving myself a reprieve from having to be "on" all the time.

and right now, things couldn't be better for me. b and i bought our first house in the burbs, i got a promotion at work and now get to be the head chef of my own events, and i have a beautiful and healthy daughter who is about to turn two years old.

so really, mr. penguin guard, you enjoy that conviently close-to-the-building parking spot and i'll walk a few extra feet. i really don't want to have anything to do with weird birds who don't fly and need to be refrigerated.

multiple choice monday

2010-06-28T20:00:00.001-04:00

what does the crazy lady in your neighborhood look like?

in my neighborhood she's about five foot three and pushing a solid two hundred.

she has short hair that she somehow manages to wrap around tiny curlers, which i wasn't even sure people still used anymore.

she wears her 'house shoes' outside and hangs out by the dumpster.

oh yeah, and she talks to herself almost as much as she converses with the neatly trimmed row of hedges that line the dumpster.

her constant proximity to the dumpster in and of itself is relatively harmless, or so i thought up until this morning.

on my way to work i threw out a bag of garbage before getting into my car. crazy slipper-wearing lady paused mid-rant to stare me down and say in a whisper just barely audible from my supposedly safe distance of fifteen feet, 'i'm watching you i'm watching you i'm watching you.'

as i thought to myself 'she's not really that crazy, she's just bored, or lonely, or waiting for someone to come pick her up, she's too lumpy to be dangerous, etc., etc.' i reached the oasis of shelter that is my car.

putting the key in the ignition and turning it to hear the engine start with a quiet rumble, buckling the seatbelt, and settling into the driver's seat, i allowed the familiarity to almost shake the weirdness of the previous ten seconds away.

reversing out of my parking spot and craning my neck around to the left to make sure i wasn't going to hit any small animals or children, i was startled by what i saw in my driver's side mirror.

crazy psycho bitch was staring directly at me through the mirror. her eyes burned with what at first i thought was anger, and then realized was more akin to the consuming desire with which a drug addict might stare down a pile of glorious dope right before pouncing upon it.

she saw that i was leaving the area and bolted toward the dumpster, reached in, and appeared to be going through the very bag of garbage i had just thrown in the dumpster.

the view in my rear mirror as i pulled away was of her squat legs straining to propel her upper body over the lip of the dumpster.

yes, really.

so now, the big question is what the fuckity fuck is my next move?

is it:

a- starve my monster for three days and lay in wait with him behind the dumpster and let him loose to feast on her lard ass

b- take pictures of her and draw satanic things on them and write scary messages to her and throw it all out in the dumpster when i know she's lurking

c- white bishop to black queen

d- go invade her territory and do my own version of crazy that may or may not include a sombrero in hopes of scaring her away long enough to buy an industrial wood chipper for all future garbage headed to the dumpster

please, help me before it's too late...

summersummersummertiiiiiiiime

2010-06-15T12:42:00.000-04:00

picking flowers is fun.

eating peanuts from the shell is fun.

rainbows and waterfalls are fun.

hots dogs on a grill are fun.

sailboats are fun.

fireworks are fun.

fishing, hiking, and inhaling the scent of freshly cut grass until your lungs are so full they feel like they might burst are all fun.

what's not fun is inappropriate ass-scratching.

thanks to the asshole mosquito residing in the pool of watery gunk at the end of my street, you can now observe me violently scratching the cluster of oversized bites on my left buttcheeck or squirming in extreme discomfort for the next seven to ten days.

spanks a lot, mosquito. keep laughing, just wait until i pour some draino in your pothole pond...

are you sure???

2010-04-08T19:05:00.001-04:00

dear chef 1, i know how to cook beans.

dear chef 2, i know how to cook beans.

dear chef 3, i know how to cook the shit out of some motherfucking beans now shut your trap and leave me alone so i can cook some goddamn beans.

thank you.

support veteran artwork

2010-04-06T09:12:00.001-04:00

this blog is usually a place for me to talk about myself, my feelings, my experiences.

today i want to talk about someone else, my brother.

my brother cory is about a year and a half younger than me yet has had life experiences the likes of which i will never know for myself. he is an iraqi war veteran who was divorced before i even got married. i remember distinctly the thought occurring to me at his wedding reception that, at the time, he wasn't even old enough to legally have a drink to celebrate his nuptuals.

he now lives across the country from his family and girlfriend.

when my dad died in february he couldn't even make it home in time for the memorial service because he got stuck in about three feet of snow for two days.

but he wouldn't say he's had a rough life. his nature is to accept his past choices as part of the path that have led him to today. he is more comfortable letting things unfold before him and listening to his instincts than anyone else i have ever known.

and just where is he today? today he is living in a new city, going to a new school, and making a name for himself as an artist.

his first showing yeilded him several offers from galleries, an invitation to a trade show, an offer for designing an album cover for a recording artist, and much more. as he develops his website and merchandise lines, he is also selling poster prints of his original drawings.

the following is from an ad he ran last week in a local artist community:

These drawings are all inspired by experiences in life. I recently moved to the area and wanted to meet a few artists,so I figured putting some pics up here would help. The drawings are 21 x 14 so they are pretty large, and they are all done with bic pens. I always felt as if they could be reprinted and sold for around 10$ as posters. There has got to be a market for people wanting to support veteran artists, right? All constructive criticism welcome, as well as pure unbridled hatred. I have plenty more of these, just not any that have been professionally photographed like these four. So sit back and stare at them, and enjoy...

(click pics to enlarge)

if you're interested in any of his work, or just want to see some different pics, please email him at corwyn.mansfield@gmail.com for more info. if you live in the greater denver area and are interested in the upcoming trade show on sunday april 18th he can give you details for that as well.

my brother's dream for a career as an artist is not about making money but more about sharing his passion and finding an audience that he can relate to, and that is something i will always support.

hey guess what!? uh, nevermind...

2010-03-29T21:47:00.000-04:00

this past weekend at work was kind of a blur, all the days seemed to blend into one another. i remember at one point there were bag pipes in a cafe (which sounded amazing), ancient books in the new york historical society, and lots and lots and lots and lots of onions.

i almost cried tears of pain for the blister developing on my right hand, but then i didn't want the onions to think they were getting the better of me so i stifled my tears out of sheer stubbornness.

by saturday afternoon i had experienced such a range of randomness that i got the brilliant idea to start another blog dedicated solely to my stories of working in a kitchen, or 'cooking room' as i was once dumb enough to say when i couldn't think of the word kitchen fast enough.

but by sunday evening i had already talked myself out of that idea for several reasons, not the least of which being that it would be harder to keep up the veil of annonymity regarding my place of employment when all i did was talk about my job.

then i realized that i tend to do things like that a lot. i come up with ideas or plans for things and then give myself time to rationalize my way out of following through. i don't know if i think this is a good thing or a bad thing, but i can say that it's definitely a pattern.

yet sometimes the opposite type of characteristic can also be true. if i find myself in a particularly spontaneous situation, i have a hard time saying no to pretty much anything. lucky for me b is slightly more grounded or else we could have been married by a dancing elvis in vegas.

what that all amounts to is basically i give myself liscense to bullshit about anything at any time and just blame it on being wishy washy.

maybe i'll start a cooking room blog someday, or maybe i'll just talk about the time that i thought about doing it. either way, i still have a full-time schedule ahead of me loaded with the promise of interestingness to come.

i'd say call me the white rabbit, but i think rabbits smell bad, so don't

2010-03-24T13:20:00.000-04:00

i am somewhat obsessed with promptness. being made to wait for someone or making someone wait for me i consider to be a serious insult.

it's not that hard, just get your shit together and get there on time. which, by the way, is a trick because if you're on time you're already late.

right.

and then i had a baby.

and then i turned thirty and got even slower.

the discomfort i feel with being late unfortunately doesn't lessen even as i know rationally that there's not much i can do about it sometimes. in one way or another i am aware that my tardiness will affect someone else in an unexpected way, which i always feel guilty about.

this morning, for example, i experienced the perfect storm of incidents that led to my being about a half an hour late for my target date with kristine.

the landscapers with their multitude of leaf blowers and lawn mowers made such a frightening racket that my silly monster was literally scared shitless. it took an extra long time and a lot of coaxing to get him to proceed with his morning poop.

which in turn delayed my shower, and made my coffee cold.

which made me forget that i was carrying coffee (as i tend to be much more careful with it when i know it's scalding hot).

which led to the sublime moment of spilling said coffee on my daughter's head.

which led me to grabbing the first travel mug i saw (after cleaning my poor kid's coffee hair) forgetting that the only clean one was the leaky one.

which led me to proceed to spill the freshly poured coffee down the front of my white shirt.

but then i remembered that i was going to target where there's a starbuck's. i knew i could save a few precious minutes by just wearing the coffee shirt and then getting a venti drip at target to walk around with. anyone who noticed the stain would be sure to see the big ass cup in my hand and think that it must have just happened.

and because i needed more coffee.

pretty clever, i thought.

and just like that, i have become the ragamuffin mom that i never thought i'd be.

not about sailboats, although now that you mention it i'd love to have one

2010-03-22T10:18:00.000-04:00

hi blogland, it's me, lana. i've had a lot on my plate lately, literally.

yesterday i ate poison at work.

it wasn't as bad as i would have expected it to be, although the taste took a few hours to fade away. but at least i saved some people from potential death and their relatives from the hassle of a lawsuit, not to mention my boss's job.

i was just commenting to a friend recently about how much i enjoy having a career that always offers something new and different with each day, as opposed to sitting in the same desk in the same office. i would have never experienced how easy it is to confuse a chemical de-greaser with cooking oil had i chosen a different path.

additionally, i am now realizing that my miniskirts from six years ago might still fit, but that doesn't mean that i should be wearing them. this does not upset me, however the fact that i kind of want to keep a few of the nicer ones for my daughter should she ever want to wear them some sixteen years from now is quite bothersome. am i a hoarder in the making?

it's almost too disturbing to think about. instead i think i'll go marvel at my amazing natural wonder, a siamese strawberry i found like a treasure hidden amongst all the regular berries. behold:

you know you want one too.

ps. where did my spell check go?

pps. and what is with all the spam? have i really been gone that long?

like mucus

2010-02-11T09:41:00.001-05:00

i was going to start this post off with a story about a nickname but unfortunately i can't because i'm too busy being mad at google.

i don't even want to ask what the fuck is with this new buzz bullshit in my gmail because i'm afraid of my head exploding and leaving tiny bloody brain bits on my nice clean carpet when i hear some asinine response.

there is such a thing as being overconnected, google, and your determination to attain global domination truly frightens me.

and that's all i'm going to say about that.

oh, and also, i love my new android phone that hanukka harry gave me.

in other news, my dad died last week and i'm pretty sure he's the one who dumped that shitton of snow all over the east coast just to throw a wrench into our plans for his memorial service.

typical.

maybe i can tell that nickname story now.

so my dad's best friend stood up to give a eulogy and while i was appropriately sad and emotional, i definitely heard derek zoolander saying 'ya-googalie' in my head.

this friend began by sharing how he and my father met when they were five years old in kindergarten. my dad says 'hi, i'm rob mansfield' and the friend says 'hi, i'm mike lucas.'

my dad says 'no, from this time forward your name is like mucus.'

also typical.

on that note, i want to send a very heartfelt thanks to all my wonderful family for coming together from all corners in the midst of a blizzard to listen to me ask mulitple times if my eyeliner was running as i cried.

you guys are the best, thank you!

be still my beating heart

2010-02-01T10:04:00.003-05:00

the blue-green sparks were enough to illuminate almost a whole corner of the dark room. crisp crackling was the perfect accompaniment to their bright display.

small wisps of my hair remained standing on end a second or two longer than i thought they would have. removing my heavy sweatshirt made me warm and cold at the same time.

laying down between the clean sheets had a similar effect.

i've heard of certain concierge services at fancy hotels that include a human sheet warmer. i wouldn't want anyone to take that moment from me. that special minute where the cold clears your mind and helps you prepare for sleep is so integral to me that i don't think i'd be able to settle without it.

eyes closed, the sounds around me became amplified. the whir of some digital device somewhere nearby, and the soft hum of the heat blowing through the vent were the most noticeable.

that was, until i nestled my head deep into my pillow. then the thud of my pulse began to pound through my ear, dull at first, then louder and more consuming.

i thought of the raven and the heart beating under the floorboards.

but that only distracted me for a brief moment. then it was back to only hearing the whooshing of my own blood in my ear.

switching sides didn't help.

we battled this way for what felt like hours. i tried to ignore my pulse, my basic life function, and it became the only thing i knew.

------

waking up the next morning, i had no memory of the struggle. it was only later that night, when the scene began all over again, that it came back to me and i knew what i was in for.

and so it's been, night after night, forever and ever, i am sisyphus and my heartbeat is my boulder. it sustains me and drains me.

Does this mean I'm my own ghostwriter?

2010-01-25T12:20:00.001-05:00

I don't know what happens when you republish a post three times, but I think I finally got the hang og this mobile blogging thing.

the whole she-bang

2010-01-14T15:22:00.002-05:00

she is marvelous at hiding
she is afraid
she is anxious, unsettled, and aware

she is brushing her thick hair, distracted by its weight
she is cursing herself for her selfishness
she is anticipating the end

she is sad for others, but only angry for herself
she is surrounded
she is above and below
she is caught, marked, and ready

she is standing tall
she is backing away
she is learning her own strength
she is fading more and more each day

she is understanding what pity really means
she is undone and rebuilt
she is better than before

she is me
she is free
she is no more

my cut is 33.3%

2010-01-11T06:38:00.000-05:00

or whatever the going rate is for pimping like a sonofabitch around these here parts. each market is different, i don't really want to sell myself sort.

more importantly, b just told me 'boy, if you do couchie right, it'll sure do you right.'

he fluffs those cushions with unparalleled enthusiasm.

right, back to pimp talk. so most of you know about how kristine from wait in the van is my oldest and bestest bud. back in seventh grade we were the bitches to know, all the smack talking we did with her ferocious perm and my perfect bowl-cut made us feared and loved throughout our junior high.

or maybe we were the outcasts who wore men's clothing and pretended to smoke cigarettes without actually inhaling.

either way, the time has come for me to say wonderfully amazing things about her and her fantastic blog, wait in the van. if you have yet to click on the link for wait in the van, i suggest you do so now so that you can enter her chuck norris contest, lest you get a sharp roundhouse to the head.

i can personally vouch for the authenticity of the items in the contest, as i was happily on hand for the entire three hour wait to meet the chuckster himself. i was not at all a crabby bitch, pouting in a corner, surrounded by underage boys at a military academy, wondering what, for fuck's sake, had i done for my life to bring me to that exact situation.

no friends, i was really thinking about how funny and special it was that one of you out there in blogland was going to end up with a piece of chuck norris history in your hot little hands.

it takes a very dedicated blogger, one who really, really cares about her readers, to offer up such valuable memorabilia instead of keeping it for herself.

if the contest is the bait, her well crafted stories and one-of-a-kind microsoft paint drawings are the true snare that will keep you lurking and lingering around her blog for years to come.

and if that isn't enough for you, than you suck at life and are destined to become a miserable old goat with really long nails, stringy hair, and yellow teeth.

(that's always how i've pictured mean people looking when they get old, or you can insert your own visual here if needed)

ok, so maybe insulting people isn't the best way to get folks to check out my best friend's blog, but then again, i've never really been one to do things the traditional way.

in any event, i hope that when you do check it out and find yourself giggling and clapping, that you have enough manners to remember to thank me in your head.

your welcome.

b's my favorite action hero

2010-01-04T10:12:00.005-05:00

i love me some christian bale.

i pretty much will watch any movie he's ever been in no matter how sucky it promises to be.

it all started with empire of the sun.

that bratty little boy who, by the end of the movie, is transformed into a wisened young man has pervaded my taste in leading men for years.

needless to say, b has been subject to my bale obsession and has accumulated a vast supply of knowledge about the actor and his many roles.

this trivia was put to good use this morning when b announced that his new year's resolution was to go on 'the machinist' diet.

for those of you who might not have seen this movie, bale actually transformed his body to about one third of his natural weight by eating nothing more than a plain can of tuna fish and an apple a day for nearly a year.

now, i'm all about supporting b in whatever it is that he should choose to pursue, but come the fuck on.

seriously?

i don't think so.

after maybe a week, the smell of tuna is going to be vomit inducing. and what the fuck am i supposed to do? eat in a cave so as not to tempt him with my normal fare of big salads loaded with cheese and eggs?

as i'm getting ready to go to the grocery store for the weekly shopping, i'm looking at this sparse list of foodstuffs:

apples (green)
tuna (lots)
shit for fuss (not literally, you know what i mean)

i think this time i have to back up his machinist diet and buy some of his favorite snacktime snacks to hide and pull out and be the hero when he decides that he's actually hungry.

how long would you last?

i give myself three days, max, if anyone were ever able to drug me and convince me that it was a good idea to begin with.

i lurk you

2010-01-04T06:17:00.000-05:00

blah blah blah blahg blahg blog blog bloggy blog blog.

i'm here, not that i expect you to notice... but i feel that i should at least make some sort of mention to the fact that i've been ignoring blogland for quite some time now.

i really don't have any reason for my absence, but i will say that it is definitely true to my character. i tend to end things abruptly, turn my back, and walk away never thinking twice about burning bridges.

so really, blog, you're lucky i felt bad for creating you and then leaving you hanging to come back here and give a little reconciliation an honest try.

if you, blog, were a garden that i nurtured and tended to so dearly in the warm summer months, you would have repaid me heartily in brightly colored blossoms and fruits. now the long, dark winter has turned my mind from the joy of your bounty and i am no longer satisfied with gazing upon your barren soil and forlorn stems.

i'm not like the other bloggers here in blogland, blog. i don't need to write. i don't write to fill a void, or to express things i cannot say in person. i write because i like to write. i like to tell stories.

but sometimes, i get bored with hearing my own point of view drone on and on in the same vein. i don't know how to change how i think, nor do i care to. i don't want to blog each and every minute detail of my life in some sort of journal-esque fashion. i don't want to write ridiculous and outlandish things to make myself stand out in the ocean of bloggers.

i really don't know what i want.

i want to not feel like a guilty schmuck for ignoring all the really nice bloggers out there who sent me heartfelt holiday wishes. i want to not feel overwhelmed with the reality of other bloggers, on the other side of a monitor, reading my words in their real lives somewhere.

it was way easier to blog before i realized i had an audience, albeit a small one.

maybe that means i'm self-conscious, although i'd never admit to that.

maybe i just need to change my perspective a little.

or a lot.

maybe that will be my work in progress.

maybe i'll just hope that no one will mind if i pretend to be invisible even though i'm really here.

burning questions

2009-12-18T08:57:00.002-05:00

last night i got mad at a picture.

this picture:

it was mocking me and my inability to recognize a joke. all i was trying to do was browse a few real estate listings (on a legit site) and then i saw this piece of work. i instantly felt self-conscious, 'am i the only moron who can't tell what the fuck this is about?'

reading further into the ad did not resolve any questions i had.

is someone seriously trying to sell this house? what is the entire fire department doing posing for a picture in front of a burning house? exactly how long ago was thomas edison's time? just how bad is the fire damage? who can i rob to get 55k cash?

et cetera, et cetera.

i was going to print out the picture and burn it just to make it feel stupid too, but then i figured it might be the type of picture that likes that kind of thing. and also because i might end up burning down my current home and wind up in a lunatic asylum perpetually mumbling something about fire and cash offers.

on that note, fuck you, picture. you and your weird fire scenario are no longer going to bother me, unless you want to play nice and tell me what the fuck you're all about. then i'll invite you over for tea and we can chat about property lines and vinyl siding.

i've been a good girl this year

2009-12-11T09:18:00.005-05:00

dear hannukah harry,

please don't be pissed that despite being a relatively uninformed jew for the past thirty years i still don't know how to spell chanukka.

and also, please don't think i'm a sellout because i have a christmas tree and a menorah. that tree is so pretty and when i put a piney scented candle near it, it makes me feel all forresty and wintery.

hanuka candles never smell that good.

now that i've gotten that out of the way, i'd like to ask you to pretty please hook me up this year with a new phone. you see, the last one you got me was a little outdated, and never really got good reception.

plus it started to rust after i dropped in it the snow.

so the next year i went over your head and got myself a stylish new phone all on my own. it looked like this:

but then i dropped it into a pot of watercress soup at work and it smelled like sour cream ever since that day.

the one i got to replace the soupy phone wasn't much of an upgrade and now tends to shut off automatically when it gets mad about all the baby drool on it.

i can't say i blame that poor phone. i wouldn't want to drooled on either.

what this all comes down to is simply that if you can find a way to get me a phone that performs better than little miss's table-top phone, and even has a decent camera on it, i promise you won't regret it.

there are so many wonderful things i can take pictures of and text to you that would make you smile. the other day i saw a portrait of a man who had just told a really dirty and inappropriate joke and he was waiting for me to either crack up or smack him. i really, really wished i had a way to capture that moment and share it with you. but alas, it was not meant to be.

together, hannuka harry, you and i can change the way i share crazy with the world. i'll even make you some of the best latkes you'll ever have. if that's not enough of a bribe for you to help a girl out, than i don't know what else i can do. i'd hate to resort to threats because they take so much work, and frankly, i'm too lazy for that shit. i'll just say, do yourself a favor harry, for the sake of your reputation, please don't cheap out on me. the world is watching and the ball's in your court.

i'm ready and waiting, your time starts.....NOW!

thank you and good day. with deepest regards,

lana

it's not me, it's you, but only if your name is miss.chief

2009-12-07T07:36:00.001-05:00

miss.chief had a brilliant idea to do a whole month of guest posts at other blogs. i took her up on her offer pretty much immediately thinking that i'd be able to bring a bit of much needed variety to my pearl hiding spot. and also because i'm lazy and i knew it'd buy me some time to create my next amazing post/vlog.

on that note, i'm pleased to present you with miss.chief:

Walking down the rain-flooded street, she thought about the story her mom once told her about when she was a small child.

She had been dressed like Paddington Bear- yellow rain boots, jacket and hat. In one hand she clutched her favorite toy dog ‘Raffi’.

With her free hand she picked up the dry dead worm corpses and placed them back into the puddles she thought they came from.

She was certain, in the idiot blind compassion of a child, that the water would re-hydrate the worms and they would come back to life. As if their only problem was dehydration and not … being mortal.

She cried when they didn’t come alive. Her mom bought her some candy and she moved on.

She later learned that worms drown in water. This is why they come out of their burrows when it rains: so they don’t drown. Not because they love the rainy weather, like she had imagined for so many years.

She probably saw that in a cartoon or something.

haunted horse (take two)

2009-12-02T07:56:00.002-05:00

ok kiddies, i did it. i made a vlog.

be gentle...

ps. the lack of proper lighting was not intentional for effect. it appears that putting a video online will make it darker than how it looks on your camera. i guess every vlogger has to go through a learning curve.

haunted horse (take one)

2009-12-01T09:36:00.000-05:00

last night i tried to jump on the vlogging bandwagon.

i got a solid grip with both hands, but my big toe slipped and i fell off. i think i twisted my knee as i rolled down a rocky embankment, choking on dust and shame.

i tried to get b to be my cameraman, but he was all technical and started talking about a contract and benefits, so i had to cut him loose from the vlog project. my style is more freelance and adaptive, i can't be tied down with worries about meeting the hr needs of my crew.

the next step was to try to do everything myself, production, editing, and airbrushing. just kidding, i don't even really know what air brushing is.

clearly, i was not successful.

vlogging is way harder than i thought it would be. or maybe it was just that i picked a challenging subject for my first attempt. you see, the story i wanted to share with you, the one about the haunted horse, has way more of an impact when you can see and hear it, as opposed to just reading about it. the pressure was too much for me and i crumbled under the stress.

i thought about writing the haunted horse story with some pictures to illustrate key points, but i'm not quite ready to give up on my (potentially) new path as a vlogger. i have to keep trying.

for now, i'll leave this post to be about the time i tried to vlog, rather than the time i tried to vlog about this crazy haunted horse story that goes like this.....

does that even make sense? i need more coffee...

nice to meet you crazy, i'm dumbass

2009-11-19T08:55:00.001-05:00

i used to think that crazy found me no matter where i was. after some healthy reflection, i think i've decided that i have a tendency to not only invite crazy, but also to perpetuate crazy.

often times, i find myself taking conversations so literally that i can get lost in details and miss out on the big picture. please allow me to share the following example: the story of crazy at the dog park.

the setting was a neighborhood dog park in the level opening at the base of a hiking trail. it was february and the snow was deep enough to require some serious footwear, yet not too deep as to trouble the dogs.

an older woman, dressed in a long sleeved tie-dyed shirt, sans jacket but equipped with a pretty hefty scarf, approached my perch on the picnic table. her pen-on-a-string swayed to and fro as her long legs marched deliberately through the snow.

polite chit chat ensued, nice nice blah blah.

then she says 'the good thing about all this snow is how it freezes the biems in the ground, even when they're still hot.'

trying not to show my confusion, i attempt to process this statement. did she just tell me she freezes bagels in the ground? does she reheat them or just eat them frozen? is there some sort of 'end of days' bagel stash outside her house?

you see, when she said biem, i heard bialy, somehow mispronounced. for those of you who might not know, this is a bialy:

a weird bagel with no hole. completely unacceptable if you ask me, but that's not the issue.

only after days of pondering the strange conversation, did i realize that she mean bm, not biem. bm for bowel movement.

she was talking about how nice it was that the snow freezes her dog's poo, thus making it easier to pick up. i, however, was completely unaware of this at the time. i asked her questions about how rapid the freezing process was, depending on the size and other factors. i even went so far as to ask how often she tried that method, and with any other things.

we had this parallel conversation in which we talked about two very different things for close to ten minutes. she was happy to oblige my inquiries and seemed to get more excited the longer we talked.

if my clever little monster hadn't chosen the perfect moment to attack her poor, ragged looking mutt, i might still be there now discussing the energy efficient option of using snow as a freezer.

take that, sucker

2009-11-17T09:54:00.004-05:00

hey reader, yes, you...

can you smell me?

i've worked up a dangerous sweat-stench that's most likely emanating from my body in visible stink lines. the noxious odor is probably making its way into my computer as i sit here type type typing away, through the nest of wires behind my ancient monitor, and directly into your private slice of internet.

this morning i had a glorious battle.

i wrestled with nature herself.

i bested a beast and made it squeal in agony.

i killed a spider.

but not just any spider. i discovered the queen disgusting spider of all gross spiders. she was rotund, with wiry black hairs covering her middle. she was about the size of a golf ball, or my hand. she moved so fast it was difficult to be certain.

she had built an elaborate web encasing the outer storm window in my bedroom, the one flanked by the pine tree that occasionally says 'hello' with a gentle scraping of pine cones across the glass.

within her masterfully crafted realm were two lesser spiders, probably males that she used as sex slaves. they were brown and skinny, small knots with little legs twisting out from their centers.

i took them out first.

as i slowly removed the web from the windowsill, i kept my eye on the queen. she darted towards my hands and then backed away slightly while circling for a better position. she was planning her attack. i knew time was running out.

in that moment of trying to keep my cool and finish the murderous job, i was struck with an idea. a notion so simple and yet so powerful that i knew i would not be defeated by the queen's venomous strike.

i reached for the hose of the nearby vacuum cleaner and switched on the suction.

the queen let out a singular wail of protest as her body was pulled through the vacuum hose and smashed into the filter. it was a defiant sound. one that makes me feel as though she may be back, vengeful and ready to rebuild her domain.

but not today.

today i am victorious.

and now, i'm going to recover from the exertion of this morning's efforts by sitting around feeling smug and superior to all spiders.

i'm legally bound to keep my mouth shut

2009-11-11T10:25:00.004-05:00

not really, but kind of.

yesterday i lived on the wild side, for about three hours. i was out gallivanting, during the day, with no babies.

i should have known it was going to end badly.

unfortunately for you, i can't give any details about meeting chuck norris yesterday and his wifey, who clearly has him on lockdown. but if you're even slightly intrigued, you can read about it here, and hear about it on the mantime radio show live today at 1:00.

i'm somewhat afraid to post my pic of the chuckster here before the full story is revealed. and also, it's a little grainy. so instead, i'll leave you with this stunning visual:

that's what he said

2009-11-10T07:15:00.002-05:00

b said to me last night 'i wish i still blogged because i need to write about that shit.'

sensing something hilarious, and most likely offensive, brewing in his brain, i offered up my little slice of the internet for his use.

please enjoy, my husband brian:

Lana watches a show called "Hoarders" on (ugh) A&E. It's basically about a bunch of slobs who can't get their act together long enough to throw out the massive piles of garbage cluttering their filthy homes. The usual suspects are middle aged women with the ridiculous need to keep every single item and trinket that falls within the gravitational pull of their useless lives, and their pussy-whipped husbands who can't put their feet down and scream "enough!"

Is this all it takes to produce a TV show these days? Replete with darkly toned music and quack "doctors," A&E does a nice job trying to convince the viewer that these losers suffer from a disease, and that it's a "real problem." Please. All I see are a bunch of clowns who have decided that candy wrappers, old band-aids, and broken furniture are valuable objects to be cherished and protected.

I mean, is this like a joke or something? I could see if these people were hoarding actual treasure, then this would be something worth watching. If some dude had an obsession filling his home with gold and silver bars? Sure, I'd watch that. Or if it was at least something badass like a compelling drive to collect medieval death weapons. But some twit that hasn't figured out that rotten containers of milk and expired coupons hold zero value? No thanks.

I'm not sure who I hate more, the asshole junk collector or the buffoonish professional they always trot in to offer advice on how to diagnose the problem. Are they fucking serious? It's as plain as day! Throw that trash in the goddamn garbage and be done with it! No person on Earth has any possible reason to fill a 3,800 square foot house with used pistachio nut shells. What's even more insane is that some of these enabling spouses actually buy a second or third home to allow their bonehead partner to keep stuffing away more and more tons of rubbish.

Man, go find someone with a REAL problem, like a heroin addiction or something. These hoarders? They're seriously just homeless people with mortgages. Yea, exactly.

death may come and her name is crow

2009-11-05T08:57:00.006-05:00

sometimes i can be a little indecisive. sometimes i can be a little spontaneous.

sometimes i have a problem with starting sentences with 'sometimes...'

sometimes i like opinions, i want feedback, i need help.

sometimes i don't give a shit what anyone else thinks.

today i care about what you think. today i want your opinion. but that could be because i'm a little scared of the answers i gave myself.

so in a totally self-serving way, i am going to pose an interactive question for you.

first, check out this ten second clip. please.

thank you.

now, is the sound:

a) my own private death harbinger

b) a bird possessed with a baby demon

c) the gates of hell opening up to swallow me alive for hating birds so much

or

d) something else that might have nothing to do with birds and/or hell

ps. i hate birds.

i hate their feathers.

greasy, dirty feathers.

i hate their beaks and their beady eyes.

i hate that their nests are germ cavities in which they breed more germs.

i hate their sounds.

i hate their wrinkly, leathery textured legs.

i hate their eggs.

i can't help but picture the eggs covered in slime, nesting in the nest, waiting to birth baby birds also covered in slime.

maybe they know.

that must be why they stalk me so.

he said what?!

2009-11-04T07:56:00.005-05:00

the man was tall, but not big. his roundness was evenly distributed for his height. his greying hair peeked out around the edges of his well worn cap.

his clothes looked as if they'd been washed a thousand times over, soft spots in the fabric were easily noticeable. the man's smile was friendly, despite the jagged bits of teeth that seemed to dance in every direction across his mouth.

the pungent, yet not altogether unpleasant odor of white lilies hung in the air as he rinsed their stems in the sink. his eyes were focused intently upon the work at his hands.

and so, with this initial impression, i was disarmed.

as i washed my hands in the adjacent sink, we said our polite hellos. i turned my back to him as i reached for the paper towels to dry my hands, thinking our exchange was complete.

'so you work here, in the kitchen?' he asked me as i walked back to my table.

i answered him with a friendly smile of my own, and a simple yes.

'what do you do, work the salad bar?'

this was confusing to me, someone who tends to take things literally more often than not, as there was no salad bar anywhere in the manor house that we catered events from. i may have shown this in my face with some sort of unattractive brow wrinkling and nose twisting. his next remark was more to his point.

'i mean, all you do is make salads and stuff, right?'

oh. i finally got his implication, that because i'm a woman my job must be to make salad. the old florist was, in his sexist way, just trying to make conversation.

i asked him, 'why would you assume that? because i'm a woman?'

his grin was wide, his eyes sparkled at my eventually coming to understand his statement. this must have made him feel more comfortable. 'yeah, that's it. because, you don't cook here, all by yourself.'

that last part wasn't a question.

while i felt my face flush and my palms sweat, i knew that i was very, very close to saying some rude things to this man, this stranger who had only minutes before won me over with his gentle touch of the beautiful lilies.

the insult that i felt was growing exponentially by the second as my brain took his friendly smile and then interpreted it as smug. at the peak of my indignation, however, i realized that no matter what i said his opinion would never be changed.

i opened up my knife bag and took out my eight inch suisson chef's knife. its carved wooden handle, slim and molded to my grip, and it's gleaming stainless steel blade sharp enough to cut bone, helped me to center my thoughts and block out the man's ignorance.

at least, i thought to myself, i have a way cooler weapon than your words, old man.

badass

2009-11-02T07:20:00.002-05:00

saturday night i saw three captain jack sparrows, two alice in wonderlands, and one badass.

no, wait. i wrote that wrong.

i meant one bad. ass.

this picture doesn't quite do the kneepit hair justice, but you can just take my word for it, it was lush and plentiful.

perfect imagery for a monday morning if you ask me.

you're welcome.

that's what friends are for

2009-10-30T09:33:00.008-04:00

i went on a date yesterday. my first in a long, long time.

i met this new girl at work last week. we shared some minor background info, had a few laughs at other co-worker's expenses, and all in all, hit it off pretty well. we exchanged numbers saying 'we should be real life friends and not just work friends!'

i didn't really expect her to call so soon, but she suggested a lunch date, and even asked if i wanted to bring my kid. it sounded serious.

now, i've never been the type to get all nervous on dates. rather, i tend to get bogged down with silly little details beforehand. for example, deciding what is appropriate to wear on a first-time, outside of work, girl-date, which may or may not be a friend interview.

it's been a while, and i've always been way off the mark when it comes to trends.

i wondered, do i need a bumpit?

no, i probably wouldn't even be able to get that mess to work right anyway.

should i wear a blazer?

that won't do because this time of year i pretty much live in my hiking boots and i don't think they go well with the shoulder pad look.

after spending enough time being significantly wishy washy, i managed to get dressed and pack up little miss and her ten million tons of gear needed for an afternoon out.

another detail i tend to be obsessed with is promptness.

if i'm on time, i'm already late.

i don't know why, but i always plan to be somewhere at least fifteen to twenty minutes before i said i would be there. it's a compulsion, i can't help myself.

when new girl was an hour and a half late for our lunch date, which incidentally turned out to be more of an early bird dinner, i was less than thrilled.

i liked her, but keeping the bitchy aside for the sake of a good impression was really difficult.

i guess i should be glad she didn't stand me up altogether. i realized that i've reached that point in my life where making good friends is hard to do. and although i'm not necessarily on a mission to fill a certain number of friend slots, i figured being nice and giving her a chance would be the mature thing to do.

after our date, she texted me three times.

i can't tell if she really likes me or if she's just a crazy stalker. the whole situation is starting to make me uncomfortable because i want to like her, but i don't know if i can.

thank god i have kristine in my life. she totally made me feel better for wanting to be a bitch about the situation. she not only understands the importance of details, she also bought me this thoughtful gift:

thanks k, i love you! (and so does my dentist)

i are scientists

2009-10-23T07:50:00.011-04:00

i smiled this morning as i realized that i was privy to a major scientific breakthrough occurring right before my eyes.

i saw a distinct example of darwin's theory (although i hate to call it that, because isn't it pretty much fact at this point?) of natural selection in action. behold, my foot-shaped candy dish:

note the remnants of your ordinary bag of candy corn present in the foot. what we have here is more than leftover candy, folks. no, these rejected pieces, the ones not enticing enough to make the giant leap from the foot to a mouth represent the mutants in the candy corn society.

the candy corns that were most appealing, and not discolored, broken, or in any other way ill-suited to be the best candy corn they could be, were the ones eaten. and as such, those are the ones that will be the driving force behind my compulsion to go out and buy more candy corn.

if i had opened an entire bag of the mutants from the beginning, i wouldn't be consuming my weight in candy corn every hour of every day for the month of october. brach's business would surely feel the downturn, and candy corns everywhere would be dying out.

until next fall, but that's a whole separate scientific theory.

i wonder if that's what happened to the candy pumpkins?

these fuckers are so damn delicious that i can see their cherubic smiles and hear their joyous giggles as i eat them. they're happy to please. they know they're too good for their own good, and thus they serve their purpose well.

perhaps too well.

i fear they may now be extinct, or at the very least an endangered species. i have repeatedly searched for them in the three major grocery stores within a two mile radius of my house to no avail. i am now contemplating going to the corner store bodegas, like the candy pumpkin junkie that i am, to overpay for stale, grouchy pumpkins.

that too, is a whole separate issue.

but for now, i think i'll leave you with this parting thought: if you find yourself staring into the bottom of a candy dish, with only a few pieces remaining, let them be. they were meant to be the stragglers for a reason.

i'm a hater first and a lover second

2009-10-21T10:54:00.002-04:00

whenever there's a choice between good news and bad news, i always opt to hear the bad news first. i feel like ending a conversation on a more positive note is the overall feeling that i'll take away from the whole thing.

in that respect, here are some randoms that are collecting dust in my cerebrum:

i hate:

- that american express keeps sending me their ridiculous departures magazine. we are certainly not the black card holding type who care about which private jet company offers the best service or where to eat when exploring the south of france.

- those disgusting yellow balls that fall off the tree in front of my apartment building and smell like rotten ass whenever someone steps on them and smushes the gooey parts into the sidewalk.

- that it's damn near impossible to find a cute-ish looking pair of winter boots for a little girl. princess wands, sparkles, and peace signs are never appropriate decor for a self-respecting toddler.

- that my neighbors smoke like chimneys around their little kid and i always keep my thoughts to myself about it and then have to vent to my husband about how disgusting i think it is.

- that writing gigs pay like shit, or are for shit that i don't want to write about.

on a lighter note, i love:

- when somebody who can't count works in the pastry department at my job and i get to bring home the extra portions of chocolate banana bread pudding with salted caramel sauce.

- (and i know i've said this before) that my kid is so chill when i blast some loud music in the car that she just continues babbling cheerily and in no way is bothered by my horrific singing.

- that the holidays are coming up and i can cook all kinds of fun things for the families. i think pumpkin spaetzle is going to be on the menu for sure, and i mean fresh pumpkin that i have to clean and roast and everything.

- that this time of year there's a million scary movies on tv. i love me some ghost stories, even if that paranormal activity movie was less than terrifying.

- that i can talk about this kind of stuff and that there's people out there who get it. thanks internet, for introducing me to all of my lovely bloggy friends!

how about you, what's on your lists today?

take two, or whatever

2009-10-20T21:58:00.004-04:00

hi blog, i'm back. i know we've had this discussion before, but what can i say, i like to repeat myself.

repetition is soothing, comforting, and sometimes necessary.

so i'm just going to lay it all out on the monitor for you and hopefully we'll be able to have a new found respect for each other when this is all out in the open.

i've been hanging out with my other blog again. and by again, i mean really only since tonight. number two has been woefully neglected as of late and at the same time you have been mutating into some caricature of myself that, as someone i respect a whole lot once said, feels like only about 2% of the real me.

now, i'm not trying to disown you. you are me and i am you.

but sometimes, as may or may not be indicative in my most recent post before this one, i feel as if you have become a home for that goofy story-telling side of me that is always performing. i do love to create elaborate scenarios and pepper my language with some well-placed curses, but sometimes i have other thoughts in my head.

i feel like it just makes sense to live as a multiple personality, utilizing the two different blogs to suit my different needs, rather than to try to marry you with someone whom i know you probably wouldn't even make it halfway through the first date with before emitting an obnoxiously large amount of "are you fucking kidding me"s and "get the fuck out of here"s.

the last thing i want is for you to think i'm taking myself too seriously, it's not that at all. instead, i feel like this is the best way to preserve what you have here. you're working on a good thing, and i don't want to ruin what works for you with inserting a whole new dimension.

thanks for understanding, blog.

and besides, knowing me, i'll be over this phase in about a week and a half. i'll be back here feeling more like myself again in no time.

time travel is possible

2009-10-16T10:50:00.004-04:00

today i will not be screaming fuck you, google.

no friends, today, google has supplied me with a good hearty chuckle served up with a side of humility.

i went back to look at my very first emails in my gmail account from january 2005. if i remembered the password or wasn't so lazy, i'd try to login to my hotmail account from college. i'm sure there's more than a few gems there.

but back to google. my pal google here has reminded me of some funny stuff, that i, as an elephant, have surprisingly forgotten. the very first email convo was enough to make crack the fuck up, but i think i need to set the stage a little bit for you.

b and i had been dating about a year and had recently moved out of our home town to where we reside now. i had taken a part time office job while looking for something more permanent. i've never, ever had a desk job before this or after this.

i was an assistant for a concrete company, basically doing logistics and admin shit. needless to say, i was bored out of my mind. i played on the internet all day long, pretending to be ordering supplies from staples. also, i sent many emails to just about anyone i knew about the minutiae of my day.

so there it is, the first thing i read this morning was a string of emails about a black ops garbage conspiracy and a shit-talker. and i don't mean shit-talker like someone who badmouths someone else, but literally, a man who talked on his cell phone while he took a shit. and by talked on his cell phone i mean made sales calls to clients.

reading words of mine from so long ago almost felt as if i was a new observer in the whole situation, sort of like when you hear your own voice recorded and played back for you.

my tone was goofy, a bit condescending, and definitely full of curses. i even ended the final email with 'TMB forever'. (for 'that's my balls' reference please go here).

is that really how i talk/write? it was funny, but also, a bit shocking to see evidence of a style that appears to be unchanged over the course of many years. i used to want to be a career writer. i used to want to write for fabulous foodie magazines and talk about the intricacies of different dishes. i imagined i could have flexibility and employ a safe amount of creativity in my career.

then i took a close look at food writers and realized how awful they are. not only does most food writing read like sandpaper in your mouth, but it manages to destroy everything about food that i love so much with nitpicking. not to mention that my 'style' is apparently not mature or dry enough to be very successful.

so now i blog. i write here on this little slice of internet in hopes of learning more and more about my writing style and to see if there is such a thing as a career in writing, for me at least. maybe, years from now i'll look back on these posts and reflect about how they have or haven't helped to shape my voice.

do you go back in time to read your old words? do you like what you find? i'm curious to know if you experience more fluctuations in subject matter and tone of voice or if your style is inherent and will show in your writing no matter what the topic.

here and there (again)

2009-10-14T08:17:00.002-04:00

y-y-y-y-y-y-yeah boooyyyyyy.

i knew a kid named jerrod in high school who used to rub his hand on his desk like he was mixing a record and say that over and over and over.

today i'm a featured guest blogger for a guy named jerrod. it would be hilarious if it was the same guy, but it's not. no, this jerrod, of the yellow factor, has asked me to be a part of a little pink series he's doing to showcase some of his favorite women writers.

and who am i to turn down a chance for ever-increasing internet glory, or to help out a pal. so go check out my post here or here (it's the same link, just in cases) and enjoy!

what else is new

2009-10-13T10:48:00.003-04:00

i'm a jew and i've found the grail.

granola + trail mix = miraculous experience

in other news, i'm working harder than a mexican day laborer. which gives me plenty of time to compile random thoughts in my head but no time to sit and elaborate on them and weave those wonderfully imaginative scenarios that i like so much.

maybe now is the perfect time to thank some special bloggy friends. i've received a couple of those awards that are being passed around like the high school ho and i'm so happy for the herpes, i mean honor, that i'd like to make an official acceptance speech.

first there's jules, of mean girl garage. i'm convinced that jules is the sweeter, funnier version of myself that i imagine i could be when i grow up. her writing is truthful and clear, and her personality makes it so easy to relate to. i admire the shit out of her, in the friendliest of jealous ways. so thanks jules for this awesome peep show award!

and this is the part where i list seven personality traits about myself:

1. i internalize my thoughts so much so that most people i meet often tell me later on 'when we first met i thought you were the biggest bitch because you never said anything to me.' i may mistakenly come off as aloof, but really, i'm so awkward that i think things and forget to say them out loud.

2. i clean things by throwing them out. i've been obsessed with that tv show about people who hoard crap. it makes me anxious because i want to go to their houses, equipped with face masks and a bubble suit of some kind, and throw everything the fuck out. i can't think straight when there's clutter around, it's the worst distraction for me.

3. i have poor self-control, i.e. i've never been on a diet in my whole thirty years of life. i'll exercise like crazy, because i enjoy it. but i'll also eat whatever the fuck i want because i enjoy that too. then again, working in a culinary capacity has definitely changed what i enjoy eating. if you ever saw the color of the oil in a deep fryer after a busy day, i promise you'd never look at a single french fry the same way again.

4. i thrive with routines. i like to do things over and over the same way. i can also play a song that i like on repeat fifteen times in a row. i'm only slightly compulsive and it makes me happy.

5. seven is a lot of personality traits to think of, even for someone who likes to talk about themselves as much as i do.

6. i absolutely cannot hide my emotions and/or true feelings about a person or situation. if there's someone i don't like, or something that makes me angry or upset, i have tremendous difficulty hiding my discomfort even just for a few hours. i know there's some times and places where you just have to fake it to get through something, and i feel like i've never been very successful at faking it.

7. i plan a lot. i'm so busy planning for tomorrow and the next day, that sometimes i forget about today. but those are the times that i just cut myself off and go for a walk in the woods with monster or play in the park with little miss or ditch little miss to go on a date with b. i think that makes those times even more special.

finis.

not really, i have another award/meme coming at you. this time i'd like to thank the wonderfully trashy-talky alyson, also known as other worldly one from calling people names. if you think i have a potty mouth, you should be warned that i have nothing on aly. and i mean that in the best kind of complimentary way. thanks aly for this sweet award!

this one is that one where you have to answer all those questions using only one word. one word is a challenging concept for a chatterbox like me, so no promises there. but here it goes:

1. Where is your cell phone? - next to me
2. Your hair? - wet
3. Your mother? - away
4. Your father? - not good
5. Your favorite food? - the consumable kind
6. Your dream last night? - rowboats
7. Your favorite drink? - coffee
8. Your dream/goal? - independence
9. What room are you in? - living room
10. Your hobby? - work
11. Your fear? - being broke
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? - working
13. Where were you last night? - home
14. Something you aren't? - your mom
15. Muffins? – anytime
16. Wish list item? - house
17. Where did you grow up? - the 'burgh
18. Last thing you did? - feed the fuss
19. What are you wearing? - jeans
20. Your TV? - off
21. Your pets? - annoying
22. Your friends? - busy
23. Your life? - more
24. Your mood? – fired up
25. Missing someone? - my girls
26. Vehicle? - perfect
27. Something you're not wearing? - socks
28. Your favorite store? - grocery
29. Your favorite color? - all
30. When was the last time you laughed? - 9:58am
31. Last time you cried? - last night (watching hoarders)
32. Your best friend? - b
33. One place that I go over and over? - hiking
34. One person who emails me regularly? - k
35. Favorite place to eat? – home

i know these things are supposed to be passed on, but i feel like i'm joining the game in the last twenty seconds so i'm going to skip that part. and also because if i don't go blow dry my hair at this exact crucial moment i'm going to have the most horrific fro for the rest of the day.

on that note, happy tuesday!

quickie

2009-10-08T23:14:00.001-04:00

when i was in college i thought it would be so hilarious to get a license plate for my car that said 'only me'. while i realized exactly how lame that was a minute later, i still maintain that certain situations have a way of happening to me more so than any other person i know.

for example, this morning i went to interview a woman for a spot in her day care for little miss.

i met your average, ordinary woman, who was hoping to get me to pay her real american dollars in exchange for caring for my kid. i'll spare you the details about the other kids with dried boogers on their faces and gazes fixed on the cartoons blaring from an obnoxiously large flat screen tv.

no, the true 'only me' moment was about five minutes into the interview when crazy day care lady went off on a tangent. she asks 'so, you know that virus you get when you give your husband a blowjob and then you have sex and you get it in your uterus?'

to say that i'm not so versed in blowjob viruses is a bit of an understatement.

my cousin noah thinks that she's confused and that the virus actually comes from being ass-fucked and then giving her husband a blowjob and getting a stomach bug from swallowing her own shit.

i can't top that. thank you noah!

when ugly attacks

2009-10-07T20:55:00.003-04:00

today i'm going to share with you a story about one of the more frustrating situations i've experienced as a parent. if you know anything about how i write, i think you'll know not to expect any 'we went here, my baby cried about this, i changed a poopie diaper in the middle of a crowded store and it was so embarrassing but her cuteness made up for it' kind of crap.

it all began with the fuss's first birthday party last weekend. after receiving mostly really great mix and match clothing pieces for her, i called my cousin laura to ask what the rule was on returning the ugly stuff. i felt a familiar twinge of jewish guilt that my nana has instilled deep within my being rise up and bully me into a corner, smacking me in the face with a blunt 'how dare you! those clothes were picked out lovingly as gifts for your kid from her relatives who adore her. you need to get over yourself and be happy that she's as fortunate as she is to have those things.'

but then i remembered that i can exchange just about anything nowadays and that really isn't so bad. no one has to be the wiser. a few encouraging words from laura, who explains that it's better to get something you like than to have your kid look like a dumpster diver, and i was off to the mall, gift receipts in hand.

what i wasn't prepared for was being outsmarted by the reigning queen of ugliness.

this hideous creation has magical powers the likes of which i've never seen before and hope to never experience again for the rest of my life.

in the children's department at macy's, surrounded by endless aisles of pink and lace, i pulled the dress out and laid it on the customer service counter hoping for a quick and easy exchange. instead, the air around us turned black and foul. mysterious clouds formed overhead. spiders and worms came out of no where and began to make their way towards the evil dress-queen. i pressed my child's bear-head blankie into her hands and guarded her, trembling.

before my mouth could even start to warn the helpless cashier, snakes arose from the hypnotic leopard print and made an unearthly screeching. the cashier was instantly turned to stone, petrified and completely devoid of any remnant of human behavior. sounds emanated from within her rock-hard facade, 'we. cannot. take. this. dress. back.'

the cashier was trapped, held fast by the grips of the dress's evil powers. to save her i had to wrestle the monstrosity back into the gift box from whence it came. i closed the cardboard lid and broke the spell. the cashier awoke, free from the devilish hold, and gave me a blank stare as if the whole encounter had never happened.

i sullenly took the gift box back, knowing i'd never be rid of its terrible contents.

my feet were heavy as i walked away, stealing glances at the cute, normal looking dresses on the racks. they seemed to feel my pain, the various sleeves and price tags rustling with sympathy as i passed.

perhaps i should get used to losing. i am a parent, after all, and things can't always go the way i want them to anymore. but that doesn't mean my kid is going to wear the medusa dress. no, the best place for that mess is the garbage, so that no other child can be subject to the bad taste of a loving relative.

driving miss potty mouth

2009-10-05T07:34:00.003-04:00

the following conversation took place in my car last saturday night, from approximately 11:21 to 11:36 pm.

me: go fuck yourself.
google maps: nice lana. and how exactly do you propose that i set about fucking myself? i am but a mere computer program, unable to think for myself, let alone determine the most appropriate way to carry out said self-fucking.
me: better yet, how about a giant fist-fuck up the ass, from an elephant?
gm: now i think you're just being bitter.
me: bitter? call it that if you want, but i still think that you need to get shoved in a plastic bag full of your own shit and be forced to eat your own shit as you suffocate on the smell of your own shit.
gm: i don't make shit.
me: yes you do! it was your shit-filled nonsense that got me in trouble today. you're only still alive because i had the foresight to leave myself extra time before my shift started.
gm: hey, it's your responsibility to get to your job site, not mine.
me: not yours?! your name is google maps! you exist solely so that you can make sure i get to my desired location. it would appear that this whole business of making up imaginary roads and giving them real sounding names isn't working out so well.
gm: that road wasn't imaginary.
me: and the next time that i have to drive around in the woods of greenwich, i think i'd prefer not to get out of my car and flag down the one passing motorist for miles around, in a torrential downpour, by waving my arms like a desperate lunatic.
me: and fuckyouverymuch that 'road' was a driveway, asshole.
gm: i never told you to get out of your car. that was all you, lana.
me: well it's not exactly like there's a corner store in between all the enormous manor houses where i could stop and ask a local to point me in the way of a non-imaginary road. even the trees here seemed to conspire to keep me from infiltrating the hidden lair that is conyers farm polo club.
gm: that's great!
me: huh?
gm: well, if the trees had a hand in things then it's not entirely my fault!
me: go fuck yourself, again.
gm: hey, how about getting yourself one of those car things that tells you where to go?
me: are you talking about a gps? see, you're so full of shit that you even suggest your competition can do your job better than you. listen up, fuckface, i'm only going to say this once, i work in foodservice. it's not a glamorous job by any means, and it certainly doesn't pay enough for me to afford luxuries like a gps when your dumb ass is supposed to work, for free.
gm: i bet everyone here in greenwich has a gps.
me: i bet they do, cuntwad. this place drips money. the smell of old, old wealth hangs in the air thicker than your shit-stink. the wide, whitewashed gates guarding every driveway part only for jaguars and bentleys. my lumbering, five year old 4-runner got more than a few dirty looks from the elitist lion heads on each stone pillar we passed.
gm: i don't know what else to say, lana. you seem intent upon blaming me for your troubles instead of just moving past this little hiccup.
me: then don't say anything at all. let's drive all the way home in silence. you can use the time to think about your colossal fuck-up and how you're going to make it up to me.
gm: fine.
me: fine.

me: oooh, saturday night eighties on the radio! as an additional torture for you i'm going to sing as loud as i possibly can. karmakarmakarmakarma-chamee-li-on, red gold and gree-eeen, mmmhhhmmmuuumm!!

that's right google, karma's a bitch. watch your back.

a day in the life of...

2009-09-28T07:03:00.001-04:00

i'm back! and thus ending my self-imposed bloggy hiatus. i thought about giving a recap of my fantastic family birthday week, but then i was bored with that idea about five seconds later. instead, i think i'll share a story with you today that seems to parallel my life in many ways.

it was saturday morning, september 19th. i woke up a thirty year old woman, wife, and mother, yet i felt no different than i had the day before, or the day before that.

by 8:30 the sunshine was bright and warm, yet kind enough to leave a crispness in the air that, to me, defines a typical autumn day. b was officially on toddler time while monster and i were free to enjoy the perfect weather.

that's right, my birthday present to myself was a day in the woods with my dog while my husband stayed home with the kid.

i'll skip the details about monster's severe car anxiety and tendency to puke in my lap or near my lap, and instead i'll just say that we headed north toward a trail dubiously called silver mine. there may or may not be an actual mine in the area, but there definitely is an old lean-to that's creepy enough to pass for the blair witch's vacation home.

leading off from the parking area is a huge open field, often hosting a few canadian geese lucky enough to have found the well-hidden spot. on one side of the field is a small lake. the trail starts towards the back end of the lake and hugs its side for a short distance before delving deep into thick towers of oaks and maples.

monster and i began to navigate the path of basketball-sized boulders, most likely laid down to hold the loose soil around the base of the lake. we proceeded to follow the small yellow rectangle markers painted every so often on a tree at eye level. i don't know much about photography, or lenses, or lighting, but i took a few pictures with my trusty canon in hopes of capturing some of the beauty to take home with me.

as far back into my memory as my mind's eye can see, i have always been drawn to forests. i imagine the trees standing as tall guardians to whatever mystery lies within their fortress of bark and leaves. the temptation to crawl, push, or otherwise break through their defenses is still so irresistible to me. i can't drive on a wooded road without my gaze being drawn like a magnet to the side, wondering what exists there that i'm not seeing.

that morning in silver mine, i was lost, captivated by such sounds as a sole acorn dropping and leaves rustling high above my head. the view of the lake to my left and an ever increasing rise to my right were made of more riveting material than i had seen in a long time.

i wandered off the trail in my distracted state. i couldn't have gone far, i had just passed a marker. as i paused and looked around, monster suddenly dashed about twenty feet to the side and froze. i went to him and sure enough, directly above where he stood was the next trail marker. sometimes he drives me crazy, but in that moment, watching my dog so proud of himself for leading me back to the trail, all the puke piles and ripped furniture were forgotten.

we continued for a while until we reached the part that i knew led to the creep-shack. i turned to head back to the car. b and i had big plans that night and i wanted to make it out of silver mine for my date.

as we emerged from the mouth of the trail, i turned and took one last picture of the path.

the field lay open before us and monster seemed to have an itch he needed some help with.

i laughed watching him roll carefree through the grass. after a few minutes i called him over to put his leash on as i saw a man with his dog approaching. i reached out to grab his collar and was surprised to feel some foreign matter stuck in between the metal rings.

i saw it before i smelled it. monster's neck and collar were covered in shit. i can't tell you if it was from another dog, a small horse, or the blair witch herself, but it sure didn't come from monster.

looking down at my feces covered finger, my ethereal mood vaporized as if it had never been. i cursed my dog's disgusting bad luck to roll around in a giant field and find the only shit spot. i fumed about my lack of proper cleaning materials. but mostly, i marveled at the irony that for the entire twenty-five minute drive back home, it was i who was choking back vomit as my car-sick monster tried repeatedly to climb in my lap with his shit covered neck.

this is one badass ode to the laundromat

2009-09-25T08:00:00.001-04:00

the final installment of my guest blogger extravaganza comes to you directly from one of the most talented writers out there in blogland. he calls himself the badass geek, and his witty and sophisticated style quickly made him one of my favorites. his words seem effortlessly complex as they create such imagery that refuses to be ignored. i rarely use my blog as a platform to tell other people what to do/read/like, etc., but today i have to just stop the gushing and ga-ga-ing over badass and say trust me, you'll be happy you went to check out his spot. do it. now. i mean, after you read this guest post.

thanks again to all of my wonderful guest bloggers and i'll be back monday! happy weekend!

My dresser drawers are empty and barren -
there are no clean pairs of underwear to be found.
A week’s worth (or more) of dirty laundry has collected
in a massive pile on the ground.

All I’ve got are some mismatched socks
(their mates lost long ago in the dryer),
and a ratty t-shirt with holes in the pits
that my wife threatens to destroy with fire.

To avoid being arrested for walking ‘round nude
(I don’t know if I’d live that one down),
I threw all my clothes into a plastic basket
and make my way to the Laundromat downtown.

It smells of lint and bleach and filth,
and it’s louder than a NASCAR racetrack.
I scout out a washer, put my clothes inside,
set it to wash, and find a seat in the back.

My neighbor to the right is friendly enough,
but he smells like he bathes in cheese.
My neighbor to the left looks like she’s running a short fuse,
balancing a screaming toddler on each of her knees.

There’s the obligatory senior-aged woman,
equipped with a crossword puzzle and a glare.
Her husband (presumably) sits slouched over, asleep,
and farts periodically, completely unaware.

I tried to focus on the book I brought,
and to ignore the noise and the smell.
I came here to quietly wash my laundry,
not knowing this was a portal to Hell.

I thought the worst was all behind me
as I fetched my clothes from the dryer,
but it wasn’t until I began to fold them
when the situation became suddenly dire.

I had a pair of my boxers in hand
when some motion caught my eye.
I looked up to see Geriatric Crossword Lady
smiling at me and looking sly.

She winked and waggled her eyebrows at me,
and my stomach fell to the floor.
This can’t be happening to me again,
not after what happened before!

No longer caring about wrinkles
(that’s what irons were invented for),
I gathered by the handful my clothes into the basket
and high-tailed it for the door.

I thought after I’d been propositioned the last time,
the odds of it happening again had to be small.
Turns out I was wrong, but how could that be?
It didn’t make any sense to me at all.

What is it with me and Laundromats?
How is it that I attract the freaks?
All I know is that I’m going to put off
washing my clothes for a couple of weeks.

the c is not the same as the one in pc

2009-09-24T08:00:00.001-04:00

today i am so pleased to present you with mr. c's first ever guest post. he usually reserves his great point and laugh stories for his blog, advice and humor from mr. condescending. i once promised him i'd never let the truth slip out about his being such a nice guy. but then again, maybe i just want to believe that there's a little kitten underneath the scales and forked tongue. who knows. maybe you should just go to his blog and see for yourself.

oh, and mr. c, you have to ask a girl out before you can claim she stood you up! but we new yorkers have to stick together, so anytime you want to go for a hike and take more amazing foliage pics let me know.

Hello everyone my name is Mr C. It's short for "Condescending."

Lana asked me to do a guest post for her, but she shouldn't need to hire me because she's the condescending one. Her and Kristine from Wait in the Van refused to meet me at the Dutchess County Fair for prime loser spotting :(

Anyway, Lana was my 3rd follower so I forgave her and decided to do my first ever guest post here.

I just want to tell you some reasons I can sometimes live up to the name of Mr C, and at the end I'll tell you a terrible thing I said last week to someone, but it was funny too!

Recently I found myself in Target with my business partner looking for memory cards. Somehow I ended up tossing the most expensive one in the department's garbage can. It wasn't an open faced one, but he was upset I didn't say anything. Oh well.

I always come up with instantly mean things to say or do to someone, then my reasoning kicks in and I usually refrain from it. Similar to when you get cut off driving, and you instantly may wish they get in an accident, but then realize it was silly to think that. I recently thought of sneaking a photo of the nice girl that cashes my morning papers out and plopping it on my blog with connect the dots drawn all over her pimples, just because she has so many pimples.

She's always nice though, so I think I made the right decision not to. Now on the other hand, this slightly cocky guy sometimes is in the store to cash me out. He really doesn't seem like too bad a guy but he's about 4 feet tall or something and has a big head. I always referred to them as "midgets". I only learned recently on otin's blog that midget was actually a racist kind of word.

Last week I didn't see him working and I asked miss pimple face if "that guy" still worked there or did he get fired. The manager is right next to her and they both look confused and ask "what guy?" Now instantly I have to refer to his height in order to clarify who he was, but I didn't want to say midget so I'm thinking quickly of what the right word would be...dwarf? Nah that sounds bad, maybe elf? No! Crap, then I ran out of awkward time and blurted out "The Gnome?"

A lot of uncontrollable chuckles start coming from them, and me too, relieved.

And then I see the little guy in the back room on the computer, probably within earshot. Oh well!

Thanks for visiting Lana's blog!

serve it up or i'll serve you a fat lip

2009-09-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

for a terrifically tasty tuesday, you've come to the right place. jerrod from the yellow factor was nice enough to compose a little anecdote for me. his tale of well exercised restaurant restraint is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the discussion of customer service becoming more of a theory than a practice. order up and enjoy!

Lana has asked (threatened) me to do a post for her as she is on a vacation (receiving her treatment). Of course I jumped at the chance to ruin everyone's day on someone else's blog. Nothing better than to go to someone else's house and tear stuff up, crap on the floor and just leave. Kind of love her for having that amount of trust in me. Awww. As you can tell, or should know.. I'm a big Lana fan. Not to a point where a piece of paper orders me to stay 500 ft from her, but a fan nonetheless. Anyway, guest post. Here it is.

Don't judge me...

Those that read me know of my troubles with the fast food industry. Recently I was at a certain McPlace and ordered a #12 with a Coke. She said "Was that a #12?" I said "Yes". This as followed by silence............ then I get this question full of attitude : "Um, with a Coke?!?!?" I sat there a good 5 whole seconds trying to gain enough composure to reply with "....Uh huh." You know the attitude of a 19 year old Latina chica with too much eyeliner and greasy hair, right? I pulled up to the window and she gave me my order without looking at me once or saying a word. Not a one word was said. I even said thank you as she shut her little window. I drove off and I swear I felt I had just died a little bit on the inside.

I'm afraid we as a society are digressing to a point that in the near future, the same scenario could happen although after I say thank you at the end, she opens her window back up and punches me in the face. Sign of the times I suppose. Gone are the days of smiling and saying thank you. Gone are the days of inquiring if I needed anything else to make my meal more enjoyable. Gone is the courtesy I should receive when I go back and exchange the Diet Coke I was rudely given with the Coke Classic that I ordered. That's fine. I wasn't acknowledge at all and to top it all off, the everlovin' fries were cold. For that, maybe I should have punched her in the face.

Any bad customer service stories you would like to share? Flood this post with them so not only will it look like Lana is really famous (she is in my eyes), I will look like I didn't just take a crap on her living room floor. See? Win/Win.

Goodnight and good luck.

i hope you're hungry, it's meaty time

2009-09-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

hey kiddies! welcome to the first installment of the mother hides the pearls guest blogger experience. i'm thrilled to have a fellow who probably needs very little pimping from me seeing as he's so hilarious people tend to flock to his blog in astounding numbers. his words seem to come from that genuine funny place deep within and crack me up daily. i still have a good laugh at chin mistress once in a while when it will pop into my head for no apparent reason.

and now, here's meaty from "why?", "how?" and other abstract questions!!

Greetings all!

How in the hell are ya's? Those of you that have read my blogs before will know that Subway restaurants have been the subject of many of my ramblings, everything from the questionable "sandwich artists" to the baffling androgyny of their marshmallowy spokesperson Jared. Well, here's another one for the books: I go to the Subway by my house last Sunday to pick up sandwiches for my Wife and I. Big mistake, as I knew they usually had nothing but snotty and trashy teen-age girls working there who were merely using their Subway experience as a stepping stone to bigger and better careers…like…oh, Denny's or Frisch's Big Boy???

So anyway, I go in there and was followed in by two more guys, and we were treated to listening to one girl working the counter loudly complaining and yelling at her co-worker, whom was sitting off to the side making personal phone calls. My favorite comment she made was "I ain't doing shit the rest of the night!!! I ain't doing SHIT! You hurrrrr (hear)???" Mind you she was making this comment in front of me and about 4 other customers by this point. Incidentally, this same girl literally stormed out after she was done making the sandwich for the guy behind me, leaving her phone-crazy co-worker puzzled. "Whurrr you going??? Hey! Whurrr you going??" Hopefully they will both take important life lessons away from this job with them, mainly, uhhhh… pimps are always looking for new hos.

OK, now that wasn't even the main complaint, as crazy as that was! My main complaint is that by the register, they had a tip jar and an index card taped to the register that was hand-written and read "Please tip your waiter or waitresses". ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME????!!!!! Now granted, it could be something that these two girls wrote and stuck on there without their manager's knowledge to see if it would really work, but the sad thing is, I don't think it was a joke. I think that this was legit!

First of all, it's not like they are some little Mom & Pop sandwich shop that is struggling to keep their heads above water in the face of direct competition from a massive Mega-Corporate Conglomerate like oh…say… Subway???! Second of all, they aren't waitresses or waiters. They cut up fucking sandwiches with all of the gusto of a diseased, three legged sloth and you usually wouldn't be able to force them to crack a smile even if you had a gun to their heads.

To borrow from Steve Buscemi's Mr. Pink character in Reservoir Dogs, you don't tip the people at the counter at McDonalds, so why would I tip them? Should I have tipped them for their wonderful professionalism or for even making me a decent sandwich (they couldn't even get that right)? I should have TAKEN money from the jar…yeah, that's right, there was actually some money in the jar! Some schmucks actually fell for it! Not me. I should have taken a massive horse piss in that jar…just fill it to the rim.

That's the frothy message that I should have sent to Subway and their cherubic, pasty, bloated he-she spokesperson Jared. Jared should spend a little less time playing with the balls of famous male athletes in their commercials, and more time trying to convince us that he is actually biologically a human male. I bet that he has butt plugs sewn directly into the seat of his massive canvas fat-man pants so that he gets a little surprise every time he sits down. Hey Jared, why don't you try easing up a bit on the mascara and lip-liner, you mysterious and frightening parasite!

I mean, am I wrong here?????

Whew… so…what's for lunch?

the time has come and its name is giveaway

2009-09-17T17:41:00.009-04:00

the results are in! i had an adorable assistant help me draw the names for my giveaway winners today.

and kristine helped too by baking these amazing cupcakes for my impending birthday this saturday.

maybe that didn't have much to do with drawing names but yes it does say 'happy 30th dirt!'. she can work wonders with some icing and pink cake.

little miss managed to pull three names out of the bowl before she started to eat the small pieces of paper, which i consider a huge success. paper can be so irresistible for a nearly one year old who's perpetually teething.

and now, the winners!!!!

the lovely sally sal of you. me. no adult supervision... is the winner of the handmade scarf!!

sally, i know you'll use it to accessorize your good looks and great charm like only you can.

next, the winner of the mystery gift is none other than vic at what were you thinking? !!

i'm sorry to disappoint, but i still can't show you what the mystery is yet. i think you might just have to wait until vic gets it and posts about how much she loves it or how lame it is. although i can give you a hint. the idea came to me after i wrote this post.

and finally, the winner for the last item, the pet treats, is cal of cal's canadian cave of coolness! now, i must say that i was surprised that the homemade goodies for our four-legged friends weren't a bigger hit. perhaps that was for the better. you see, when i checked the jar of cat treats i saw this:

oh yes, moldy, fuzzy, rotten cat treats. yum.

since i had set aside some treats for kristine and her obnoxious cats anyway, and because she also requested a poisonous flavor, i gave her the extras instead of throwing them out. and today when her cat fluffy shit almost scratched little miss, i threatened to force feed them to the vicious feline.

but not to stiff cal on his prize, i have arranged to wash out the treat jar and send it to him with some nice, store-bought kittie snacks.

that's probably going to be the last time i bake for a while.

as it turned out, not one person wanted the doggie treats. so i'm going to keep them to give to monster. and also so i don't risk peta hitting me with attempted pet murder charges.

i hope you all enjoyed my blogoversary/birthday/100th post celebration! it was, after all, inspired by you, dear readers. the fun shall continue next week with my star studded line-up of guest bloggers. i'll be back monday the 28th, don't miss me too much!!

no, no, thank YOU

2009-09-17T09:33:00.001-04:00

today is going to be a very busy day for me, which is fine because sitting around with nothing to do can sometimes make me want to kill myself, or the unemployed assclown who drives his ridiculously loud remote control car right under my window for hours at a time.

first on my to-do list today is send a very huge THANK YOU out to my guest bloggers who will be sharing their funny here at my pearl hiding spot next week. i'm technically not going away, that was last week, but i will be so busy with family birthday week that i don't want to leave my blog all neglected. plus guest bloggers are fun.

without further adieu, your guests are as follows:

monday 9/21- meaty from "why?", "how?" and other abstract questions

tuesday 9/22- jerrod from the yellow factor

thursday 9/24- mr. c from advice and humor from mr. condescending

friday 9/25- mike from badass geek

sensing a pattern maybe? why yes, i have asked all guys to guest post for me! not only do i enjoy all of their writing and abilities to entertain, but i also thought it would be a little funny to have a bunch of dudes say they were guest posting for a blog called mother hides the pearls. but i guess that's only funny if you don't know me, because sometimes i think i can relate to men better than mommies. b always says he loves how i drink beer like a man.

so if you haven't already checked out all of their blogs, you should. they were kind enough to write for me and they each have a wonderfully unique style that truly makes them all stand out.

moving right along, today is actually going to be a two post day for me. this one here marks number 99. this afternoon i will be over at kristine's house (from wait in the van) while we ignore our kids, drink gallons of coffee, and draw names for the winners of my giveaway! don't get any silly ideas about me rigging anything here either, i don't play that way. besides, all the stuff i'm giving away i've already given her at some point already.

tonight i will post my 100th post and it will reveal the winners. i hope no one is too disappointed about not winning, or about winning.

and lastly, i have to give a warm hug and a shout to stacie from stacie's madness for making my day by giving me such a sexy bedroom-eyes blog award!

that's right folks, she adores me, and i adore her. her writing is witty, poignant, honest, and hilarious. if that's not reason enough for excessive adoration, that i don't know what is. thank you stacie!

and to pass this award along, i'd like to give it to lora at fever. not only do i adore her blog, but i have the biggest girl crush on her and i love our little email convos in which we repeatedly tell each other how great we are. you do wonders for my ego lora, and your writing touches me so profoundly that i carry it around in my head long after i've turned my computer off. so thank you for sharing that carefully selected 2% of yourself in your special way.

that's all i've got for now. tune in later tonight for the winners!!

thank you and goodnight.

i respectfully decline the invitation

2009-09-14T20:36:00.000-04:00

i love my cousins. and i'm not just saying that because they're the only two that i have, or not because they both read this blog.

i love my cousin laura because she's more of a sister to me than my real sister.

i love my cousin christina because even though we may not talk all that often, i still feel that we have many characteristics in common and can always find something to laugh about together.

so now that i've established the love-fest, it's time to share with all of you quite possibly one of the most disturbing things i've seen in a long, long time.

how many of you know what in the fuckity fuck this phallic looking thing is?

ok, so maybe that's not what they all look like, and i should know because i've just now browsed way too many pics in my google images search and still can't find one that conveys my absolute disgust at this product, but it's called a neti pot.

i can't even get into describing it's function in detail because it bothers me that much. but i will say that there are some sickos out there who deliberately put this mess up their noses in hopes of relieving sinus congestion.

oh yeah, and it makes liquid and boogies come out the other side of your nose.

it's so gross i can't even take it. i'm shivering in my chair this very moment just thinking about it.

i was recently made aware of this phenomenon of self-inflicted torture this past weekend as my extended family gathered to celebrate nana's eightieth birthday. apparently, i'm the only ass who's not only never heard of a neti pot, but who also equates its use to being raped by a horse up your nostril.

laura proclaimed with conviction, 'oh yeah, i love my neti pot. you know what? i'm going to have a neti potti so we can all sit around with clean sinuses and smell things better!'

i asked permission to use 'neti potti' but only so i could burn it up.

this is what i think maybe laura thinks when she says neti potti:

this is what i think when i hear neti potti:

the best way to get out of trouble is to stay out of trouble from the jump. look at how brainwashed those poor cartoon folks are. their eyes are glazed over to disguise the humiliating and invasive nature of it all, as they use a neti pot with a decorative flower etched on the side to distract you from the gory truth. no friends, i can see clearly that no good can come of this.

laura and chris, i will drive hours and hours, with the fuss bitching all the way, just for five minutes with you guys, so long as i never, ever have to see a neti pot in real life.

---------------------

for those of you who may have missed it, there's still time to enter my blogtastic giveaway!! i'll be drawing names and posting the winners thursday night the 17th.

my name is: you're a lying cheat!

2009-09-10T19:25:00.005-04:00

as i sat down to type here tonight i was all set to write about b's breakup with his man bestie, but after three deleted paragraphs i'm realizing that the wounds are a little too fresh to talk about details just yet.

it was only two days ago that b asked if we could rent i love you man starring paul rudd in his quest for a best man.

not that he's sitting here moping about it. rather, i think he's stuck in that state of disbelief resulting from realizing that two people could disagree so deeply, so profoundly, about their life's values as to end a friendship. and not just end, but mutilate and dismember all the memories and even the very concept that that other person has defined in your own mind for so many years.

as hard as it might be for b to give up his binge drinking, sports talking, male ego boosting partner in crime, i know that he is aware of exactly how inevitable this ending really is. we've talked recently about how it may be hard to see yourself changing, but it's always clear when your friends don't evolve with you.

it's ok babysnakes, when you get home from work tonight with a sixer we'll sit here and shit-talk him til we can't take it anymore. then we'll talk about the fun times and tell silly stories.

and it'll suck a little bit less.

and eventually it won't matter.

and i'm pregnant again.

no i'm not, but i got your mind off the breakup for a hot second.

if it counts for anything, i love how you're willing, no, are compelled to stay true to yourself despite what it may cost you.

what about you, dear reader? why do you think buddy breakups are worse than dumping a lover? is it because somehow it's easier to love a friend?

come and get it, it's giveaway time!!

2009-09-08T19:23:00.010-04:00

after much flaking and painful disorganization, i have finally gotten my shit together to officially launch my blogoversary/birthday giveaway!!! i feel like celebrating my 100 posts, my six months of writing publicly, and my 30th birthday with all of you dear readers and i couldn't think of a better way to make you come to my party than to give you things.

as many of you may know, i have some issues with technology. this is not limited to, but does include blogging in general. i have put forth a certain amount of effort with this blog that surprises even myself. although i still have no idea what the little orange and white triangle lines thing on my sidebar means but everyone else seems to know so i play along. my point here is that apart from the number of people in the followers box, i really have no idea how many people may actually be taking time out of their day to read my words.

so i'm just going to assume that there's more than two of you and less than a million. and i appreciate each and every one of you more than i'm going to say lest i get all sappy and self-doubty. suffice it to say that for you faithful readers i have presents!!

i like to make things, but mostly things that i will use. i hate clutter and tend to clean up by throwing stuff out, a lot. lately i've been in a mood to consolidate rather than collect more products of my various hobbies. so i've been a busy little bee over here making presents for some lucky internet friends. it's a win-win!

first is a knit scarf. you may recall what happens when i attempt to knit things with rounded edges. clearly proven to be too much of a challenge for me, i have stuck to my comfort zone of small and rectangular to produce this eyelet scarf:

it's an acrylic blend in bright white, measuring six inches wide and about 45 inches long. i washed it in baby detergent because that shit smells so good i want to carry some around in my pocket and huff it whenever i'm having a stressful moment, and also because it makes things really soft and fluffy. personally, i think it would be great for a man or woman, white matches everything anyway. here's a close up of the detail:

next i have a two-fer. this was a little more difficult seeing as i hate baking and don't even own a rolling pin or a mixer of any kind, but i managed to make some non-poisonous pet treats. there's liver and carrot triangles for kitties and bone-shaped whole wheat cheese snaps for doggies. no fancy icing or sprinkles or other dessert related decoration here. these are bare bones, plain and simple pet treats. although monster sure seemed to like them enough to knock the scraps off the counter and stuff his face.

i put each in a plastic treat jar. they look like this:

i'd like to give them as separate gifts because i know many people have either one type of pet or the other. with each jar of treats i will also include the recipe that i used should you want to make them yourself once your pet devours their tasty goodness.

lastly i have something that i personally find to be hilarious. i wasn't sure if i was even going to offer it up for fear that no one would quite understand my sense of humor and find it as funny as i do. then i got over myself and realized that this is my giveaway and if you want shit than you can have what i give you.

unfortunately, i don't have a pic of it because it can't be truly finished until i know who's getting it. and since i can't show you, it's certainly not as funny to tell you. therefor my final gift will be the mystery gift.

i thought i'd run this giveaway pretty much like how miss yvonne did when she gave away her fancy insult gum. it was really the most fair way i've seen to do things. to enter, you can either comment on this post or email me at pearlhider (at) gmail (dot) com and let me know which gift you'd like. if you post on your blog with a link back to this post, that will get you a second entry. i will be drawing names for the prizes and posting the winners thursday the 17th.

i hope you enjoy my bribes and that they make you giggle and clap. and also that they make you come back here every once in a while to lurk or comment, whichever you prefer.

don't make me stick a strawberry up your nose

2009-09-04T10:35:00.008-04:00

to anyone who is planning, thinking of planning, or might ever in the next twenty years plan a catered event, if you make me plate up this strawberry monstrosity i will guarantee that you will never want to see another strawberry for the rest of your life.

please excuse the drawing, i wasn't exactly in the mood to take photographs the last time this asshole dessert and i were together. it might look all sweet and refined on the outside, but really, it's just that mean bitch you knew growing up who thrived on taunting you ceaselessly.

maybe a dessert can't call you dumb, but it sure as hell can make you look dumb when you have exactly twelve minutes to assemble a few hundred plates and ole strawberry shit decides to have ten million components.

enough with all the specific timing bullshit too, you dumbass dessert. the mousse has to temper but not too long or the ice cream will melt, the panna cotta has to be chilled so that the soup can be poured over it warm, mint oil last so it doesn't bleed into the sauce....AAAHHH!!

ok. i feel better now. sometimes i just need to let it all out.

even though this pain in the ass is on the menu for my shift at work tonight, i'm also working with hook-up chef. actually, i think he's officially slutty chef now that he's moved on to hitting on barely legal waitresses in front of the whole kitchen. regardless, he's sure to provide some form of disturbing yet engrossing display of inappropriate behavior to make me forget all about strawberry shit, for a little while anyway.

on that note, i hope everyone has a fantastic holiday weekend! i know i will, labor day means octoberfest is right around the corner!

ps. i'm still working on my blogtastic giveaway, but i haven't forgotten. i'll have info and pics soon!

sharing is caring, and i care about you (in that non-threatening, semi-anonymous internet way)

2009-09-01T07:15:00.000-04:00

it has arrived, today marks the beginning of a celebration.

as we now find ourselves in the month of september, nine months after the holidays, there are many glorious events about to take place worthy of at least an obligatory nod on these here pages. it's not only my birthday season, but this month will also mark my six month blogoversary as well as my 100th post.

now, i usually don't make a big deal about my own birthday, but this year i'm turning thirty, and i think that's reason enough to party. oh, yeah, and this will also be the first year for family birthday week. that's right, myself, the fuss, and b all have our birthdays in the same week at the end of september. and there's also the big get-together for my nana's eightieth birthday. yes, the same nana responsible for my header pic.

while us yankee/mets loving folk will descend upon the land of the green monster to visit the fam in the cape cod area, there may be some things going on here at my pearl hiding spot.

i still can't believe i haven't quit blogging yet. there have been so many times that i questioned my ability to tell an entertaining story, or doubted that i would ever reach an audience that understood my point of view, yet i still kept going. and mostly to show my appreciation for that momentum from you dear readers, i want to do a little something special.

and also because i never win any bloggy contests so it feels a lot better to give things away than to be sad about being a loser.

so you guessed it, there's a giveaway coming up here soon! unfortunately i don't have the pics ready yet to get you really, officially amped up for it. so this is more of a teaser post about a giveaway than the real thing. but trust me, it will not be crap from my closet or chewed up dog toys, despite the fact that monster's headless blue dino cracks me the fuck up and i can't see how anyone else wouldn't laugh at it:

oh, and i'm not done yet kiddies. i'm working on arranging my all-star lineup of guest bloggers to thrill you with amazingly hilarious and well crafted masterpieces while i'm off getting drunk. i have no idea what they intend to write about, but i do know that they are probably going to be at the very least slightly more fun than me talking to inanimate objects or inventing different personas to talk shit to.

if that isn't enough to entertain you, then you're shit out of luck, because that's the best i could come up with for my fantastic birthday/blogoversary/100th post extravaganza. and if you are intrigued, or even shivering with anticipation about what exactly my fabulous 'thank you for reading my words' gifty gifts are going to be, then i can tell you to relax. take a deep breath. details will be coming soon, with pics to prove i'm not entirely full of it.

tell me have you seen her?

2009-08-27T15:52:00.005-04:00

i don't have my funny.

and i don't mean that i lost her forever like a permanent break-up. i'm talking more about a game of cat and mouse that funny is playing with me.

lately i've had a rather full plate, even though i'm not really hungry, and i think funny is feeling a bit left out. 'act like a grown-up' has been crashing at my house a lot, eating some of funny's favorite snacks, using all the hot water, basically being the kind of guest you know might be moving in but you'd rather see on a one way train to 'get the fuck out of here-ville'.

so in retaliation for the rude replacement persona, funny has decided to be a little bitch and storm off. i think this is the part where i put my life on hold and chase after her, because in all honesty, i need funny to get through life. i need funny in good times and bad, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, til death do us part.

i need to have a nice long talk with funny and hopefully i will be persuasive enough to not have to return home alone. i can reassure her with kind words, a big hug, and a friendly pat on the ass. i refuse to believe that this is the end.

funny, if you're out there, hiding in the shadows of the internet, you mean the world to me, i can't blog without you. i'm coming to get you!!

i'll be back in a few days. in the meantime, i'm open to suggestions for how to maintain a long-distance relationship with act like a grown-up. or perhaps i should just ditch act like a grown-up altogether and get a really good disguise so everyone will think we're still going strong when i'm fucking around with funny all day.

wow, i really need to find funny....

things are not always what they seem

2009-08-26T11:47:00.012-04:00

this is the view from the park down the street from my house, it's right on the river:

this morning we went early and there was not much of a breeze to speak of and very few boats out. with the exception of the brownish tinge to the water, the river looked so peaceful, so serene. the soft lapping sounds made me think of the rhythm of an old rocking chair, subtle yet constant.

the water rippled just enough to produce a broken reflection of the sun.

there were even some guys fishing and crabbing and enjoying the view.

i hope their view included this:

can you read that part there at the top? no? ok, i'll write out the boldface part:

women of childbearing age and children under 15 should not consume any fish from the hudson river.

now, i've lived by this river my whole life and it pretty much goes without saying that you never, ever even want to swim in that water, let alone eat anything that comes out of it. but for those of you who might be assuming that rivers are freshwater and it can't be that bad, i offer the following:

-for decades new york city garbage has been barged and dumped upriver because of the lack of landfill space in the five boroughs.
-indian point is a nuclear power plant that is situated right on the banks of the river
and lastly,
-for over thirty years general electric dumped over a million pounds of pcbs into the river from it's plants. those pcbs are still found in the sediment and algae.

growing up with this knowledge has made me wary of fish and shellfish in general. i can fillet a three foot striped bass in about ten minutes, which is not fast and not slow, but you will rarely find me eating the day's catch.

i could never seem to get my mind past the part about thinking where the fish came from, what it ate to survive, and what kind of water filled its gills. paranoid much? maybe, but it's too late for me to change now. i will forever be leery of neptune's minions.

i should have been born by the ocean.

i know a guy who actually says 'make that paper' when he means 'go to work'

2009-08-24T08:15:00.004-04:00

sometimes it seems that having a potty mouth can bite you in the ass.

there are many times at work that i find myself fantasizing about how nice it would feel to tell the customers what i really think. for example, come on people, you're not allergic to parsley, just say you don't like it. the chef will be slightly less annoyed with you if you're honest and don't try to make up a bullshit allergy.

but our customers never see the inside of the kitchen or get to look the chef in the face. perhaps that enables them to be more demanding. and we never see them so maybe it's easier for us to assume they're being difficult because they have nothing better to do. i can't say for sure, but i do know that not one night at work goes by without at least a few customers submitting some absurd requests, followed by a healthy bitch-fest by a chef.

then i heard about the wiener circle in chicago. their unique flavor of customer service, while amusing to many, was actually developed out of need. the customer base is largely drunk white people leaving the bars. the mostly black employees shout gems like 'how many motherfucking cheese fries do you want?!'

for many at this particular food establishment, it's how they support their families, even if that means taking insults from drunks calling them all kinds of degrading racial slurs.

i found this video of the trash talkers in action, it's taken from a tv program so it's a bit long. right around the 2:25 minute mark you meet poochie, the manager, who seems to be great at what she does. around the 5:00 minute mark, she talks about some of the customers who get a little too carried away with the shit talking.

i'm not exactly sure how long i'd be able to put up with that kind of talk at my job. or maybe i just don't like drunk people. or then again, maybe it'd be different because even the jew slurs don't bother me, and i can't imagine anything someone could say that's not specific to me personally that would upset me.

what do you think? would you last at the wiener circle, or would you prefer to do your shit talking behind closed doors?

i'm here (and there) to help

2009-08-21T07:22:00.005-04:00

today is a paradox. i'm here, but i'm also here. i don't quite understand the physics of it all, but for one day only i've managed to be in two places at once.

today my very first ever guest post is up at becky's place, i'll go eat worms. in case you missed that link, it's here. while she's away on vacation, she asked a whole slew of great writers to help keep her readers entertained. i only hope they don't shake their heads and go 'what the...???' when they read my contribution.

i've been told my sense of humor works best with an acquired taste.

anywhoooooo, you can read my post here. happy friday!!

golden brown looks good on me

2009-08-20T08:40:00.008-04:00

these are my favorite flip flops.

now i know that i'm in between pedicures, so you'll have to excuse the nudie toes. b is a big supporter of my bi-monthly pedicures, mostly because he hates toes in general. he was shocked to learn that in no way is toe-hair removal a part of the process. i could share the story about the time he tweezed my toe hair out because they bother him that much, but he made me promise not to ever, ever tell anyone about it.

me, i'm not worried about it so much. i've had a lifetime to look at my toe hair and i'm ok with it.

back to my flip flops. so i wear these brown babies pretty much every day in the summer. sure i have others, but these always manage to find their way to my feet without me even thinking about it. there is one major downside, however.

every night, as i'm lounged out on the couch, limbs all a-splayed in every direction, b will inevitably burn me up for my ridiculous flip flop tan lines. but that's ok, i can take the heat, i love the sun.

b, on the other hand, for those of you who don't know him, is so white that if you were to put him on a beach he'd glow like a brilliant beacon amongst the pale sand and bright wash of sunlight. his skin may or may not be translucent. he gets sunburn through his clothes and shoes. although, when i'm sixty and wrinkly he'll probably be sixty with soft, supple skin, fresh as a baby's behind.

right, so you know what i have to say about all this mocking of my tan lines?

if you'll pretend you don't see the gigantic big toe on the right side there, you can proceed to be impressed with how i can give you the finger with my toe.

i know, i'm so talented.

oh, and also, because he's currently not annoying the shit out of me, here's monster looking all cute:

finis.

i'm even furiouser and more furiouser, updated

2009-08-19T08:16:00.004-04:00

i'll put a brief disclaimer here that this post will contain a raw display of my anger at a shitty real-life, personal situation that i usually avoid talking about on this blog like the plague.

but sometimes it just needs to come out.

so, ok, here it is. (deeeeeeeeep breath) i pretty much don't like my dad. except that he's almost dying and i'm the closest (geographically) family member that can take care of all his shit.

it's a burden that i've been struggling with on and off for a while, but in the last month things have gotten bad. and by bad i mean, imagine the worst possible scenario and then add attorney's fees and cockroaches. yes, literally.

when i spend eight to ten hours a day, a full tank of gas, and exhaust every babysitter i know, driving my ass all over the hudson valley to sort through my father's lifetime of fuck-ups, and he doesn't once acknowledge my efforts, it makes me want to beat him with his prosthetic leg.

not that i'm looking for a thank you, but more that he's acting as if he expected me to come along sooner or later and just clean up his mess for him.

i don't even like the guy. we have no relationship to speak of other than the basic, biological connection. yet to let him rot away in his filthy apartment is not only cruel, but also a decision made based on emotion.

my brother is the lucky one. he escaped while he could, now living family-free on the beaches of south carolina. if only i could have run away too.

but i only avoid, i don't run permanently. i don't think i'd ever have it in me to up and leave my life and ask my husband and child to do the same. and that makes me so fucking pissed.

my dad spent his life being an asshole and isolating himself from society and now i have to listen to him complain about all of the doctors and nurses 'getting in his business' i.e., trying to help him live.

after my meeting this morning, i hope i will be at least one step closer to wiping my hands clean of this foul process. but at the same time, i'm afraid to hope for anything. my father is the black hole of negativity, and the more i wish for good things, or even a little piece of mind, the worse it gets. infinitely compounding until the pressure is enough to crush me to dust.

wish me luck today!

-------------------

alright, so maybe i can be a little overdramatic. but that's just it, i have to deal. the routine will always be the same: get all worked up and tense about something and then afterwards realize exactly how much i was over reacting.

and really, even if my dad is a jerk, it doesn't mean i wish him ill will.

sometimes when i want to call b at work and ask him for the love of god to make the baby stop crying, i have to remind myself that i'm a big girl now and i can handle a little unpleasant household issue. i think the same rationale can be applied to this dad situation.

just because it's not fun or easy or exciting or in any way pleasant, that doesn't mean that i have the right to stomp my feet and bitch about dealing with it. that's not going to accomplish anything anyway.

what i am going to do is get on with the rest of my daily life and not let all this mess drag me down. little miss and i are going to the park and then to the gym for a nice long run. i shall return in a better mood, that i am sure of.

(i would really like to unpublish this post, but since so many of you out there have already read it and were kind enough to leave such supportive words i'll leave it. thanks everyone for your kind thoughts!!)

life can be easier to take if you pretend it's a game

2009-08-17T17:09:00.003-04:00

hello kiddies! and welcome to this monday afternoon edition of waiting room hell! the producers and i hope you'll enjoy the show. now if you'll sit back, stretch out, and grab something handy to break in sheer frustration, preferably glassware, we can begin.

our first contestant is mr. snots-a-lot. as he moves in for his initial approach, clearing his phlegmy throat with a loud ugh-hhhhuugghhh, i (your host/judge) have begun to shift in my chair to face the opposite direction.

mr. snots-a-lot barks in his deep, gravel pitch, 'boy or girl?!'

i challenge him by turning farther to the side, giving him more of my back and less of my profile.

'hhhmmmmuugggnnngghhh!! BOY or GIRL?!'

his persistence is setting the bar high for our other competitors.

'meeeeessss, the baby, is BOY or GIRL?!?!'

dingdingding! we have our first winner folks. yes, that is a baby that i'm shielding from your superfluous snot display. congratulations pal, you officially win the title of grossest waiting room attendee.

not to be outdone, our next contestant, mrs. i'm-so-old-i-can't-find-my-grave, quickly enters the game with a gnarled finger pointing toward the golf ball-esque growth on her neck screaming 'it huuuurrrts!' she follows up with a friendly, albeit warbley, 'good morning' announced to no one in particular at 1:30pm.

bonus points for making herself heard across the room and down the hall. what a strategist, that one.

but today was not the old gal's day. she was soon to be crushed in a battle for the title of most randomly annoying waiting room attendee but our third and final contestant, mr. chatterbox.

mr. chatterbox is one stiff competitor. if you see him approaching, you'd do well to up and leave whatever waiting room you're in and forget about whatever business brought you there in the first place. he pulls no punches in his game. his disguise of a lightweight suit with co-ordinating tie and pocket square might lead you to underestimate his abilities.

without any prompt whatsoever, he will sit so close to you that you will be able to inhale his toupee glue. but before you even get a chance to enjoy the high from his noxious hair chemicals, he will proceed to talk loudly into his outdated cell phone about his last physical, nodding and winking at you all the while, just to make sure you're getting every last word pounded into your cerebrum.

his blatent disregard of the written no-cell-phone rule, as well as the unwritten get-the-fuck-out-of-my-personal-space rule, earns very high marks. to ensure a win though, he's got to bring everything in his repertoire for the finale.

he does not disappoint.

mr. chatterbox assumes the tone of voice that he thinks resembles andrew dice clay, and begs the crowd for a little forgiveness. only he's trying to be rodney dangerfield. his misuse of two of the most eternally obnoxious 'comedians' is enough to guarantee a landslide victory. if only he'd added a little carrot top to the mix, he could have broken the world record.

on that note, we'd like to thank you for tuning in, and we'll see you next time here on waiting room hell!

(this program brought to you by our sponsors, toyota and frosty paws doggie ice cream treats.)

dear so and so; revenge isn't always the answer

2009-08-14T09:14:00.006-04:00

dear pants,

ok pants, i thought we were going to enjoy a nice long late summer/early fall season together. you all well-fitting and perfectly cropped just below the calf, me all happy and flirty wearing pants that make my ass look amazing.

but i guess you had other plans.

getting caught on the sharp edge of the eraser holder of a dry erase board may have been your greatest backstabbing gesture yet. the inch long tear on the right butt cheek, below the pocket, complete with bleeding puncture wound to said cheek, has more than tried my patience.

not only did my hopes of having a marvelous, feel-good pair of pants die on that dry erase board, but the humiliation continued as i had to leave a meeting in which everyone present watched your cruelty unfold, and then proceed to crackhead alley, also known as grand street in newburgh. walking in the absolute worst part of town, with a bloody, exposed butt cheek was nothing less than horrifying.

i had thought for a second about how vindicated i would feel by ripping your ass to shreds and using pieces of you to clean monster's crate. then i realized that i'm just so disgusted by your betrayal that i can't bear to look at you anymore. you and your bloody hole are going right in the garbage, and don't come back, you hear!

thank you for your attention in this matter.

sincerely,

i'm not into the ass-less chaps look, ok?!

two-fer, enjoy it while you can

2009-08-12T14:18:00.006-04:00

posting twice a day around these parts is pretty much unheard of. except that i'm super extra motivated today. today i'm full of that 'i can get everything done without wanting to kill myself' kind of energy. i think it started with the gym this morning.

i've been working out a lot more than i ever thought i would lately. i might have dropped a hint about my birthday coming up soon, and being that it's my thirtieth, i'm pretty sure that b is planning a surprise party for me. except that i don't think he knows yet that i know. sorry, b, but i know. unless it's all a rouse to throw me off track! that could be fun.

right. so the impending birthday celebration has brought the type of clarity to my mind that some people claim they experience right before dying. it is imperative that i work the shit out of my lazy ass at the gym so that i can look ridiculously, unattainably hot at my own birthday party.

i have about a month. this pressure is certainly enough to get me through the front door of the gym, but sometimes i need just a little bit more to really help me make the most of my workout. luckily, my fellow gym members are there to push me along.

first i'd like to thank the short woman with dark hair next to me on the treadmill. dear woman, your abuse of stinky, musky, and altogether cheap smelling perfume does more than mask your sweat-stench. it advertises that you do not like to smell other people's sweat. while this might be a classy sentiment in your mind, it's really just a tool i use to run faster and sweat more.

i'm determined to make you smell my sweat if i'm stuck here choking on your bad taste.

i ran harder than i have in weeks.

next i'd like to give a very special shout-out to the girl on the elliptical talking on her cell phone. while i have my music on full blast so that i don't actually have to listen to you talking, i can tell that you are by no means out of breath. if you are taking up space in this tiny cardio room and not breathing heavy, and can even carry on a phone conversation, than you're wasting air.

to make up for your lack of intense respiratory activity, i will breath faster and deeper and take up all that extra air that you're not using. my fully extended lungs help to propel my weight up this neverending motherfucking incline so that i can feel better about myself while you chat away.

lastly, but certainly not the least appreciated, is mr. old, old, OLD man on the cycle machine wearing a tank top. sir, your dedication to your physical fitness at your age is nothing less than commendable. also, the pea-sized globules of chalky deodorant caught in your armpit hair keep winking at me when you stretch your arms. it's the clearest sign yet that you have my back against musk-lady and phone-girl.

now that i know i'm not alone in my efforts to better myself, i am revitalized with my burning need to finish this workout and go the fuck home and eat some potato salad or something.

ahhhh, that felt good. i'm all limber and energized. it won't be long before i can put on a cute little dress and make my husband remember how hot i was when we first met. or, at the very least, i can distract him with a low-cut dress and my enormous tatas.

linky love

2009-08-12T13:50:00.001-04:00

i haven't been a very good bloggy friend lately. it's been weeks since i actually found my way to my computer to read all of your clever, funny, insightful, and crass posts that i love so much. i'm not here to make excuses. sure the food poisoning didn't help much, but i still respect all of you folks out there who make the time to not only maintain your own writing consistently, but also support your fellow writers.

and, by the way, as i once told the novelista barista, i absolutely think of blogging as real writing. it takes so much work and time out of your life to manage, not to mention creating something that you want to be an accurate representation of yourself, how could something you pour so much energy into not be considered legitimate?

well friends, today i had the pleasure of two bloggy pals giving me a shout and basically reaffirming my decision to keep up this time-suck of a blog i have here. there have been more than a few times that i thought for sure i was going to just stop posting and be done with it all. but the fact that there's people out there who take even a minute out of their day to read some random story i feel like telling means the world to me.

i love telling stories, it's how my mind works. i make everything into a narrative as its happening. if only i was patient enough to sit down and write a novel, i could have a lot of fun with that i think.

but i digress, my point here was to say thanks to everyone out there who doesn't get bogged down by life and finds a way to share their thoughts and experiences through their writing.

mr. condescending just posted about his 100 favorite blogs he likes to read. he's a guy who knows how to win a girl over with flattery, and also how to play the game without being hated. you walk that line so well, mr. c, you really are an artist! thanks again for the honorable mention, i'll keep finding funny if you keep reading.

it was also brought to my attention that jerrod, over at the yellow factor, was somehow absent from my little linky list. jerrod, i'm going to blame the computer demons for that one, i don't have any other explanations. but in his generous way he gave me a glorious award for me to hang with pride on my sidebar. behold:

oh yeah, i was definitely the kid who made yellow snowballs. it's all the same when you have mittens on, right? right. so thanks again, jerrod! i'll try and keep up with my writing, including the many fuckity fuck curses, and be worthy of this award.

and i can't forget courtney and porkstar, who have so kindly added me to the sweat crew even though they didn't really know me and i asked to join their group.

i still haven't figured out how to make that list so that it links to all the other members, but i haven't forgotten about it. i'm proud to display my sweatiness for all to see.

so for all of you out there who i've been a stranger to lately, i'm on my way! right after i tend to a walking (or should i say running) ten month old who is having a hard time learning that 'no' means 'garbage is not for eating' and 'the toilet bowl is not for hiding toys'.

lana-uncut, because i heart sally

2009-08-08T21:37:00.002-04:00

this is me:

not in the physical sense, but in that weird comparison that people always make about having a good memory. i don't like the simile, but i'm going to go with it because it's the most recognizable, and also because i'm too lazy to start a whole new simile.

basically, i can remember a ridiculous amount of unnecessary details. i'm talking everything about everything that you never cared about remembering. you know that conversation we had about that new band we both liked three years ago? of course you don't. but i remember where we were, how the conversation started, what we had for lunch, and what we were both wearing.

i swear.

it's fucking sick.

even sicker is that i'm nearly thirty years old and i'm just now realizing exactly how unusual this is.

you want to know anything else about me? well, sally does. she said so herself on her blog. (about a week ago. sorry sally, i was in the grips of typhoid/diphtheria/scarlet fever/a really bad tummy ache). i've actually been tagged for this little thingy before by miss yvonne, and i complied by talking about myself and then tagging some other people. what happened was that the people i tagged either burned me up or ignored me. so this time i'm only going to do the talking about myself part, that's really my forte anyway.

so here's where i list ten things about myself that you don't already know:

1. whenever i hear someone say 'you're crazy' i always reply in my head 'i'm only mad north by northwest.'*

2. yesterday i was driving and saw an old hispanic man on a busy street waving a metal detector over the edge of the sidewalk. i thought to myself, 'what in the hell is that guy doing? there can't possibly be any buried treasure there!' and then i realized the metal detector was in fact a weed wacker.

3. i like pickles so much that sometimes b calls me pickley p. pickleberg. oh, and also because i'm a jew and i like pickles.

4. i don't think boxing counts as a real sport. or maybe i'm just disgusted by the brutality of it i can't understand how anyone could be a willing spectator.

5. my birthday season is fast approaching. what are you going to get me?

6. b just downloaded a bunch of the old classic video games onto the wii so last night we were playing bubble bobble at two am. full blown addiction. (the fruits of our previous internet battles with wires and routers and adapters oh my!)

7. i already shared this one with meaty, but i can count to ten in cantonese. my last job had a sushi bar and the sushi guys had so much fun telling me to say six and seven over and over. i finally interrupted their juvenile laughing fits to ask why and learned that the words for six and seven said together meant dick. i then proceeded to laugh like the juvenile that i still am at heart.

8. i don't understand why blogger keeps telling me that my request could not be processed. i wasn't asking you to do anything, stupid google shitass program!

9. i live thirty minutes from the town i grew up in and went to high school in. it's way too close and too far at the same time.

10. i just remembered there's a new flavor of beer in my fridge....

the ever-evolving essence of me will heretofore be on display at this location for as long as i am lazy enough to not sit down and post about anything else. enjoy!

*someone please tell me i'm not the only dork who knows this line.

there's always a silver lining

2009-08-04T19:04:00.009-04:00

despite the fact that i love to throw curse words around like an old sailor (is that really true that sailors curse a lot?), i am an enormous prude when it comes to talking about poo, pee, puke, or any other bodily function/excrement.

this is extremely fortunate for you readers out there in blogland who will be spared the gory details of my battle with food poisoning over the past four days. although, there were definite moments of profound revelation that i experienced in my most harrowing times that i felt worthy of sharing.

the first is by far the most important of the lessons i learned this long weekend; simply that food poisoning is going to be a much more effective diet for me than my previous standby of coffee and air.

this dawned on me sometime in the middle of the night sunday, as i got up out of bed and groaned my way to the bathroom, passing by my open closet door. there, subtly tucked away yet exposed enough to be illuminated by the fluorescent green glow of the alarm clock, was my collection of skinny jeans.

at least a half dozen pairs of those perfectly fitted jeans that go with every motherfucking thing you could ever imagine yourself wearing, somehow managed to migrate to a visible corner of my closet to speak to me.

'psst!! hey, lana! we're still heeeeeerrrrrrreeeeee!!' (that last part was actually sing-songy like the little girl in poltergeist, sneaky ass jeans)

but alas, at the time i was in too much of a hurry to reach my bathroom successfully to stop and make sexy eyes at my skinny jeans. and besides, i know them all so well by now. each pair perfect in fade, wash, length, hem. everything, perfect. except that they haven't fit so well since i grew a baby.

i'm not bitter about it though, changes in your body are a natural side effect of incubating and then birthing a child. i'm ok with that, i don't hold it against you skinny jeans.

that doesn't mean i didn't go back to sleep and dream about wearing each and every pair of those damn jeans and rolling around in a field of daisies like i was in a mariah carey video about being in love except that i was in love with my jeans and not a man.

waking up in the morning, i realized that all the intense pain i was experiencing was really for a great fucking cause. in fact, it even made me question the whole commitment to serving safe bacteria-free food to customers when i'm at work. i'd be doing some of them a huge favor, and if they knew i was behind it all, they might even come and give me a high five.

but that last part came from being dehydrated, so i'll just stick with accidental bacterial intake as being a great diet.

my second revelation that came to me was that hospital nurses sometimes, once in a while, suck at their jobs. while three different nurses had to attempt five times to find a vein to use for an iv, i thought it was a little unusual that they were having such a hard time. then today i looked down at my arms and was aghast to see that in both of my elbow creases i had obscene bruises and puncture holes that immediately made me feel like i had the beginnings of jared leto's arm in requiem for a dream.

(i thought about posting a pic, but it's way to gross for me to even deal with so i'm just going to link to the pic. feel free to look if you have a stomach made of steel, or don't if you're a pansy like me.)

i know being a nurse is a really hard job, and i'm certainly not trying to offend anyone who is, or is thinking about becoming, or ever was a nurse. but come on with this bullshit, i look like a damn junkie! lucky for them i don't have shit to do all week and a kid who can't tell if mommy's using or just has a boo-boo.

and so, in summation, i fully believe that as the fall season approaches, i will soon find myself wearing my skinny jeans and a nice, long-sleeved sweater to hide the iv wounds. thanks food poisoning, you're my bitch!!

that thin line between ignorance and enlightenment is the most treacherous place of all

2009-07-30T17:16:00.007-04:00

b and i might be the most technologically challenged people you'll ever know. our computer is practically an ancient relic, which is probably why it's so riddled with demons.

of course we need to upgrade to wireless, but there's a few things holding us back. there's the whole issue of needing to force our evil computer to do as much work as possible in it's golden years. no early retirement for you, you bastard (talking to my computer, not you dear reader). b and i are determined to feel like we've won even a small token battle in the war mr. hp-suck-my-ass-desktop has waged with us. and if that means robbing an old withering soul of living its final days in a sublime and peaceful existence, so be it.

another factor preventing us from living in laptop bliss is the fact that we don't know shit about shit when it comes to any type of electronic appliance or device. last night b asked me what a router was. i had heard this word before. and only because i'm good at making up stuff when i don't know the answers, i told him it was a thing you need for the internet. when he asked me how the internet gets in there if there's no wires attached i knew i would be exposed for the fraud that i am.

but b saw the shame in my face and being the sweet and kind husband that he is, he cheered me up with 'hey, don't worry about it. all those people that know all that shit about technology can go have sex with technology and make little robot-people hybrid babies. then we can unplug all the wires and be left alone and the world will be all ours and we won't even care about the internet.'

i love him so much.

i didn't want to spoil the moment by asking 'what if they're all wireless hybrid babies?'

much of this technology talk was spawned by a new addition in our household. yesterday we welcomed a bouncing new baby dishwasher. and yes it really bounces and technically might be a baby version of a real dishwasher because our cheap-ass apartment complex would never spring for anything of real value. the single solitary knob on its blank front is the only means of operating the machine.

while it does look like a sorry excuse for a home appliance, it is easy enough so that i can figure out how to turn it on. i was shocked, however, when b stated that he doesn't want to get confused and break it, so he doesn't want me to teach him how to use it. any other wife might suspect that their husband was trying to avoid dish duty, but no friends, not me. i could see it in his eyes, the feeling that this was just one more thing for him to have to figure out and get angry with for making him feel like a dumbass when he can't make it work.

don't worry b, i won't let that dishwasher get the better of you. shhhhhh honey, it's ok. thaaaaat's it, deeeeeep breaths. relax. i'm here, and i'll make sure there's no wires or batteries or any other electrical source around for ever and ever, as long as we both shall live.

choose wisely

2009-07-28T08:48:00.008-04:00

today i have a little story to share that's funny, gross, and sad all at the same time. i can't say it's inspired by my dad, because that's not really accurate. but suffice it to say that there is a connection to him, even though it only began with a name.

when i was a little girl, about nine or ten years old, i was taught that rodents would make perfect pets. my mother was strictly against dogs or cats for a few years, and during that time she educated myself and my brother about the wonderful joys that small furry creatures can bring into one's life. i still don't know if she immediately regretted doing so, or if that feeling of making a horrible mistake overcame her slowly, like a chill creeping up her spine and finally piercing her brain in a way that only a ghastly revelation can.

we had a gerbil named fluffy. maybe she didn't like her name so much, or maybe she just didn't like when my brother would force her to run in his greyskull castle like a maze. either way, she definitely did love to claw the shit out of our delicate children's hands.

after my mom decided that she was allergic to fluffy, spontaneously, then came the hamsters. they were ok, i guess. until they started breeding. i'm not prepared to relive that nightmare just yet. i can still smell the cedar chips if i close my eyes and think long enough about it, and not in a good way. besides, the real story comes after the evil sex-addict hamsters, so i'm just going to keep moving here.

next was a mouse. somehow i managed to convince my mom that mice make outstanding pets. we brought home a little grey fellow with a white spot on his head. i named him louis, which is my father's middle name. i can't explain why i was compelled to give the innocent mouse this name. even today, it makes me wonder if i knew he was doomed from the moment he entered out house, paralleling my father's life in so many ways.

in the beginning, things went great. louis was as happy as a mouse could be. he was fed and cleaned and loved. he was doing so well, in fact, that he was getting noticeably stronger. it wasn't long before he escaped his little cage and ventured forth into our house on his own.

i absolutely forbade my mother from trapping him. i wanted louis to be able to enjoy his freedom and flourish among us, rather than be captured and set outside where who knows what could harm him. i think my mom set traps for him anyway. but we went almost two months with louis scurrying around throughout the house, our shy little roommate.

he grew to the size of a small rat, the white patch on his head the only identifying mark of his former semblance.

then one day my mom decided to bake some cupcakes.

do you remember as a child, smelling the chocolaty cakey goodness of cupcakes warming in the oven, the scent wafting through your home as if on a mission to distract you?

i've lost that memory. for on that fateful day, as the cupcake batter rose and thickened in the little paper cups, the odor coming from our oven was nothing short of nauseating. a foul stench clouded our kitchen and grew more intense by the minute. my young mind had no imagery yet disturbing enough to associate with the mystery smell.

it was bad enough for my mom to call the appliance repair man. as he disassembled the oven, he discovered louis' nest. the clever guy had built his home inside the wall of our oven. it kept him warm and cozy for the few winter months he had spent there. unfortunately, it was his bad luck to wake up from a nap and venture out at the exact time that my mother had turned on the oven.

at first, i was so angry at my mother for cooking my beloved pet. although, with time, i eventually accepted that louis' life was somehow destined to meet a volatile end. what good could possibly come of overindulging and living in an environment that is in no way natural to your species? no, louis probably would have been much better off out in the wilderness of our backyard, using his innate instincts to guide him through the perils of a normal mouse's existence.

for that i am sorry louis.

i can only hope my father doesn't end up cooked, figuratively, as a result of his poor choices. but only time will tell what his fate is destined to be.

you wish you were here

2009-07-22T17:55:00.001-04:00

welcome to hell on earth. or just my house. whichever you want to call it.

mr. c invited himself over for a gawker's gander at my surroundings, and because we're practically neighbors (live in the same state) i couldn't possibly refuse him a tour. so come on in, if you want, no pressure. oh, and don't mind that smell, monster's ass sometimes emits a fishy odor when he gets nervous.

i guess the best place to start would be my bookshelves, a.k.a. toy storage.

here you can see we have our dear doggie's bed nestled in between the two bookshelves. this is precisely where he will remain for the duration of your visit, as he has a tendency to rip houseguests to shreds for the mere offense of walking through the front door. oh, and the painting above his bed might look a little familiar. it's an original oil piece done by my nana of myself and my brother. there's a freaky anecdote that goes with it, if you're interested.

mr. c is curious about my favorite bookshelf and what books it holds. it's so hard to choose only one favorite shelf when you can find any number of randomly interesting things. for example:

a: the toga iced tea bottle that my friend got for me from the dollar store when we were in eleventh grade (k do you still have yours? i don't think t does.)

b: my servsafe manual that proves i really do know how to make food without transmitting any parasites or bacteria

c: baby touch and feel animals

the technical analysis of financial markets is b's book.

mr. c also wants to know about what dvds are on my favorite shelf. i think i might only own about a dozen dvds so this one won't be too hard to answer. i find that most movies or shows i like are on one of the 800 or so tv channels we get, and if not, can be easily ordered through the cable box. as a result, the dvds that we do own are from at least six years ago and were dated even then. but here are some samples:

moving right along, the next stop on the tour is my favorite cookbooks. which again, i'm going to half answer because although i'm a professional chef, and have a jewish grandmother to unload her cookbook stash on me one piece at a time, i pretty much never use cookbooks. my favorite food books are more reference type. you can see them here:

the herb bible and herbs and spices are both excellent resource guides for almost every herb or spice you can think of. i usually don't have the patience to follow a recipe and often will read cookbooks like you would skim a boring magazine article, just enough to get the idea. although, this method frequently bites me in the ass when i make something i love and then try to make it again and have forgotten whatever it was that i did to make myself love it in the first place.

what's that, all that cookbook talk has made you hungry? well, if you're expecting me to cook dinner you have another thing coming. i usually don't like to cook big meals at home for a couple of reasons. one of them is named modesto, or something else similar, and his absence in my house pretty much means that either we're going out to eat or ordering in. we can go to the lovely mexican spot overlooking the river with killer burritos, or if you're daring, i could order one of those naked chicks to come over and let us eat sushi off her body:

on second thought, maybe that's not such a good idea.

ok, so maybe i can throw a few things together. i've been wanting to recreate this seafood ragout that i've seen at work. it's basically some shrimp, scallops, and mussels cooked with rosemary, thyme, white beans, and a saffron tomato broth.

but i'm also a huge fan of duck. so if i were planning a special 'i'm only cooking to impress you' dinner, i'd probably include some duck breasts with a pomegranate sauce.

or maybe a lamb roast with a mint and papaya slaw.

or i could make osso bucco served stew-like style over rice. i can buy the shanks with the bone marrow still inside for an extra treat.

or i could stop rambling already.

yeah, i need a beer too after all that mess.

lucky for you b and i drink beer like it's our job. i tend to prefer an ipa or lager, middle of the road i guess. nothing dark dark like a stout, but not light like that crap that comes in a can that changes color just so the morons who drink it can tell if it's ice-fucking-cold so that their taste buds will be numbed and not notice the obscene lack of flavor.

b's going to pick up a sixer tonight on his way home from work. the beer store down the road keeps dogfish head cold so that's definitely a favorite.

i hope you enjoyed my tour, or at least didn't hate it. and if you did hate it, maybe i'll send my monster after you to convince you how warm and welcoming my home can be.

eyeshadow and boobies live happily ever after

2009-07-20T07:46:00.012-04:00

of all the many wonderful things in this world to be addicted to, i might be the only one who needs a support group for over-use of glittery eyeshadow. i've known about my weakness for years. yet somehow, i cannot manage to 'just say no' when i open my blue and green flowery make-up bag, search deep in its dark corners, and my happy hand closes upon a round silvery case of sparkly joy.

i really do need help.

(don't worry coffee, you're still my number one addiction. now and always.)

then again, maybe it's not so bad because the sparklies usually fall off pretty quick. then it just looks like i'm not wearing any makeup at all. either way, my huge tatas will almost always capture someone's gaze long before the bad taste in eyeshadow does.

for example, in this pic where i showered and put on clothes that don't have elastic waistbands, you can barely see the aforementioned sparklies:

kristine and i had a lovely night out at a concert this weekend. no husbands and no kiddies. it was the definition of amazing. conor oberst, if you're out there somewhere, you're genius is mindblowing. and the guy at your merch table has a very weird haircut.

as we navigated our way through the field of fellow concertgoers, closer and closer to the stage, i also realized that glittery eyeshadow is way better than that gross patchouli smell. i might have stuck out like a shiny beacon amongst the throngs of hippies, but at least i didn't have that musky stink radiating from my body, like an olfactory needle piercing the brains of innocent music lovers.

i also immensely enjoyed dancing like a mime/mexican jumping bean hybrid, despite repeatedly and unintentionally hitting the ass of the man standing in front of me. thankfully, enormous boobies are great cover. the guy said if it was someone with a big beer gut slamming into him he'd have to wreck shit, but because it was me with a nice smile (low-cut shirt) he'd let it go. joke's on you guy, because i have both a beer gut and a nice smile.

and now i'll stop, before i give you any more reason to believe i'm that person you'd love to hate at a concert. but if it's already too late, i can tell you that i will most definitely be the girl wooo-woooing loudly in your ear at the end of each song.

you're welcome for that.

_____________

if you were at all interested in seeing some great pics from the show, you could go here to kristine's blog. she posted some great shots that encapsulated the whole night. and as usual, her paint skills can be rivaled by no one.

i have an endless supply of bullshit in my catalog

2009-07-14T13:31:00.008-04:00

i usually despise lying. the whole moral objection part is one reason, but also because i'm a horrible liar. i get all sweaty and flushed in the face. this ridiculous nervous giggle erupts from me in spasms, like a bad twitch that i have no control over, accompanied by the cheesedick grin that only looks more awkward as i try to straighten my uncooperative lips out.

once in a while, under extreme circumstances, i can pull off a lie. but usually only if it's for a really good reason, like for example, a dumbass practical joke.

now, i'm by no means what you'd call a prankster. i generally think that stuff is pretty annoying. the whole 'salt in your coffee' thing needs to stop, it's not funny people!

that was for my co-workers. i got it off my chest and now i feel better.

right, back to my point. i was about to tell you the story of my most successful prank/joke of all time. which, you might find slightly immature, but i was thoroughly impressed with myself about.

it was about 2002ish, and i was out of college but still young enough to go to college bars and not be the creepy old-er lady getting her drink on. i was living at my mom's house with her and her lame bf and three motherfuckingdisgusting cats. one was named ass. he had a leaky pooper.

one day my little eye spied a catalog lying amidst the mail for mom's bf. it was international male. i think they've change the name since then, but they sell things like this:

and this:

oh, and also this:

because you don't have the pleasure of reading the lovely captions for these pics i'll tell you that the middle one is called mansilk and the last one is called pistol pete.

as you can imagine, the first idea that came into my head was 'how can i share this comedy genius with other people?'

naturally, myself and my friend amanda, who looked incredibly mature and not at all like a skanky 22-year old, brought it out to the bar with us that night. you know the place, you've been there. two hundred people squished into an old house-come-bar, spilling out onto the patio. the floor permanently sticky from who knows how many years of spilled alcohol seeping into the hardwood, and every frat boy in town wearing his white hat with some logo on it to match his uniform of khaki cargo shorts and fitted t-shirt.

i folded the international male and stuck it in the back pocket of my calvins, waiting for someone to take the bait.

it wasn't long. a chipper fellow approached me with a twisted grin, 'so what's that in your back pocket?'

my first victim.

i casually informed him that i worked as an intern for the company. the less i talked the more intriguied he became. finally, i gave him what he was waiting for.

'well, to be honest, it's really stressful right now. the underwear model that we wanted to use just cancelled for another job and now we're stuck with this massive photo shoot for the new season and no model. my boss wanted me to find someone who would be willing to drop everything and go to the bahamas for four days on less than 24 hour's notice. she just doesn't get it, people have lives. they can't just up and leave to prance around in a thong for four days, even if it is all paid for.'

his eyes lit up like the griswold's house at christmas.

playing right into my game, he offered to be the model for me. he'd probably be able to talk to his teachers and get out of class for a few days...

i told him we'd (me and my colleague) have to talk about it for a minute.

(cut to half an hour later)

almost every guy in the bar is now standing in a line next to our table, some holding offerings of beer and shots of every variety. they are, in turn, pulling up their shirts to show us their abs, hoping that we might choose them to work as the international male underwear model.

we were professional, no touching or flirting. simply taking fake notes next to bad nicknames written on a bar napkin.

by the end of the night, we had had our fill of drinks and amusement. we left the bar, having stayed in charater the whole time.

i guess maybe it's only a real practical joke when you clue the victim in on the fact that it's a joke. but i'm not claiming to be the joke master over here, so we bailed and left a few dozen frat boys with false hopes of making it big in thong modeling.

or maybe the joke was on me after all. did the drunken boys really buy my load of crap? or were they just trying to talk to two chicks in a bar who weren't in their art history class?

who cares, i had fun. and it was also fun to reminisce about this story with kristine last night at her house. as she perused the website, i walked out of the room to talk to b. he was calling to make sure we weren't getting into any trouble, and i had to get away from the junk pics to be able to have a conversation. 'talk' might not be the best word. i probably should say snorted/laughed hysterically when i heard kristine scream 'ewwww, i see penis!!' from the other room.

nearly a decade later, and i still crack up at junk holders. and that, unfortunately, is not a lie.

not me, no way, no how, not ever

2009-07-10T11:40:00.004-04:00

last night b and i went to a reception dinner to welcome the new regional managing co-operative district chief financial directing big boss. so what i made up that title, not like anyone ever really knows what those guys do anyway. the guy seems nice enough though, despite what i initially thought of him based purely on a picture.

the funny part was that the dinner was held at the estate where i work. so there we were, all dressed up in a room of 200 plus white collar, conservative, finance people, and i was busy bullshitting with the waitstaff. although i have to say that many of them didn't recognize me with my hair down and no chef whites on, so i had to have that awkward 'oh yeah it's me, i showered' conversation a few times.

but more importantly, i have to say that last night taught me a very, very valuable lesson. i learned exactly what type of old lady i do not want to become.

to be fair, this lesson actually started on tuesday morning when i was in traffic court. the sweet little old gal sitting next to me, someone's grandmother, seemed so helpless and scared about how to talk to the officer about her ticket. she kept leaning in to ask me what to do next, because i look like the kind of criminal who's seen the inside of a courtroom a few times yet is still reasonably approachable.

maybe she's psychic, but i was happy to answer her questions, hoping to make her experience a little less intimidating.

that is, until she began her relentless onslaught of fart bombs. i think she may have been having flashbacks to the first world war, and her subconscious released her own version of lethal gas to protect herself from any possible attackers.

she shrouded me with her clouds of stink, and still looked me in the eye to ask about when to stand up and talk to the cop.

devious as a black widow, masterful in her craft of luring you in just to poison you while you innocently offer advice, she was a rattlesnake in the grass, coiled and ready to strike. no granny, i do not want to be like you when i get old. it seems you have cornered the market on sweet and deadly, i could never dream of following in your footsteps.

she wasn't even the worst of the old lady gang.

last night i had the pleasure of sitting next to old secretary lady, who's biggest offense was the pearl-sized orange ball of ear wax perilously nestled inside her ear, ready to make its escape at the very slightest of head turns.

i tried not to stare.

it was incredibly hard to make small talk with b's other co-workers while at the same time keeping one eye on the crystallized ball of nasty just waiting to roll out onto my miso glazed chilean sea bass and blend right in with the papaya chutney. it was a cruel game. i knew if i wasn't vigilant i would end up eating the wax and be none the wiser.

so naturally i shoveled my food into my gaping mouth as fast as i possibly could so that i could retreat to the ladies room and wrestle with my spanx for about twenty minutes. i figured in that time old secretary lady would have finished her dinner and maybe gotten up to mingle.

i didn't know what i had inadvertently set myself up for.

in the bathroom stall next to me, as i struggled to get my spandexy undies back in place, i had to listen to oversharing old lady making vag farts and ugghhhhh noises. as i barely managed to keep my dinner in my stomach, she proclaimed 'that's how you know the food was goooood!!'

i tried to wash up and exit the restroom before she emerged from the stall, but alas, that was not my fate. no, oversharing lady had to reach right in front of my face to grab a hand towel while i retched silently.

'even these towels are nice here!!' she said with a grin.

i hung my head and ran out the door, never looking back.

and so, with these fine examples laid before my feet, i now know that i will make the effort to become a very different type of old lady. i will smell perpetually of fresh mint leaves and sit in a rocking chair knitting ceaselessly, even in the summers. i will not threaten innocent people with my bodily excretions in any state of matter.

i hereby do declare that i will be a truly harmless old lady. unless of course you try to talk shit about my driving, then i'll be forced to beat you with my cane.

and the winner is... (there's nothing to win, but nothing to lose either)

2009-07-02T10:25:00.006-04:00

i was watching this tv show the other day about a loser. this man is broke, divorced, and lives in a tent in his own backyard. so naturally he attends a seminar on how to employ his natural talents in a profitable way. except that the only innate 'winning tool' this guy could come up with about himself was the fact that he's hung.

right. because the only direction this show can go is for him to become a hooker.

so it got me thinking about what my winning tool was and how i could put it to work for me, without involving prostitution in any way.

the first thing that came to mind is that i'm a decent cook. but then i realized that a million other people can also do that as well. not to mention that i'm lacking both the massive start-up capital and spare hundred hours or so a week needed to ensure that your culinary skills will ultimately become profitable.

i can also knit pretty well. but again, a trillion other people can do that. and i'm way too lazy to maintain an etsy account. besides, i'm also learning that yes, you can have too many throw blankets. and then, maybe i can't knit so well because i can only make things that are square or rectangular. this is what happened when i tried to make a hat for the fuss:

it was a little big.

so what the fuck else am i good at? (besides throwing unnecessary sweary words into sentences)

my moment of clarity has arrived.

i am an awesome negotiator. or i guess you could say i make good bribes. but i like negotiator better, it just sounds slightly more badass.

this is a skill i've had to hone over the years. it wasn't always so sublimely refined as it is today. when i was in college, the power of my skills used to even blow my own mind. like, for example, when i would go out to the bar with a fiver in my pocket and come home wasted and with about thirteen bucks stuffed into my pack of marlboro reds.

there was also the time that my piece of shit nissan sentra exploded on a major interstate, at 11:00 at night, on my birthday, in those dark days before cell phones. somehow i managed to convince the state trooper, who found me crying in a ball fifty feet from my smoldering vehicle, to drive me the forty plus miles to my house instead of following his orders to drop me at the place where they were going to tow my car to. he even let me use the radar thing to clock speeders. it looked like a tv remote from the eighties.

as i matured, so did my ability to reign in my power.

just this morning i successfully convinced the fuss that playing with the maraca i made out of plastic cups, hot pink duct tape, and quinoa is way more entertaining than chewing the nest of wires underneath the desk.

as anyone who's ever had the pleasure of a teething nine-month-old's company can tell you, this is not an easy thing to accomplish.

and if you wanted even more evidence of my winning tool at work, i will now predict that i will become, literally, a winning tool over at yo mama's blog. i'm pretty sure i can convince miss yvonne to send me a care package of insult gum, a handmade card, and maybe some cookies by spreading linky love for all you out there in blogland. i know you want to be a winner too, and you just may be if you head over and check out her contest.

whew. all this talking about myself has tired me out. what about you, dear reader, what's your winning tool*? i ask in part because i care about you and want to get to know you a little better, but also because i want to get some ideas for different ways i can exploit things to make bags of money. alright then, let's hear it.

*please don't creep me out by being perverted. i may be using a dirty pun, but i'm hoping for clean answers.

there's no segue good enough for this mess

2009-06-29T19:31:00.016-04:00

i'm back blog, did you miss me?! whatever, not like i have anything earth shattering to talk about, just a few random stories of weirdness. but before i get started, i have to send a huge thanks to kristine for hooking me up with a funny and nostalgic post and reminding me that my shoulders used to be real bony. and also a hello and thanks for stopping by(!) to the new readers that she may have lured over here with promises of who knows what.

after my much needed mini vaca to cape cod, i returned home to jump right back into my routine of work and more work. saturday night i was catering a wedding for about 300 people. the decor looked strikingly similar to the wedding scene in beetleguese, but the blood red calla lilies and black lamps on the tables wasn't the weird part. what struck me as being a little over the top, not to mention an unnecessary mixing of genres, was the troupe of midgets dressed up as oompa loompas.

those little guys were lingering in the kitchen, watching us plate up 300 pain-in-the-ass tiny little plates of a dessert sampler, in full costume. when i first saw them i almost giggled and clapped, but then i realized just how out of place they were. they didn't talk much. in fact, they all looked extremely bored and put out. maybe that was their defense against the question we were all dying to ask, 'what exactly are you guys going to be doing here?'

i never found out. by the time my boss said 'aqui, chula, take some chickens for your husband' their act had yet to start.

maybe that's for the better anyway, those fuckers always scared the shit out of me in the movie.

as i related the story of my night to b, he reminded me about another uncomfortable food-related situation. it must have been last summer, because i was in that 'i'm so pregnant my baby might come out if i fart too loudly' condition, and also because we were at the hospital for the baby classes. being unable to waddle too far, we ate lunch at the hospital cafeteria. b ordered two hot dogs, thinking that that was a reasonable request.

what he got looked like this:

i know that's a piss poor job of photoshopping two hot dogs into one bun, but it really was the best i could find. no, what b got was actually worse. it was two sorry looking naked dogs nestled into one bun, but they gave him two. so on his plate were two buns and four dogs. the chick behind the counter looked at him like he had three heads when he asked for two more buns.

the real humor was the fact that he ate the weird dogs out of desperate hunger.

he felt so dirty afterwards, like as if someone had made him watch a bad porn or something else comparably naughty.

he made me promise not to tell anyone that he really ate the weird dogs.

sorry b.

even more bizarre than the double dog incident was the first time i met bill murray.

bill is a good friend of the restaurateur i used to work for. he was in and out of the different kitchens of the restaurants my former boss owned, and he even showed up to our summer picnic one year and played on our softball team.

as you can imagine, he's a total wacko in person. not only does he look about thirty years older than he really is, but he dresses in those old polyester blazers and shirts that look like the stereotypical garb an old, bumbling geezer would wear. i don't know if it's a deliberate effort or not, but it only adds to his oddball persona that he's developed over the years.

so the first time i met him i was working at my station, getting ready for dinner service. i was so intent on chopping scallions or whatever the fuck it was that i didn't even see him until he was about four inches from my face on the other side of the pass line (the shelf where you put plates for pick up). my boss introduced me to him and he mumbled something indiscernible and stuck two fingers at me through the pass, at about chin height.

two fingers for me to shake in some weird alternate version of a handshake.

i didn't even want to touch him, i almost yelled out loud 'what the fuck?!'

but i saw my boss nod subtly at the fingers and i just took a deep breath and did it. i shook his fingers and said some 'nice to meet you' crap, all the while wondering if this was something he did with everyone, or did he think that i couldn't handle exposure to all five digits on his right hand.

not that i dislike the man, but come on. two fingers?!

i still feel like scowling and shifting my weight uncomfortably when i think about it.

and now, some cuteness for a little balance:

little miss was way too annoyed about not being able to crawl after the dead jellyfish washed up on the beach to co-operate for a nice photo shoot. but these two in their tankinis was worth me stepping on a little dirty jelly and slimey seaweed.

of course, getting trapped by a rapidly rising tide with a stroller laden like a packing mule might have been a little too much. thanks miss, for at least not protesting to being carted over an acre of beach rocks while mommy scrambled for saftey.

I Love Kristine the Best*

2009-06-24T07:00:00.001-04:00

HEY EVERYBODY!

It's me, Kristine! From Wait in the Van?

Sigh. Moving along.

I had a really great idea about what to write for Lana's blog today, but I had the idea at night right before I fell asleep. And I am SO not one of those people who keeps a pen a paper on her nightstand. Hell, I don't even really have a nightstand; it's more like a cardboard box. So, instead I tell myself, "Oh, hell yes, that's hilarious Kristine! You're so amazing and funny and gorgeous and skinny...and....SNORE." Then I forget.

So I went through some of my crap. You know, that I keep in my cardboard-box-nightstand, and I found THIS:

And I figured, since Lana's out of town and all, we could totally talk about her behind her back! HA! And by that, I mean, she'll totally be in the loop and reading it and listening and shit because this is HER blog. So it'll be pretty much just pretend. And full of love. Because we love Lana. And that part's NOT pretend. YAY! Rainbows!

This picture was probably taken in like 1996 or something. We were apparently sitting on the floor in my bedroom in the house my family rented during my middle-high school years. It was the only free-standing house I lived in until I graduated from college. Don't you feel sorry for me?

Well don't, because we're here for LANA. I like this picture so much because it captures quite a bit of what defined us as angsty teen punk shitheads. I mean, do you SEE my room? And those clothes? Including the shirt I'm actually wearing? Sal's Boutique, baby**. We were all class.

Also, I'm not wearing my glasses. Neither is Lana. Big deal, right? Probably contact lenses! Um, no. More like, probably we thought we were cool enough to walk around blind because SEEING ISN'T REALLY A BIG DEAL. And if we were in fact wearing contacts, Lana's were probably covered in fungus (changing them is optional) and mine had probably fallen off my eyeball. Hey, dry eyes also happen without herbal supplement, smart alecs.

This was also the house where I considered myself cool enough to throw a party while my parents were away. And by "throw a party" I mean, invite a full band to set up in my living room and let the place get totally out of control while I get tipsy on 2.5 beers. When my mother came home the next afternoon, she found an empty in the oven, the heat cranked to 80, and a missing block of mozarella cheese. We really knew how to party.

So, let's cheers to Lana, the cheese-loving-contact-abusing-formerly-man-clothes-wearing blogger who is totally vacationing WITHOUT ME right now.

Love her.

__________

*You can tell this is not written by Lana because it's properly capitalized and stuff. So I don't feel all that badly for making her pretend to declare her love for me.

**Um, or you could also call it The Salvation Army Thriftstore.

i forget what sunshine looks like

2009-06-22T17:29:00.002-04:00

tomorrow i will be on my way to the beach. except that i probably won't spend much time at the beach with all this never ending rain and unsummery cold air.

little miss and i are road-tripping it to visit some fam out by cape cod. i may yet still parade her around in her new pink and white polka dot tankini, because i don't foresee another beach trip before she outgrows that piece. and also because my cousin bought her daughter the same one so of course we've been talking about them playing together in matching tankinis for about two months now.

suck it up girlies, parents are allowed to make you uncomfortable for their own entertainment, that's what you're here for. and besides, playing in the rain is almost like swimming in the ocean, right? close enough.

oh, and let's not forget about the concert i will subject my kid to on the three plus hour drive. i never could carry a tune, but i sure can have fun car singing. at least she'll sleep through half of it, and when she is awake for my singing, she can't talk yet so i don't have to worry about any verbal objections.

my set list might include some of the following, in no particular order:

- the entire we are scientists album, starting with this one

- weezer, circa the blue album. i can never have too much of a good thing.

- anything by ryan adams.

- the shout out louds, playing this one no less than four times

of course once we get to the lovely land of the green monster, i will promptly turn off the music, roll down my windows (no matter what the weather) and blast the yankees game on the radio. unless they're losing, then i'll just mutter about it to myself.

and that's basically all i need for a good road trip. luckily i have an ipod full of 90s rock so i'm sure i'll find plenty of soundgarden, smashing pumpkins, and toadies thrown into my lineup as well.

as for little miss, how could she not enjoy that? actually, the way i see it, i'm doing her a favor by not playing boring classical or dreadfully repetitive children's music in the car. i think she's only pretending to like 'i've been working on the railroad' anyway.

one thing i know little miss does love, is kristine and her masterful paint skills (and also my segue skills), so it only felt natural that she should guest blog here at the pearl hiding spot while i'm away. i personally think k is hilarious, and i think most of you already read her blog, but for those of you who don't, you should. go here. but also, come back here, please.

i can't vouch for content, but i'm pretty sure there will be words and there may or may not be a picture posted in my absence sometime this week.

i shall return, hopefully with some interestingness this weekend, perhaps with an update on hook-up chef. happy first week of summer y'all!!

bambi doesn't want to see your junk, and neither do i

2009-06-19T08:42:00.010-04:00

i love to go hiking, whether by myself, with monster by my side, or just with some friends. i have been to many local parks and mountains nearby over the course of my years and have almost always enjoyed the feeling of being close to nature.

there was that one incident at weird mountain, but that's not where i'm going with this today.

no, today i'd like to talk about how hiking can be a pleasant experience, with your clothes on.

this morning, the one article that jumped out of my monitor and slapped me in the face was the one in which i read 'hikers who prefer clothes are not happy.'

now, i'm all about letting people decide whatever lame annual events they want to participate in, but just because there's a naked hiking day, doesn't mean that you can hate on me for wanting to walk through the woods with my clothes on.

i love natural crap as much as the next person, but you'll never find me using the summer solstice as an excuse to pretend i'm chilling with pan or diana, traipsing around in the buff.

and don't even try to pull that whole 'but it's easier to spot deer ticks' argument with me either. i can check for ticks just fine by pulling up my pant leg.

no, you silly nude hikers, you have no grounds to label me. in fact, it is i who can call you names. how about pedophile? do you like that one? because that's what you're going to be known as if someone spies your junk swinging in the breeze if they happen to be out hiking with their children.

if communing with nature was something that made you feel strongly enough to free yourself of your material shell on one specific day, than perhaps you should look into one of those off-the-grid habitats where your blatant disregard for social norms will be more accepted. that way you can go all out, literally i guess, if you wanted to.

and now, because i can, i will show you some pics of hiking + clothes + happiness.

even monster is smiling in these pics. you can't argue with that happiness.

fried = fancy

2009-06-17T09:00:00.007-04:00

what do four culinary school graduates do for fun in their spare time? curious you should ask, i was just about to tell you anyway.

what we definitely don't do is go to trendy restaurants and analyze the various components and techniques used in our meals. instead we get together at places like this where it's ok to throw your peanut shells on the floor and the house specialty is fried pickles.

oh yes. you heard that right, fried pickles, and they're fucking fantastic.

sometimes it's the ease of junk food that lets people enjoy themselves more than the expectation of culinary wonders ever could.

you can have your fancy dressing-up and sterling flatware and countless courses of tiny things. i'll always prefer foods that can be eaten with one hand allowing me to hold a beer in the other.

i think that's what the marketing suits had in mind behind this gem:

the 'big az chicken' can be found in corner stores all over this great land of ours. its simplicity lends a hand in its success. sometimes, people just want a big ass chicken sandwich.

how could you argue with that logic?

and now, if you'll excuse me, i'm off to work where i will prepare thousands of hor d'ourves for people all dressed up in uncomfortable clothes.

i miss you too!

2009-06-14T11:03:00.006-04:00

hi blog! it'sa meeeee, maaaaaaaaaarriiiooooo!!! no, it's not. it's just plain old me, no cartoon plumber in sight.

it's been a while since we've spent some quality time together. i'm starting to feel like you're another kid that i have to take care of and nurture and shit. fuck that, i have enough responsibility in my life. i need to get back to the way things used to be, where we could tell silly stories and just enjoy a few laughs. no pressure.

over the past week there were a few things that i wish i could have shared with you, but for some reason i don't think i could get it together enough to spend more than five minutes at my computer. and when i did manage to find my way to the internet, it was only to play my neverending scrabble battle.

i thought for sure i was going to be able to write a nice cohesive post about safety coffins and those wackos out in arizona who buried themselves alive to see what it would feel like. talking about how bullshit it was that they had flashlights and sleeping bags in the graves would have done all the work for me.

instead, i'll just give you a picture.

then there's also the story about my unfortunate luck to be in the walk-in at work, carefully placing chives and chervil in their appropriate homes, at the exact moment that two of my coworkers decided a giant refrigerator was the perfect place to have a little secret sexy time.

there's no picture of that.

although, the respective spouses of the two in heat might appreciate a little photo evidence should they decide to go ahead with any divorces.

additionally, i think my dog might be spending some time doing things that i don't even want to imagine. $300 for the vet to tell us that his stank ear is caused by a thriving community of yeast feels like a punch in the babymaker. she gave us doggie monistat 7 and sent our little monster packing.

on a lighter note, perhaps the highlight of the week may have been when b came home from the gym, exceptionally proud of himself for his renewed commitment, claiming that 'in two months my muffin-tops are gonna be gone, son!'

and of course i have to throw some bloggy love to beckybecks who made me a lovely pic of her face on a stick body with huge tatas. we all know how i feel an unbridled kinship to any chick with huge tatas, those things are ridiculously hard to corral sometimes, i feel your pain becky! and thanks for the awesome pic!

so there it is, blog. i'll make a little more effort to not neglect you and maybe you could meet me in the middle somehow. i don't really know what that means, so i'm going to give you a day or two to figure it out.

love always,

your mom.

no gun show today folks

2009-06-11T20:02:00.000-04:00

i used to get embarrassed easily, now i just get annoyed and cry.

this morning i had a meltdown in my car. i sat there, annoyed at myself for getting all worked up again. i knew that if i bothered b at work i'd hear 'why can't you pretend you're linda hamilton and you're going to kick some machine ass?! you need to be a little tougher sometimes and not so high-strung.'

instead i called the toyota dealership and cried to the service manager. and now i've come full circle because i'm extremely embarrassed about it.

i don't know about where anyone else lives, but here in the good ol' hudson valley we've had about five straight days of rain. normally, i find the rain to be refreshing, even comforting, as the sound of water drumming the leaves outside my window will often lull me to sleep.

rain takes a turn for the meaner side of irony, however, when your overpriced, gas-guzzling suv has a busted sunroof.

for the past three days i have been battling mother nature to spare the interior of my spacious vehicle. at three am last night i was convinced that my plastic wrap + garbage bag + towel contraption was the most brilliant idea i'd ever had.

and then i saw things in the light (greyness) of day.

i used to love that sunroof. its wide expanse provided me with a fresh, invigorating breeze after spending twelve hours working in a hot kitchen with nothing more than a pair of ceiling vents circulating the recycled air. there was always the issue of the bitchin' rectangle of arm-tan i'd have to work hard to avoid, constantly remembering to wear tank tops for a drive longer than 15 minutes, but aside from that no major complaints.

so now karma is having her fun with me. not only did my ass get sopping wet (through a towel) on the drive to the dealership, but i've been given a death-trap to drive for a week while they exorcise the demons controlling the sunroof positioning. the flashy yaris sport is eerily similar to the smartshitcar that i have bemoaned in the past.

when i installed the infant car seat, i noticed it was wiggling to and fro as if it were on roller skates and the backseat were a slick, polished surface instead of pleathery upholstery. luckily, little miss didn't seem to mind in the least. babies can be so accommodating sometimes.

returning home to find no viable parking and having to lug a twenty pound infant and all of her crap up an enormous hill to my front door was the icing on my day. i gave in and called b, if only to have him keep me from crying again.

he promptly told me that if i wanted a handicapped parking spot right in front of our door he'd be happy to take the yaris and run over my legs, hopefully rendering me a parapalegic and so in need of special treatment. b's always been good at giving me a little perspective on things.

on the plus side, i plan on falling asleep to the sound of the rain tonight.

friday fiver

2009-06-05T11:08:00.005-04:00

here's a fiver for you. things i can say to my awesome kid:

1. yes honey, mommy can eat brownies for breakfast because i was so good at not cleaning
(i also just told miss yvonne this one over at her awesome super special place yo mama's blog, the best place on the internet for wolverine claw action.)

2. no, monster's butthole is not where our fingers go

3. stop looking so cute when the asshole neighbor walks by, the last thing mommy wants to do is be fake nice any more than she has to

4. yay for blasting some muse instead of napping! (loudloudloud!!)

5. when i get old i'm so going to shit my pants and smile at you and clap while you wipe my ass

finis.

this post is a way for me to not post anything of substance

2009-06-05T08:12:00.005-04:00

ok kiddies, the time has come. bananaman will now be making himself comfortable at the following locations:

the yellow factor because jerrod loves bananas (and hanukkah)!!

either dibbly fresh or get a pencil and your casebook, both owned and operated by sadako. or i guess it's entirely possible that bananaman might like her so much that he'd hang at both her spots, but that's ultimately going to be his decision.

and lastly, i have to say that i offered up bananaman in what i thought was a fair trade to trodo over at diamond pewpin carnivore, but alas, she has yet to come and claim him. i don't want him to end up in a loveless home where he's not wanted. i'm not a bananaman pusher after all. so trodo, if you want him, he's here waiting for you.

and i think i may just have to show my true affection for the purple shirt wearing bananaman and place him here as well.

i hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, as i know i'm sure to sleep better knowing i'll always have a banana friend should i need one.

it's not cheating if it's imaginary

2009-06-04T13:49:00.003-04:00

if i was single, and i could date a grocery store, it would be you stop & shop. not only do you have all the really great organic and all natural foodstuffs, but you sir, are quite the charmer.

flattery will get you very far with me. and if you happen to be a corporate food retailer, spread throughout multiple states, sending me fancy letters about how valued i am (my business is) will make me blush and say 'oh, you' with such convincing faux modesty that you will soon find me throwing myself at you in uncontrollable fits of passion.

that was your intended response, right?

either way, i am so filled to the brim with love for the fact that you appreciate me, dear stop & shop, that i decided that i should pay it forward. i'm going to put the fancy bananaman you gave me to good use. his toothy smile and purple smoking jacket/hawaiian shirt covered in your emblem shall live on forever on the internet, perpetually brightening the day of those who are fortunate enough to gaze upon him.

behold bananaman:

i know how badly you all want his sexiness to grace your sidebar. he's a friendly guy, ask nicely and i'm sure he'll come hang with you.

i'm a sadist*, now with more evidence

2009-06-03T07:35:00.000-04:00

yesterday i was struck by the realization that there are not nearly enough drive-through coffee places around. as i was out with little miss, the last thing i wanted to do was strap her in, unbuckle, re-strap, and repeat more than was absolutely necessary. she doesn't even like coffee so it's not like i could bribe her to make it easier to take.

but after ultimately successfully pouring a hot cup of love in a dirty gas station while holding a wiggling baby in one arm, i felt pretty damn impressed with myself.

that is, until i got home.

upon returning from my day's activities, i spied the biggest, baddest, meanest wasp of all time buzzing about on my kitchen window screen. so naturally the first thing i did was grab a cup and something to slide under the cup. i trapped that mother so fast it didn't even know what was going on.

i set the angry wasp on the counter and weighted the glass with a lemon. it looked like this:

i giggled and clapped a little.

the wasp got angrier and flew into the glass repeatedly, methodically making it's way up and down, around its clear prison wall.

i love when i can trap bugs who think they're faster than me. i'll show you wasp, how many breaths do you have left little fella? better stop your squealing** before it's too late.

the next thing i did was run over to my computer and type b a little note:

me: when you come home i have something special waiting on the counter for you

b: uh-oh. is it a bug trapped under a glass?

me: hahaha (translate to evil cackle) it is!! it's a giant wasp!

b: oh :( i was hoping you were going to say it was beef wellington.

(no creative license needed, this was our exact conversation)

my standard procedure with bugs i find in the house is this:

1. try to get monster to eat the bug

if that fails (or is likely to fail), i then

2. trap bug under a glass and then put something on top of the glass just to make sure it's too heavy for any super bug adrenaline rush to move

the end result being that

a. b comes home and disposes of offending bug for me

(OR)

b. the bug dies a horrific death, gasping and wheezing until it finally succumbs to suffocating in a cup of irony, eyes wide open staring blankly at the great world outside of the glass barrier.

well kiddies, b had to work late last night, so guess which fate ol' mr. angry wasp was met with. that's right, he ended up like this:

poor bastard was probably holding his wings and begging for his mommy with his last breath. now if i were standing in the kitchen, waiting for it to finally expire, then i might have a problem. but i was content to only go back in and check a few times so i don't think i need an intervention or anything like that.

*a very special thank you to skitch and mjenks for the correct definition

**it was only screaming in my head

drink if you dare, or if you want to get high

2009-06-02T09:21:00.005-04:00

this morning i sat down to a healthy breakfast of super strong coffee and a (small) handful of jelly bellys to read the local paper. now this rag has been duly mocked for its ridiculous headlines, but every once in a while i will spot something that really hits home to me.

today is was this article. i'll spare you from having to read it, the link is there more to prove i'm not making this up. apparently there were almost 20,000 cases of red bull confiscated because they contained cocaine. now it all makes sense.

as my affinity for coffee may lead you to correctly surmise, i got hooked on caffeine early in my youth. recently i was reading over at children of the 90s about surge, but i have to say i never got into that one. jolt was my gateway drug of choice.

i never did (and still don't) enjoy soda in general because i found the syrupy sweetness only made me more thirsty. but i would down a can of jolt in no time just to get the shakes that i craved so much from caffeine overdose.

once i discovered the magical powers that coffee had for my awful hangover that lasted from when i was nineteen to about twenty four, i was fully dependent. i've never gone back to energy drinks and i can't say i miss them. b, on the other hand, will relish the high that nothing else can bring like a red bull and vodka to an empty stomach.

i knew something had to be unnatural about this combo when the sweet, charming man i knew and loved turned into a raging ball of hate after only about eight large drinks. unfortunately for me, the concert we were attempting to see offered only bud, bud light, and red bull and vodkas. being the beer snob that i am, and unable to handle any liquor whatsoever, i was sullenly sober.

the more b drank, the more i counted down the minutes until we were escorted out of the concert. thanks a lot modest mouse, you sounded great from fucking outside. so as we stood in the street in front of the venue, b's apology came to me in the form of him offering up suicide as a way to garner my forgiveness.

'i'll fucking kill myself for you, is that what you want? look, i'll kill myself on this bus!!' he screamed as he attempted to run into the front end of a parked bus. after he was sure that i was thoroughly impressed with his brazen bus-suicide, he allowed me to put him in the car and drive home.

to this day, i will protest loudly if he even looks in the general direction of a stash of red bull. and now, this very morning, i am vindicated. so what the coke was found in china, it still could end up in american red bull somehow, and for that i feel justified in breaking b's habit. i'm not a nagging wife, i'm a champion of heart health and savior of parked buses in the greater ny metro area.

and now that it's nearly 10 am, i need to go make another pot of coffee for my late morning fix.

my long weekend didn't do much for my writing skills

2009-06-01T00:18:00.001-04:00

i think google is mad at me. i might have pushed it over the edge when i didn't want to look up the proper meaning of sadist vs. masochist.

google feels threatened that i no longer care about finding out the exact meanings of things and that i can live my life happily ever after with unanswered questions floating around in my head.

you know what google, not everyone needs to search things all the time. so stop letting all that shitty junk mail into my inbox to try and make me pay attention to you, or guess what, i'll boycott your ass. i'll start writing real letters and mailing them to people, through the postal service, to read instead of using blogger. i bet that'll make me really popular, and you'll lose all that potential revenue from the ads on my blog. you know, those little unassuming links in my sidebar that usually talk about bed bugs or chinese thongs (thank god we got rid of that one).

and you know what else, google, if that's even your real name, i'm still kinda mad at you for making me have to be invisible every damn day on gchat. marvin's still stalking me. isn't there a setting somewhere that will let me just be invisible to one person? if not, i suggest you get on that piece because it's getting really old having to go through those two extra steps to open a chat window with b while he's at work.

so guess what i'm going to do now, i'm going to do your job for you, stupid google. i'm going to answer some really important and profound questions that were recently posed to me. because everyone knows that if you post questions on your blog i am obsessively compelled to answer, much like a dictionary with tourette's.

my little becky, who hangs out over at i'll go eat worms, was the latest to test this theory. while we haven't been friends for very long, i can say that her poignant probes into the recesses of my mind are truly astounding. and for that, becky, i made you a special present. and also because you love doggies as much as i do. so before i get to the questions, i want to give you this:

thanks becky, for understanding the ups and downs of being a dog owner, and also for making up your own words all the time. i'll completely understand if you don't like my present, and i may or may not steal it back to put on my blog as well.

and off we go:

13. if you were an animal and you couldn't get that eye goop that gets in your eye corners from everyday living or baby zebra killing would that just totally drive you frickin insane? additionally, would you lick the eyegoop out of your cheetah lovah and cheetah baby's eyes because, you know, appearance may not be everything but eyegoop is juss nast? and would you sit butt to face sistee nine style to flick flys off each other with your tails?

eye goop is quite possibly one of the most disgusting things on this planet. i avoid the ones on monster's face at all costs, and leave them to grow and harden to the size of small pebbles until they either fall off from gravity or b sees them and cleans them for me. so no, i will not in any incarnation have anything ever to do with goop.

14. bonus! what is the name of my favorite freckle?

hairy petunia

15. if you had whiskers would you grow them out or would you keep them at a respectable length? can you tell that i'm watching a nature show while writing questions?

what i am starting to think is that you may have confused me with some other cat loving blogger, because i hate cats and all cat things, including whiskers.

16. don't you hate it when t9 is like being a bastard and keeps putting of instead of me or good instead of home? why can't they fix that?

ok, you definitely have me confused with someone else! how could you, becky?! are all my posts about my smelly dog not enough for you to remember me? i mean, i can see how you might make this mistake, kristine is my friend in real land, outside of blogland, and we do sometimes make cross-references to each other. but since we are in fact separate people, when her kid t9 is being a bastard i really don't give a what because he's not mine and i only see him like once a week.

and that shall now conclude this round of 'questions i answer so i don't have to think of something extraordinarily witty to blog about' for today. i will try to bring the clever/originality sometime soon, but no promises.

who's more annoying, me or me?

2009-05-28T13:36:00.000-04:00

i realized this morning that i have this whole weekend off from work. i've been working so many weekends lately that i almost don't even know what to do with three days to myself. sometimes i'm so indecisive that it makes my head hurt, or maybe that's just a natural response to my multiple personalities battling it out in my brain.

either way, it dawned on me that i should probably take advantage of my sybil-esque tendencies and see what fruitful results i can elicit from deep within my psyche. this morning i took a very thorough survey of my peeps to see what they had to say about this whole 'free weekend' situation.

me: hey practicality, what do you think about this weekend? got any good ideas?
p: uh, how about vacuuming up this dirthole you live in for starters? then there's always laundry, grocery shopping, dishes, making baby food, more dishes....
me: yeah, ok i get it. you're boring, who's next?

me: what's up free spirit? what would you do with three days to yourself?
fs: oh hi! well let's see, i might take monster out for a really long hike up in silver mine or maybe even minnewaska. oooh, and i'd have to make sure i brought a notebook to capture any reflections i might be stricken with as i'm surrounded by nature's beauty. i might also want to start planting that garden i've been talking about. i could have all organic vegetables and then have some flowers on the edges to bring some harmony.
me: uh, that all sounds like work to me. i'm trying to not do any work here, maybe next time... i think i see paranoia over there, maybe she has something to offer.

me: paranoia, what the hell are you doing with all this foam padding stuff?
p: oh, just a little babyproofing.
me: um, i don't think monster is going to be very happy with padding on his feet. have you thought this through?
p: oh yes. this is exactly what the book said to do, cover ALL sharp objects in the house, and if you haven't noticed he's got some claws there.
me: o..k... you don't think that's a little extreme? i mean, he still has to walk, and it's not like the baby can get up onto his sleeping chair to mess with them.
p: uh-oh. is it too much? am i over-protecting? is little miss never going to learn to have natural boundaries? are other parents going to think she's spoiled? is she going to be able to make friends in kindergarten? is she...
me: that's enough! i gotta go see something, uh, over there. bye.

me: potty-mouth! you ol' bitchass! it's been too long!! maybe you can help me think of something to do this weekend. whattya got for me?
pm: for fuck's sake, enough with this indecisive bullshit. just get your ass out and do something already. b will be here to watch little miss, so you can go get shitfaced in the middle of the day if you want.
me: oooh that sounds fun! you coming?
pm: fuck that! it's supposed to rain. i don't go anywhere in the rain.
me: well, i can't exactly go out drinking in the middle of the day all alone. it's not that fun to get shitty and talk to myself.
pm: and that's so different from this crap you're pulling right now?
me: right. whatever. fuck off. i'm going to talk to laziness.

me: lazy, you have to have something good for me. no one else has been any help. i just don't know what would be the best way to spend my weekend.
l: go to the beer store, get a sixer of something new, put b on baby duty, and park it on the couch alternating between horror movies and super mario galaxy. done.
me: i knew i saved the best for last for a reason! you are so good at understanding me. how do you always have the right thing to say?
l: i'm really just too lazy for this conversation. can i go nap now?

i think laziness is my new best friend. at the very least, i should definitely listen to her a little more often. oh wait, i think i just did. i was going to make up some fun pictures in paint to illustrate this post, but guess what, i'm too lazy! so my words are all you're going to have, i trust you all to create wonderfully funny and appropriate images in your heads for yourselves.

and now if you'll excuse me, i think i need a nice long nap to help me gear up for all the sitting around i plan on doing this weekend.

i'm the one who likes to hurt things

2009-05-26T20:49:00.004-04:00

i can never remember if it's the sadist or the masochist who likes to be the one inflicting the pain. i thought about looking it up, but we all know how literal google can be. i'm sure even this post is going to be enough to make the little men who live inside my computer run and tell all their little computer dwelling friends that i like weird mean porn. which may or may not be true, but that isn't exactly what i'm talking about in this particular instance.

so if you will please picture me the james spader to maggie gyllenhaal in 'the secretary' i will continue with this warped train of thought i have somehow embarked on.

really though, i'm talking about how i like to dehydrate all my house plants and then bring them back to life at the very last minute.

behold my sad little christmas cactus.

this baby has been sitting on my kitchen windowsill for over a year now. i think the last time i watered it was sometime in early march, there was definitely still snow on the ground.

i wash dishes in that kitchen every day, for no less than two hours a day (not all at once). i look into the pink ceramic pot and know that the thick, fleshy leaves of the plant are yearning for me to be the one to save it from certain death. we're not talking about neglect here, i don't forget to water it. i choose not to water it. i say 'oh plantie, you're fine. you have the very word 'cactus' in your name, that's got to count for something. hang in there til tomorrow, maybe i'll feel differently about you then. by the way, nice flower.'

but i never do.

until this morning, when b said 'LANA! throw this gross dead plant out already!!'

i obligingly answered 'sure honey, i'll do it today.'

but after he had left for work and i went into the kitchen to do the deed, i knew i was only fooling myself. i promptly drenched the dry soil with a hearty dose of tap water and put it back on my windowsill. i've seen it get way worse than this before. i give it a good 36 hours before it bounces back to its usual state of not-so-sadly-surviving.

now the planties in the living room are getting jealous. it's almost like they can smell the water that their fellow prisoner/companion was fortunate enough to receive this day. their leafy tendrils are pointing this way as i type, reaching out for me. the little bead bugs i once so delicately placed in their pots to spread some cheer have now mustered what strength they have left, uniting in a desperate attempt to force me to care for their plant-hosts.

i won't cave. not tonight, do your worst bead bugs.

(and then tomorrow b will read this post and then be all 'yeah! those ones in the living room are gross too! when are you gonna get rid of them! why do you even have plants in the first place?')

well b, i'll tell you why, because i'm a masochist (or a sadist, whatever).

if i knew how to make a fancy fireworks display, i would do so now

2009-05-22T08:53:00.008-04:00

at this very moment i find myself succumbing to the inevitable boob sweat that will plague me for the rest of my days, and also to the fact that during my brief respite from everyday busy-ness i will end up sitting at my computer chugging coffee like it's going out of style.

on this cheery sunshiney morning i can only think about how amazingly awesome it's going to be to have b around for a long holiday weekend. and since i should be doing something else instead of blogging right now, i will offer up a small list of things to look forward to this weekend:

1. not working with dick chef (sexist asshole who won't let me get near a heat source because that's for menfolk)

2. any and all time spent with family so that i can pass off the baby and drink a shit ton of beer in the middle of the afternoon

3. getting out of the house and away from monster's incessant barking and therefore not have to hear myself yell 'shut the fuck up you stupid mongrel' every five minutes

4. eating more hot dogs than i want to count

5. allowing myself to pretend that someday i'll be able to own the boat i've always wanted and picture myself out on the river basking in the sun (as i watch every other assclown in the hudson valley out on their boats that they probably don't even appreciate as much as i would)

6. finally getting a pedicure so that when i wear my flip flops you're blinded by fluorescent orange nailpolish and don't notice how big my big toe really is (or how sad my little nubbin of a pinky toe is)

and i think that might be more than i can handle this weekend, but i'm damn sure going to try. i know this holiday is really about commemorating those that have given their lives in battle, but there are plenty of americans who may not have died but gave of their lives when needed. on that note, i want to thank my brother, a veteran of the iraqi war, and all others for doing what i know i never could. THANKS FOR BEING STRONG FOR ALL OF US!!!

this post shouldn't even exist

2009-05-20T08:44:00.011-04:00

i wasn't even going to post anything today, yet here i am type, type, typing away. i have a trillion things to do before leaving for work today, not the least of which may or may not include letting monster loose to attack the man who insists on playing with his remote control car right outside my window.

before i do that, i can easily take a few minutes to tell you all about this little gadgety thing i saw on kristine's blog this morning. it's called wordle, and it takes your most commonly used words from your text and makes a cute little arrangement for you. since something new is better than nothing at all, i thought i'd try it. (and no, it's not stealing post ideas if she encouraged people to do it. which, by the way, you should do it too, it's fun.)

here's my compilation: *

(click here to see julius ceasar in full battle regalia, or maybe just a bigger version of my wordle)**

so, i'm not really surprised to see 'really' making such a loud statement in this collage, but i am wondering why 'so' isn't front and center, considering i have a really, really bad habit of starting off sentences with 'so...'.

who knows, maybe the little guys inside my computer who run around picking up words and throwing them back down randomly forgot all about 'so' because it's so little. at least they didn't forget 'assclowns'. that's one of my favorites.

or maybe the little computer guys are obsessed with any word that starts with the letter 'a'. it seems there's a disproportionate amount of a-words in this wordle. they even grabbed the abbreviation a's (for the oakland athletics-worst baseball team name ever). i guess i should take the hint and change up my writing a little bit. there's only so much i can write about appetite addiction or adventurous attention.

i always did have a problem with excessive alliteration.

now that i've sufficiently wasted another seventeen minutes reading up on mr. linky, i think i just need to stop where i am and leave nature to take its course. i wanted to see if i could pull off adding that piece here so that you could all link your wordles to me, but i guess i should have known it wasn't going to happen before i even started. i don't think i'll ever get all that html crap anyway. well, the thought was there, and that should count for something.

*i'm sorry this picture is so small. i have no idea how to make it bigger and now i really need to go get ready or i'll be late and unprepared for work and then i'll get fired and then i'll lose my home and then my kid will starve. fuck you wordle! no really, it is kind of fun, if you can manage to get the right size to show up. any helpful hints?

**if you really wanted to humor me, you can click on the link. i know, i probably wouldn't either, it's ok.

eat at your own risk

2009-05-19T08:38:00.008-04:00

there's nothing wrong with being sexually adventurous, but there's definitely some lines that i won't cross. the biggest taboo for me is the mixing of food and sex.

these two acts, once merely for survival, have often become intertwined and co-mingled in a way that i will never feel comfortable with. i like to savor the taste of a well-prepared meal, or enjoy a delicious dessert, on a plate. i prefer any sexual encounter to be as far removed from the kitchen as possible.

but there are some folks out there who would call me prude, or at the very least, tell me that i can't knock it til i try it. all i can say to that is you can have your whipped cream bikinis and sushi served on a woman wearing nothing more than lotus leaves, i'm too much of a purist to taint one pleasure with another. and how do you really, really know what you're getting yourself into? humans can carry around some nasty little surprises that may only become visible when it's way too late for you to do anything about it. before any of you guys get too excited, ask yourself, is this thick, rich whipped cream just masking genital warts and maybe some crabs? or perhaps, think twice before using your chopsticks near the sushi woman's too-perky breasts, lest you cause her implant to rupture, spilling boob juices onto your spicy tuna maki.

thinking about eating, licking, or otherwise consuming food from another person's body, no matter how physically attractive they may be, is so repulsive to me that i can't help but shudder and make that 'bleeecchhh' sound.

body shots are right up there as well. you might argue that if the liquor is strong enough, say moonshine as opposed to peach schnapps, there might actually be some sanitizing going on there to make ingesting fluid off of someone's body seem not so bad. and you may be right, but i will not be the one to test that theory.

this whole topic may seem a bit out of the blue for me, but the truth is, it's been prompted by what i consider to be one of the most disturbing advertisements i've ever seen.

there's so many levels of wrong here, white castle. the weird shadowy, smokey lighting, the pig stripper taking pleasure in covering herself in the sauce, and the fact that she knows she's performing for a crowd who's captivated by her sexy dance. eeww. but the part that really gets to me, the part where i have to say 'that's enough of this food porn!' and quickly change the channel, is when the guy licks the sauce off the paper bag from his finger and then nods his head, acknowledging his pleasure.

it's too much for me. i need a hot, steamy shower to clean all the icky off.

my work is never done

2009-05-18T09:02:00.007-04:00

this weekend i actually worked two shifts. that's a huge step for me, my usual being about one shift every two weeks. i have to say, it definitely is hard work, but sometimes a girl just needs to get out of the house and in front of a hot oven or deep fryer to really appreciate all that life has to offer.

the burning pain in my legs that i've been experiencing since yesterday morning leads me to believe that i've actually been using some muscles, to walk around and stuff, which can never be a bad thing. i've also begun to collect more of the horizontal burn lines on the middle of the inner forearm from hot sheet pans. these lines are almost like the rings of a tree trunk, the amount you have indicates the length of time you've been working. up until this weekend, i only had two.

working for an enormous catering company when i'm not pregnant also means that my appetite will return to that of a normal cook, i.e., nonexistent. spending ten-twelve hours a day handling food, even if it's the most gourmet shit i've ever seen, makes me want to ingest nothing more than an ice cold sam adams summer ale. which, of course, the bartenders are way too stingy with so i have to settle for a few gallons of coffee. so hopefully i'll shed the last 25 pounds of baby weight in no time with my new diet of caffeine and air.

another fun thing about working more is that i get to come home and see what random goings-on b has managed to capture on camera. i don't know about all of you, but this weekend we had another one of those obnoxiously loud thunderstorms that should have lasted only an hour but stuck around for about two days. oh and just a warning for future reference, flip flops plus flooding rains is not a safe combination. right, so i was trying to introduce this lovely photographic evidence of monster's new favorite hiding spot during a thunderstorm. it used to be here, but it seems that sometimes a dog just needs a little more security, and nothing says 'you're safe here buddy' like a bathtub.

(i don't know how to make that writing not blurry so you're just going to have to deal with it)

on that note, i before i go scrub the shit out of my tub, i really would like some input on a question i had not too long ago. i never really got a second opinion about this, and i'm still very curious. if a bathroom cleaner is so strong that it makes me headachy, and the roof of my mouth and the back of my throat burn for about five hours after using it, does that mean that i shouldn't give my baby a bath in a tub that i just cleaned with that cleaner, or does it just work really, really well?

i'm going to use it anyway, i guess i just wanted someone to tell me that it's ok and that little miss won't develop a skin condition from chemical exposure.

my baseball post

2009-05-15T09:33:00.004-04:00

you may not know this about me, but i grew up in a family of baseball fanatics. there was no other sport that we even paid attention to. when i was about eight years old, and my brother about six, no one could top ol' donnie baseball in our minds. darryl strawberry on the mets and jose canseco on the a's were up there too. we don't need to tarnish that childhood memory with where they ended up, so i'm just going to move along here.

now, with b being a mets fan, we enjoy a mutual love for our ny baseball teams. we still have to make it out to visit the new stadiums sometime this summer, although i have to say that i'm a little superstitious because every single time i've been to the old yankee stadium the guys lose. i might be a hex.

my point with all this is that i was super annoyed to read this crap in my local paper this morning about how they're auctioning off the fucking clumps of dirt from the old stadium.

i mean, i always kind of looked the other way when ticket prices kept going up and up and up. it's entertainment, and if that's the price you have to pay to enjoy it, so be it. but selling clumps of grass and pieces of a busted wall that that douche kevin brown punched a hole in, just to make a buck?

i can't decided who's the biggest tool, the yanks for looking at $$, the assclowns who pay for this stuff, or me for getting annoyed about it all when i really should have seen it coming a mile away.

you asked for it

2009-05-15T07:54:00.000-04:00

well it seems like only four people wanted to play this little game, which made it easier for me, less questions and all. the rules are simple: post the answers, describe how to pass along the meme in that post, and make your own questions (or borrow) for the people who want you to interview them.

i made up a lot of these questions myself, but i definitely did find some online that i either borrowed or adapted. and now, without further ado...

kristine:

1. why do you prefer glasses to contacts, despite the occasional lisa loeb comparison?

2. would you rather swim in a pool, the ocean, or the hudson river?

3. using your porn name (first pet + street you grew up on) as the main character, please give a brief summary of the movie about your life.

4. why does the drive through atm have braille on the keypad?

5. is it possible to have a relapse to your windex smell addiction?

jerrod:

1. have you ever played hot dog bush? if not, please go play it now and tell me what your high score is.

2. if you were in hell and got really mad at someone, where would you tell them to go?

3. if you could be anything in a grocery store, what would you be and why? (i got asked this once on a job interview and it freaked me out. like, has someone ever said 'pickles. i'd like to be a jar of pickles.'??)

4. which is better, being the youngest, middle, oldest, or only child? which were you?

5. what nickname have you been called that you hate the most?

erin:

1. did you ever find out who wrote you that really mean email? would you respond if you did?

2. can you convert your headband pattern to knit for me if i promise not to sell them?

3. what color would a smurf turn if it were choking?

4. do you sing more in the car or in the shower? what, if any, accompanying dance moves do you employ while singing?

5. what was the last item you re-gifted?

miss.chief:

1. what anagrams can you make with your name (real or pseudonym) and which is your favorite?

2. what's the difference between a crocodile and an alligator, and which do you prefer?

3. if you absolutely had to kill a spider, as opposed to putting it on a spoon and setting it free outside, would you give the spider a eulogy and a proper burial? how would you sum up that spider's life?

4. why does your kit kat clock's mustache bother me WAY more that his shifty eyes?

5. what was the last randomly gross/potentially lethal thing you saw while walking to the bus stop?

that's all i've got. i look forward to reading all of your answers, now if you'll excuse me i think i just saw monster lick his junk and is now heading towards the baby....

from me to you

2009-05-14T07:50:00.006-04:00

alright, i'm going to get this out and then drop it: despite the weird tone of my last two posts, i am completely happy (as in not depressed) and not trying to change anything about myself. i've had 29 years to accept that i will always have the wrong thing to say at the wrong time, and that's that. i'm so awkward that even when i was trying to make fun of myself it sounded like i was sad. but thank you to those well-wishers and supporters, i'm here for you guys!

soooooooooo, on a lighter note, the mysteriously modest writer miss.chief has been ever so kind to me for most of my, albeit short, blogging venture. most recently she has supplied me with something to post about today and save all of you from reading another borderline 'does she need a psychological evaluation?' post. and for that miss.chief, i made you a special present. i don't know if i can call it an award because i made it just for you and usually the awards are ones that you pass on to others, but if you did pass it along that would be fun too. behold the magic of paint:

thanks for always getting it, and for never having writer's block.

so the rules of this mini-meme are that i have to answer the five questions that she has written for me. then to pass it on, anyone who wants to be interviewed can write 'interview me' in the comments section. the first five people to do this will get five individual questions from me to post about. so really, this meme is a two-fer. tomorrow i will post the questions and then i'm off the hook til monday.

i'm going to warn you now, i'm in a very chatty mood at the moment.

1. What in the hell does your blog name even mean? (the pearl one)

since i'm exceptionally bad at describing myself (hence the one-liner 'about me'), kristine suggested i use a line from a song i like as my blog title. i usually shy away from discussing what music/movies/tv/etc. i like because you can make a case for or against pretty much everything, and i hate futile arguments. but today i will tell you that the line is from a ryan adams song and goes '...with her father on amphetamines, her mother hides the pearls...' i fucking LOVE me some ryan adams, and that's all i'm going to say about that. (unless someone tells me that it's copyright infringement to use a fragment from a song and then i'll delete this post and deny any connection whatsoever).

2. Has the pancake shirt caused you to vomit yet? Please answer in the form of a question, jeopardy style.

what is, i don't think that's possible. upon receipt of said pancake shirt i promptly washed the cat hairs off so that monster could proceed to cover it with dog hairs and make the shirt feel welcome in my wardrobe. i eat pancakes for dinner sometimes when there's no food left and i'm too lazy to go grocery shopping. pancakes = night off from real cooking, so they make me happy.

3. Have you ever seen the CSI episode where the guys dies from allergies, getting shot with an arrow, drowning, a snake bite, and getting hit in the head with a crowbar but then they have to say he died from a heart attack or something? it's my favorite.

what the...?? i request a new question, that's a rip-off. it's just a yes or no, and therefore leaves me much less opportunity to talk about myself. but anyways, i DID see that ep and it was actually a whole season edited into 43 minutes.

4. Why can humans move their eyes in opposite directions toward their nose but not away from their nose?

actually, some humans can do this. my physics professor in college could do this every day, but i don't think it was intentional. he was big and round and had this cloud-like greyish-whitish beard that connected with his hair and he looked just like santa. we called him professor santa and he really liked it, he would always smile and have this deep, jovial laugh that made you just want to hug him.

5. Don't look this up: what does ROFL mean again?

omg, lol!! i TOTALLY know this one now. it means really old (and) fucking lame. at least that's what i'll say to anyone who uses that crap with me.

i know you want to play now.

and now before i go, it's time for one last teeny weeny present. this one is dedicated to my bestest pal of, holy shit i can't believe it's been that long, 18 years. we go all the way back to mr. stern's math class in seventh grade. thanks kristine, for always being there to help and for always understanding me. this one's for you:

try, try again

2009-05-13T07:47:00.002-04:00

i'm going to try really hard here to not look like i'm trying really hard to not sound like a mommy blogger. the point is this, yes i have a kid and yes i spend most days with her as opposed to adult company, but as much as i am immersed in kiddie culture at home i do like to think that i have other things to talk about.

right, so that's when i re-read some of the things i've written and upon realizing that they're about my kid's toys or poop or cute faces, or about my dog's toys or poop because he may as well be a mentally challenged toddler (is that pc?), i got annoyed with myself.

but then the other day i was reading sally's blog and she had some pictures of these fabulous 'alternative lifestyle' barbies. i don't know why but transgender barbie really struck a chord with me (NOT sarcasm, i swear!), heshe looked so pure and happy expressing hisher true self. i was torn between thinking that i must procure one immediately for little miss, and also that i must keep it for myself and let her play with something a little more baby speed and less adult humor-ish. ah well, she's a smart gal, i'm sure she'll let me know which type of barbie (or any other doll, not necessarily that doll) she prefers.

i, one the other hand, have never owned a barbie. not one. ever. i was way more into my little ponies. their flowing manes and tails were so fun to comb, and they all had cute pictures of stuff on their butts. my brother had an endless stash of he-man figurines that he let me play with to ride the ponies, as long as i lent him my ponies to be the cavalry in a massive battle sequence taking place on the stairwell.

so now as i'm sitting here remembering that i never had a barbie, i also remember the smell of the my little pony. each was the same. it was that powdery, rubbery, faintly floral smell that was unique to plastic horse hair and bodies. do they even still make those things? because if they do and someone were to open a brand new one within about 20 feet of my nose, i'd be a little kid again, giving my cousin a funny look when she pulled out a big box of nudie barbies suggesting we dress them for a party.

i definately did work with a guy once who had a really, really long ponytail that actually smelled JUST like my little pony. if he weren't such an asshole i would have asked about his shampoo and explained my dear affection for the plastic horse hair smell. but alas, it wasn't meant to be.

maybe i'll buy some for the fuss just so i can sniff them first before she proceeds to chew them and get them all slimey and gross. she won't mind, cheery little thing, she's always happy to let me play with her toys.

i need to get out more. help...

who, me?

2009-05-12T09:45:00.004-04:00

i'm really awkward in person. if you met me, spent half a day with me, and then had a minute to reflect, you'd think i was in need of some chemically induced stability.

i often make jokes when others are serious, and become intensely focused when others are lighthearted. sometimes it takes days for me to even realize the emotional discrepancy, but i do eventually see it. i've never been good at reading people, so i'm usually left playing catch-up.

i've come to accept this, but that doesn't mean that it never bothers me occasionally.

recently, at work, i had an experience where someone said to another co-worker 'i'm scared of her, she NEVER smiles' referring to me, in that jokey-i'm-kinda-serious way. the other co-worker replied 'who, HER? she's always laughing, what are you talking about?'

since both of these people are people that i would consider friendly acquaintances, i was a little surprised at the opposite opinions. now, i've been known to say that i could care less what people think of me and that i just 'do my own thing.' but we all know that everybody cares. even if it's just a little bit, only once every few weeks or so, there comes a time when you do actually care.

today is that day for me. so instead of talking about how nice and sunny it is outside, or how cute monster looks curled up into a ball with his tail around his nose, i'll just leave you with one last tidbit from my sometimes irrational logic:

sometimes i feel the more friends i have the more lonely i am. i'll take my three or four good ones, hold them close, and feel comfortable knowing that i don't have to pretend to make sense to them.

i guess that's not all that irrational, maybe i'm too morose for witticisms today.

ps. i can't stop laughing at the fact that i haven't changed the batteries on one of fuss's singy toys and every five minutes or so i now hear 'if you're happy and you know it clap your hands' in that drawn out, demonic, warble voice.

speech therapy

2009-05-11T08:14:00.007-04:00

this morning, as i sent my congratulatory 'YAY!' to kristine, via our perpetual scrabble game, for finally being able to present her 50-page MASTERpiece, i began to reminisce about all the many times i've had to present some work of mine in front of a class. now, nothing i have done can even come close to her intense MASTER research, but is more along the lines of trying not to get beat up or thrown in detention in high school.

the scariest assignment was when i had to work with the girl who was goth ahead of her time, back when everyone else was still rocking the lumberjack flannels and kurt cobain was alive. not only did she wear a plastic barbie doll leg with red sharpie on it to look like blood around her neck as a decorative accessory, but she also hated me. i was too scared of her to talk shit about her then, she just hated me because she could, i guess.

after two awkward afternoons at the local library where i spent the time reading the collected works and countless biographies of william blake, while she spent the time drawing pictures of me hanging from a noose (i'm assuming it was me, she got the bangs just right), i pretty much wrote my presentation and figured she could say whatever she wanted to after i talked. well, as it turned out, what she ended up saying was that i stole her speech and that she had nothing left to say. consequently she failed, and spent the rest of our time in high school giving me death looks and kicking my shins from under her desk.

there was also the time that and i got drunk on my free period from the convenient stash of my mom's foster's keg cans and then 40 minutes later was swinging my legs from my history teacher's desk babbling something about jacksonian democracy. kristine sat there burning me up and laughing the whole time because she knew how wasted i was. she got yelled at and i got an A+.

considering that my oratory skills seem to have been somewhat successful in the past, i find myself now wondering if there's a way that i can exploit my natural talent to work for me.

well, maybe there's no need for me to go that far, but at the very least i can spend ten years making this fabulous picture in paint instead of showering like i should be doing.

ps. i had to look up how to spell 'speech' in my scrabble game, just to make sure.

that's it, i can't take anymore!

2009-05-10T09:13:00.003-04:00

little miss pulled out her cuteness reserves for this pic as my mother's day present.

sneaky little thing. i thought i had seen all of her tricks and she comes up with this. where does she keep all that cuteness in that tiny body? i don't think i'll ever know.

a message to the kid walking alone who thought it was cool to verbally assault me

2009-05-08T10:17:00.008-04:00

ok kid, enough with this bullshit. i know you're only about eight years old and all, but that doesn't give you free reign to be a punk-ass.

i'm not even going to waste my breath talking to you about respecting your elders, nay respecting people in general, but i will say that you're damn lucky you're not my kid.

and when did you learn that that oh-so-irritating teeth sucking sound is an appropriate response to hearing something you don't want to hear? that's almost worse than when you called me a 'lying bitch.'

i think it's high time you took your little tush home and begged for your mother's forgiveness and professed your undying love and support for her and all the things she does for you. maybe give listening to her a chance, there could be some valuable information there.

then again maybe not, i did find you wandering dubois st. at nearly ten pm on a thursday night.

anywhoooooo, at the very least, if you're going to ask a stranger for money, try using the 'my family has no money for food so they send me out to the streets to beg' routine. it will get you worlds farther than the 'hey lady, you got fitty cent i can hold?' bit. even though i know you're only going to use that fifty cents to buy a *gasp* sugary soda at the corner store.

that is all.

ps. tell your mother i said happy mother's day for me.

karma IS a bitch

2009-05-07T14:24:00.003-04:00

alright, here it is. this is my 'i need some balance post'. talking shit about my creepy neighbors, no matter how much they might deserve it, has left a nasty taste in my mouth. so i'm back to send a little positive energy out and feel a little more at ease.

fuss and i had a nice afternoon out visiting friends and i'd like to share some randoms that made me smile:

1. i have officially renewed my crush on the shuffle feature on my ipod.

2. little miss is the best kid ever for not letting my blasting the shit out of whatever song shuffle picked for me stop her from having a little car nap.

3. i love that the trees have actual leaves on them again.

4. i want to write a cookbook on how to incorporate herbs into everyday cooking because i love herbs and i think they make everything taste better (NOT referring to that other herb, but i do have an amazing rosemary hot nuts recipe if anyone's interested).

5. i love how my gay guy friends always say how much they can't stand kids and then shower the fuss with the sweetest affection every time they see her.

ok, i feel a little better now. not to be all spiritual or whatever, but i've always felt that you get what you give, and that applies to your mindset as well as your actions. hope you all enjoy the rest of your day as much as i will mine.