ring ring

Somewhere, deep in Amazonia, on the humid, mosquito-swarmed banks of a muddy, broad river, where strange birds call out and sharp-toothed fish lurk beneath the surface of the water, there is a dude who makes his living by tapping a stand of rubber trees, collecting the resin, and smoking it into a ball that he can sell to traveling rubber merchants. That fellow lives in a small tent with a plank floor, cooks his meals along with his rubber ball over an open fire, and works fourteen hours every day.
That guy, unlike me, has a cell phone.

I've always thought a cell phone, for me, is a big waste. I work all day at a desk where I have a phone, and then I go home to my house where I have a phone. In between, I'm on the train, and there's no signal anyway. I am not a fan of the whole "we'll call you when we pick a restaurant!" thing where cell phones render humans incapable of making a plan and sticking to it. And I don't see a need to be constantly reachable. Plus I'm bad about losing things, and breaking things, and forgetting things. Most importantly, I am a cheap bastard. So no phone for me.

Last night I was out with my buds, and they managed to hit me right where it hurts cell-phone-wise. They said that it would be nice for my friends if I had one. Those sneaky bastards have to know that the way to manipulate me is to tell me I'm doing it for my dear friends.

So maybe I'll get a cell phone. dammit. But a cheap one.

high school nightmares

I do love my parents, but they do some stuff I can't bear. One of which involves being friends with the parents of kids I hated in high school. They're always talking about "the Smiths* were over for dinner last night, and they said Jonathan is living in LA," or some such nonsense. Thing is, Jonathan was a grade-A asshole when he was ages 6 through 18, so I don't want to hear it. Hearing it puts me back in a frame of mind I don't want to go. This is my problem, I realize. But it makes me do stupid stuff. I just spent twenty minutes sitting here thinking of what to wear on Friday when we go up there for the weekend, because The Smiths and the Jameses will both be over for dinner that night, and somehow, in my addled mind, I have to dress up, and wear makeup, and look nice, so that they will not all go home and email Jonathan and Sally about how that Shirky, you rememeber, from school? The ugly one, with the glasses, and the little head? She looks a fright!! She must be eating twelve cupcakes a day, poor thing.

Ahem. No fair pointing out I'm insecure. I know that already. I just can't make it stop.

My parents are even going on a vacation this summer with the Jameses, to a tropical locale (SO not like them, I have no idea what's gotten into them) where they will no doubt sit around and discuss boring grownup stuff, but I will worry that the Jameses will think poorly of my parents because I am not successful. And that would be terrible because it is not my parents' fault I don't really like working for a living/haven't found my calling/am a lazy ass bastard. And oh, just thinking of these people makes me think of their horrible children, who probably aren't even that bad, but one time, Jonathan Smith told me I was stupid and annoying when I asked what the fuck was going on during some weird ass japanese movie he made everyone watch, and another time I heard him making a twenty-dollar bet with some other douchebag over who could seduce a freshman first, and that is just nasty, and he is nasty, and I hated him, so there.

So yay! Three-day weekend! Rock out!

*not their real names. None of these names are real.

to persistent voicemailer

1. Sudeepta does not in fact work here
2. Voicemail is not capable of responding to questions. It is a robot.

scraping the bottom of the blogging barrel

--attention: the following is boring--
It's another rainy day here. Unfuckingbelievable. I have been sitting around trying to come up with projects and plans to distract myself for the next 18 months (give or take.) I got nothin'. Except eating. Look for me in your local bakery, licking cupcakes clean of all the bomb frostings.


Work is so slow lately, it's nearly approaching the boredom level of the Old Job. The Job That Broke My Brain! I really hope it doesn't go that far. For one, I hate looking for new jobs and two, I begin to sense that the problem may not be the jobs, but me, as a person who cannot occupy herself for more than five minutes without employing cupcakes.

Ideally I would find a hobby that could be engaged in from my desk at work without anyone noticing (breeding fancy chickens is probably out, and hog-calling is a definite no) that costs nothing and makes me smarter, not dumber. Perhaps I should run a side business of some sort from my cube. Is there a market for home-based cupcake testers?

ooh! blogging about work!

The woman in the cube across the aisle is being Angela. You know, the religious nut on the The Office. She's on the phone with someone, complaining a lot about the Da Vinci Code. She and I probably don't agree on much. But we can agree that that book is lametastic.

I hear lots of phone conversations because we have just cubes. One woman seems to be running a financial consultancy out of her cube. She is always giving advice on investments and IRAs and so on. I wonder how good her advice is, though, since she still works here and is not living it up Trump-style.

This is why I always find an empty conference room, even just to make a dentist appointment. Super secret ninja style personal calls!

Seriously, she is still going on about the Da Vinci code.

a new fad that's sweeping the nation -- wasting food!

We went to New York this weekend. Rather than bring a traditional hostess gift such as flowers, we brought hijinks!

After a nice brunch, we went over to a nearby park to be a bad influence on the local children.

We stopped on the way to purchase 2 liters of diet pepsi and a pack of mentos. Both of which I consider inedible, which is good, because wasting food is not easy for me.

Here, you see the pepsi, awaiting its fate:
And the mentos:

And Lauren:



Aaaaaand, the mischief:


Kids: definitely try this at home.

damp

Seattle,

Some of your things are still at my place. I put them in a box for you so if you could just come and pick them up that would be good. There's drizzle, mist, clouds, and some dave matthews CDs. Anyway, if you could come get them pretty soon, that would be great, I don't have a lot of room.

--Boston

cat in doghouse

At about four AM every day, the elderly feline resident of our home begins her "Wake UP, you guys" routine. She howls in the hallway, she saunters back and forth across our heads, and worst of all she climbs up on our dressers and begins pushing little objects off one by one.
I keep a squirt bottle of water by the bed to discourage her. I know she remembers what the bottle does because I only have to hold it up and she runs off. But thirty seconds later she is back, making sure that the force of gravity is still acting upon all the items on our dresser. She's robbing me of hours of sleep! I was so tired, I tried to turn off the alarm clock by squirting it with the water bottle.
This morning she raised the stakes by throwing down a glass of water that was up there. It was just pulverized. We'll be finding glass crumbs for months, I'm sure. Good morning! Step on glass! feed me, bitches! Or the next one falls on your head!

gone

Twenty-two painstakingly assembled copies of our profile are now in the mail.
they had better arrive safe and sound, after all those trips to staples and oh my god the pages are upside down moments.

I feel like we'll never be finished though: there is often one more form to complete, one more thing to sign, one more document to get witnessed (every agency has their own requirements, their own forms, and so on).

It has taken a sick long time to get this far, what with the homestudy social worker dragging her feet and then up and quitting (so she got laid off. It's not her fault! still! It was an inconvenience!) I'm not too worried about time--going into this we knew it would take a while and we were in no rush. The longer it takes, the more dough we have saved, the more chances we've had to pick up and go to NYC on a whim, and all that stuff. I'm trying to really savor all that instead of letting my brain swirl itself into an anxiety smoothie.

brain smoothie is a nasty drink, by the way. Very salty.

douchebag rundown!

Today's list of worthless tools who tick me off!


David Blaine
James Frey
Samuel Beckett
Steven Pinker
Mary Cheney

Congratulations, you all suck!

edited to add:
how could I have forgotten Mel Gibson? The King of All Jackasses.

owie

I have been attending a series of lectures at BU Med School. I like science; I like to hear about research; I thought it would be fun. They had important doctors lecture on their area of research. Some were better than others. You know--some actually talk, and others read right off the powerpoint. The stuff they presented was a little boring--I was ready to hear about some amazing new discoveries, and they were all like "Smoking leads to heart disease." But it was OK.
There were two things that I hated though: one, the building the lectures were in has a constant smell of week-old garbage. Two, there were several other attendees who delighted in asking the most obnoxious followup questions.
Now, some of the mainly-elderly audience was asking kind of strange questions, but clearly they needed to know the answers, and I can't have a problem with that.
But then there was Pre-Med Asshole. Every time he raised his hand, I rudely rolled my eyes. He would invariably ask a "question" that was really just a list of vocabulary words he'd recently memorized, with no real point. The speaker would listen politely, blink, and try to form a question out of those words that he or she could answer, and end with "Does...that answer your question?" Pre-Med Asshole was a fucking showoff, but not even really smart. The worst kind!
Then there was My People Are Superior in Every Way Guy. Oh god. This guy did not ask questions. He would raise his hand and say "I have an observation," and I would shrink down in my seat because I was actually embarassed for him. For example, when the topic was Depression, he offered that His People do not suffer from depression, due to their "fighting spirits." The speaker respectfully repeated the main topic of her presentation: depression is caused by chemistry in the brain and central nervous system. She guessed that cultural coping mechanisms could mask or exacerbate depression. But MPASEWG wasn't having it. "We had a man in my country named Gandhi," he continued, "who had this fighting spirit! I have a fighting spirit!" The speaker allowed as how Gandhi and MPASEWG might have the somewhat-protective allele of a particular gene that has been recently discovered. But MPASEWG insisted on the more scientific conclusion of "fighting spirit". I wanted to ask his spirit to step outside to settle it mano a spirito.

Last night the topic was BOOBS! Or breast cancer, specifically. And oh my god, am I the only person on earth who still doesn't understand how mammograms are possible?? The boobie...in the machine...and squashing....holy crap, that has got to hurt. Also I still can't look at my own chestal area and imagine how mine would get in the machine. They're ATTACHED, for pete's sake. And there is not much there! They don't stick out very far! And I just imagine this horrible pinching machine scrabbling at my chest trying to squash something that isn't there. And it misses like 30 percent of tumors? Why is it still used? That's insane!

That was before I learned to swear

heh.

When I was in high school, my worst subject was English. Also math. But English I hated on a personal level--all the literature we were forced to read pissed me off extraordinarily for some reason. I also hated my teachers. I found them smug and hateful.
In 12th grade I took one semester of a class where we had to read "Man and his Symbols", which still triggers boiling rage. This is how much patience I have for bullshit pseudoscience: . We also read, and were supposed to perform, "Waiting for Godot", which I find profoundly irritating. I know! Smart people like these things! But I am not that smart, so I don't.
The play only has two parts. (Spoiler: Neither of them is Godot.) So two students would act for a while, then the two more would tag in. Somehow I was either absent or stubborn on that day. Since I remember it, obviously, stubborn. And I didn't take my turn. So, to make up for it, I had to come after school to perform "The Lesson" with another kid who had been legitimately absent.
Are you familiar with this play? There are again only two real parts. A tutor and a pupil, and the tutor hates the pupil by the end. By the end (Spoiler: the tutor kills the pupil in a scene of barely-disguised sexual violence!) the guy is shouting and yelling at her.
I took the role of teacher, and Pete took the role of student. In retrospect I should have read it through before choosing, because the tutor has this line (while stabbing):
"That'll teach you, bitch!"
When the time came for me to speak this line, I gagged on it, and skipped the word. I was young! My teacher was there! I couldn't do it!
Afterward, Pete was mad, as he thought maybe our grade would be lowered because I failed to swear.

And so I am not much for absurdist plays. And now I can say that Beckett, Ionesco, and that fucking Godot are all bitches.

Comin' back from Cali

Dude. Do not come back to Logan at 5 AM. There are no taxis. There is no train. It is cold. It is raining. It sucks ass.

California, on the other hand, is mild and sunny and beachtastic. Too bad I was born with new england tattooed on my butt.

I managed to sneak around Santa Cruz without running into my former co-worker. I told my sister "She's a vegan, and she drives a car that runs on vegetable oil," and she was like "yeah, her and everyone else in town." Yes yes. I know what the town is like. If it weren't for the ocean breeze mixing with the patchouli and feet, it would smell like my own home town. Also, we were there on the twentieth of April, so, you know, there was that smell as well.

We have these friends who are moving to Asheville, NC, which means when we visit our family and friends, we will be hitting the neo-hippie trifecta. Like medieval pilgrims visiting Rome, Jerusalem, and Santiago. Maybe we get some kind of holy dispensation from Phish for it, I don't know. I feel like I should get something, though, for eating vegan cookies. Do you know, vegan cookies have no butter in them? Not even a little butter. They play a dirty game, those vegans.

whoa!

did you know you can get podcasts with tivo?

Of course you did. You are not an idiot like me.

But I am delighted! Podcasts all the time! On the Tivo!

guh?

So at CVS they have a new display of these fancy expensive hair products. There are two varieties to choose from. One for "fine" hair and one for "thick" hair. They're both meant for curly hair. The line is called "curl conscious". Here's what the boxes have on them.

In case I have bollocksed up the pictures again, the 'fine' hair trio says:
Nordic Angel
English Rose
Wispy Waif
Botticelli Muse
Baby Doll
Belle du Jour

The 'thick' hair boxes say:
Latina
Hot Mama
Vixen
Temptress
Amazon
Kinky Chick
Wild Child
Warrior
Brunette
Mamacita

I...don't even know what to think. My mind...she is blown.

Tuesday impersonates Monday

This morning I woke up late from a dream in which I was running to escape a vengeful ghost (wtf?). I realized that both of my pairs of pants were dirty (it is hard for me to buy pants that fit, ok?). I thought I would wear a skirt. I knew it was cold and rainy, so in order to wear a skirt I needed a pair of tights. I found only navy blue (no go) and grey, which, with a black skirt just made me look like I got dressed in the dark. I ended up wearing the dirty pants from yesterday (my volunteer night--they have baby boogers and fingerpaint on them. yes!) I showed up late for work, and without my pass, so I had to sign in and knock on the door, and now I'm trapped here for the day, unless I want to get stuck out there again.
Woo! Go Tuesday!

I should really do laundry more often, and possibly buy more pants. Yesterday I went into the one store that has pants my size but everything there is like sixty bucks and I am a super cheap bastard. Whenever I express pants-buying frustration to my friends, they always exclaim, "The Gap has 'long' pants!" or something like that. Here is Gap's idiot-ass idea of 'long' on me:




Damn you, pants!

Operation BookHoard

The mission to collect all DCF winners is going well. My first stop was of course half.com, which worked out well, and Goodwill, good ol' goodwill, has also been helpful.

As I get them, I'm also reading them. I read them while I blowdry my hair in the morning. Even so, they are pretty quick reads, not nearly as substantial as I remember them. Which makes sense, since I last read many of these twenty years ago or more.

There are only a few genres represented so far. I like to think this is because there are certain things that really, really appeal to the kids who are voting on this award, but maybe authors are just damn copycats. Here's what we're looking at:

Alone in the Woods
Magic Stuff Happens to Regular Kids
Confrontation With a Bully

Classic themes, all.

I can't keep my grownup brain from analyzing them as I read, though. I pick out stereotypes and gender role enforcement and ecologically unsound camping practices (some of these are from the fifties, okay?), and none of the books is free of all that stuff. In fact, there's one book--well, I'll post a photo later. Still, I like them all okay and I still think they are young reader gold.

	Naughty words	Children alone in woods	Child confronts bully	Magical happenings	My complaints	Other
Two in the Wilderness		Yes			Sister sweeps; brother hunts
Bones on Black Spruce Mountain	Piss AND shit!	Yes			Kids in the woods cut down trees, build fires, very naughty	Adoption figures in this story
A Bundle of Sticks	"faggot"		Yes
The 18th Emergency			Yes
Time for Andrew			Yes	Yes
Jennifer Murdley's Toad			Toad confronts bully	Yes
Castle in the Attic		Briefly		Yes
Summer of Fear				Yes	Girls is bitches
The Boggart				Yes	Gang of "friends" really just a collection of stereotypes
Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio						One of these things is not like the others...

naughty kitten

I think we'll have six more weeks of winter, because I have lost my mittens--an annual occurence. Stupid mittens.

In my brain I keep coming up with little projects to fill my blog. Not so hot on the followthrough though. Like, every time I walk through the neighborhood, I think of taking photos of all the churches. There are SO MANY. They're all different, too. Some are two churches in one (two congregations share the building). I'm so unschooled in churchery that these places might as well be secret underwater cities. I have a vague idea from TV and movies that a church contains benches, a talky fellow at the front, and maybe some hats. I generally picture the Simpsons' church and Reverend Lovejoy. Beyond that I probably couldn't distinguish a Catholic church from Satan's Holy Roller Church of the Sacred Beagle. What? You don't believe me but this is a seriously church-dense neighborhood.



They're all very mysterious to me. I hardly ever (never) see people going in or out of them. This is related to my weekend laziness, most likely.

Hapless

How to make a weekend trip to the mountains into a study in dumbassery:

Be very careful to pack necessities:
1. milky way miniatures
2. travel scrabble
3. sled

Who cares about these luxuries:
1. toothbrush/toothpaste/soap/shampoo/contact lens case/deodorant/sunblock...all that kind of stuff.
2. boots
3. socks

For that extra something, when sledding with the all-important sled, be sure to go right over a pile of dog shit! (Bravo, irresponsible dog owner!)

I am exhausted today from waking at 5 to drive sister in law to the airport. Not an early riser. I feel like barfing! yeah!

anyway, lessons learned, I guess.

I'm Bored. Let's Buy things!

I adore good quality kids' books. In my old job, the Job That Broke My Brain, I scored a ton of good ones, and discovered a bunch of quality authors I'd never heard of when I was a kid myself. I have a little stash now--I am pretty greedy about them and never seem to give them away as I intend.

I have already begun collecting books that are a little "special" for our imaginary kid. I got my mother's favorite (I searched hard for the same edition she has, didn't find it, but got close.), my grandmother's favorite, and a few picture books in Tamil.

I hate bad kid books as much as I love good ones. My unfavorite* are "books" that are really printed advertisements: Licensed Character's Trip to McDonald's! Barbie Goes Shopping For Branded Items!** I also hate are preachy, "lesson" books (Little Engine that Could, I'm looking at you). I dislike cheap thrown-together looking stuff with no author, too. Yes, you heard me, Dorling Kindersley, all those shiny photos can't hide your EMPTY SOUL.

Now I'm trying to collect a whole set of really good books in the laziest way---using a list of award winners. It's the Dorothy Canfield Fisher award, which no one has ever heard of, but it was really a big deal to me growing up. The annual winner is chosen by actual kids, so you know the books will appeal to real life readers. I voted every year I was eligible and man, those were some awesome books! There are 48 winners to date and I've given myself the mission to track them all down. Yes! A project! My favorite!

If you're interested, here's the list:

Winners of the DCF Award from 1957 to Current Award Winner


1957 Pace, Mildred Mastin. OLD BONES, THE WONDER HORSE


1958 Cleary, Beverly. FIFTEEN


1959 Leighton, Margaret. COMMANCHE OF THE SEVENTH


1960 Erickson, Phoebe. DOUBLE OR NOTHING


1961 Bell, Thelma Harrington. CAPTAIN GHOST


1962 Lampman, Evelyn Sibley. CITY UNDER THE BACK STEPS


1963 Burnford, Sheila. INCREDIBLE JOURNEY


1964 Ball, Zachary. BRISTLE FACE


1965 North, Sterling. RASCAL


1966 Cleary, Beverly. RIBSY


1967 Viereck, Phillip. THE SUMMER I WAS LOST


1968 Jackson, Jacqueline. THE TASTE OF SPRUCE GUM


1969 Thompson, Mary Wolfe. TWO IN THE WILDERNESS


1970 Morey, Walt. KAVIK THE WOLF DOG


1971 Erwin, Betty K. GO TO THE ROOM OF THE EYES


1972 Ellis, Melvin. FLIGHT OF THE WHITE WOLF


1973 Caufield, Don and Joan. NEVER STEAL A MAGIC CAT


1974 Woods, George A. CATCH A KILLER


1975 Byars, Betsy. EIGHTEENTH EMERGENCY


1976 Merrill, Jean. THE TOOTHPASTE MILLIONAIRE


1977 Pevsner, Stella. A SMART KID LIKE YOU


1978 Duncan, Lois. SUMMER OF FEAR


1979 Pfeffer, Susan Beth. KID POWER


1980 Budbill, David. BONES ON BLACK SPRUCE MOUNTAIN


1981 Howe, Deborah & James. BUNNICULA


1982 Pascal, Francine. THE HAND-ME-DOWN KID***


1983 Blume, Judy. TIGER EYES


1984 Mauser, Pat Rhoads. A BUNDLE OF STICKS


1985 Cleary, Beverly. DEAR MR. HENSHAW


1986 Smith, Robert Kimmel. THE WAR WITH GRANDPA


1987 Winthrop, Elizabeth. THE CASTLE IN THE ATTIC****


1988 Hahn, Mary Downing. WAIT TILL HELEN COMES


1989 Paulsen, Gary. HATCHET*****


1990 Ehrlich, Amy. WHERE IT STOPS, NOBODY KNOWS


1991 Lowry, Lois. NUMBER THE STARS


1992 Spinelli, Jerry. MANIAC MAGEE


1993 Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds. SHILOH


1994 Coville, Bruce. JENNIFER MURDLEY'S TOAD


1995 Cooper, Susan. THE BOGGART


1996 Hahn, Mary Downing. TIME FOR ANDREW


1997 Park, Barbara. MICK HARTE WAS HERE


1998 Kehret, Peg. SMALL STEPS: The Year I Got Polio


1999 Levine, Gail Carson . ELLA ENCHANTED


2000 Sachar, Louis. HOLES


2001 Curtis, Christopher Paul. BUD, NOT BUDDY


2002 Di Camillo, Kate. BECAUSE OF WINN DIXIE


2003 Creech, Sharon. LOVE THAT DOG


2004 Jerry Spinelli. LOSER


2005 Kate DiCamillo. THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX

*like that? slipped in a word to fill the lexical gap

**And don't get me started on branded toys. I tried to find toy food one time and everyone was selling sets of "food" that were just plastic replicas of happy meals! fuck that! And they sell miniature dirt devil brand vacuum cleaners! what the hell! If my kid likes vacuuming that much, he can learn to use the real one while mommy chills out on the couch, ok?
Now that I've said this, my kid will probably refuse to wear/eat anything that does not feature a mutant ninja something or a talking british locomotive.

***I remember this was a big hit because it had the word BOOBS! in it! Yes!

****This was AWESOME.

*****Ditto above, but here's what should have won that year.