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the latest
waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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My oven light won't go off. That is not a metaphor---there really is something wrong with my oven---but it can function as one if you want, to explain why I CANNOT SLEEP. Last night was fine for the first two hours, then I was completely wide-awake from one to three in the morning, and then mostly-asleep but restless and waking up every twenty minutes or so until it was time to get to work. As for the actual oven light, what to do? Let the bulb burn itself out? Unscrew it? Resign myself to the fact that every time I get up in the middle of the night (OH SO NIGHTMARISHLY OFTEN), the oven light glows in the darkened house like a demon stove? Ahhhh! Demon stove! LET'S MAKE STUPID LISTS CHICAGO STREET NAMES THAT ARE ALSO STATE NAMES 1. Illinois Also: Weed Street used to be Alaska Avenue, Claremont was Idaho Street before 1886, 11th used to be Kansas Avenue, Whipple was Nebraska Street until 1936, Deming Place was Nevada Street until 1936, Oregon became Flournoy in 1936 (TIME TO BUY A NEW MAP! IT'S 1936!), Winchester was once Vermont Avenue (and there is still a Vermont Street on the South Side), and Marianna Street was Wyoming Street until 1895. WHILE NOT NORMALLY BRAND-CONSCIOUS, I SOUNDLY REJECT GENERIC VERSIONS OF THE FOLLOWING PRODUCTS 1. Peanut butter. It's Jif or nothing, baby! I'm choosy, and I choose it! I am slightly ashamed to admit that I also despise all forms of "natural" peanut butter: you all can go right ahead and use the bulk grinder thing or feel virtuous about your organic-legume sandwich, but this girl needs her emulsifiers. 2. Toothpaste. I just have a hard time believing in the cavity-fighting power of anything but a major brand. 3. Tampons. I have my favorite. I don't care how much cheaper the store brand is. 4. Cereal. I don't eat cereal very often, but when I do it has to be mass-marketed. There is something slightly depressing about store brands of cereal. Or worse, that giant bag of "Puffed Rice." 5. Ditto with the box macaroni and cheese. I honestly prefer Annie's but Kraft will do in a pinch. I stay away from all the fakers and player-haters. SPEAKING OF FOOD Yesterday I Googled "frozen butternut squash" for obscure, Becky Homeccy/Suzy Homemaker reasons of my own, and found a recipe for butternut squash soup. That is not so very weird. The very weird part is that this particular recipe was on a White Power/Aryan Pride/Racist Skinhead Wacko website. Ever since then I have been thinking about trashy pregnant white girls with Iron Cross tattoos stirring butternut squash soup. I guess it is good that even racist bastards enjoy butternut squash. However, it is slightly troubling that I get nothing interesting by searching on various combinations of "White Power" and "zucchini" or "acorn squash" or indeed, any other variety of squash. I hope there is no corresponding bullshit neo-Nazi ideology about how butternut squash is the Master Race Squash, or anything else that would prevent me from enjoying my favorite squash in good squashy conscience. Now I am going to stop typing the word "squash" so much.
NEW OBSESSION The vulgar, pointless, punchline-with-no-joke "Twat? I cunt hear you!" has become the new Hanukkah Lewinsky. I can't stop thinking about it, although I wish I could. SILLY-CONE Recently LT had a downtown appointment so he dropped Nora off at my office for an hour or so. We rode the elevator together, shared a grilled cheese and a banana,* and looked at pictures of cats on the internet, which makes Nora happy (the girl is going to grow up believing that the World Wide Web is one vast interlinked repository of cat photos) (and really, it kind of is). We also played with the Silly Putty I have in my office. Nora liked to pull it apart, as wide as her arms would go, until the thin strand broke in the middle, and then she would laugh and laugh and laugh until she was doubled over with tears coming out of her eyes. Which of course gave me the giggles too. We were both just absolutely losing it in my office. Whew! That putty, it sure lives up to its name! *Okay. I am no longer as self-conscious as I was about mommy-speak, by which I mean the fact that my child spouts an ENDLESS STRING OF NOUNS, ALL THE LIVELONG DAY, and the fact that I, as someone who loves her and wants to encourage her language development, spout the nouns back to her all the livelong day, with frequent editorializing and exposition. However, it's one thing to babble mommy-style in the grocery store or at the playground, where you are often surrounded by understanding child-friendly adults, and an entirely other thing in a giant office-building cafeteria, especially when you are having lunch with your toddler next to a table full of alienated IT guys. It did not help that one of the components of Nora's lunch was a banana. See, you probably don't know this, but there is an Elmo segment about bananas. At the end of the banana segment, when Elmo generally meets a personified version of the thing he's been thinking about that day (ya da ta da), he, well, meets a banana. The banana puppet is wearing a bow tie and glasses, and he has this Borscht Belt comedian personality, with plenty of rim shots after his jokes and a repeated "Thank you!" (Oh man, this makes less and less sense the more I type it. Hopefully at least one person out there has seen Elmo's World.) The point is that these IT guys were already shooting me and Nora odd glances as I talked about drinking "our" juice and so forth, and then we came to the banana part of the lunch, and Nora brightened and started yelling THANK YOU! And because I have been through this eight thousand million times I know what she means. I totally get my daughter's pop-culture references. So I say, "The banana says thank you!" Then Nora does a rapid-fire mime routine where she points to the banana, then to my eyes, then to her eyes, all the while repeating her intelligible-only-to-me word for "glasses," so I say, "Yes! The banana was wearing glasses." Conversation at the IT table has now just about stopped. Because this is such a common exchange at our house it never once occurred to me to give a little of the Elmo-Related Banana Backstory for the benefit of the people who were openly eavesdropping, and only now am I realizing just how crazy I must have sounded. Good thing I don't give a rat's ass. (The poor rat's ass! No one gives it! No wonder there are all those big rat-ass sales after Christmas.) Hooray! Go Bears! I was also thrilled to pieces that the Vikings lost on Monday night. I would like to give Randy Moss a debilitating wedgie. I am bored with myself, and with this entry. More wine, anyone? ---mimi smartypants should go to bed. back/forward |
