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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


2006-09-01 ... 1:25 p.m.

What would be the polar opposite of the days when I walk around radiating compassion like a visiting yogi or epileptic Russian saint, mentally namaste-ing my fellow CTA riders, recalling that each person on the street was once a tiny baby wholly deserving of love? Oh yeah, it would be days like today, where my brain is like one big lip-curl sneer, and I stomp down State Street passing uncalled-for judgment on people like Mr. Clown Pants and Brainless Victim Of Trendiness #61 and Lady, I Hate To Say It But You REALLY Need A Bra With That Shirt.

And then I was nearly run over by a Rolls Royce. What a classy way to go.

I have no right to be passing fashion judgment on anyone, as I am currently wearing side-zip pants. My mom took me shopping (more on this below),* and one of the purchases was these pants. These pants right here. (I just stopped typing long enough to make Vanna White-ish gestures toward my own lap. Seriously. There has been too much caffeine.) The pants fit fine, look professional, are comfortable, etc, but the side-zip thing is very strange indeed. At the beginning of each bathroom visit I can be found scrabbling around at my crotch, where the fly should be, and feeling this faint panicky undercurrent like help fuck I can't get my pants off...oh.

*So my mom took me shopping and now I have all kinds of grown-up clothes for work. My mom taking me shopping is about 90% awesome (my mom took me shopping! she bought me things!) and about 10% fraught with Issues (my mom thinks I'm a slob! my mom doesn't trust me to dress myself!). I love my mom all to pieces but she has always had this amazing ability to get people to do exactly what she wants while somehow making them think it was all their idea. The things she manipulated me into doing while I was growing up were almost universally good things for me to do, and the "thinking it was all my idea" part gave me a lot of self-esteem and faith in my own decisions. (Which were often not entirely my own at the time, but they now are. I guess they were sort of like practice decisions.) So on the one hand this behavior is the very definition of "controlling," but on the other, as long as the powers are used for good, it is a fairly brilliant parenting technique that I hope to master.

FRESH *&^*$&%&))&*(@

I love living in a neighborhood with lots of weird little grocery stores, and I love even more that often I have no idea what they are selling. One of the Indian produce stores on Devon has huge signs proclaiming a sale on FRESH GUVAR and FRESH OPO and what the hell are those things? After performing some very tricky Google-ju, it seems that guvar may be a sort of bean and opo a sort of squash, but it is still not entirely clear.

Speaking of squash, it made me happy to see that fall vegetables, including my beloved butternut squash, are back in the stores. Shit, I should not have mentioned that, since now you people are going to think I am obsessed with butternut squash. I am really not. But maybe I am, because when I saw the squash at Whole Foods I had to get one, and then I made kind of a production of picking the one with the most pleasing heft and shape, and then while carrying the squash through the store I realized I was sort of cradling it like a baby, and had a brief mental image of walking around with the squash in a sling or strapped to my back in a Maya wrap.

THE NORA OF MYSTERY

1. Right before bed, my daughter, aka The Questioner, Ms. Interrogative, or Nora "Hey, You Know What?" Smartypants, asks me why stilts are called stilts. Since that night I have been to several dictionaries, hundreds of linguistic websites, and even scammed a look at the online OED from a librarian friend, and the answer is I DON'T FREAKING KNOW. Nora, please lay off the imponderables when you are supposed to be sleeping.

2. The stilts-interest probably stems from the fact that Nora has been on a performing kick for a few weeks now. She likes to put on one of her crazy assembled costumes and wave a stick around or hop on one foot or perform various other feats for our amusement, complete with bowing and "thank you, thank yous" afterward. It should go without saying that I am expected to be the audience for these shenanigans, but Nora made it explicit one day by asking me to sit down in a chair and then saying, "On with the show! I am the expert. You are the amazed person." Okay, that sounds easy. I will be the amazed person.

3. I am on the phone with my mother, and when I hang up Nora is right there glaring at me. "I am VERY ANGRY with you," she says. "I wanted to talk to Grandma." I explain that I had no way of knowing that, due to my lack of psychic abilities, but invite her to hit the redial button and have at. She and my mom chat, while I work on getting dinner ready, and I can hear Nora's replies getting increasingly perfunctory, with a lot of "mmm-hmmm" and "yeah." Then Nora grabs a sand pail that was sitting by the back door, puts it on like a hat, and very sweetly says, "Well, Grandma, I have to go now---I have a bucket on my head."

This is now my new official sign-off on all phone conversations.

EXTREMELY VOMIT-INDUCING LINK

I am dead. I have died. This is what did it.

WEEKEND PLANS

1. Haircut. I don't even care anymore, I have neither preferences about length nor delusions of hipster coolness, as long as the haircut person can get it to be FLAT. For fuck's sake. I cannot deal with all these bit and flips and wispies. I DEMAND FLATNESS.

2. Drinking at Delilah's. It has been too long. Mmmm, I can already taste the debauchery.

3. Holy shit---getting a cat. Yes, although we are still plenty sad about the loss of our fat-bottomed girl, it�s time to begin to love again and I have caught LT poking around on Petfinder and shelter websites several times now. We have an appointment to meet some felines on Sunday and the whole thing is a little scary. Unless we adopt a cat-shaped throw pillow, NewCat is almost certain to have a very different temperament and energy level than Original (Recipe) Cat, so I am trying to prepare myself. Nora is not being told about our excursion until it is practically time to get in the car and go, because frankly I don't want to hear about it all weekend. Talking about this reminds me that I should run out and get a new cat carrier because newly adopted pets are plenty freaked out without also having to ride home in a plastic container permeated with the smell of death. Hi, we're your new owners, get in this box! The last cat who used it leaked out a lot of her vital fluids and then died, but that's okay, right?

---mimi smartypants meow meow meow meow cats ask for her by name.


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