Pretty Much. . .

...Thanksgiving is awesome. All day eating and sitting and telling everyone how much you love them. It just turns into a really love-y time whether you mean it to or not. It's like being happily drunk where you just run around the bar telling strangers you're so glad you met them because they're really beautiful people (you can tell because you can see their souls through their eyes). It's like that. Sort of. Just without the drunken making out and 3am burrito run.

I spent all day on the couch by the fire, reading with my cousins, and chatting a bit about their schooling until I put a ban on that kind of talk when I was reminded once again even the 12 year old is way smarter than me. (Fluent in French? Well that's just great. At 12 I was fluent in Full House, so that's kinda the same.)

When it came time to eat dinner my Aunt and I sat together at one end of the table and pretty much shoveled the food in with both hands, pausing only when our plates were clean. When we looked up from out empty plates the entire rest of the table was staring at us in shock, their mouths wide open, my eldest cousin shaking her head at us. My Uncle cleared his throat, "Mind if we say grace so the rest of us can start eating?" Mind? Heck no, we didn't mind. That would give us time to let the food settle before we went in for seconds.



I hope everyone else had a really great Thanksgiving! And I'm still sort of in the holiday afterglow so if you want me to shower you with compliments and love just give me a call, I'll be doling it out til the leftover turkey runs out. Well, that or until I realize I've had The Starter Wife marathon on half the day - that cannot be good for me.

Down To One

I kept putting it off and putting it off and then today, while I was reading Twilight in the twilight (stop judging me), all the light went out and I was in the dark. I had some warning, a few seconds anyway, to know it was coming. A gentle pop and fizz, like an old fashioned picture being taken with gun powder, and then black. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled to the bathroom where I knew the light bulb was still in working order. I felt around for awhile until I found the light fixture and took the working light bulb with me to the living room. So, now I’m walking around from room to room unscrewing, and screwing a single light bulb so I can have light wherever I go. It’s not so bad except when you’re sitting in the living room and decide you need some crackers so you unscrew, screw, go to the kitchen, then get settled back onto the couch, unscrew, screw, when you realize the crackers you got were the stale ones you never threw out just left next to the box of new ones even though you said, If I leave these here I’m gonna forget which ones are new and which ones are stale, and then promptly closed the cupboard on them, so you get back up, unscrew, screw, get the new crackers, unscrew, screw, decide you really want some cheese with them, unscrew, screw, decide you have to go to the bathroom, unscrew, screw, go back to the living room, unscrew, screw, realize you left the crackers in the kitchen, unscrew, screw, nope you left them in the bathroom, gross, unscrew, screw, living room, unscrew, screw, realize you got these crackers from the stale box again instead of the new box, unscrew, screw, think about how your mom would breast feed one out of the two twins repeatedly on accident because she was so tired she couldn’t remember which baby she’d already fed, unscrew, screw, did you forget something, oh the crackers, unscrew, screw, and you wonder how in the world she could have mixed up her babies, or forgotten which one she’d fed for Christ’s sake, unscrew, screw, dang it, the crackers, unscrew, screw, they’re babies, and they weren’t even identical babies, unscrew, screw, now you’re thirsty, wine goes with cheese and crackers, unscrew, screw, pour yourself some wine and think about how when you first started drinking wine it was with your mom and it was from a box and that was nice, unscrew, screw, get comfy back on the couch and decide to forgive your mom for only feeding one of her children, most likely Bubby, that’s why she turned out so chubby as a child, and decide to call her to tell her you love her then realize your phone is in the bedroom, unscrew, screw, after several minutes of increasingly frantic searching find your phone tucked away into a pillowcase on the bed, along with a stapler, a Reese’s peanut butter cup, and seven hair ties all carefully hidden from your cat at various bed times throughout the week, unscrew, screw, eat the Reese’s peanut butter cup, forget why you’re holding your phone, wash down the chocolate with all of your wine, decide you need more, unscrew, screw, all out of wine, but have some Jim Beam and that will certainly do, unscrew, screw, remember you were going to call your mom but now you might be a little tipsy and last time you drunk dialed her you ended up singing and she recorded it, unscrew, screw, not really sure why you took the light bulb out this time, screw, get really tired of all the unscrewing and screwing and decide that there is nothing, nothing else you will ever need from any of the other parts of the house until morning and you will no longer be leaving the couch now that you have Mr. Beam and Mr. James to keep you company, so you pull the blanket up over you, turn on some old Lost episodes in anticipation of January, and decide that tomorrow – tomorrow you are definitely going to start keeping a grocery list.

At Least She Was Smaller Than Me

Walking to school there's always a lot of people around because it's downtown, so I'm used to passing workmen asking me if I play basketball, art-y kids asking me for a cigarette, or homeless people asking me for change. Yes professionally, No I wish, and Yes as long as I have enough leftover for a Snickers ice cream bar. But yesterday I'm walking past the Corner Bakery trying to will a brownie to come floating out the door at me, when this older homeless woman charged right at me, like some sort of sidewalk linebacker protecting her path and the path of those around her, and elbowed me as hard as she could in the side, while screaming at the top of her lungs, "YOU BITCH!" and then calmly carried on down the street. I stood stunned for second, my mouth wide open in shock, with two other women who had been crossing the street at the same time as me. The three of us stared at each other, then down the block at the woman who hit me, then back at each other. One of the women said, "I think you just got molested", and that was it. I lost my shit. The three of us burst into uncontrollable laughter and couldn't stop, even when the cop pulled over and told us if we didn't get out of the way of traffic he was going to have to move us himself. "I'd like that officer," the other woman said, but we moved out of the road and then in a rare moment of touchy-feely-ness the three of us did this weird group hug and then left each other, continuing on down the street in three different directions. If I had had some sort of magical traveling pants I would have given it to them just then. And then made Alfre Woodard play me in the movie version.

I'm still not sure what is was that made me the bitch to hit, but if I ever see her again I'm gonna find out. I'll be wearing some sort of protective gear though, just in case.

Putting My Head In My Oven, And Not Because I Wanna Die, But Because It's Warm Up In There

So, I don't know what kind of system my heater is on, but it's obviously the rebellious teenager of heater systems. It yells at it's mom, skips class, steals it's aunt's cigarettes only to find out they're Kools, wears all black, and has sex with her Spanish teacher.

It doesn't come on is what I'm saying. Until it does come on and then it's on full blast for two straight days, so that I have to walk around in shorts and a bikini, because there's no way I'm opening the windows. I know that soon, horribly soon, the heat will stop, go on a strike with pickets and signs, for weeks, and I'm gonna keep what little heat there was trapped as long as I possibly can.

Anyway, I'm in one of those no heat phases right now, and this is what I have to wear to stay warm, two sweatshirts, gloves and all:




Even James is curled under a blanket:



Hellllllo lover.


At about 6 today I had had enough so I went to the grocery store to warm up. I didn't even need to buy anything, I just wanted to go somewhere with people and heat, so I just walked around picking things up, looking at the ounces in them thoughtfully, putting them back and then moving on to examine all the different kinds of lightbulbs.

Oh who am I kidding, I do that even when it's not cold. I love being around food.

Sometimes I Don't Even Want To Take My Coat Off To Shower

I just checked the temperature and it pretty much said:

Weather:
Really Cold
Feels:
Even Colder

Luckily I have a very strange body heat thing when I run, so even though it was 30 degrees this morning (feels like 19) when I decided to brave it and get out there, I started sweating and getting so hot I wished I'd worn shorts. Could be because I was wearing three layers of pants, but whatever.

Then, I just went to make myself some eggs and bacon and when I went to crack the egg it wouldn't crack open, like there was something solid inside. I stood there for a second thinking, "Oh my god, did I hard boil these eggs and forget about it?" No, no I did not. Apparently my refrigerator is so cold it froze my eggs. It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my life. Like, some chicken mama had come over and decided she wasn't ready for chicks so she had her eggs frozen for use at a later time, you know, when she's settled into a career and whatnot.

It looked like a bouncy ball that just happened to look like an egg, and I was half tempted to throw it to James to see if he wanted to play with it. I called my mom and she said she thinks it'll be ok, and that she's heard of people freezing eggs, and that no I'm not going to get any sort of poisoning. So, I'm letting them un-gel for a while, and then I'm gonna see if they still work. For some reason defrosting chicken - not that weird. Defrosting eggs - nuh uh. It's like telling me you're going to have to bake me some licorice.

Anyway, I'm gonna go turn down my refrigerator because I just discovered my milk is also solid. That I'm just throwing away.

Spacca Napoli

Last weekend my friend Gabi came out to Chicago to visit me, and for the entire month prior to her arrival I got at least three texts a day discussing where she wanted to eat. By the time she got here the list was so long we figured we were going to have to eat 17 full meals a day for three days, with bakery breaks in between. Instead, we ended up going to the same pizza restaurant three nights in a row. There's this place that makes these thin Italian style pizzas that are so good it's like they have all your hopes and dreams baked into them. Apparently the owner only uses Italian wood burning ovens, and Italian flour he has shipped out from his grandma's farm in Italy where she culls the wheat herself, and then knits a quilt to wrap around each package of flour so it'll stay warm for the flight. Or something like that.

So, Gabi gets off the plane and she's hungry so we hop in a cab and go straight to the restaurant complete with luggage, and enormously oversized pillow she refuses to travel without. (except! for the time we visited Bub in Italy and Gabi decided to leave her pillow there so that she could fit Special K with strawberries cereal boxes into her suitcase, because she was convinced they wouldn't have them in the U.S. "But I can just buy a new pillow!" she screamed. This may be a whole other story for a different blog.) We get there and they ask us if we're moving in. Kind of, we say. It's not until the end of the weekend, when we're walking in and high-fiving the bus boys, that they realize we weren't kidding.

Anyway, we were so excited that first night to be eating pizza together that we got two bottles of wine. That's one bottle a piece too many it turns out. Stuffed and hammered, we decided to get a cab home but for some reason couldn't find one, so we just started walking and wheeling Gabi's suitcase down a major street, in the rain. For some reason we decide the clicking of the wheels on her bag down the sidewalk is making an amazing beat so I start doing a little butt-shaking dance, which then led to Gabi dropping her bag and running to the flag pole in front of the hospital we'd been walking past to do an impromptu pole dance, which was really just her swinging around once and then falling to the ground while I screamed, "You stopped my beat!"

Luckily, a cab pulled over at this point. We jumped in and I pointed dead ahead, proclaiming, "To Home!", Gabi high-fived me and we buckled up while the driver continued to stare at us as we giggled and high-fived for a good 2 minutes before he said, "Where do you live?" Slightly embarrassed, I gave him my address and two blocks later we were there.

Once at home Gabi and I immediately changed into our pjs, and then I stood in my kitchen drinking water while watching her stumble back and forth between the couch and the chair like a cat, until she found a comfy spot and fell asleep.

The next night we chose to just have a glass of wine each, no bottles, definitely not two bottles, and the pizza was just as amazing as it was the night before. And while the rest of her trip involved no more pole dancing, and no more cab rides, it did involve lots of napping and movie watching, and that was just as fun.

R Is For Reading

So I spent a good part of yesterday calling up my family members and screaming, "I NEED TO READ TO YOU FOR TEN MINUTES!" Most of them asked me what the hell I was talking about but my mom was just really pleased I was so passionate about literacy.
"I knew reading those Sue Grafton novels to you every night wasn't a waste!" she said, and then I pictured her propping her elbows up on the table and resting her chin in her hands, ready for whatever I was gonna give her. (Sue Grafton novels as childhood bedtime reading by the way - this could explain a lot.) I was doing a reading with a bunch of other super talented ladies last night, and the only constraint was that it had to be five minutes or less, so I was reading two separate pieces aloud and timing myself. They whistle you off if you go over and I was already so nervous I thought I was going to pee my pants, I didn't need a sharp, loud sound to scare it out of me.
My mom actually picked the story I ended up reading as her favorite, because she said it sounded like it really happened. When I reminded her they both really did happen (the story I read was about someone peeing on my front door, and the story I didn't read was about my first boyfriend in 6th grade) she said, "Oh honey, he was your boyfriend? Didn't you just do his math homework for him?" Yes I did, but that wasn't the point. The point was he really was my boyfriend, for two whole weeks of awkward avoiding each other in the hallways until we broke up via his dad's answering machine, and she should respect that. Today, when I called her to thank her for her help, and let her know how the whole thing went she said it was no problem, she loved me, and she knew that one day . . . one day, after all my hard work, I might be as good as Sue Grafton.

Here's hoping.

I Love When Beer And Politics Come Together, It's Like Getting To Have Christmas And Chanukah!

So tomorrow's a pretty important day, and I just found this little side by side video thing for ya'll to watch when no one is looking at work.

The first one is from 8 years ago (or two elections ago, I think I'm gonna start talking about time in terms of elections. How old are you? Why I'm 7 elections thank you very much). The second video is the exact same actors, just in the present. I love that they were all available to do that again. Now if only someone could talk the My So-Called Life People into it, I'd be set.