pictoral update

Shoes!




Something's sprouting!

No ants!

Hockey pits! (Have you ever *tried* to take a picture of your own armpit? It's harder than you might think.)

xoxo

my psychic powers desert me

When, in response to Mr Lopez coming in for the bottom of the ninth, I said, "This doesn't seem like a very good idea," I was thinking more in terms of 'walk-off home run'. Ah, a failure of psychic powers *and* imagination.

Also? Julie comes back, winning streak ends? Coincidence? Ha!

Also also? From another anonymous soul on the interwebz (paraphrased): "We don't even refer to Lugo by name in my house. We just call him E6." If I ever get sick of Julie, I may need to steal that.

xoxo

i wish to lodge a complaint

Actually, two.

First one, consumer-style. A week or two ago I was out with a friend and we were by CVS and I was like, can we pop in for a second, I just need a couple things. Well, one of the things I needed was the stuff I wash my face and take my makeup off with. Because I was imposing on someone else's good nature, I grabbed my stuff really quickly. Come to find out, the stuff I bought is not my usual product, but a similar one in almost identical packaging, and it a.) is too runny and b.) stings my eyes when I take off my mascara. Why would you market something as facial cleanser/makeup remover if you cannot use it to take off mascara without burning your eyes and why would you put two of your products in packaging that looks exactly alike unless you very carefully read the label (unless your fiendish plan is to make consumers grab the wrong one by mistake and have to return to buy the other product, thus making two sales instead of one)? Yes, yes, I know, read the fucking label, Andrea, but I was just trying to be polite and considerate. God.

Second one, nature-style. Ants! Every spring/summer you hear me bitch about my war with the fucking ants that get in by my kitchen window (off the deck) and upstairs from the door to the upper deck. Well, that time is here again. Yesterday I went into the kitchen to make tea for me and L and there were like eight ants frolicking in my sink. I took great satisfaction in powerwashing them down the drain with the sink sprayer while yelling, "Die, motherfuckers, DIE!" but seriously, I've got to get out the ant spray, which I am loathe to do because of Evil Kitty. Because this *is* war.

xoxo

P.S. Do you know that Blogger spellcheck, which balks at "hoodie", knows that motherfuckers is a word? Huh. How about that.

mental

Here are two true facts about me: I have an anxiety disorder with a side of depression (hold the ketchup, please) and I think a lot, often about things that other people don't ever seem to consider. These two true facts are related, but not, probably, in the way that you might first think.

What brings this up? Well. Today's work day (and, to an extent, yesterday's) has been rife with dead spots, not slow exactly, but with longer than normal spaces in between appointments. And since it is literally 95 degrees in here even with the back door propped open, I have not been inclined to do anything ambitious and productive in those spaces. Instead, I've been reading crap on the internet. And from two different sources, I followed two different links to two totally disparate discussions (one from an American Muslim woman living in Saudi Arabia, the other from an evangelical Christian perspective), both of which happened to involve a discussion of, and endorsement for, "modesty" in dress. And then, also separately, I read some people excoriating (and other people defending) Dita Von Teese as a feminist because she has implants and wears corsets. And all this stuff smushed itself together in my brain into another of my exceedingly crackpot theories, which I was going to blog for y'all.

And then I thought, Andrea, you are mental. The reason you are wasting your time reading this stuff, thinking about how it all relates, and distilling a cultural hypothesis from it is *not* intellectual curiosity, and you fucking know it. The reason you are doing it is that it keeps you from thinking about: a.) whether maybe dad has cancer and all the cupcakes in the world aren't gonna fix his weight loss or b.) what the chances really are that you've picked up a parasite from a patient or c.) how your house probably really needs a new roof (along with all the other stuff it needs) and how people with houses that need work shouldn't be buying shoes or getting pedis or acupuncture or d.) how you are in fact going to die alone and unloved and be eaten by your theoretical 12 cats before anyone finds you because you won't have any step-grandchildren to check on you or e.) the 53 other anxiety- or depression-triggering topics that could find space in your brain instead.

I wish I knew what normal people have going on in their brains at any given time. What's happening in there if you aren't continually thinking either about horrible things you'd rather not contemplate *or* stoopid stuff that is just so much mental masturbation? I really wanna know. Is that why people are extroverts, so they can spend all their time talking and no time thinking? Is it possible to think about nothing at all? (I guess meditation says "yes" but I usually have a big ol' FAIL at meditation.) Can you train yourself to just think about very concrete things like lists of what you're going to make for dinner or who's gonna win American Idol or today's Sox-Yankees game? My whole life I always thought having a good imagination was a positive thing, but the older I get, the more I realize that unless someone's paying you for your creative output, it's really more a curse than anything else.

That is all.

xoxo

fear my power

So, last night I was talking to my TV in that way that I always do when I'm watching a game in the privacy of my house with my kid, and I said, "Jason Bay"--because I always call Mr Bay by his full name--"Jason Bay, why don't you hit a home run right now and tie this. I *know* you can do it." Next pitch? Yeah, baby. D's yelling and laughing and pointing at me. I do wonder sometimes whether encouraging the belief that I can in fact predict the future in someone who is, let's face it, more prone to delusions than the average person is wise, but y'know, the seduction of being right is just too sweet to resist.

I wish I could say I predicted Youk, but I just could not stay up any longer and went to bed during the top of the 11th. I know, shameful, but I did have to get up and go to my bastard job this morning. If I could turn my awesome psychic powers towards, I dunno, predicting lottery numbers or something, that whole eventuality could be avoided. I'll have to work on it.

xoxo

thoughts for friday

1.) According to the AP, Michael Phelps is "casually dating" (the anti-gay marriage) Miss California. Doesn't that kinda make you wish her interview question was about legalizing the ganja instead? Also? The headline for this was something along the lines of "Phelps dates beauty queen" which brought up my eternal question: why, when you become a famous athlete, you immediately are required to start dating (preferably blond) bimbos? Why is it beyond the pale for you to be hooking up with a nice, attractive lawyer or nurse or preschool teacher or, geez, I dunno, another athlete? It can't be just the looks thing, because there are plenty of real women with real jobs who are stunning. I was thinking maybe it's that at a certain point, your ego is so overinflated that you want a woman who is as vapid and empty as possible so she doesn't have any actual thoughts, ideas, or original opinions to interfere with her reflecting back your adoration of yourself, but then, I thought about Tom and Gisele, and that's obviously not what's going on there. All evidence points to him being her bitch and, I'm sure he thinks what she tells him to think. So maybe it's just peer pressure! But, mom! All the other superstars are doing it!

2.) Speaking of female attorneys, did you hear about the woman in Scarsdale who is in trouble, and being absolutely excoriated on the interwebz, for kicking her (behaving obnoxiously) 12 and 10 year olds out of the car three miles from home and telling them they could walk? Not exactly seeing this as child abuse myself, but I'm probably just a bad person.

3.) And, just throwing this out there, but I am totally willing to forgo shaving my pits for the duration of the playoffs (in solidarity with Mr Barma's hockey beard) if it will help the Bruins go all the way. Because that's the kind of girl I am.

xoxo

everyone's favorite little MILF

I know it's shocking, but today I'm gonna talk about someone else's lingerie.

It seems that our (faux) MILF's baby will need a bit of minor surgery and, anticipating needing to stay over at the hospital, she decided she probably needs to buy some sweatpants or similar. "What?" we all asked in shock. "You don't own sweatpants? What do you wear to bed? What do you wear around the house?"

In keeping with the high-heeled shoes and adorable outfits she wears to work, the answer is: negligees! She hangs out in the house in pretty, sexy little nightgowns. And she doesn't even have a (live-in) man, I marvelled. She started laughing. It seems that when her daughter's father and she were living together, she'd bitch to her friends that every time she got into bed, he was immediately all over her. Maybe, they would suggest to her, he's confused by your alluring night clothes into thinking they're a signal you're looking for some. (And really, gentlemen, I do sympathize. It must be hella difficult figuring out when we're dressing or grooming ourselves in a certain way so as to come onto you, and when we're doing it for ourselves because it makes us feel pretty.)

Anyway, even though it makes me aware of my own sartorial failings, her little admission made me love her even more. Of course she's not wearing Old Navy pj pants or freebie oversized t-shirts like the rest of us. She's her own little (glamorous) individual. In fact, I suggested we all buy her a pair of those spike-heeled marabou slippers for Christmas next year, because those she doesn't have them, and if anyone could pull those off, it obviously would be she.

xoxo