You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May, 2007.
Ugh, ugh, lazy girl. I’ve been spending all my time pretending to work while actually reading celebrity gossip blogs (I’m so in love with Go Fug Yourself at the moment — it’s hilarious) and cheesy chick lit novels and basically dicking off. And when I’m not at work, Boyo and I have been at the beach, because while nobody was paying attention it became summertime! And I have a sunburn, which I never get. And there’s sand in every single thing I own, no matter how much I wash everything. None of that matters, though, because there is ocean! And hermit crabs! And sand castles! I love the beach.
Ahem. So, first off, I just read a really, really good book – not chick lit, despite what I just said. I heard about it on the Diane Rehm show a while back and was utterly fascinated by the book’s premise, but never caught the title and then randomly found it someplace and ran out to the library in fits of excitement. It’s called The Time Traveler’s Wife, and my sister immediately went into paroxysms of bitching about how everything is called somebody’s wife and blah blah blah when I told her to go out and get it, but whatever. The story is riveting. Go get it, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Plus E really liked the cover photo, which is just a ringing endorsement, don’t you think? The author’s website appears to be permanently under construction, so Wiki it is for my link, though her site does look like it’ll be lovely if it is ever put back up.
In further reviews, I posted a Fruit Bats song recently, and I just wanted to reiterate the goodness thereof. I think I’ve listened to Mouthfuls at least 8000 times this week, though that could be a wee exaggeration. Either way, they are awesome and while you’re running out to Borders or whatever for The Time Traveler’s Wife, grab a Fruit Bats album, too, okay?
I feel like I should review a movie in this media-heavy post, and actually Boyo and I saw Shrek the Third last week while E was away in Canada. It was funny, in a Shrek sort of way, and we had a good time. I’d recommend it if you enjoyed the first two, it’s just more of the same without enough of Donkey, who I think is hysterically funny. We have quoted a lot of Donkey around here, along with a lot of “That’ll do, Donkey”. We’re lame like that.
So, that’s my week in books, music, and movies, I guess. I wanted to write all about how weird my new celebrity obsession is, but I hate posts that are too long, so I guess I’ll do it next time and waste my beautifully crafted lead-in first paragraph. You didn’t notice the beautiful crafting? Well, that’s because it wasn’t actually.
3 things:
1. A word of advice – if you are fat and embarking on an exercise routine, don’t suggest to someone that you should take “before” and “after” pictures. This is because a) the pictures will make you want to set yourself on fire and then go dig yourself into a huge pit, because eeewwww, my ass shouldn’t look like that. and b) every time you raise a morsel of junk-like food to your mouth you will hear “Hey, did you want to look at those pictures again?”.
2. I learned today that if you type something into a translator online and have it translate from English to Spanish, then translate back to English, you’ll end up with something completely different from what you started with. It will usually be funny, especially if you make it about monkeys. I usually make mine about monkeys. You could use goats, too, if you’re brave.
3. Have I mentioned how much I love Christopher Moore? Because if not, I am now. And I do. He is so freaking funny, like laugh-out-loud as you read funny. I’m reading Lamb right now and even though my Bible knowledge is awfully scanty (okay, I have basically no Bible knowledge at all), it’s hilarious. Books that make you snort with laughter are so rare.
Or, notes from a weekend.
First things first:
"Well Guy in a skeleton costume Comes up to the guy in the Superman suit Runs through him with a broadsword"
Could there possibly be a better way to start a song? No? I agree. It just keeps getting better from there, too. Mountain Goats are rocking my springtime this year.
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Boyo got into all day kindergarten, they called us to let us know today (it was a lottery thing). E and both felt the same way – happy, because it’ll be great for Boyo and nice for me to be able to work days so we can all be home in the evenings together; but also sad, because that’s a long time away from this amazing kid of ours. He read two books to my sister today “Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You” and “The Nose Book”. Bless Dr. Seuss for his awesome, fun early reader books. I can’t believe I have a kid who is old enough to read. I still feel like I’m an impostor, faking at adulthood. I’m so not a grown-up. Every time I mention feeling that way, though, someone who really is a grown-up to me says that s/he feels the same way; so I guess it’s something you feel throughout your life.
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We went to my mother’s yesterday and she cut me a huge armful of lilacs, which I distributed throughout my house in vases. The entire house, which usually smells vaguely and unpleasantly of garlic and cat pee (which is gross, but not as bad as the smell in the stairwell, which we are sure is squid testicles, because what else could smell quite that bad??) smells fabulous and floral, like powdery old ladies have been spraying their delicate French perfume everywhere. I put clean sheets on the bed and curled up in the smell of clean linen and lilacs, the window open and a nice spring breeze on my legs. A lovely way to fall asleep.
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Last night we watched Pan’s Labyrinth, which I wanted desperately to absolutely love and be blown away by. It was good, the costumes were really cool, but it was so freaking VIOLENT. I hate violence that seems like it’s for its own sake and not for any sort of purpose – we got that the guy was awful without all 8000 torture scenes. Fight Club, while horrifying and difficult to watch at points, had violence that I understood. It was a movie about a club for fighting, there was going to be violence. In this movie, I felt like it detracted some from the fairy tale. There were also some camera pan scenes that didn’t work for me – great, sweeping shots of the Captain’s quarters while he shaved that were lovely to look at but didn’t contribute to the story at all. All in all, it was a little disappointing, and E felt that the colors were a Jeunet & Caro rip-off. I think almost all movies since Amelie have ripped that off, and none have done it as well. Amelie was so gorgeous. All their movies are gorgeous. Pan’s Labyrinth was definitely gorgeous at points, too- but, yeah, if you want foreign films, go French. No one has done it as well as Jeunet & Caro. The City of the Lost Children still gives me chills, it’s so good – and I’ve seen it at least a dozen times now.
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Sometimes, when I’m away all day, I miss my son so viscerally and awfully and can’t imagine how you can manage to live away from your children and survive it. Doesn’t it break your heart? The other night after I’d spent all day at school and then gone from there straight to work, I came home and lay next to him and kissed his little head, just to be near him for a little while since I hadn’t had any Boyo that day. Sometimes I can get away with that and sneak off, but sometimes he wakes up and wants to chat or eat. That night we lay there and I fed him blackberries and he told me all about his day and we made up stupid rhymes and laughed hysterically about them. When finally I told him he had to go to sleep because it was awfully late, he wanted me to stay for a minute and I held him and remembered 10,000 other times holding him and thought about how small and precious he still is, even if he’s nearly 5. The feeling you get, lying there, holding your child and smelling that sweet sunshine and shampoo hair smell and feeling the warm little arms wrapped around you… there are just no words for it, no way to say “this is how it feels, this is the way the moment is”. It’s too much to describe. But I knew, lying there with him, that this was one of those moments I would look back on and remember forever – the way the nightlight hit the side of the bed, the way the green polka-dot blanket draped his legs, the way the cat was running amok in the hallway, the empty blackberry container in my hand. It all created this perfect moment I get to come back to whenever I need peace in my life now.
Hello, googlers who searched for “woman in rainboots sex” and “girls, in,rainboots, sex”. I hope you found what you were looking for.
Obsessively listening to: http://indiemuse.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/10-when-u-love-somebody.mp3
Awesome song.
Also obsessively listening to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snQW28vYH8s
Word on the street is they are Bush-type Christian, which is the worst kind, and the rest of the album I personally think sucks… but this song is constantly playing at my house lately (and in my car, and at work, and oddly enough it came on my MP3 player as I’m typing this. Spooky.)
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A few years ago E and I watched a really, really awful movie. Well, actually, we watched part of it and then fell asleep. But anyway, there was this hilarious song in the awful, awful movie (okay, the one that went “America, fuck yeah” was funny, too…. ) called Montage or something like that, about (appropriately enough) those montage scenes that all movies seem to have, wherein the characters get to do something that should take hours or days or whatever in about 3 seconds. After that song, for some reason, whenever I do something that takes too long, I fantasize about getting to do it montage-style. Like cleaning my fridge the other day. I’m down on the floor, scrubbing away with a wonderful-smelling baking soda and vinegar-soaked sponge, wishing that we could montage the whole thing. You’d see me getting out my supplies, a few gratuitous scrubbing shots, and then, voila, clean fridge! Like magic! I really want more montages in my life. Like with the walking? Three miles a day on the same path gets old. And tiring. And my thigh muscles start to hurt. I’m all ready to fast-forward to me posing in my new teeny-tiny bikini with people throwing rose petals at me. Or at least to me being able to go into H&M and buy a shirt. I’m easy.
Fair warning: not only am I drinking a Newcastle, but it’s 1:30 am, and I just got home from work (which came directly after a boring, boring class), so I will probably go off on weird, confusing, perhaps even misspelled tangents tonight.
1) I remembered the other Cool-Ass Shizz I wanted to mention: baking soda. All hail the baking soda! Firstly, because you can clean every damn thing in your house by mixing it with vinegar, making awesome little volcanoes of scrubbing goodness everywhere. Kids love it. But mainly because I have discovered that baking soda can be a Key to Good Skin. I’ve been (gently) scrubbing my face with it every night, and my skin is magically clearer and softer and generally healthier. E insists it’s the 3-mile-a-day walking, but that just makes me sweaty and gross, which is bad for the skin. It’s definitely the baking soda.
2)I was reading over at Linda’s blog — BTW, if you haven’t tried her spicy salad, go do so. Come back once you’ve finished. It is SO GOOD! And healthy! Revolutionary salad! I made my own super-ghetto salsa to go with it (chopped up red pepper, tomato, and onion soaked in a little Italian dressing, making it not salsa in the least, except in my world), and I couldn’t stop eating it. — anyway, over there she posted about her anniversary and going away for the weekend. I need a romantic anniversary this year, but since we’ll just be getting back from vacation two days before and it’s midweek, I highly doubt that’ll happen. I’ll settle for a nap. I was thinking, though, how much fun my honeymoon was, and how it was also unsettling since Boyo was 1 when we got married, and I was still breastfeeding and had to, well, expel some milk into the bathroom sink. For comfort reasons. Now THAT is a romantic honeymoon. Squirting breastmilk in the sink.
3)Driving home tonight I saw a man wearing rubber Wellington-type knee-high boots and baggy denim shorts walking along with a hiking stick. On the highway. At 1 a.m.
At the gas station today, I saw two middle-aged men rocking out loud to Snoop.
The other day at the gas station down the road from that one, a chicken was standing outside the door. A live, pecking-at-the-ground chicken.
Could these things be the signs of some sort of pending apocalypse?
