cat cam
lunch likes to sit on my windowsill. today he is directly in front of the webcam, looking out upon his domain.
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July 27, 2003
July 21, 2003
tom, noted egyptologist
from my mother, about tom, my five-year-old nephew:
I just finished unloading the dishwasher and thought it was time for you all to hear (or read, as the case may be) the conversation that took place in my car yesterday afternoon.
Tom and I were headed to Kroger and were stopped at a red light. The car in front of us had an unusual decal across the back window and I thought I'd point it out to Tom.
"Tom, that window has a sign that says, 'Sink the Fink!' I don't even know what a fink is, do you?"
"Lala, you must be joking me. You know what a fink is! It is one of those statues that they had in ancient Egypt — you know, a finks, that statue with the body of a cat and the head of a person."
consumer report
here are some of the things i bought in maine:
- lobster dishes. at mikasa i bought four soup bowls and two platters. i wasn't going to buy them. i told paul, "i really don't need them." "but what about your soul?" he asked. note to self: keep paul.
- a couple of rectangular ceramic baking dishes from le creuset. orange, natch.
- dinner.
July 19, 2003
spur of the moment
today paul and i are going to maine. we'll be back sunday night. what can i say? i needed some coastline.
July 18, 2003
down by the water
paul goes down to the pond several times a day to look at the froglings.
it was a dark and crappy novel
this year's bulwer-lytton winners (or losers, as the case may be) have been announced!
some of my favorites:
Mac was the crustiest ex-LAPD homicide detective with three ex-wives, two mortgages, a greedy daughter wasting time at college, a gay son playing acid-blues punk in some Sacramento dive, and a liver that had been bitch slapped by cheap vodka so many times it looked like a bag of yellow fat, who ever walked into my floral and gift shop.
The sun rose over the horizon like a great big radioactive baby's head with a bad sunburn but then again it might just have been that Lisa was always cranky this early in the morning.
When the time came for Timothy to fly the nest, he felt the best years of his life were ahead of him, if only because he had spent the childhood ones living in a nest.
The sun rose over the horizon like a great big radioactive baby's head with a bad sunburn but then again it might just have been that Lisa was always cranky this early in the morning.
When the time came for Timothy to fly the nest, he felt the best years of his life were ahead of him, if only because he had spent the childhood ones living in a nest.
July 17, 2003
julie at 13
you should know that the highlight of my teen years was my thirteenth birthday, when my dad took me to see duran duran in baton rouge.
July 16, 2003
everything i need to know
it's betty's birthday today. i will treat you to a sampling of the knowledge i have acquired through her patient tutelage.
never buy a two-door car.
if the car plunges off a bridge and into the mississippi river, first check to see which bank is closer. then grab aunt betty's purse. i learned this before i learned how to spell my last name.
do not eat chicken salad you have not made yourself. it will always contain the bite you wish you'd never tasted.
vodka should be stored in the freezer. it makes it kind of thick and syrupy.
check to see whether the fries are hot before you leave the drive-thru window. at the ordering speaker you will ask, "are the fries hot?" the disembodied voice will say, "everything's hot!" but sure as i'm alive, the fries will not be hot, and you will save yourself another trip around if you verify that immediately.
i swear it, da ali g. show really is funny. reSPEC'.
god save the queen
the ap is reporting that britain may have invented lasagna.
now who's going to cop to balut?
July 14, 2003
garden of earthly delights
the latest news from the garden...
here are some of the lilies currently rioting across the back fence. thank you, deer off, for protecting them from evil. this closeup sort of looks like the kind of thing you'd find on a greeting card.
this is a shot of one of the raised beds paul built me. i had the idea that i'd plant a cutting garden. the cosmos are going great guns, very satisfying. the zinnias, though, are a little too dwarfy to be useful for cutting. next year i'll plant something different.
here's the front bed, complete with purple glass birdbath. (it originally looked very naked, but then the bee balm got tall enough to camouflage it some.)
i've been spending zero time working out in the garden, but the mulching i did early in the season seems to have paid off in terms of weed control.
and i quote...
yesterday i went with paul to the annual meeting of the nwu vermont local. it was billed as a cookout (country music! swimming! free barbecue!) as well as a meeting. little did we know that the meeting part would take five hours and the cookout a mere fifteen minutes. i was left to my own devices during the meeting, so sat out on the deck overlooking acres of beautiful gardens, a frog-clogged pond, and the distant mountains.
as i sat, a woman came out and joined me. her name was phyllis. phyllis is a raving madwoman. here, now, i will tell you what phyllis said.
i had to come outside. it was very strange in there. i have chemical sensitivities so i needed some fresh air.
[julie nods and murmurs, trying to be polite without drawing phyllis into further conversation]
[phyllis shakes the clear contents of a jam jar vigorously, unscrews the top, and drinks deeply]
i was going to go swimming. i even brought a bathing suit. but i don't know how deep the water is and there could be chemicals in it.
[julie considers a mild contradiction, believing that no frogs could survive in the pond if it were doctored with chemicals, but ultimately decides she doesn't care whether phyllis goes swimming or not. instead julie nods and murmurs — see above.]
[a few others venture outside, including a woman with long, spidery black hair who introduces herself as the daughter of a poet who won a national book award: "we're a family of writers."]
i had to come outside because of my chemical sensitivities.
[spider-woman asks, "what are chemical sensitivities?"]
did you know that since world war two there have been fifty thousand new chemicals pumped into the environment?
[julie tunes out for a while. hum de dum, look at that bird. i think i'll plant some globe thistle in my garden next year. i wonder when the burgers will be ready.]
i write poems. i haven't had any published in a while but i have two in a college anthology.
[she quotes the title of the anthology...and the names of the editors...and the publication date...and the name of the publisher. spider-woman mentions again that her mother won the national book award for poetry.]
my first chapbook came out in 1972. it was the first time my publisher published a book by a woman. they were going to publish some poems by a woman that the publisher was fucking, but i saw the poems and said, "my poems are better than that! why won't you publish mine?!" he said, "we will!" and they did!
[emphasis on "fucking" is hers, not mine. please note that an eight-year-old girl sits three feet to the left of their little group, avidly following the conversation.]
then when my book came out, there was an event to showcase it and two other books by women poets. the small books editor of the washington post was there.
[julie wonders whether it was the books that were small or the editor.]
everybody expected him to write about one of the other books, because he was fucking the writer, but he didn't! and he was fucking the other writer, too. but he talked about my book. everybody said he must be fucking me!
[julie makes a mental note to the effect that if anyone had ever fucked phyllis, it must have been many moons ago indeed.]
here's what he said about my book:
[phyllis quotes at length from the thirty-year-old review. julie tunes out, filtering in only words like "luminous," "trenchant," and "poignant."]
[spider-woman, in a flurry of oh-would-you-look-at-the-time, makes to go inside again.]
before you go, may i recite a poem for you?
[julie almost laughs aloud, delighted. spider-woman frantically considers bolting, but capitulates.]
young zionism
[as an aside, phyllis asks spider-woman if she's jewish. spider-woman declines to say.]
when we were 15
they told us
no drinking, smoking, or screwing
until we reached israel
no wonder
they called it
the promised land.
and then they all went inside.
later we hightailed it out of there with indecent speed so that phyllis could not request a ride home from us. if she'd asked, i was all set to lie and say i'd worn perfume.
July 04, 2003
summertime, and the cookin' is easy
paul's sister, niece, two nephews, and a friend are visiting this weekend. here is the menu:
friday dinner: burgers, chicken breasts, and salmon on the grill. buns of all nations. condiments. chilled asparagus vinaigrette. paul's shockingly delicious potato salad. buttermilk country cake with sugared plums.
saturday breakfast: bagels, cream cheese, toast, jam, cereal, fruit, etc.
saturday lunch: out, thankyouverymuch.
saturday dinner: grilled turkey breast. lemon/parmesan rice. steamed broccoli. green salad. corn on the cob. more cake, please.
sunday brunch: breakfast casserole from a recipe from paul's cousin chrys. (special family bonding bonus.) fruit salad.
the beauty of this menu is that it's easy and absolutely appropriate. happy summer, everyone!
i'm just saying.
percentage of women at last night's july 4th fete who seriously needed a better bra:
July 03, 2003
paul's turn
proof that paul's smarter than i am: you don't see him with his arm trapped in the coiled extension cord, do you?
spacker
today i mowed the back yard. we have an electric mower, so cutting the grass involves managing a 100' extension cord. after i finished, i decided to be a good citizen and coil the cord back up so paul could easily drag the mower to the front for his stint.
so i did that thing where you wrap the cord around under your elbow, then over the palm of your hand. i was proud of how tidy a job i was doing...until i realized i'd wound it so tightly that there was no way i could get my arm out of the coil.
i bent. i stretched. i pulled. no avail.
i had to uncoil the entire goddamn thing again to free my trapped forearm.
it's all about you.
i spend so much time yammering about myself that i thought i'd talk about someone else today. specifically, some of you. here are some interesting tidbits for you to consider.
when we were remodeling the bathroom in new york and had been toiletless for a few days, cori took pity on me and invited me over for dinner. she and josh made delicious fried chicken, treated me like an honored guest, and generally made me forget the horribleness that waited for me back at the apartment. she might not have known at the time what a kindness she did me, but i was deeply grateful. she also once said "fuck" in front of my mother, and had the best wedding i've ever been to.
when i worked at suranet back in the pre-.com days, ed and i used to walk down to a nearby 7-11 every day for a big gulp. we consumed buckets and buckets of coke. ed's wife is an accountant, so from january to mid-april she spent most of her waking hours preparing taxes. when she wasn't available, ed would sometimes take me to orioles games so as not to waste their season tickets. and he would often come over and watch welcome back, kotter with me on friday nights. he was my very best pal in maryland.
i don't even know where to start with harold. through alphabetical chance, he and i sat next to each other in patsy musgrove's twelfth-grade ap english class, world literature. we spent three months studying the bible. harold and i entertained each other by drawing flip-book cartoons in the margins of our bibles — a stick figure robbing another at gunpoint. a stick figure being flattened by a falling safe. a stick figure dying, decomposing into the ground, and a cross rising in its place (which was then promptly flattened by aforementioned falling safe, in an uncredited cameo). harold wore the same pair of jeans every day one semester, just to see if anyone would notice. no one did.
July 02, 2003
nature, slimy in tooth and claw
paul finds a lot of gross things.