Summer Recap

So long time no post.  We've been traveling for my work, and busy with Hannah, and she's started sleeping through the night (yay) but winds up getting up at around 6 most mornings (not yay).  Which means that I kind of have to rethink my whole sleep schedule, getting up early to write, how I'm going to fit in The Artist's Way etc.  Our babysitter likes to talk about how she "puzzles" things together, and that's what I'm trying to do.

I was thinking back on the summer, and how it didn't work out at all the way I'd planned.  I had planned to go to Sweden for my best friend's wedding, and North Carolina for my stepbrother's wedding.  Neither of those things happened.  Instead, the following happened.

Memorial Day Weekend: the Saturday morning of Memorial Day Weekend I went to the doctor and got meds for my bipolar disorder.  I took them that Saturday night, felt like a freight train hit me, and slept for 13 hours without waking up once.

Hannah moved into her own room Memorial Day Weekend as well.  It was a big weekend all around.

The week after that I was in New York for BookExpo where I met a lot of publishers, took lots of long walks through the city, revisited some of my old haunts, and ate a lot of Pret a Manger sandwiches.

In mid-June the shit hit the fan with our neighbor when he came pounding up our steps swearing at us (he has some anger issues).  We should have called the cops for disorderly conduct, but we were too shellshocked.  Next day the County comes out and says that:
- we have to tear down the cat shed
- we have to get an inspector out about the home office
- we need to rehome half our cats.

That night I escaped to Seattle for the launch of the Amazon Fire phone and met Jeff Bezos the next day.

When I got home we decided that we were moving back to Pennsylvania by the next summer.  We would swing seriously into Moving Mode, which meant getting rid of stuff, fixing up the house, and yes, rehoming our cats.  I stopped feeling safe in our home thanks for the asshole next door, who also started coming up more often.  Before The Incident we'd seen him twice in 7 years.  Now he's up like every week.

Ok, so we spent tons of time and energy calling cat places and trying to find homes for older cats, which is a tough sell.

Then I went to Vegas for ALA Annual.  It was hot.  That's all I can say about that.  Oh, and the Bellagio fountain show is amazing.

We started Mommy & Me swim lessons the last week in June.  Hannah had a blast with the kids in the water, and even went off the diving board.

By the 4th of July we had homes for the cats lined up, and we were delivering them.  J took down the cat shed, but it took a week because he was doing it carefully since we might wind up reassembling it in our driveway.

The inspector comes in mid July and says that J has to tear down the home office, and has 2 weeks to do so.

I work part time so he has time to disassemble, and Hannah and I spend a lot of time together in the afternoons.

We had our first yard sale on August 2, and made around $70, and got rid of 2 carloads of crap.

The home office was mostly torn down by her birthday, on August 7.  Which she spent in the ER with strep throat.  A 15 hour overnight ER visit.  I'm still recovering from that.

Sometime in there I went up to San Mateo and got pissed off at the summertime tourists clogging up the airport.

After all this, the idea of going to Sweden - just the idea of it - made me nauseated.  I just couldn't do it.  So I bailed on my best friend and his wedding.  So sad.  I also bailed on my stepbrother's wedding.  Too many people got married in August.

Hannah took her first steps August 9.  She was really seriously walking by around the 19th.  Now she's a pro.

This past week we were up in Santa Clara for a big event I do there each year.  The drive through the Central Valley with an antsy 1 year old who can walk was pretty rough.  I had told my boss back in mid July that I was moving, and was going to be working for myself.  I might still stick around with my current job on a consultant/contract basis (and in fact I think it makes sense for me to do so, at least for a year or two), but I'm also hustling for other work next year, and will be going to the Pa Library Association meeting at the end of September.

And today, to nicely wrap up the end of summer in a neat little package, we had our second yard sale and made around $250.  I sold the Asus tablet I bought in 2011 at Best Buy in Upland.  J sold his first guitar.  We're seriously getting rid of everything.  It's awesome and freeing and amazing.

This summer I also started practicing daily meditation, daily writing, and using the loseit app.  I'm within 7 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight.  I walk around the lake at least 4-5 days a week, with smaller walks the rest of the days.  It's great to start feeling healthy again.  I'm fairly well adjusted to my meds - they don't make me feel like I was hit by a freight train anymore, though I do still need 8 hours of sleep each night to not feel like death.

Hannah is on a good schedule, and I get time in the evenings to myself these days.  Also the mornings, if I can drag my ass out of bed early enough.  Now that it's getting light so much later, the 5:45 alarm seems even more like a medieval torture instrument.

And I've read a ton of books on Oyster.  I heart Oyster.

So that's where we are.  Nothing went as expected, but that's kind of how life goes, and I'm really excited about the future.  Working for myself, however that will go.  Moving back home (which sort of fills me with dread, but is also exciting at the same time - plus J is really excited, so it's great to see him like that).  Really committing to a number of big changes, which I think will be for the best for our family, and for Hannah.  It's been a crazy summer!

People I'm Glad I'm Not: Tony Stewart

It's still a rough time in HannahLand, with her still sick, and being super fussy for most of the day.  We did have a few high points - she took her first steps by herself! - but for much of the day it's been rough.  We're even letting her cry herself to sleep - something I've been totally against from the get go - because she's fighting sleep so much, but she needs it desperately, and when we're in the room with her, she just cries to be held and won't lay down.  Poor baby.  It's been rough.

Still, it's better than what Tony Stewart is going through.  The bigwig Nascar racer (3 time champion) killed an unknown driver last night by freaking running over him.  He was doing some dirt track racing an hour away from the Watkins Glen speedway where he was meant to be racing the next day in NASCAR, and got into an altercation with a driver, spinning him out.  The caution flag came out, and the driver stepped out onto the track, and seemed to play a game of chicken with Stewart when he came around the next time, pointing at him and not moving.  Tony is famous for his anger (he's pulled similar moves himself, even throwing his helmet at the car of another Nascar driver two years ago) and while it's tough to tell from the cell phone video, it appears that Stewart did something before hitting the guy - revved his engine, swerved, something.  The investigation will have to determine what that something was.

In the meantime, we're sad about it here in the Teysko house.  Tony Stewart has always been J's favorite racer.  The year J and I met, 2005, Tony won the championship.  We bought a #20 car Christmas tree ornament (now Stewart is in the 14 car, but at the time, it was the 20 Home Depot).  In fact, for a long time, J refused to shop at any DIY store besides Home Depot, thinking it might jinx Stewart.  Only once he changed cars would J walk into Ace or Lowe's.

J identifies with Stewart in lots of ways, but especially his anger issues.  He doesn't get road rage to the same extent as Tony, but he gets pissed off and says really stupid shit that he regrets later.  It's cost him friendships, roommates, and often causes fights between us.  But at the end of the day, nobody dies.  Tony lost his temper, refused to yield, and a 20 year old kid's existence has been wiped off the face of the earth.  And even if Tony didn't hit him on purpose, he still has to live with the knowledge that his car caused the death of this kid, and he'll need to wake up to that every morning for the rest of his life.

And so, I will take a crying fussy baby giving me a migraine over what Tony's going through, any day.  I'll wake up tomorrow and take my baby to the doctor, and she'll probably be happier, and then I'll get a break while I work, and then we might walk at the lake, and eat dinner, and have a bath, and bedtime might go better than it did tonight, or I might want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon again.  But either way, it's a hell of a lot better than what Tony's going through right now, and I feel for him.  And the driver he killed.  What a freaking mess.

Deja Vu All Over Again (and baby news)

Things have been absolutely crazy here in HeatherWorld.  What with J tearing down the building (he has 6 more days), me trying to watch Hannah so he can have time to work while trying to keep up with my own job...there hasn't been much time to spare here.  Plus, on Saturday we had a table at a local flea market and got rid of oodles of stuff.  We're starting to think ahead to the move to PA, and are getting even more ruthless than we were before we had Hannah.  This was the first layer of skin off the onion.  Everything that didn't sell (except for the 'spensive electronics - like my Asus tablet - which I can sell on ebay) went to the thrift shop on the way home, and we got rid of about 8 boxes of junk.  That's 8 less boxes that we'll have to move.  And 8 less boxes in Hannah's closet so I now have space to think about the next layer of ruthlessness.

The reason it's been deja vu is because over the weekend the building was at about the same level that it was last summer before Hannah arrived, and looking at it brings back all the memories of pre-Hannah life; before I was bipolar, before I spent 5 months pumping, before I was so tired, etc etc.  The night before I was emergency-induced, I was sitting in there with the floors unfinished as they are now, while J was doing some wiring, and I posted on facebook that I was craving whoopie pies, and I read magazines on my ipad, and I felt Hannah kicking.  Now the building is back in the same shape, and we have a Hannah, and life is completely different, and the building is coming down rather than going up.

Fun with Boxes!

But in unrelated news, it rained all day yesterday, so we had Rainy Day Fun, which involved figuring out a gazillion things to do with a cardboard box while staying in our PJ's.  Examples: you can sit in it.  You can hide in it.  You can get pushed and pulled in it.  You can put things in it, and then take them back out.  You can put all your stuffed animals in it, and then sit on top of them.  You can sit in it and close it up so you have your own private space.  Who knew there was so much you could do with a cardboard box???

Hannah's birthday is this week, and I may have gone just a tad crazy on the toys.  But here's what I figure.  I figure that she won't really be getting more until Christmas, so this lot is going to have to do her for four and a half months, which, in baby time, is like forever.  So I got stuff that may be a little advanced for her (like a my first leggo-wannabee set of giant blocks, and organic edible crayons) because I figure that by November she might be totally into it.  She also got some more normal age appropriate stuff like shape sorters, pull toys, bead mazes, pounding things, some bath toys, and baby musical instruments.  We went to Ikea last weekend to get a baby duvet set for her crib (now that she's a year old, she can have blankets, and I wanted to make her crib more friendly and cozy looking than just the gross white sheet that seemed to always get stained with her drool).  But anyway, I had no idea that Ikea had so many kickass toys in their baby department.  I bought one of everything.  Even some things that she already has one of - like a ring stacker thing - because with toys like that, it's good to have variety (so she says, justifying it).  She's also getting some German baby books and I heard a rumor that her Opa (originally from Leipzig) has purchased some German cartoon kids' dvd's from Amazon.de, which will play in our playstation.  And she also got her little duvet and sheet set, which I gave her early, and she adores. She still moves around too much to actually sleep under the blanket; I just put her in her little sleep sack on top of the duvet, and then in the mornings sometimes I catch her kissing it.  It's very sweet.

To celebrate her birthday on Saturday (2 days late) we are doing a 10k at the lake (the Run Through The Pines, which they have every year) and then the grandparents are coming up, and maybe her little friend Neil (baby of Jason and Katie, born about 6 weeks after Hannah). I'll get some pre-made food at Costco to pop in the oven, and we'll have a nice meal, but I refuse to do a cake smash.  I got her a brand new sweet birthday outfit, and I'm not ruining it with a cake smash.  It is one tradition that I am not going anywhere near.

In fact, I am not baking a cake at all.  I have enough issues with food, and J has enough issues with alcohol that the chances are pretty strong that our babygirl is going to grow up with some addictive tendencies of her own.  I'm not going to start a precedent that happy occasions mean sugary crappy food, and so we will be having a nice healthy meal (post 10k) and perhaps the adults will have cupcakes.  Maybe.

And that, my friends, is how we do birthdays in HeatherWorld.  At least, it's how we're doing brithdays this year.  Next year it might not be so easy.  For one, I probably won't be able to keep her presents in a big Ikea bag next to her crib without her catching on to them being there... There's pros and cons to every age, I'm finding.  Right now she is teething and fussy, so that's crappy.  But I can keep her presents in her room, 3 feet from where she sleeps, and she has no clue.  Plus I don't have to wrap them.  Pretty awesome.

Stupid movies and chastity belts

In the evenings after Hannah goes to sleep, J and I have half an hour of "us" time.  Mostly we play Diablo together, but the past few days we've been watching Robin Hood: Men in Tights in installments.  Suddenly it's 1993, and there are references to Arsenio Hall which I actually understand.  And Carey Elwes is still hot.  The movie is a parody of the Kevin Costner movie Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, and is silly and goofy and pretty stupid much of the time, but has some hilarity that is worth sitting through the stupid.



One of the things that I'd forgotten about the movie is that Marian has a chastity belt.  I got to wondering whether these things were actually real or not.  I've never read anything about them.  Turns out that not only are they real, and they were used during the Renaissance (so, unsurprisingly, this movie is off with its timeline as it's based in the medieval period) but they are still used today (largely in the bondage scene, but still).

At the time, they were ostensibly used to prevent rape.  But they also made it difficult for women to do anything without getting the key from her patriarch.  Catherine de Medici is supposed to have worn one that was exhibited in Paris.  In later years, chastity belts were actually marketed to young women entering the workforce as a way to ensure that they could easily rebuke predatory advances made by their bosses or coworkers.

There are, in fact, still versions of chastity belts being sold to young women.  Last year a company called AR Wear (stands for Anti-Rape) had a successful indigogo campaign to create shorts that have a steel plate in them, so that when things turn sour after a night of clubbing, you have some extra protection.  They even suggest that parents might want to get them for their daughters.  I can just see the look on their faces at Christmas.

I don't know how I feel about this "chastity belt" shorts thing.  On one hand, I have a daughter who will someday grow up into a young woman, and I know the statistics.  On the other hand, I am going to enroll my daughter in martial arts classes when she is old enough, and teach her how to defend and empower herself without needing to wear steel shorts, which seem like unnecessary weight and discomfort, and a bitch to launder.  It's like the whole thing where if we stop traveling and stop going places, then the terrorists win.  It seems like, if you need to wear steel shorts to go out, then the rapists win.  At the same time, there is something to be said for protecting yourself in advance, and not, you know, going to, say, Iran wearing a USA flag shirt, and talking crap about Islam.

So I have managed to turn a stupid Mel Brooks movie into thoughts about feminism and the history of the chastity belt.  Because I'm a nerd like that.

Celebrating Ice in New Zealand

When I was in New Zealand I picked up a copy of New Zealand Geographic, like our National Geographic only, you know, New Zealand centered *duh* and I've been reading it the past few days.  One of the ads caught my attention.  It was for an event called the New Zealand Icefest, and I thought, "yep, that sounds about right.  A country of 4 million people, in the middle of winter, near the pole, of course they need an icefest."  I imagined that there would be a lot of carving of ice, and things like that.

But nope.  I went to the website and saw that it's really a celebration of Antarctica, and New Zealand's role in Antarctic research.  I had no idea that New Zealand, and Christchurch specifically, played such a role in Antarctic exploration and research.

Shackleton, Scott, and Sir Edmund Hillary all launched explorations of Antarctica from Christchurch.  I had always assumed that it was from South America, as that seems to be the closest tip, and it's true that Shackleton's most famous journey was started from South America.  But many journeys also started from Christchurch.  New Zealand was among the original 12 signatories of the Antarctic Treaty, which was signed in Washington DC in  1959 and was the treaty that designated Antarctica as a research continent devoted to peace and learning (it sounds noble, but really I'm betting it's practical.  How can you make war in such a cold climate??).  Christchurch is also apparently home to the International Antarctic Centre (which appears to be a mixture between theme park and aquarium, dedicated to all things penguin and Antarctic), and the US Antarctic program is based there (when they're not, you know, in Antarctica.  They come up for the balmy climate.  Current Christchurch weather is 48 degrees Fahrenheit with 90% humidity and high winds.  Sounds about right).

Moonrise over Antarctica on Midwinter Day. Photo from
US Antarctica Project

I checked out this article from the US Antarctic program - they have an online newsletter called that Antarctic Sun; clever - and as we just celebrated the summer solstice, they celebrated Midwinter Day, which is a hallowed event for them.  Apparently the sun set on March 23.  It won't rise again until September 21.

But back to the Icefest.  There will be keynote speakers, and a chance to video conference with actual people living in Antarctica.  So you can ask them about the weather, about the daylight, or lack of daylight, about Seasonal Affective Disorder, whatever.  You can also learn about penguins.  Everyone in the Antarctic education field seems to be obsessed with penguins.  They are pretty cute.  But still.  Maybe it's because there's no other cute animals on Antarctica.

The Guardian recently published an article about a cook in one of the research stations, who averages making about $16/hour, but all of her expenses are paid, so she gets to pretty much bank that.  She has a blog called, cleverly, Cooking on Ice.   If the idea of escaping from the world (no planes fly in between February and October) you can look for jobs on the Antarctic Connection website, or the USAP itself.   Who knew there was so much action in Antarctica?

Geeky Girl

So apparently I'm hip.  I scored one of only 120 invitations to go to Seattle to attend the launch of the super-secret gizmo that Amazon is launching on Wednesday.  I'm not exactly sure what I did to deserve this free flight and free hotel and presentation by Jeff Bezos himself (and maybe I'll score a freebie?) but I'm not arguing.

Most of the press think it's going to be a smartphone.  Either way, I'll be live blogging and tweeting it (they said we could blog, but not take video).  I'm super-stoked, and I wonder if I'll be as excited about it as these people are...

Unanswerable Questions

Last night J and I had a Date Night since we have this awesome nanny/sitter now.  We do things classy - a fast food dinner from Wienerschnitzel (they have pretzel buns now - I'm a sucker for pretzel buns - and anyway, I'm going to go back to being a vegetarian now that I'm no longer breastfeeding...soon...) and a movie.  J snuck his hot dogs into the theater in his pockets because he's skinny and wears loose jeans.  So I could really say, "is that a hot dog in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me," and the answer would be that it was a hot dog.  I find that amusing.

Anyway, we saw Winter's Tale, which it seems critics hate, but I loved.  I won't do a boring recap of the plot here - there are tons of snide reviewers and critics out there already doing that.  But the part I really liked was how it crosses time and dimensions, and how magic surrounds us.

I'm starting to get to that place in life where you start to get glimpses of What Might Have Been.  When you're in your 20's and just starting out, you don't see those places.  You just see this big life, 60 years or whatever, stretching out before you and waiting to be filled up.  And I suppose that once you get older, you don't really think about those Coulda Shoulda Woulda's that much because there's not really much point.  You're happy with the life you've made, and that's that.  But I feel like here, in my mid-(almost late)-30's, I'm still close enough to those decisions that I can see the other lives that other decisions would have led to, and I can wonder about them.  It's like wagon spokes that stretch out from the center indefinitely.  I'm on my spoke, but I can still see the other ones on either side of me.  Eventually it'll get to a point where I can't see the other ones because we'll all be so far apart.

I think about things like:
- What if we hadn't bought our house when we did?
- What if I had never got married?
- What if we never adopted that first stray cat that showed up on the deck (pregnant, unbeknownst to us)?
- What if I had stayed in London by marrying one of my gay friends?
- What if I would have taken that job in Hong Kong in 2003?

I think about the other people I could have been.  There's Career Girl, the girl I always thought I'd become, who modeled herself after Samantha on Sex and the City, who never got attached and always looked out for herself first.  And had fabulous shoes and was always on the list to get into any club she wanted.  Then there's New Agey Hippie Girl, who maybe lives in a commune in Santa Cruz, reads tarot cards on the beach and eats a lot of organic soy.

Then there are versions of who I am that are only slightly different than who I am now.  Like if I'd have stayed in London.  I'm sure I'd still be me, only just a bit different.  Maybe a little better put together.  I always seem to try harder in London.  London brings out my inner fashionista.  Or, at least my inner-person-who-cares-about-good-grooming.  I imagine who I'd have become if I'd stayed in NYC, and I think I'd be a bitter version of myself now.  Life was harder there, and I don't think I'm cut out for the obstacle course that living in Manhattan was.  If I'd have stayed in Nashville I think I would have gouged my eyes out with a spoon.  I really hated Nashville.

Anyway, the point of this exercise isn't to wallow in the me-who-could-have-had-better-shoes.  But to recognize how life is made up of these decisions we make every day.  Choose one road over another, and that's the road you're on.  We realize this with the big things.  Like, if I marry this person, then I give up my Life of Singledom (and I really loved being Single).

But it's the little things that really make up the bulk of our decisions each day.  If I eat that spoonful of icing that is really *really* calling to me right now, then I'm not going to ever fit back into my prepregnancy jeans properly.  Alternatively, if I go to yoga each week, I will get stronger and more flexible, and quite possibly be able to contort my body into my jeans sooner.

So I'm looking at the decisions and choices I make today and trying to imagine how I can incorporate some of these other Heather's that are still tantalizingly close, without having to jump over into that life.

And I also wonder whether there isn't some other dimension where all of the different choices got played out fully, and there's not some other Seinfeldian Bizarro Heather who has managed to grow her hair out so it's long and shiny.

This is where my brain starts to play tricks on me and I feel like I'm watching an episode of Through the Wormhole, one of my favorite shows where Morgan Freeman explains trippy scientific concepts, like What is Time.  Is time finite?  Is time fixed?  What if, right now, all these other Heather's were running around with fabulous hair, doing all kinds of different things, in relationships with different people, married, not married, kids, no kids, yada yada.  I'd like to talk to some of these other Heather's, and see what they think about life.
But then we'd probably all explode, and that wouldn't be any fun.

And this is the point where my head starts to explode.  And I'm late for yoga.

The Things I Like To Do When My Husband Goes Away (aka, Keeping it Real)

J is away for a little bit, and I have Alone Time At Home, which I don't get very often these days.  He's super protective of me, and to be honest, I'd rather not be on my own too much.  But I have this little haven of time alone, and I'm not going to waste it.

Don't judge me...  I'm pregnant...

- I have a Peter Cetera playlist going on Youtube on one computer.
- There is a Netflix Gossip Girl Marathon going on on another netbook.
- I am playing Skyrim.
- I am eating strawberry Jell-O right out of the big bowl with a giant mixing spoon.
- I have a face mask drying on my face (well duh).
- I have a hair mask in my hair.
- I just farted loud enough to freak out Joey, who had been sleeping on the couch next to me.  I'm pregnant, ok?
- I can feel a burp coming on, too.
- I'm wearing flipflops with socks.
- I have pretzels and peanut butter, and no utensils of any kind with which to eat them.  Will that stop me?  What do you think?
- My cell phone has an article on the screen from the New Yorker, but I have no intention of actually reading it.  It just makes me feel smart being up there.

Yep, that's your report from Pregnant Land.  Just keeping it real.  You know, because I'm usually so glamorous and polished and stuff.

Here's a fun tidbit:  I was trying to find an image for this post, and googled "slobby pregnant woman."  The second image that comes up is of Jesse Jackson looking drunk.  I have no idea what that means, if anything, but I think it's pretty funny.

Animals that look like Mark Hoppus

We all know I have a shameless crush on Mark Hoppus, right?  Though I have to say, it's completely platonic.  I really just want for J and I to be bff's with him and his wife.  We'd hang out in London together, eating noodles at Wagamama's, and I'd walk them all over the city; and Mark and J would make each other laugh by being crude and calling each other poopstain (which is, incidentally, the pet name that my darling husband has started calling me - we know how to keep the magic alive), and I'd talk about yoga or raw food or pilates or something equally cool with his wife.  Oh, the fun we'd have.  And I'm actually like two degrees of separation from him.  J recorded an album in the same studio where Blink recorded their first album.  A friend of J's, Dave, has a friend who ran over Mark Hoppus's foot with his car in like 1996.  Or something.  I forget exactly.  And Tom, also of Blink-182, listened to J's band play one night (though there were a bunch of bands at the club, so it wasn't like he was just there to see Hectic Effort).

Then yesterday a friend forwarded this collection of Otters that Look like Benedict Cumberbatch (the totally hot - in a non-platonic way - actor who plays Sherlock in the updated version).

And I thought, hey, why don't I make a blog with animals that look like Mark Hoppus, thus combining some of my favorite things (animals, blogs, and Mark Hoppus).

Exhibit A.  The Hair.

Exhibit B.  The Occasional Angelic Look.

Exhibit C.  Both Mark Hoppus and dogs look cool and tough in sunglasses.





Exhibit D.  Mark Hoppus and Pigs both slobber when they sleep.




And finally, Exhibit E.  An obligatory otter picture.

Secret Salon

A summer project I've been working on has been to organize all my digital pictures.  I've got nearly 10 years worth of unnamed files, that supposedly represent some of the greatest times in my life, but I've got them everywhere, in no order.  So every day I sort through a folder or two, and I can start to see a very faint light at the end of the clutter tunnel.

Today I found this picture.  It's somewhere near Hemet, down the 15 freeway, in some nowhere ghetto-fabulous strip mall.  I remember being there.  I think we were on a road trip and had to pee and this was the only place that looked promising.  I asked J, "why the hell did I take a picture of a ghetto strip mall?"

And he says, "because it's the trendiest salon in the world.  It's so trendy, it's got no door."

It's like a secret society.  You've gotta know the password, and they let you in through the quickie-mart.  I bet you go through a check-cashing place on your way, too.

But seriously.  I give you Trend Setters Salon.  It's so trendy, you can't get in.

The Music Wayback Machine: 1999

I've been playing around on Spotify, using the Billboard charts to make playlists of different years.  Here's one from one of my favorite years, 1999, when I was 23:  http://open.spotify.com/user/hteysko/playlist/46OKyZBEVMvR3fY2QtBWX0

Let me tell you about the coolness of my life at 23.

First off, in the spring of that year, I broke up with my longtime boyfriend Mark.  We wound up breaking up several times before it finally took.  He was a good guy, I'm sure he still is.  It's just that, you know, I was 23 and I'd known him since I was 19, and life is too short to not spend your 20's doing crazy stuff that will make your grandkids cringe someday.

So that summer I moved to LA and lived in Koreatown, at 426 S. New Hampshire Ave, in this cool art-deco building from the 20's.  It's where I spent the year before moving to London when I was 24, and that year will always be one of my favorites.  My apartment had a fold-in-the-wall murphy bed, big windows with bars on (I'd hang plants from them), and a tiny kitchen with a tall ceiling.  I was too broke to have a mattress when I first moved there, but after I found a job at a headhunting firm in LA, I saved up, and around October I had enough for a mattress.

On the day it was delivered, I woke up early and rode the bus (oh yeah, I didn't have a car) to the kmart on third (where The Grove is now) and bought a full bed set with a comforter, that I still sleep with to this day.  I waited in the lobby for the mattress because my building was so ghetto that none of the buzzers worked.  And once it was delivered, I walked to the Chinese place on the corner and got dinner, made up the bed, and spent the evening watching football and eating dinner in bed.  Life was blissful.

(Here's a funny story - in the summer of 2005, before I met J, I went on a blind date with a guy who lived in that same building.  It was too random for words.  There are thousands of apartment buildings in LA and I wind up on a blind date with a guy who lives in the one I lived in five years before?  Too strange.  It kind of creeped me out, but I still went upstairs to his apartment anyway because I just had to get inside the building and see whether they'd changed the carpet.  Plus he had a cute cat and I'm a sucker for cute cats.)

So anyway, there I am in my little studio apartment (which I really adored.  I've never had an apartment I loved as much as that place) with the fold in the wall bed, and a mini-refrigerator because the big one that came with the place didn't work, and the building management never fixed it.  Since I didn't have a car, I walked around with a fold-up grandma cart and took the bus to Trader Joe's, and I learned how to cook chicken.

There was an earthquake that fall that was strong enough to wake me up in the middle of the night.  I was dreaming that a monster was shaking the bars on my windows, and I was pissed off at him for that.  Then I woke up and realized it was an earthquake and ran to the doorway, but by then it was over.  I woke my parents in Pennsylvania up in the middle of the night, though, to tell them I was ok in case it was on the news or something.  They weren't impressed.

Blink 182 got popular with What's My Age Again, which coincidentally had lyrics in it about being 23, which I took as some kind of sign.  Of what, I'm not sure.



I went on a couple of Very Bad Dates.  With one guy, we had a good first date, and then he wanted me to come out and see him the next night, but it was late, and I was going to have to take, like, four buses to get to the Valley, and I was lazy and didn't care that much, so I wound up not going and falling asleep without calling him instead.  He freaked out and called the police, reporting me missing, and they came banging on my door at 4am.  Listen, I'm sorry I stood you up, whatever your name was, and I guess it was sweet of you to not want me to be dead somewhere, but had the thought not occurred to you that I was standing you up?  Really?

Speaking of dating, I was so bad at it, that when a guy didn't call me back after I'd left him like, five messages, I assumed that he must have lost my number and I called him at work to give it to him.  Seriously.  Such a bad move.  I'm glad that somewhere along the line I finally learned how to play it cool and not wear my heart on my sleeve.  So that six years later, when J and I were on our third or fourth date, he was talking to somebody else and referred to me as his girlfriend, and I completely ignored it.  And then a couple of hours later, at the end of the date, I quickly said, "I'm glad you called me your girlfriend," and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, and then walked out the door.  It was the smoothest move I've ever pulled off, and he said that it was one of the things that officially hooked him.

And now, just an hour ago, he burped in my ear.  I asked him why he did something so gross, and he said, "so your brain could smell my dinner."

We sure know how to be classy.

Magic notebooks and Early Music

In the summer of 2002, I was set up with a guy who slept with a ferret in his bed.  I didn't know that before I met him, but as soon as I found out, it was the only thing I could think about, and kind of grossed me out.  I feel like a hypocrite because I sleep with cats in my bed, and both species lick their butts, but cats have the advantage of being cute, and not being ferrets.

Anyway, two things about my long introductory date (he lived in Ohio and I drove out over Labor Day weekend) have stayed with me.

First, he was (and still is, I might add) the only guy who ever surprised me with a carpet of rose petals.  Now that I'm 35 and jaded, it makes me think it was a nice trick he uses on all the new girls he meets, but at the time it was the most romantic thing I'd ever seen, and made me feel like I was in a soap opera.

Second, he introduced me to engrish.com, a probably-offensive, not politically correct (but utterly hilarious) website that makes fun of the English translations on Asian products.  For example, this Christmas card:

Have you "done" a nice boy & girl?  Really?  

Oh, you can have hours of fun looking at engrish.com.  

So this week I'm up in San Mateo at my office, and I was going into the city tonight because the San Francisco Bach Festival is going on, and I can't pass up an opportunity to hear some Telemann played on original instruments.  I'm a geek like that.

I decide to utilize my yelp app and find a stationary store nearby, because it's been a long time since I've gone on a pen-binge, and I'm due for one; and anyway, I had an hour to kill before the concert, and what better way is there to kill an hour than to look at pens?

So I am led to a Japanese shopping mall that has both the Japanese equivalent of a Barnes and Noble (two stories, lots of browsing) and a massive stationary store.  My Japanese twin nearly exploded with glee.

I got a crapload of pens I don't need:

but the things I want to share particularly, are the engrish notebooks.

This one reads: Choose!  Not be a consumer, but be a smart consumer.  If current consumption would expand and a variety of floras & faunas would be extinct, human beings would be next!  

Holy shit, that puts the fear of God in me.  What am I supposed to do if, say, I'm a kid taking notes in class, and suddenly the realization hits me that the entire human race could be destroyed because my friends didn't buy the right notebook and the floras and faunas were all going to be extinct.  That's a panic attack just waiting to happen right there, that is.

This little beauty says, Comedian? Please have a wonderful time with this notebook.  The story of pleasant animals.

So hang on, what if I'm not a comedian?  Can I still have a wonderful time with the notebook, or do I need to have a crappy time with it?  And what if I don't write the story of pleasant animals in it?  What if I don't even like animals, much less think they're pleasant?  What then?  Do I need to get another notebook?  Will this one explode?  

But seriously, anything can be funny if you take two mice, draw some bow-ties on them, stick a microphone in front, and make it look like they're doing stand up at The Comedy Store.  You could have written anything up there on top, and I wouldn't care because I'm so enchanted by the Jerry Seinfeld mice.

Keeping up the trend of using cute animals, we have this furry little thing, with a caption that reads, A pleasant memory and beautiful scenery.  There are a lot of unforgettable things in everyday life.  and at the bottom we have, I write an important thing, and do not let's finish.  A way of writing seems to be for freedom and oneself.

WTF?  Is that supposed to even mean anything?  The unforgettable things in everyday life, I get.  That's fine.  Cute kitten, unforgettable every day life...I'm with all of that.  But what the hell is that last part?  I write an important thing and do not let's finish?  In a metaphysical way, it sort of reminds me of an 8am Philosophy 101 class I took as a freshman in college.  While the professor talked about Socrates and riddles, I tried to memorize all the Presidents.  It gets so murky after the Civil War.  Does anybody know who James K Polk even was?  Who gets elected with a name like that?  I think he's a Made Up President, just to give kids more names to remember.

Finally, this one is my favorite.  Note Book personal.  Most advanced quality gives best writing features and gives satisfaction to you.  Ok, first, what are these advanced writing features?  It looks like a normal narrow-ruled notebook to me.  Does it make my coffee for me?  Does more paper appear when you run out?  How can paper have advanced writing features?  And I'm wondering whether maybe somebody ought to send one to Mick Jagger, too?

Buh-dump...bing!

My Day in Numbers

J has been away this weekend doing some sort of bachelor-party-manly-camping-rafting trip, and I'm home with the cats having Girl Time.  So here's what Girl Time looks like, in Numbers.

8: The number of episodes in The Kennedy's miniseries.  Also, coincidentally, the number of episodes that I watched last night, while laying on the couch not cooking dinner and not caring about the house getting messy.

2:  The number of dreams I had last night about living in the White House and dating RFK.

3:  Miles around our lake, which I walked around this morning.  I've been trying to do that 5 times a week.

2:  The number of Diet Cokes I drank today.  I'm supposed to be off soda, but I figure that J is having a weekend filled with debauchery, so I can drink some nasty aspartame-laced-infertility-causing diet coke.

3:  The number of Harry Potter movies I watched today in preparation for the big midnight IMAX showing on Thursday night.

2:  The number of walls in my home office that are now painted a lovely shade of bright green called Summerland.  That number should be all 4 after tomorrow.  It's nice and zen, and as an added bonus, it will be a cheerful gender-neutral color when this room gets changed into a nursery - when we finally manage to have a baby.  (sad, but kind of funny - though not ha-ha funny - story: the other night I was talking to J about names for the next baby when I'm pregnant with it.  Baby T and Mustard Seed are already taken, and I asked him if he had anything he wanted to call it.  He said he wanted to call it, "i hope it lives."  Cue tiny violins now).

27:  The square inches of my arms and legs that are covered in green paint.  I'm kind of clumsy and like to back into walls covered with wet paint a lot.

35:  The number of books that I decided are going to Goodwill and/or the Yard Sale Pile, and have been relocated from my home office to the living room floor.

3: The number of Tylenol I took for my back, which kind of hurts after the painting.

8:  The number of mayorships I have on 4square now that some punk took away my mayorship of the 7-11 this morning.  Dammit, I'm going to go on a slurpee diet to get that mayorship back.

1:  The number of sticks I peed on this morning because I've been feeling really nauseated and thought I might be pregnant.  It was negative, but this is ok because I'm still not ready.  The game is on again in September.  But right now, it's still the Summer of Heather.

2: the number of pounds I've lost this week, after having hit a somewhat discouraging plateau the past few weeks.  

87: the number of emails in my work inbox this morning.

5:  the number of emails in my work inbox tonight.  I'll knock those suckers out tomorrow for sure and start the week on an empty inbox.

Ok kids, I'm off to sleep for 8 hours now and cuddle with 3 or 4 cats.  Here's a funny cat story - whenever J's away, I sleep on his side of the bed.  And the cats love to cuddle with him, so they all come under the blankets and start to get all comfy, and then realize it's me, and get really confused.  It's my way of tricking them into giving me more love.

I voodoo, do you voodoo?

So I'm in New Orleans which is known for a couple of things - music, alcohol, girls flashing themselves for beads, parties, food, and...voodoo.  There is voodoo stuff everywhere in this town.  Palm Readers all over Jackson Square, outside of the big churches.  It's all intermingled with organized religion, and nobody seems to take it too seriously.

I decided to jump in and get a reading done at the most touristy-looking place of all.  Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo.  I decided it was a sign that I should go there when I saw one solitary newspaper article up on the wall about the store, and it was how the woman who owned it had some kind of magic spoon (not to be confused with the magic beans that the magic spoon stirs) that, when women ate soup with it (or something), helped them get pregnant (no shit.  Where do I sign up?).  I went in, said I'd never had a reading done before, and didn't say much else.

The first thing that the reader said was that my son and daughter loved me very much.  WTF?  I don't have a son and daughter, I say.  No, you do, she says.  I see them here.  It's the biggest thing in the spirit world that I see about you right now.  It's the biggest message.  Your son and your daughter are devoted to you.  Then she shuffles her cards, sees a 9 of diamonds, and says, "oh, your son and daughter you lost this past year.  Saturn's orbit sure has been a bitch to you this time around."

That's some creepy shit right there, folks. I always said it.  F*ck Saturn.  What has Saturn ever done for me? Now it all makes sense.  Stupid Saturn.

(A side note on my opinion of all things occult-like: I posted once before when I talked about the tarot cards, this stuff doesn't scare me.  It's the spirit world, and to me it's the same place where the angels are, and some people are in touch with it, and some people are able to share their gift, and being all freaked out and thinking of them as "witches" seems so medieval to me. I just don't like to give the Devil that much power, you know?  Evil feeds off of the power you give it.  If you just take things as gifts and accept them, and don't make it all "evil", things work out a lot better in the end.  I mean, five hundred years ago the priests used to read rune stones to predict the gender of the king's children.  It's all relative.  Thus endeth the lesson.)

Anyway, back to my reading.

She also said that my son - Baby T - is going to come back to me, but it might not be as a natural child I carry.  I'm apparently going to have three children.  One I will carry, one will be adopted, and she couldn't tell on the third.  The jury's still out on what my ovaries will accomplish.

She said she could tell that my partner was going to come into his own skin sometime soon and in the next few years would start a business or do something that would really amaze me and make me super-proud.  Sweet.

Apparently the worst of everything is over.  Again, this is because Saturn's orbit is receding.  Stupid planet and its stupid orbit.

What else...

Oh, she said that J is so crazy in love with me.  She said she rarely sees people with partners as crazy in love with them as my partner is with me.  Awwww.  Bless.

She picked up on travel and wanting to live abroad, and before I even mentioned anything about it, she said that I would live in many places and many countries and my children would grow up speaking many languages.  I asked how that was going to happen, and she said that a close male with brown hair and brown eyes was going to be instrumental in having it come to fruition.  She thought it was Jonathan, but he doesn't have brown hair and brown eyes.  Sandor in London, I'm looking at you for that, ok?  Make it so, Number One.

Oh, and I have four guardian angels.  I wonder whether they're anybody famous.  I can just see it.  Beethoven, Henry VIII, Heidegger and my grandma are all sitting around having tea, planning how to protect me from Saturn.  Henry VIII wants to chop some of its rings off.  Beethoven wants to scream at it.  And Heidegger wants to question whether it exists at all, and if naming it Saturn gives it too much power in my life. And my Grandma wants to chill out and try to appease Saturn.

Anyway, that was my psychic reading in a nutshell.  I spent the rest of the evening wandering around listening to music.  All in all, not a bad way to spend an evening.

In the world of Small Things That Make You Happy: I've finally got my Girly/Dido station on Pandora exactly to my liking.  It's taken nearly three years of tweaking, but I realized tonight that I didn't click "dislike" once in nearly two hours of listening.  I am happily bopping around now listening to The Cranberries, and remembering college, and thinking that maybe I have a paper due tomorrow, but then realizing that I don't, and then I feel relieved.

So something new I did today was wear my sunglasses inside, all day.  I am having a hard time this weekend, if you hadn't noticed from yesterday's post, and I didn't really feel like facing people.  When I went into the convention center, I was hit in the face with 25,000 shiny happy people/librarians, and I wanted to hide from all the festivities.  Plus, there was free food, and nothing gets librarians on city-budgets excited like free food.  I was early for my first meeting, and wanted to sit somewhere quiet and read, but I couldn't get away from it all, so I decided to put in my headphones, and put on my sunglasses, and it really was like being in my own little cocoon of a world.  I had Bob Seger on (Roll me Away is one of the greatest road-trip songs ever) reminding me that I've been running against the wind, and the world was a nice shade of muted pastel blue, and no one smiled an annoying bright smile at me, and I didn't care how aloof I looked.  Damn, it was fun.

The only funny thing was when I accidentally walked into a wall because, in all my aloofness, I wasn't paying attention.  Whatever.  I'm a klutz, but I'm an aloof klutz.

Seriously, I'm going to do this Sunglasses Inside thing all the time when I don't feel like facing people.  It's such a good trick, I don't know why I didn't think of it before.

The only other time I've work sunglasses a lot (other than, you know, like in the car driving, and on the beach, and obvious stuff like that) was when I was 17 on a school trip in Europe, and I discovered alcohol.  There were a whole bunch of us from different schools and I made friends with this guy Craig, who was gorgeous.  He was subsequently my "date" to the senior prom.  "date" being in "quotes" because he was gay.  But he was from another school, and pretended that he was my boyfriend really well, and picked me up in a red porsche, so I was stoked.  Besides, I'm a nerd and spent most of the prom studying my flashcards for all my AP tests that were going on the next week.  Yep, you read that right.  In my tiny little beaded purse, I had stashed a set of flashcards on the French Revolution, and an extra lipstick.  I rock like that.

Anyway, Craig was gorgeous.  And there was this other gorgeous girl - I forget her name, but let's call her Kristen, because in my high school Kristen's were all really pretty.  So Kristen was tall and model-gorgeous, and I think she didn't realize that Craig was gay, but she probably figured that they should be together because the two gorgeous people are always together, right?  But Craig had already told me he was gay, and he and I spent all the bus-rides sitting together listening to Andrew Lloyd Weber soundtracks, so we were already tight.  So Gorgeous Girl - Kristen - was super-friendly with me, cuz I think she thought maybe I would somehow be an "in" to Craig.  So it was the three of us, together.  The two model-gorgeous people and me, drinking champagne with diet coke (yes, you read that right.  Champagne with diet coke.  Don't ask).

Actually, I might just be inventing all that in my head.  The motive, I mean.  I just know that it was model-Kristen and Craig and me and I was really drunk for the first time in my life, and discovering the deliciousness of being slightly out of your head, and then having bloodshot eyes the next morning.

Hence the sunglasses, which never came off, the entire trip.

Speaking of being drunk, you know what one of my favorite feelings in the world is?  You know when you're out at a club, and you get really drunk, and the music is throbbing and pulsing, and you're dancing, and you're sweating, and you're laughing and giddy, and the room is sort of spinning, but it's all kind of fun and crazy, and only slightly woozy? And then you go to the bathroom.  And you're in the stall and you're peeing, and for the first time it's like, kind of quiet, except you can still hear the beat thumping around, and you're like, "Ahhhh, this peeing feels really good.  Man, I'm hungry.  What's going on?  Did I just make out with that guy out there?  What was his name?  Or was it a girl?  Huh?  Who's calling me?  What phone number is this written on my hand?  Damn, I'm still peeing.  Oh man, this is taking forever.  I'm just going to rest my head against the wall here..."

I LOVE that feeling.  Like, totally love it.  I'd go out clubbing every night (if it wasn't so tiring - seeing as how I'm not 23 anymore) just to get the peeing-while-drunk feeling.

This has been random, hasn't it?

Same Sh*t Different Year

I'm moody today.  I'll tell you why.  Because I'm at the American Library Association's annual conference in New Orleans, which happens every year around this time.  Last year it was in Washington DC.  And I had found out I was pregnant about 10 days beforehand.  I was trudging to the Safeway near the convention center to get Good Food since there was a little life inside of me, and was thus avoiding Convention Center Food, which basically sucks all around.  I was still all excited.  Reading the What To Expect When You're Expecting book, highlighter in hand, post-it stickies marking every relevant page.  Thinking about how the next year, we'd all drive to ALA because we'd have a 4 month old, and I've been on enough flights with 4-month-olds that I wouldn't want to inflict that on anyone.  Stupid planning.  Stupid What to Expect book.  They don't tell you to expect that your heart is going to be literally torn apart.  They don't tell you to expect to have emotional mood swings even 8 months later.  They don't tell you that you'll burst into tears doing the most mundane stuff like picking out raspberries in the grocery store.  They don't tell you crap.  Everybody knows to expect morning sickness.  Duh.

In addition to the fact that, since last year I have lost two, count 'em, two babies, I'm also reminded of my friend Jim Buescher.  Jim Buescher was my bestest friend from the time I was about 12.  He went to a different school - Penn Manor whilst I went to Pequea Valley - but we met in drama classes at the Fulton Opera House in downtown Lancaster (a mysterious place which, to a country bumpkin like me, was brimming with sophisticated things like coffee houses called The Monks Tunic, and convenience stores you could walk to.  Imagine that.  Walking!  Like on a sidewalk!  Slurping your slusheee.  Amazing!).

My name then was Heather Buettner and he was Jim Buescher, so we were only separated by a very few letters in the alphabet.  He was worldly and knew all about Paul Simon's albums post-Garfunkel and pre-Graceland (when he wrote deeply poetic songs like "When Numbers Get Serious" and before he became a plastic surgery disaster).  After the SAT's one Saturday afternoon we were driving along a back country road and he started driving in the oncoming lane and saying, "Look!  We're in England!"  And he taught me how to say a French phrase, which, roughly translated meant: "I like to frolic with gay soldiers in New Orleans."   Only he didn't tell me what it meant, and I wandered all around the French-speaking part of Switzerland on a choir trip one summer thinking I was asking people where the bathrooms were.

Anyway, I'm in New Orleans now for the first time (which, coincidentally, got me the jetsetters badge on 4square today, thank you very much) and Jim Buescher is...wait for it...passed on.  Like my (count-'em) two babies.  He died in a car accident last summer.  I found out about it while I was at an OB appointment.  That's some dramatic foreshadowing if I've ever seen any.

So here I am in New Orleans and I want so desperately to call him up and say, "J'aime jouer avec les soldats gais à la Nouvelle-Orléans" only he's not there.  And I want so desperately to hold my baby boy, only he's not here.  In a town that's been descended upon by 25,000 librarians, you'd think somebody would effing be here.  But nope.  Nobody's here.  It's a ghost town.  


I've gotta go to bed.  Oh, and I'm sick, too.  To the couple who sat next to me on the plane from Vegas:  sorry for all the hacking, folks.  I hope you had purell handy.  I tried not to breathe on you.


I'm gonna go cry my little shrinking self to sleep now.  Cue tiny violins.

Save CJ Fam

So I always spend part of every afternoon dealing with my self-diagnosed ADD and indulging in Internet Crap.  And because I'm friends with a 13 year old boy on Facebook (Mars, my cousin through my stepmother) I stay hip on what the kids these days are doing.  So I've been hip to Rebecca Black for a few weeks now, because he keeps posting the video and commenting about how much he hates it (thus increasing her youtube views to an even more astronomical number).

In case you've been hanging out on a boat for the past month, Rebecca Black is a client of Ark Music Factory, a company that, for $2000, will write you a pop song, make you a video, and raise your hopes of becoming a pop star via the internet, however they won't pay for your years of therapy once you realize that you probably won't become the next Britney Spears.  She sings a terrible song called "Friday," the only unique feature of which is how she pronounces it with three syllables (Fri-eee-day).  Well, that's not entirely true.  The other unique feature of this song is its ability to get inside your brain and eat all the other music you've been listening to all day, and then it will repeat itself over and over again until you want to stick your head on an anvil and knock yourself silly.

In last week's InfoMania, Sergio did a White Hot Top Five dedicated to the other stars (aka kids with rich parents) of the Ark Music catalog.  They were all Disney-wannabees, with the exception of CJ Fam, a firecracker 4'1" 53-pound (according to her profile on the Actors Pages, which, creepily features a picture of her posing at the beach in a bathing suit) blond-haired Annie lookalike who strikes me as being about as annoying as the giant splinter I got caught under my thumbnail when I was cleaning the deck the other morning.

But since she's only, like, 8, I blame her parents.  Probably her overbearing mom who always wanted to be a star herself, but wound up getting pregnant and marrying her high school boyfriend and staying in Dumbf*ck, Nebraska until she had a midlife crisis and packed her youngest daughter, and greatest hope for stardom into the Ford and drove to LA where, rather than prostitute herself and her Baby Girl on Sunset and Highland, she decided to sign her up with ARK instead.

Actually I made all that up.  I think she's from Florida.

But I do think her mom is to blame because when you click on her youtube profile, the first link is a montage featuring the Beatles' Help to get her "fans" (aka 6 year old girls who shouldn't be on the internet in the first place anyway) riled up to view her videos as many times as Rebecca Black's, in a "Showdown" so that she can get signed by Ryan Seacrest, too.

Listen Overbearing Mom:  I could ignore the fact that you let your Baby Girl sing Lady Gaga songs with lyrics about being too drunk to text while she's dressed like a hooker.  I could ignore the fact that you are pitting her against Rebecca Black in a weird Showdown that evokes images of John Wayne and fake gun battles, thus creating a scarcity conversation in her developing brain so she'll probably be super-competitive with everybody her whole life ("There's not enough success for everyone, and Rebecca Black is getting it, that tramp, so therefore we need to have a Showdown").  I can even forgive you trying to vicariously live your dream through your daughter, and turning her into a little brat that everybody's going to want to beat up and no guy will ask to the prom, in ten years, because she's so annoying.

Even though children's services might come knocking at your door, I can even overlook you allowing your 8 year old to be eroticized in a world of internet porn (see above-mentioned bathing suit photo, and this gem):

It's no worse than pageant moms do all over the country.

But.  I.  Can.  NOT.  Forgive.  The.  Blasphemic.  Use.  Of.  The.  Beatles.  In.  Supporting.  This.  Endeavor.

When will the madness end?  Can't Yoko Ono sue somebody over this?

Remember like 13 years ago when we were all up in arms over Britney Spears looking too hot in her first video?  I know, our precious little CJ Fam wasn't even born yet, and her super-hit, the oxymoronically-named single, "Ordinary Popstar" (I refuse to link to it because I don't want to contribute to the Rebecca Black Showdown) was still years away from being conceived, but I remember that time.  I remember people freaking out over Brit wearing a Catholic uniform and doing some dirty-dancing moves next to a locker, which, incidentally looks like the dancing they did in movies from the 50's compared to what our CJ is doing.

My dad likes to say that things in the 50's were better, and more innocent.  And I'm always like, "yeah, Dad, you're just looking at the past through rose-colored glasses.  It wasn't so great if you were black.  Or a woman.  Or, you know, not Beaver Cleaver or Donna Reed."  We've had arguments about this since I was 16.  But I'm starting to think that my dad could be right.  Maybe we are going down the slippery slope.  Maybe pole-dancing in gym class is coming next?   

(Then again, even being Beaver Cleaver wasn't able to save Jerry Mathers from looking like a dope all his life, which is really apropos of nothing, but needs to be said because I found this picture):

So, maybe Eddie Haskell should win a couple of rounds, you know?  Just to even things out.  Make The Beav look a little less dopey/strung out.

And maybe it wasn't the end of the world when Brit did her thing with her pigtails flying around.

But this CJ Fam thing, it's just out of control.  If it can help her get back to being an Ordinary Girl (and not an Ordinary Popstar) then I will continue to click Rebecca Black's video day and night, bravely facing the teasing of my husband for continuing to sing the offending song even when I know it gives him a migraine, and I will selflessly help her decide whether she wants to party in the front or the back seat on the weekend, and do whatever I can so that she wins this Showdown, and CJ Fam can get back to school and maybe get some guidance counselling or some education in something other than Being a Pop Star 101.  Because Rebecca Black doesn't strike me as a crazy chick whose life will be destroyed if she gets some early success.  I'm worried that if CJ Fam gets big-time attention, she'll wind up being the next Lindsay Lohan, only worse because Lindsay Lohan is really talented and it still couldn't save her.

And lastly, will somebody please kill whatever it is that keeps attacking her legs in her video?

Thank you.

Nine Years Ago Today...

...I started a blog, or a weblog, as it was called then.  Blogger wasn't owned by Google yet.  If you wanted to make a nice background, you had to actually program the style sheet yourself.  People didn't really use "widgets" yet, and "gadgets" were still the things my dad bought in the camera stores around Times Square.  When you updated your blog, it stayed on the Blogspot home screen for a good five minutes, because there were so few being updated.

I thought I was going to lead a bohemian Henry Miller type of life, only I'd be Anais Nin, and I'd fall in love with Henry Miller types of men, and lead a nomadic life, dependent on just my notebooks and my ipod.  I was still madly in love with an Unsuitable Man whose biggest assets were that he oozed charm and had a beautiful voice, but I had worked it out by then that nothing was going to happen with him, so I dated lots of other Unsuitable Men (I found them in the personals section of Nerve.com), and then would give a play-by-play recap of each date on my blog afterwards.  I got a lot of readership from teenage boys.

Here's my first entry (a brief warning: I'm 25 in this post.  So, you know, keep that in mind):

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Wednesday, March 27:

I'm about as happy as I can be right now. It's Easter, so the stores are packed with Marshmallow Chicks, and there's really nothing better for the soul than marshmallow fluff with a thick coating of sugar. At least not when it's raining and miserable outside. I have become quite zen about my relationship to marshmallow chicks in my wise mid-twenties. I guess that's about as good a way as any to start off a weblog - sort of like starting a new journal.

When I was a kid I used to start each new journal with all my stats - parents' names and occupations, favourite colour, favourite New Kid on the Block, best friend... But then I found that most of my Hello Kitty journal would be filled with my personal statistics, and I was constantly writing them over and over, so then I just started numbering my journals and keeping them in order so I wouldn't have to rewrite my biog each time...

So I could start this weblog by telling you about myself. Stuff you might want to know, like how old I am (25), where I live (everywhere...don't ask...wherever iTunes is, is home), my favourite dead composer (Poulenc), favourite live composer (Arvo Part), or whether I'm in love at the moment (I'm happily not - happily because I was in love with someone who didn't love me back for two years...ahem, no names mentioned...g... Before that I was unhappily cohabitating for four years. So this is the first time in a long time where I'm happily into myself.)

But I assume that if you came here early enough to be reading these first few weeks' worth of posts, you know me, or you know NomadChick. So there's not really a lot I can say here other than telling you that this space is reserved for my own travel tales and daily adventures - while it's linked to NomadChick.com, and is part of the website, it's really the place to see what sorts of scrapes I got myself into lately...go ahead, laugh at me...I'm sort of used to it...

So I'll tell you about my infatuation with Marshmallow chicks. I don't think they sell them in England. At least I didn't see them. But that's not the point. The point is that I used to be addicted to the creamy sweet gooieness of Marshmallow chicks from the time they'd enter the store (just after Valentine's day) to the after-Easter sales. I used to panic in April wondering what on earth I'd do for ten months without them, and I'd spend my allowance on a hundred packs at 12 cents each at the KMart sales. But then I'd get really sick of them by May. And I'd forget about them for another year and then be overjoyed at the first sighting in February.

See, this is where I've become zen-like...I've realised that the secret to true happiness lies in the cycles of Marshmallow chicks...to enjoy it when you have it, not force it longer than it naturally lasts, and not get attached to it because, though it's sad when the Marshmallow Chicks leave the store, if you go outside everyday and play in the sunshine and have a lot of love in your life, suddenly a year will go by and the army of Chicks are back at WalMart and the cycle goes on...

Impressive, eh?

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Just the other day I drooled over Marshmallow Chicks in Target, but I was strong and walked away, because of the whole dropping-pounds thing.  And besides, now they make them all year round - you can bite the head off of a marshmallow santa - so I'm not missing them too much.

Little Earthquakes

I've been listening to a lot of madrigals lately.  When I was a senior in high school, I got my first CD player for Christmas, and a $50 gift certificate to Coconuts, which was next door to Borders, where I worked.  I bought a bunch of classical Naxos CD's because I could get more with the gift certificate (not knowing that ten years later I would run a portion of their digital sales and skype with their President on a regular basis...weird).  The one disc that I spent the full $13 on (it was 1993/94.  Discs were like $12.99 then) was the Madrigal History Tour by the King's Singers.  A madrigal tour of Renaissance Europe.  Too many fa-la-la's to count.  I loved it!

I've been listening to that disc a lot lately - I've been trying to get all of my discs burned onto my computer so I can stick the physical CD's up in the attic, or even give them away (taking the simplicity movement to the next level) and I got hooked on it again.  

Tomkins' Too Much I once Lamented kind of sums up how I've felt this week.  Melancholy, but still hopeful for the future, in a morbid sort of way.  I know this song is about love, and giving up on the unrequited version thereof, but it's applicable any time you know you're miserable, but want to just hold on to it a little wee bit longer because it's become such a big part of you, and you don't know who you are without it..

I'm still doing pretty well, but having to give the pup back to a terrible owner, and worrying about her with all the snow we've had, has kind of thrown me a little bit.  One thing I've noticed is how easily I'm thrown in general.

Which brings me to the title of this blog post - the Tori Amos song, which I love.
"Oh, these little earthquakes, here we go again...oh these little earthquakes, doesn't take much to rip us into pieces..."

I would like to be someone for whom it takes more than a lost dog (no matter how great the dog) to rip into pieces.




I'm getting there, one step at a time, I guess.  I've made up a list of ten lovely things I'm going to do for myself tonight, none of which involve food.  Well, one involves wine, but just one glass, so that's ok.  And we'll spend the weekend cleaning up from all the storms, and then on Monday, we shall head to Long Beach to get on a boat, upon which I shall spend my time reading, napping, swimming, napping, reading, swimming, napping and maybe some more reading.

I was just listening to Robbie Williams songs on youtube, and realized that my boyfriend before I met Jonathan kind of looks just like him, especially in the face.  He didn't have dark hair, but he totally had the same face and expression.  I wonder if that's why I liked him, on a subconscious level?  It certainly wasn't his gift-giving ability (as witnessed by the gift card he gave me for our first, and only, Christmas together).  And his personality did leave a lot to be desired.  But he had a really sweet dog.  You can put up with a lot for a man who looks like Robbie Williams and has an adorable black lab.