The Diet Starts Tomorrow

One of my best friends got me involved with a local ballet troupe. Not as a dancer--to help raise funds. Anyway, her husband was telling me how the artistic director of the troupe asked him whether he was a dancer, because he had the build.

I replied that when I meet the General Director of the Lyric Opera, he'd probably ask me whether I'm a singer. Because I have the build.

Which sort of sucks, frankly.

Well, anyway, this evening, I'm taking part in the Music Institute of Chicago's music marathon. I'll be singing three pieces: Purcell's "Strike the Viol," Faure's "Dans un sommeil ..." and "Bill," with lyrics by P. G. Wodehouse and music by Jerome Kern, from Showboat.

To say I'm nervous is to somewhat understate the matter. I've been studying voice for years, but this is the first time I've sung a solo in longer than I can remember. And at my last lesson, I was screwing up the lyrics like crazy.

On the brighter side, That Stud Muffin I Married is coming to hear me. And so are friends Fiddledeedee, V., and M. Afterwards, we'll head over to Tapas Barcelona, where we will eat and drink like crazy, and I for one, am planning to talk my head off. (I've been resting my vocal chords all weekend, and frankly, they're ready to explode.)

So then, after my 15 minutes as a real, live diva is over, and the tapas are eaten, and the booze is drunk ... then it's time to stop looking like an opera singer. No, this is not me. This is an actual opera star. The one on the right is Jane Eaglen. Unfortunately, I don't sing like her. On the other hand, I also don't look like her.

You know, with singing, it's always a trade-off. Sing badly and look like Madonna, sing great and look like Aretha. Since I sing better than Madonna and worse than Aretha, and am closer to Madonna in vocal ability than I am to Aretha ... I think I need to get in a lot better shape. Not in such great shape that people expect me to sing like a dancer ... but not in such bad shape that they expect me to sound ... like the opera star I'm not.

Easier than 1-2-3

As stolen from Everybody Knows, the Alphabet Meme:

Accent: Born in Boston, grew up just outside. Schooled in Massachusetts. I have the slightly flattened O's of the typical Bawstonian, but I don't drop my R's.

Booze: I hate scotch, brandy, and cognac; I don't care for tequila or vodka, except in specific drinks; I'm not much of a beer drinker, but will have one with the right food; I loathe most liqueurs. I'll pretty much guzzle everything else.

Chore I Hate: Picking up the garbage and putting it back into the garbage can after the raccoons bust through the plastic bags and scatter it around. I also loathe polishing silver.

Dog or Cat: Neither. My son has a Malayan box turtle.

Essential Electronics: Laptop, and if the electricity is off long enough, the refrigerator/freezer.

Favorite Perfume: Right now I'm on an "old lady" perfume kick, which sort of makes sense, as, let's face it; I'm not getting any younger. I like Chanels #5 and 22, Hermes Caleche, Guerlain's Jardins de Bagatelle, Lucien Lelong's Indiscret.

Gold or Silver: Gold. Yellow gold. Silver is to eat with. And to polish. Which I hate doing, remember?

Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts.

Insomnia: Never. I plaster the world with my anxiety when I'm awake, and then sleep it off.

Job Title: Housewife. I don't call myself a stay-at-home-mom because during the seven hours a day my children are at school, my house gets a lot more attention than they do. Anyway, I loathe the use of the word "mom" for "mother."

Kids: Two.

Living arrangements: 3 bedroom, 3 bath, 3 "bonus room," Tudor Revival house in Stepford. 1 Husband, 2 kids, 2 cars, 1 turtle.

Most admirable traits: I am a highly skilled word merchant with an excellent sense of humor and lovely table manners.

Number of sexual partners: Is this before or after I got married?

Overnight hospital stays: Three, and they all involved babies being born. Three guesses as to who went first.

Phobias: None. Although I'm not crazy about heights. Although that doesn't keep me off scary rides. Unfortunately.

Quote: "Beauty like hers is genius." Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Religion: High Church Episcopalian, verging on Anglo-Catholic. (I'd go all Cardinal Newman and convert to Catholicism, except Joke would gloat so ferociously. Kidding. I just said that to give him a quick frisson or two.)

Siblings: Four. Two sisters and two brothers. All loud.

Time I wake up: 7:00 or thereabouts. Except on Saturdays, when I sleep later.

Unusual talent or skill: I'm great at throwing a wadded up piece of paper--in an perfect, elegant arc--straight into the wastepaper basket. Three points! Other than that, I'd say I was pretty ordinary.

Vegetables I love: All. I would happily eat a plate of green stuff for dinner.

Worst habit: Procrastination.

X-rays: As needed.

Yummy foods I make: I do standard Eastern Seaboard, traditional American food of the New England (clam chowdah, blueberry gingerbread) or Southern (fried chicken, real cornbread, collard greens, coconut pound cake) variety. I branch out from time to time, but I sort of don't see the point of abandoning well-prepared traditional food in favor of some new foodie trend. My food Bibles are James Beard's American Cooking, Sheila Ferguson's Soul Food, Fanny Farmer, and Marjorie Standish's cookbooks.

Zodiac sign: Sagittarius. The most intellectually curious and philosophical of the signs, as manifested in our symbol, the centaur with the bow and arrow, which represents our search for knowledge. Of course, I only believe in astrology insofar as it flatters my ego.

Friday already? Or, I'm dancing as fast as I can.

Hey, so yesterday's entry had a point, and this one doesn't. Tough. You clicks your links and you takes your chances, people.

1. OK, Blackbird's show and tell Thursday--late, as usual. My street:

More accurately, a small portion of the many cubic yards 'o' crap I hauled to the curb this week for our annual Trash Week extravaganza. This is the week where the village hauls away--for free--anything that two reasonably strong men can load onto the back of a truck.

Naturally, this is a highly-anticipated event. I spent a week getting ready. That garage I cleaned out last Saturday was just part of my strategy.

Some of the stuff that people put out is great. Mostly ours has been embarrassingly trash-like, what with the stuff the previous owners left behind, like chicken wire and broken storm windows and such.

But this year we had, in addition to the usual mountain of big cardboard boxes and Styrofoam wine bottle inserts (because That Stud Muffin I Married persists in ordering wine over the internet) veritable treasures! Such as a mahogany dining room table that I eBayed, my son's almost-brand-new yet vastly overgrown bicycle, scads of outgrown toys, etc.

All that's long gone. What you're seeing here is the second wave. I'm particularly pleased to have gotten rid of that broken-up, basically useless chest of drawers that has been in the basement for eight years, also those two wobbly kichen stools, and a bunch of baby clothes (so my youngest is nine, and I had boxes of old baby clothes--so sue me.)

The trashpickers have come and gone. They start on Sunday, when the savvy homeowners start putting out their nicest trash. The dining room table and the bicycle lasted five minutes before they were swooped upon and taken. (In case you're wondering, swoopers, yes, I do know what that stuff is worth, and no, really. I just wanted it gone.)

Right now, I'm ecstatic. Not only has the village hauled away half a dumpster's worth of crap, the garbage man has come, the recycling man has come, and Purple Heart took eight shopping bags of children's clothes and toys from my doorstep. My house has lost about 600 pounds.

========

It's Loretta's list Friday. So here are ten jobs I'd like to have:

1. CEO of Estee Lauder
2. Photographer
3. Non-chain coffee house proprietor
4. Landscape designer
5. Courtesan
6. Ne'er do well
7. Interior decorator
8. Librarian
9. Auctioneer
10. Author of etiquette books

I like to think that with the exception of 3 and 9, I put my blog(s) to good use in dipping somewhat into the other professions. (Especially courtesan. "How was your day, honey?" she asked, offering her readers a martini and a backrub.)

====
My Thursday 13--oh, fuzz it, I'm late again--it will have to wait until next week.

====
My tenant! Is the Rock Bitch. She's a Stones fan/student/mother/cancer survivor/pottymouth, the owner of www.clusterfook.com, and she invented Get Drunk Friday. Her blog is well worth reading. Go on, check it out before she changes her template or her domain or whatever. Go!

And now for something completely different: Gisele Bundchen peeing

OK, I lied.

You know, I have all kinds of interesting things to say. But I'm not going to. Because I know what drives traffic to this site, and it's neither my infectiously merry outlook nor my deft handling of the English language. They are nice enough, in their way, but they don't explain why my hits have skyrocketed. Way, way, up. Or why I have people checking in from all over the world. Belgium, Singapore, Taipei, Zuid-Holland, Distrito Federal, Buenos-Aires, Aargau, Sao Paolo--this place is starting to look like the cafeteria at the U.N.

But since I'm a Sitemeter-using geek, I can check to see what brings in the traffic.

For a long time it was this:

But now? Now it's all about
the girl peeing.

Who knew that trans-species urination was so hot? I mean, wow, this cute chick on the toilet is nice enough, but put a tiger outfit on her and, apparently, ROWRRRR. Right?

The weird thing is I didn't actually have La Chatte Qui Pis on here; I only linked to the image. Yet apparently people are doing searches for images of girls peeing and they're ending up here.

Lucky me.

So anyway, welcome, weird perverted people! Pull up a chair. For your slobbery viewing pleasure, here are those pictures you appear to enjoy so much. In one post, even. Enjoy! And hey, if you can hang on, I'll rummage around and see whether I can't find a nice shot of Gisele Bundchen on a toilet. It might take a while, because Gisele is a very busy woman, what with being a supermodel and all, plus she hardly ever eats or drinks anything, for fear of gaining an extra ounce or two, so she actually doesn't go to the bathroom very much--hardly ever, in fact. And when she is in there, she's just watching Kate Moss do lines. But don't worry--I'll find you a picture. Anything to please the fans.

And ... don't thank me. It's enough to know that somewhere in Taipei, a pervert is weeping grateful tears.

I'm clean, complex, light--like a good Montrachet.

Stolen from Jasmine:

the Prankster (38% dark, 30% spontaneous, 31% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | COMPLEX | LIGHT Your humor has an intellectual, even conceptual slant to it. You're not pretentious, but you're not into what some would call 'low humor' either. You'll laugh at a good dirty joke, but you definitely prefer something clever to something moist. You probably like well-thought-out pranks and/or spoofs and it's highly likely you've tried one of these things yourself. In a lot of ways, yours is the most entertaining type of humor because it's smart without being mean-spirited. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Conan O'Brian - Ashton Kutcher The 3-Variable Funny Test! - it rules -

Sunday Confessions

1. I procrastinate and find it very hard to stick to a deadline. If you don't believe me, check the date of this entry.

2. I'm one of those idiots who believes she has every single disease she reads about. And now that I have children, I am convinced that I have non-verbal learning disorder, anxiety, depression, ADD and ADHD, learning disabilities, speech processing issues, mumps, strep throat, head lice--oh, and I need braces.

3. I hate it when people call me just to say "hi." For years my husband called me at least once a day, sometimes two or three times, just to say "hi." This drove me nuts. Partly because I hate, hate, HATE being interrupted, even if I'm just sitting there reading the newspaper and drinking coffee. But also because I sense sometimes that people who call me just to say "hi," are bored. And they're looking for some entertainment. And since I have a not-undeserved reputation for being fairly entertaining, they call me. Well, I'm not flattered, and I'm busy. GO AWAY.

4. I am the worst speller I know.

5. OK, I know it's just a big computer, but I love ordering a bushel or two of some weird anomalous junk--say, science fiction, or the complete recordings of Nathan Gunn--from Amazon. Because then Amazon thinks I like it. And keeps recommending it. For some reason, I find this funny. I like to fuck with Amazon's head.

6. A lot of SAHMs give me the creeps.

7. I hate horror movies. Or movies with violence. Or movies with sex. PG-13 is about as far as I'm willing to go. (Luckily for me, I find fart jokes amusing.)

8. I'm a pervert. Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous: blue sky, every spring flower you can think of in bloom--perfection. There is nothing so rare as a spring day in Chicago. And how did I spent it? Cleaning out my garage. It was dark, cluttered, and filthy, and I was in manicure-destroying, why-did-I-wear-these-clothes-for-such-a-dirty-job bliss. Because I love really disgusting cleaning jobs. And I practically climax when I get to throw stuff out.

9. If you suspect you're boring me, you probably are.

10. The other night I had a dream about George W. Bush. Thank God it wasn't erotic.

Best Picture, 2007.

It's a sure thing.

Six Degrees of Mrs. Fortune

It's down to the wire, folks--click on Mrs. Fortune's thumbnail over there on the left, because I'm evicting her later today.

I feel bad about that, even though I'm her evil landlady. Because her blog rocks.

I say this even though she posted a picture of Kevin Bacon, who is so ugly that I, personally, would like to stay way further away from him than a paltry six degrees. Ninety degrees is more like it. (Is it possible to get a nose job to make your nose bigger? Because if there is, Kevin Bacon would be right in line behind Michael Jackson.)

Why I am Stupid; an Ode in Nine Paragraphs.

I rented a limo for my daughter's birthday party. There was some justification for this; I had 10 or 11 little girls on my hands, and we were heading to a Chuck E. Cheese in Arlington Heights, IL (Where??? Exactly!) and couldn't fit them all into our cars. But then I stupidly I decided it was only fair to rent a limo to transport the five boys who were going to my son's Chuck E. Cheese's birthday party, even though we didn't have to travel as far, and I could have fit them all in my van.

And while searching for a bargain like unto the amazing bargain I got when I rented a limo last January for the girl's birthday party, I found a company that charged an OK, if not fabulously economical sum,

forgetting that bargains in limo rentals involve drivers who speak English as a second, possibly third, language, and who know even less than I do about getting around the Chicago area,

which will therefore leave me standing outside in the parking lot reading the print-out of my Yahoo Maps search into my cell phone while trying to understand remarks made in a high-pitched East Asian accent that reminds me, due to the driver's cheap-ass cell phone, of Apu from The Simpsons, but squeakier and forced through a paper shredder of static and cell phone drop-out. All this to help the driver find us so we could get home.

Because the first driver--the one who finally figured out how to find the Chuck E. Cheese at 7142 Carpenter in Skokie--had an accident. Not, thankfully, when the boys were in the limo. Just a fender-bender after he dropped them off.

But it was serious enough so that we got a new limo and driver for the trip home. And he was an hour late. And had no effing idea how to find us, and once he found us, how to get us home. And as I may have mentioned earlier, talked funny.

And unfortunately the backpacks and boyish detritus left in the back of the original limo were not in the second limo, and they have not been returned to us. Not even now, over 24 hours after the second driver managed to get us home.

Resulting in many angry telephone calls to the limo company. (Because there is nothing that encourages ethical and business-like behavior than irate and sarcastic telephone calls from your customers.) And apologetic calls to the families of the boys whose backpacks have not yet been returned.

And business-like calls to the local police. (Update: Which actually wasn't stupid ... because it resulted in Driver Number One showing up at our house last night, or should I say, this morning, at 12:30, with the backpacks and the scooter.)

Thursday 13; or, What do I look like, a rabbit or something?

Whoops, I think I linked to peanutmomof4's site by mistake. I only meant to leave a comment, but I guess I signed up for the Thursday 13 meme, instead.

So I guess that means I have to leave a list of thirteen things about me.

I'm too grumpy and hungry to think of thirteen nice things. So I'll post a list of 13 crappy things I have to do today:

1. Eat something. Then make the beds.
2. Empty the dishwasher.
3. Track down some rsvps.
4. Rsvp for a cocktail party.
5. Eat something. Hungry! My laptop is starting to look tasty.
6. Do laundry. And put the clean clothes away.
7. Give myself a half-way decent blow-out so my hair won't look idiotic tomorrow.
8. Mail five packages. I'm selling my books on half.com. If you have an apparently bottomless appetite for film studies or fashion, check it out. See how much money I waste on books? That I never read?
9. Go for a walk. (I'll try a combo--and walk to the P.O. Call me a miracle of efficiency.)
10. Get clothes ready for a board meeting I have to go to tomorrow.
11. Go to grocery store and buy vegetables.
12. Figure out what happened to the vegetables we had.
13. Accept blame for hoovering down every tomato, cucumber, and bit of broccoli in the house.

Adam and Eve on a raft

Sh! Don't look now, but I think I'm approaching a "normal" state.

The following are over: Christmas, mother's birthday, daughter's birthday, Valentine's Day, son's solo in class play, Spring Break, Lent, Easter, my son's birthday, and the Brownie service project I decided to dream up.

I'm looking ahead into the near future, and I'm not shuddering.

And I'm not in some wacky state of mental Zen--with a side of Feng Shui. The future looks a bit rocky. I still have my son's birthday party, three concerts, two hideous meetings of a group I volunteer for, (one of which will involve out-of-town travel with a bunch of old ladies including my mother, and the other of which will involve my wearing a corsage. Don't ask.) Oh, and I might be attending That Stud Muffin I Married's 20th reunion with him. Ew.

But I'm looking around, and things seem relatively peaceful. I think I have six more weeks before any really serious s. hits the f.

I'm feeling so at peace that I've decided to chuck any idea of having my blog entry flow gently from one idea to the next.

****
I'm on Day Two of the South Beach Diet. This is an excellent diet for people who are feeling puffy, and who don't mind eating eggs without toast, biscuits, or starch of any kind.

When I was younger, I would have sworn that my gullet would seal itself off at the very idea of swallowing scrambled eggs without toast, and you can just forget anything runnier and gooier, like eggs over easy. My gorge rose at the thought.

But with age comes wisdom--as well as puffiness--and phrases like "Lose 13 pounds in two weeks!" have a tendency to jump off of book covers and attach themselves to one's corneas. Accordingly, two years ago, I allowed the South Beach Diet to help me lose about 30 pounds.

Unfortunately, eggs without toast lost their appeal, whereas doughnuts started to look pretty good, and the weight crept back on. First I noticed that my fall clothes were too tight, so I bought new ones. Then I noticed, as I packed for spring break at Walt Disney World, that my spring/summer clothes didn't want to button and/or zip. Then, on Easter Sunday I weighed myself and discovered that I'm at my pre-pregnancy high. So it's back to the eggs without toast, and isn't it lucky that I happen to have a generous supply of hard-boiled eggs in the house?

***
I have a new tenant this week, Mrs. Fortune. Her blog is new to me, and so far, I like it a lot. I've only read three or four entries, but I've discovered that Mrs. Fortune, while both female and a blogger, does not like cats, which right from the start, makes her stand out of the crowd. Also, she is pregnant, but not, apparently, overly sentimental about it, and Jewish, but not particularly vehement about that, either. As the blogosphere is rife with fundamentalist Christian home-schooling cat-loving women, it's a refreshing change of pace to read the blog of someone who is none of the above.

Also, she's funny, she swears almost as much as I do, and she won $2,000 playing poker on her honeymoon. I'm very impressed by that last part, by the way. I play poker from time to time, but I never win huge sums of money; I just end up naked.

At any rate, I say you should click on the thumbnail over there, or I might have to start posting pictures of me losing at strip poker while eating eggs without toast. This is no empty threat, because as I mentioned above, my life has become magically unharried. This means I'll be able to find a fully-charged digital camera and the cables to attach it to my laptop very easily indeed. So you'd better click on Mrs. Fortune's link. The consequences of ignoring my pleas won't be pretty.

It's Easter Monday. It's Tax Day.

But most important, it's my son's birthday.

Weirdly enough, it was Easter Monday and tax day the day he was born.

Eleven years ago today, just before noon, my doctor removed what sounded like an angry tomcat from my lower abdomen.

Now, this was after 56 hours of labor, and I was kind of messed up on Demoral. But I remember thinking he was pretty special.

I was right. Happy birthday, boy!

Life is short; Easter is long.

After a lengthy three days at home with my children, I have come to the startling conclusion that my children are a lot like my relatives. Only younger. I mean, it's uncanny how much they remind me of my family. Not my in-laws--the family I grew up with. As in, my bothers and sisters. Or even (she added, looking around nervously) my mother. Who was not nicknamed "The Witch of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts" for nothing.¹

Not that my children really act like mother (thank God) except for being able to get on my last nerve and make me completely crazy ... but this weekend has reminded me of what I don't like about holidays with my family:

1. The non-stop talking about subjects that bore me comatose.
2. The fighting.
3. The utter lack of gratitude for my extreme thoughtfulness.
4. The television and/or Nintendo being on ALL THE TIME unless I put my foot down, but when I do that, the reaction, if verbalized, would translate to: "I'm bored; play with me. Right now. No, I don't care that you're elbow-deep in soap suds washing millions of dishes. I said now, woman!"
5. The almost constant eating and drinking and making messes in the kitchen. By lunch time today, I was ready to hand out K-rations for Easter dinner.
6. The non-stop talking. Yes, I know I already mentioned it. But it's a constant.

This does not mean I don't love my children. The whole time they are boring me comatose, I'm wishing they'd shut up about Pita Lion or Kitty City and just let me poke them in their cute little tummies or count the freckles on their noses or whatever. Instead, I have to listen to the long, involved adventures of their fictional characters. They both make up wildly elaborate imaginary worlds derived from popular children's entertainment, like Harry Potter or Wallace and Gromit or The Winx Club ... but with all kinds of levels and tournaments, a la Pokemon, in the case of the boy, and ridiculous numbers of characters and relationships, a la the Bratz, in the case of the girl, and I can't possibly keep it all straight. I've tried, and that way madness lies.

So honestly ... I can't wait to pack them off to school tomorrow. They go on and on and on. I can't imagine where they get that from.

¹ Three guesses as to who came up with that one.

It's good to see the green, green grass of Walgreen's

Easter isn't pretty in these parts.

Well, to be strictly accurate, the outside looks great. The past couple of days have been in the high 70s and low 80s, so the forsythia, daffodils, and scylla are blooming up a storm. In my neighborhood everyone has cleaned up their yards, even the people next door who, until last week, still had Christmas stuff up.

But indoors? Yikes. Easter ain't pretty.

"Why is this?" you ask. To sum it up in a single sentence: Today I harrowed Hell Target. And Costco. And Walgreen's. And I have discovered the hell that is last minute Easter shopping.

All I wanted to do was get some stuff for my children's baskets. That's all. But Costco had been a wash-out; all they had was huge boxes of Easter candy which would work for an entire Sunday school, but would be a bit much for a family of two children. (No matter how much candy I sneaked.)

So I went to Target. Which was a nightmare of Biblical proportions, to borrow the phraseology of one of my pals. I picked over the picked-over remnants of Easter basket goodies, but I found very little that could actually be considered edible. There were tons of Peeps for the weirdos, perverts, and child-molesters who actually like crunchy sugar-covered luridly purple marshmallow chicks. But where were the solid chocolate rabbits? The normal fruit-flavored jellybeans? The pastel-colored M&Ms? The Cadbury Cream Eggs?

Oh, and where was the green grass for the baskets? For that matter, where were the baskets?

Gone, all gone.

It was so crazy-making that I actually ate some Cadbury Mini Eggs at the store. From one of the half-dozen bags in the display that were ripped open. And I went back for more.

Yes, that's right; your Poppy was prowling around Target eating fistfuls of Cadbury Mini Eggs, scowling at the stupid purple marshmallow chicks, stressing out, and talking to herself.

After about 20 minutes of rummaging around, I managed to find two chocolate rabbits. I also found a box of four Cadbury Cream Eggs tucked away in another random part of the display. And I nabbed a bag of Butterfinger eggs. (I disapprove of Butterfinger eggs, but my children like them, and I needed to buy something.)

So I looked for grass for the baskets. There was no green left: only pink and yellow remained. For green grass, I had to go to Walgreen's.

Hooray! Walgreen's had green grass and they even had pastel M&Ms. So I looked for some plastic eggs to put the M&Ms in.

And this is where I got really weird. And mind you, I'd already been eating store candy from ripped open packages. That was bad, but at this point, I went all Lord of the Flies. There were no plastic eggs on the shelves, and because I hadn't seen any at Costco or Target, I took a package of plastic eggs from what I hope was an abandoned shopping basket at Walgreen's. I bought them and brought them home.

The plastic eggs are filled with treats and distributed in the garden for tomorrow's hunt. The eggs are dyed. The baskets and the candy and the green grass and the little presents are hidden in the basement. I have nothing left to do but blog my shame.

And now, I'm begging. Next year, will one of you more organized types start telling me how many shopping days I have until Easter? Because even with Lenten deprivation, I don't seem to be able to recognize when the Bunny is almost upon me.

Have you checked out my tenant yet?

I know, it's Good Friday, and you have other things on your mind. Like maybe Passover.

But please click on my renter's thumbnail. Chatty is feeling all bereft and woebegone ovah theah.

Whip me. Please.

I got a fabulous email from Jen Lancaster, whose book, Bitter is the New Black, is simply flying off the shelves, dahlings.

See, I won a copy on Snarkywood by writing a photo caption. The Snarky Girls posted pictures of J. Lo, and I wrote an amazingly witty caption for the picture of J. Lo in the infamous green see-through dress.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm bragging about myself. Again.

Right. Well, anyway, since I already own a personalized copy of the book, I've threatened to have a contest of my own to determine the fate of the signed copy I won. And now Jen has offered me a couple more copies to serve as prizes in my contest.

Now, I thought about doing a contest a la Joke, where I ask all kinds of questions, the answers to which are buried in my own archives. But frankly, I don't want to re-read my old stuff myself--so I certainly don't expect sentient beings to burrow around in my archives like pigs searching for truffles.

So I'll have a contest that requires very little effort--and doesn't involve reading shitloads of my old posts--yet helps me. (If you Google the phrase "enlightened self-interest," my picture pops up. Try it!)

See, I'm having trouble coming up with new material for one of my other blogs. The one where I make fun of those godawful recipes you find in Junior League cookbooks. You know, the recipes featuring Cool-Whip, Dream Whip, or Miracle Whip?

(I'm not really having trouble finding recipes that qualify. I have tons of the neccessary cookbooks. But when you're as lazy as I am, you prefer having material deposited directly into your email account, instead of, you know, prying your ever-widening ass out of your comfy armchair to find them.)

So here's the contest: email me your foulest recipe. It can be either your dirtiest little culinary secret or something you rooted around for dug up at the Kraft Foods website.

The three most disgusting, unappetizing, chemical-laden recipes will win signed copies of Bitter is the New Black.

Contest ends May 1, 2006. Employees of The Opiate of the Masses are prohibited from entering. Winners will be announced in The Opiate of the Masses. For a list of winners, send an email to poppy2006@gmail.com. No truffles were harmed in the writing of this entry. You might as well stop reading now, because Poppy has run out of pseudo-legal contest jargon.

Chronic-what?-cles of Narnia

First, see the movie:

Chronic-what?-cles of Narnia

Then, read the book:

Lazy Sunday, wake up in the late afternoon,
Call Parnell, just to see how he's doin'.
"Hello"
"What up, Parn?" "Yo, Samberg what's crackin'?
You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?
NARNIA! Then it's happenin'
But first my "hunkin' legs??" are stickin' like duct tape
Lets hit up Magnolia and mack on some cupcakes
Yo, That ba-ker-eees got all the bomb frosting
I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling

TWO, no SIX, no TWELVE, BAKERS DOZEN
I told you that I'm crazy for the cupcakes, cousin.
Yo, Where's the movie playin?
Upper West Side, dude
Well let's hit up Yahoo Maps to find the dopest route-
I prefer Map Quest
That's a good one too
Google Maps is the best,
True, dat--double true
68th and Broadway, Step on it sucka
What'cha wanna do Chris?
SNACK ATTACK MOTHERFUCKER!

It's the Chronic WHAT? -cles of Narnia
Yeah, it's the Chronic WHAT? -cles of Narnia
We love that Chronic WHAT? -cles of Narnia
Pass that Chronic WHAT? -cles of Narnia

Yo, stop at the deli; the theater is over priced
You got the backpack?
Gonna pack it up NICE
Don't want security to get suspicious
Mr Pibb and Red Vines equals CRAZY delicious
Reach in pocket, pull out some dough
Girl acted like she never seen a ten be'fo
Its all about the Hamilton's baby
Throw the snacks in the bag
and I'm Ghost like Swayze

Roll up to the theater
"Ticket buyin is what my handle is ???"
You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we're droppin' Hamilton's
Parked in out seats, Movie trivia is the 'illest
What Friends' alum starred in films with Bruce Willis?
We answered so fast is was SCARY
Everyone said "awww" when we screamed "Matthew Perry."
Now quiet in the theater room, it's gonna get tragic
We're 'bout to get taken to a dream world of magic

Its the Chronic WHAT? -cles of Narnia
Yea, its the Chronic WHAT? -cles of Narnia
We love that Chronic WHAT? -cles of Narnia
Pass that Chronic WHAT? -cles of Narnia

Big and little challenges

Today's little challenge? Picking out the cabinets, cabinet options, countertops, hardware, and flooring for a new kitchen. I did it on-line and emailed the results to my sister's fiancé, otherwise known as my "contractor." It took about 30 minutes.

Yes, I know people who, like Edina in an episode of Absolutely Fabulous, can spend weeks just picking out cabinet handles. Edina and Patsy even flew to New York to check some out--only to come home and find that Edina's daughter has had the kitchen completely overhauled in her absence.

That's what I'm aiming for, except this is real life, not a situation comedy, so I actually have to make some decisions. But in a perfect world I'd say "stainless steel appliances, white cabinets, whatever floor and countertops look best--use your own discretion" and magically it would be done, and if not perfect, would be close enough to what I like.

I'm actually as close to this as a non-fictional character can get, and I am not complaining at all that I'm not spending weeks obsessed with drawer pulls; it's a kitchen, people. Not the Red Room at the White House.

So the big challenge is today's Brownie project, which I dreamed up and will be leading at this afternoon's meeting.

I wanted the girls to do a service project and one that doesn't affect our immediate community (we already did a trash pick-up at a local park.) You know, one involving outreach.

So we're making May baskets for the residents of a homeless women's shelter in Chicago. We're making the baskets out of brown paper shopping bags, which the girls will decorate, and we'll fill them with shower gels and nylon shower puffs and lotion and sugarless gum and other sweet-smelling stuff that I'm going to go out and buy at Costco any minute now.

So here I am wondering whether I need to cut the brown paper bags and staple the handles myself, or would it be better for the girls to do that themselves? And should we remove the price tags or leave them on? And of course, I'll need to try to explain why some people are homeless. And explain that spring is a good time for fresh starts, and that we want to help these women make a fresh start in their lives.

So that's today's big challenge. And it makes redoing a kitchen look like an airplane crossword puzzle. Maybe even easier.

Poppy preserves a discreet silence, but Chatty B. Tawkin

I'm in Boston for a family wedding. Verdict: meh. Best thing about it was the absolutely gorgeous church.

Hanging out with my in-laws was fun, though. And prowling through Chinatown. And OMG, the lunch at the Taiwan Cafe was out of this world, as was the used book shopping.

But I never like events that involve getting dressed up, so the wedding and rehearsal dinner were only OK.

Which means I don't have much to say. So why not check out my tenant, Chatty B. Tawkin? Just click on the little thumbnail on the left. Her posts are succinct--kind of like this one--but much more interesting. No, really! They're funnier, too.

Hot or Not?

I'm in a small city in Massachusetts for a meeting. They're putting us up at a local hotel.

Well, technically, it's a hotel, but it could also double as a showroom for Hitchcock painted furniture, which you probably won't have heard of unless you read the ads in Yankee magazine. And since Yankee magazine is pretty hard core (pronounced "hahd co-ah") you won't have done that unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool New England Yankee.

By "Yankee" I don't merely mean "person born north of the Mason-Dixon line." That's a start, but it doesn't go far enough. No, by "Yankee," I mean "a fair-skinned, bland-food-eating, over-educated, dipsomaniacal cheap bastid who probably swears way too much and has a bizarre, inexplicable attachment to braided rugs, Indian pudding, Country Curtains, The Boston Red Sox, and Dunkin' Donuts--maybe even baked beans and brown bread."

This hotel is definitely owned by Yankees. I haven't seen any doughnuts or braided rugs yet, but the curtains in my room aroused my suspicions at once.

And the owners are definitely cheap bastids. My room is freezing. It's so cold that I'm sitting here huddled under my laptop for warmth (purr, purr, nice Macintosh--so cozy.)

And when it comes to interior decorating, I think this hotel, like my mother, updates things about once every fifty years. Our motto is "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." Another trademark of the traditional Yankee (as if there were any other kind. There are no neo-Yankees or Yankee wannabes. If your ancestors haven't been here braiding rugs, baking beans, eating doughnuts, and saying "Yankees Suck!" for at least 200 years, you don't qualify. Give up and move to the sunbelt, becuase you'll never fit in.)

Of course, now that I've said all that, I've done an internet search for Hitchcock furniture only to discover that Hitchcock Furniture was a 180-year old firm--but they just went out of business. And their hideous "phony Colony" (pronounced "foe knee cologne knee") furniture is now apparently a hot collectible. Whatever, people.

So ... hotel room? Cold.
Hotelier's sense of style? Colder.

But free wireless internet access? Hot!

I just hope they don't find out that big chain hotels charge $9.95 for wireless access. Because I'm a cheap bastid doughnut craving Yankee, and free wireless rocks my world.

I'd like to thank God. Oh, and my makeup artist.

I'm famous on the internet! And it's for two reasons. Two! Which means I get 30 minutes of fame, not fifteen.

And I'm using a few of them right now, even as we speak, to brag share the love.

First, I've received a glowing review on Stephanie's Mystickal Incense blog. Stephanie says my blog "kicks major butt!" You'll have to scroll down to see it--it was posted March 29th. (See how modest I am that I didn't brag about this right away? Especially about that part where she says this blog is one of the best she's seen on the internet. On the entire internet, people. Yet even with these accolades, I remain lovably humble.)

Second, Jen and the gals at Snarkywood ran a prize for snarkiest caption of a picture of J. Lo. I'm proud to say that I won one such prize, (a signed copy of Jen's book, Bitter is the New Black) even though I've never seen J. Lo in a movie, or a video (I understand she sings) or really anything except magazines and celebrity blog sites. Still, that tacky green Versace dress deserved to be withered like a fig tree, so I went all Biblical (or is it Oscar Wilde) and slapped it silly. And I got the nod. Yay me!

The prize is a signed copy of Bitter. Since I already bought one at one of Jen's local signings, the question is, whom should receive this fabulous book?

Should I go all Joke and run a contest? Or is that beneath a celebrity of my stature? Or ... would I seem more lovably humble, more real somehow, if I acted as if I were unaware of my fame?

I'll throw the question out to you, my public. Should I hold a contest, so that one of the little people of the internet can win this wonderful prize? Or should I give it to a friend or relative, who, I should remind you, has the inestimable pleasure of already knowing me in real life.

Zen Poppy

In case you were wondering why I've been kind of quiet lately, I've been busy.

See, right before Spring Break, when I was starting to pack, I had to make the children play fashion show to see what, if anything, still fit from last summer.

In the case of my daughter that was "not much." So the outgrown stuff is stacked up on what seems like every horizontal surface in the house.

Also I've been doing the vast mountain of laundry we brought back from Florida. And putting things away. This is a pain because it's not warm enough to wear our Florida clothes around here yet. So that means packing them away so our bureaus and closets don't choke. And I haven't finished. So that stuff is getting stacked up all over the place, too.

So piles of clothes that still fit, but aren't warm enough to wear, are keeping company with piles of clothes that have been outgrown.

Once this starts happening, I am seized with an uncontrollable urge to declutter. (I mean, good Lord. What if they start to breed? Like budgies? And I end up with huge flocks of neatly folded clean clothes flying around the house?)*

On top of that, it's chilly outside, but very sunny. And what with no leaves yet on the trees and Daylight Savings time, the light is pouring into my house. Which leaves me longing for the pale, cool colors and general spareness depicted in those books about Swedish style that had us all (OK, maybe it was just me) longing for painted wooden Gustavian furniture. Or at least, light colors and no crap all over the place.

So I'm packing up stuff to take to the thrift shop. And I'm listing stuff on half.com and titletrader and bringing stuff to the post office. Be gone, revolting clutter! Out! Be gone!

I'm aiming for a zen, minimalist exquisitely orderly somewhat tidy ok, not completely trashed house. And then I'll invite you all over post pictures.

* Monty Python routines will haunt me 'til the day I die. You have been warned.

Attention, people of the South

Look, I don't want to start anything. I don't want to refight the Civil War (for one thing, the depopulation of the North has become so severe that you'd probably kick our asses.) And anyway, I'm a Southern Belle wannabe. And I love my Southern friends, I really do. Even when they're being preposterous. (As in talking about "real Southern chicken salad." Hello? No matter where you make it, chicken salad is cooked chicken, chopped celery, and Hellmann's mayonnaise.)

But I just spent two days driving from Florida to Illinois. And there are some areas that need a little help.

1. It's called "fast food" for a reason. It's supposed to be fast. I don't want to go into a Starbucks and wait 15 minutes for a latte when there was only one person in line in front of me. I don't usually drink coffee; I don't usually go to Starbucks; I don't know a venti from a grande from my left butt cheek. I certainly don't know how to use the machines. What does this mean? It means I start to get pissed off when I find myself wondering whether it wouldn't be faster for me to walk behind the fucking counter and make the goddamned coffee myself.

2. Not all Northerners are from New York. In fact, many of us are from cities that hate New York. So don't ask someone wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap what part of New York she's from. Here's a clue for you: the B on the cap isn't for "Bronx" or "Brooklyn."

3. Yeah, snow can be hazardous to drive in and it's a bitch to shovel, but it covers up a lot of flaws. So. If you don't get snow, the burden is on you to keep your yard cleaned up.

4. I don't want to burst anyone's bubble, but up north, when we see insects, we call the exterminator. We don't arrange an annual festival around the local fire ant population.

5. You've got to learn to pace yourselves. 86 degrees at 10:00 in the morning in March is too much too soon. What are you going to do in July and August if you're letting it get that hot in March?

6. OK, OK, it's warm all year around. We get it. Now get the weight-lifting equipment off the front porch. Sheesh.

7. Oh yeah. All the signs along the highway in Georgia for "spas" aren't fooling anyone. And if one of my children ever asks me what a "spa" is, I'm going to drive right the fuck up to one of them, march in, and demand a hot stone aromatherapy massage. And someone had better know how to do it, too. Because after the embarrassing experience of having to explain to my children what truckers like to do during their (you should excuse the expression) "down time," I'm going to need a nice long soothing massage. And if I don't get one, I really am going to restart the Civil War.

On the road. Again.

Yesterday we drove from Orlando to Nashville. We left Walt Disney World at 9:30 and arrived at our hotel in Nashville at 1:00 in the morning, except it was only midnight because we're in Central Time. So we gained an hour. How clever of us to be driving west, n'est pas? We are to be congratulated.

My current book-on-MP3 is Ian Carmichael reading the unabridged version of Dorothy L. Sayer's Clouds of Witness. It's great and really makes the miles fly. Especially when my husband is driving.

Today, it's Nashville to Chicago, with stops at Cracker Barrel, this trip's chain eatery of choice.

p.s. In the "country store" part of Cracker Barrel, my daughter discovered country music. She's now listening to Tammy Wynette and Dolly Parton. Pretty good for a child born in Chicago. I can't wait for her to start talking country music with her little friends at school.