More of my revolting glass-half-full ponderings.

Hey, internet!

Yesterday's first meeting with the trainer went fine! He had me lifting a few weights and doing a few balance-y, coordination-y things and I didn't even fall over. Also, I didn't kill myself lifting the heaviest weights because, well, why? So that actually went pretty well.

I mean, the worst thing about it was realizing that I was probably old enough to be his mother.

Today I have a few body aches, but nothing major. Nothing that couldn't be cured by some time in the whirlpool, drinking champagne and sweating, followed by an hour-long full body massage. And since I'm not getting those, isn't it lucky that 45 minutes on the treadmill and a hot shower will also take care of the situation.

God ... how can I have nothing else to say? I don't, except a shout out to the Lohan clan. Keep it up, people! Because you is writing my Mamarazzi entries for me, practically.

Oh, and the foot is loads better. So please don't leave me comments about Plantar warts, because 1., that's not the problem, and 2., Ew.

Wednesday's child is full of woe.

Oh, whom am I kidding. Yes, I was born on Wednesday, and today is Wednesday, but I'm not filled with woe. I just have a little jigger of woe splashing around in an otherwise full glass of whee.

Woe is me because:

1. Lemony SarahO is moving to Colorado. I never thought she would move. Never! In fact, I secretly hoped her house would not sell and she would not move, and she'd stay here and be my real-life pal as well as blogging buddy and Mamarazzi colleague. Bummer. I'll miss our blabbermouth lunches.

2. My right heel still hurts a little bit.

3. Bugs! Bugs in the yard! The 17-year cicadas are starting to hatch. And some people are all excited about this. I am not one of them. Hello? Bugs are gross.

4. I have my first meeting with a new personal trainer today. I am skeered. Will he hurt me?

But there is a lot of whee! mixed in with the woe:

1. Celebrity parenting is a complete trainwreck these days, which gives me lots of material to use for Mamarazzi posts. I subbed for Sarah today. I made fun of Candy Spelling, for a piquant change of pace. Because even I, with my limitless appetite for idiocy, am getting a little sick of Britney.

2. The personal trainer will have to be nice to me, even if he can't stand me. That's always pleasant, and reminds me why I hired doulas to come help after my second child was born. (This of course, was after I learned--with the first child, and the hard way--that becoming a grandmother was not miraculously going to transform my mother into a kind, thoughtful, selfless person.) Since then, my philosophy has been: if you want people to be nice to you, surround yourself with employees, not family members. And fire them if they get mouthy.

3. You guys are the greatest. I loved the comments to my last MY FOOT HURTS post. I am taking all of your advice. I am even taking the advice of Anonymous, who didn't like medical advice by blog. Anonymous, I'm also going to search the internet some more and not rely solely on my blog for get-well-soon advice. In the meanwhile, I bought two different OTC orthotic shoe inserts and my foot feels better. Yay!

And then Nemesis came up and bit me on the ass.

You know, it was very recently--a mere post ago--that I mentioned what a nice life I lead. And mostly, I do.

Except I planned to spend quite a bit of time this month working out at the gym, or going on long, vigorous walks, working up a light sweat in a desperate attempt to shed fat cells and transform what's left from a bulging sack of Crisco to a lightly muscled, firm, rubbery bagel of fleshly delights.

Unfortunately, I've developed cancer of the foot. Or something like it. I'd go to the doctor and check it out, except I hate doctors, and anyway, what's the internet for, if not to discover all kinds of information about medical conditions that then become your completely paranoid worst nightmare?

I don't even want to talk about it. I hate feet. I know I'm alone in this, or have been for the last decade, where the entire world has fallen down and worshiped French pedicures and strappy sandals (which by the way, is redundancy in action: I mean, show me a sandal without straps and I will show you a shoe sole) and reflexology and Manolo's shoe blog, but I don't care. I hate feet, and I don't want to talk about them.

So something's wrong with my foot, and I can't work out the way I planned. And I'm sitting here imagining myself hauling my enormous carcase through the swimming pool, lap after lap, until I build the upper body of a wheelchair athlete on steroids.

And I realized, hey, I'm feeling whiny.

Better blog about it.

Before I crush my laptop keyboard with my Popeye-like forearms.

Andrew ate eight thousand

In case you're wondering, that was part of a carpet commercial I used to enjoy. And it works as a segue into yet another peek into the Sargasso Sea that is my brain. Yes, I've been tagged, so enough with the procrastinating. Time to stop all this half-assed, feckless time wasting and get down to some back-breaking, excruciating, Total Time Annihilation!

Here are the rules: • Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about him/herself. • People who are tagged need to write in their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. • At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. • Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

So. Eight things you didn't already know about me.

Of course, I could be lazy and pretend that everyone reading this is reading my blog for the first time, whereupon I could admit that I have two children, live in Illinois, and am a cradle Episcopalian. And that would be three things already--hey, look! I'm practically half-way done!

But let's pretend I care enough to give you people some of the richer, rarer, stranger things about me.

1. I fall asleep pretty much as soon as my head hits the pillow, and sleep through the night. I never remember my dreams, and I never get up to pee. No, not even when I was pregnant.
The first thing I do upon awakening is head into the the bathroom to empty my bladder, and rabid coyotes gnawing on my calves wouldn't be able to stop me.

2. I've spent the past 10 years trying to forget most of the stuff I learned in graduate school. This is easy and enjoyable, and involves reading books and watching films I actually like, instead of books and films that other people think are important. All while drinking my beverage of choice, which very often, is alcoholic in nature. I recommend this.

3. I utterly refuse to become interested in any story that could be described as "tragic." Even "tragi-comedies" are pretty much off my radar. If I want to cry, I can just re-read the part of Little Woman where Beth dies. Works like a charm.

4. Speaking of which, by the time I finished second grade, I had read all of Louisa May Alcott's books. This means that Louisa May's ideas of what constitutes good behavior had inveigled themselves into my brain cells and imprinted themselves there when I was too young to stop them, sort of like the way a baby duck will decide that the first moving object it sees is his mother. As a consequence, I will never be as mean as I'd like to be. My friends often remark on how kind, nice, or generous I am. It's sad, but I just don't seem to be able to become consistently snarky, sarcastic, dark, or bitter.

5. I've been contributing to Mamarazzi for over a year, and still feel inadequate, mostly because I don't know who half these so-called "celebrities" are. Like "The Hoff," of whom I had never heard until his daughters released the hamburger slobbering video, or "Denise Richards," whom I confused with that woman who used to make all the aerobic tapes.

6. I am extremely put off by other people's vulgarity. But not my own.

7. My husband rakes in the dough and we have no credit card debt. Consequently I feel that I have nothing to complain about, and therefore I could get kicked out of the blogosphere any second. Since mostly people appear to blog in order to do a lot of whining, and most of the time, I don't think I have anything to whine about. This might be because of Number 5 up there, where I learned the virtue of Hard Work and Cheerfully Shouldering One's Burdens and the like, but I suspect that Louisa May Alcott herself would admit I have a pretty nice life.

8. Almost everyone I've met through the internet has been weirder in real life than you'd think they'd be, judging from their on-line personae. And incredibly talkative. And I'm sure they'd say the same about me.

I hereby tag: Babelbabe, Major Bedhead, RW, Sarah Louise, SarahO, Susie Sunshine, Suzanne, and Tut-Tut. But feel free to ignore me. I'm nice about things like this.

For some reason, I feel the need to change my hair color. And my makeup

Wrong again, Ann.

So I'm surfing around the internet and Ann Coulter's busy eulogizing the Reverend Jerry Falwell and ranting away and I'm letting her get away with it because frankly, I get those television evangelist guys all mixed up. But then I realized that Ann got an incredibly basic fact wrong. And when someone gets a simple fact wrong--repeatedly--it means I get to call bullshit. So that's what I'm doing. Here's a chunk of Ann's column:

What Falwell was referring to are the gay activists — the ones who spit the Eucharist on the floor at St. Patrick's Cathedral, blamed Reagan for AIDS, and keep trying to teach small schoolchildren about "fisting."

Also the ones who promote the gay lifestyle in a children's cartoon.

Beginning in early 1998, the news was bristling with stories about a children's cartoon PBS was importing from Britain that featured a gay cartoon character, Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubbie with a male voice and a red handbag.

People magazine gleefully reported that Teletubbies was "aimed at Telebabies as young as 1 year. But teenage club kids love the products' kitsch value, and gay men have made the purse-toting Tinky Winky a camp icon."

In the Nexis archives for 1998 alone, there are dozens and dozens of mentions of Tinky Winky being gay — in periodicals such as Newsweek, The Toronto Star, The Washington Post (twice!), The New York Times and Time magazine (also twice).

In its Jan. 8, 1999, issue, USA Today accused The Washington Post of "outing" Tinky Winky, with a "recent Washington Post In/Out list putting T.W. opposite Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche, essentially 'outing' the kids' show character."

Michael Musto of The Village Voice boasted that Tinky Winky was "out and proud," noting that it was "a great message to kids — not only that it's OK to be gay, but the importance of being well accessorized."

All this appeared before Falwell made his first mention of Tinky Winky.

After one year of the mainstream media laughing at having put one over on stupid bourgeois Americans by promoting a gay cartoon character in a TV show for children, when Falwell criticized the cartoon in February 1999, that same mainstream media howled with derision that Falwell thought a cartoon character could be gay.

OK, I made it as clear as possible, so I'm sure you noticed it. Coulter repeatedly refers to Tinky Winky as a cartoon character. When if she had watched even 10 seconds of the show, she would realize that Teletubbies is live-action.

I know this sounds like I'm being insanely picky. Live-action, shmive action, who cares? Why do I get to call bullshit? This is why: it looks like Coulter did a quick Nexis search, saw how many stories claimed Tinky Winky was gay, and decided "Hey, there's a column in this."

Whereas, if she were me, and had actually spent a couple of years letting her children watch Teletubbies, not only would she realize that Teletubbies is live-action, not animated, she would also realize that post-modern intellectuals, Queer Theorists, and media pundits can all agree on something, and it still doesn't mean jack shit.

The program's target audience wouldn't know a gay icon if it dropped its red pocketbook and came up and kissed them. A two- or three- or four-year-old doesn't know from gay. Anyone who has spent time raising children realizes this.

Also, the whole matter of being a "gay icon" is problematical at best. I mean, Judy Garland is the biggest gay icon I can think of. Does that mean my kids shouldn't watch The Wizard of Oz? And if they do watch it, and my son grows up to be a ballet-dancing interior-decorating homosexual, who gets the credit, me or Judy Garland?

Does anyone else out there suspect that regular columnists sometimes run out of anything original to say, so they pick a non-issue to rant about? I mean, everyone knows inspiration palls from time to time, but honestly, how low can you go? It's just too easy. It's so ... intellectually cheap.

Yeah, I should find someone better to pick on. And leave Ann Coulter alone.

Tagged

This time from Joke.

1. What do you hope to accomplish with your blog?
To waste as much of other people's time as possible.

2. Are you a spiritual person?
No. I'm Episcopalian.

3. If you were stranded on a deserted island, what three things would you want to have with you?
A restaurant, a library, and a spa.

4. What’s your favorite childhood memory?
The time my younger brother poured olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper into my milk and stirred it up. I waited so long to drink it that the oil separated and was floating at the top. My mother said "Poppy, drink your milk." I looked at it and said "MOM!" My brother burst out laughing. My mother said "Henry, drink Poppy's milk."

He drank it. And then shat like a goose for the next 24 hours.

Yes, my mother was a strict one. But since in that instance I wasn't the one to suffer, I treasure that memory. I treasure it so much that whenever I'm in any kind of spiritual agony--like I'm in labor or having a root canal--I conjure up that memory and relive that sweet, sweet moment.

5. Are these your first (tagging) memes?
As if, you stupid newbie.

Pajama blogging at its finest

I'm not really here. OK, I am. But I'm not presentable. Because I'm going to the gym.

OK, yes, it's after 11:00 in the morning and I'm still not dressed, but you know, I've had such a busy week. I forced myself to do all kinds of things I didn't want to do--like get dressed up, drive downtown, attend meetings, go to fundraising events and concerts--when all I wanted to do was play with the internet.

I mean, why put yourself in situations where you have to get dressed in uncomfortable clothes and be polite, when you could stay in your pajamas and take cheap shots at celebrities?

So just a few quick, sweet, fruity Jell-O cheap shots, and then I'll promise I'll go all low-fat organic strawberry smoothie at the gym.

Today's winner is Anne Heche, my current Mamarazzi target for pretending not to be batshit crazy, when we all know she is.



Runner-up Number 1 was Miss Personality herself, Lindsay Lohan



who apparently Comes In Color. Her so-called dress looks like an ace bandage on acid. "She's like a rainbow. Coming colors in the air. Oh everywhere." Including her hair. Which frankly, looks better red, because when Lindsay goes blonde she looks like every other peroxide blonde coke-snorting starlet who just escaped from rehab. Such as this one:


who has not yet discovered that low-rise jeans are out of style. Or that wearing a hat doesn't make a wig look less like a wig. Or that it's called underwear for a reason.

OK, folks--gym time.

Tinky Winky gets the last word.

And it's "Bye-bye!"

The Strife is O'er, Part I

The first of my two fundraisers is over, over, over, and I am glad, glad, glad. I had a nice crowd of people eating, drinking, and making merry to celebrate the opening of an exhibit at the Chicago Cultural Center. The food was delish, the drinks plenteous, I met the Mayor's wife, and was petted and praised by all. Yay, me.

And now, I get to do what I want to do. Which is sit around in my pajamas and play Snood Solitaire on my laptop. When I'm not blabbing on the phone with RW of Chasing Vincenzo, who, believe it or not, is even funnier in real life than he is on his blog.

The cleaners will be here soon, so I'll help them out a bit by doing my bulldozer bit, wherein I put away my crap and put everyone else's in big grocery sacks and then carry them down to what a realtor would call our "rec room," (otherwise known as "that tomb of gloom down in the basement that, many owners ago, was enlivened with a green linoleum floor and knotty pine paneling.") So that takes care of my workout, because that will be a few bags and a few trips up and down the stairs.

So really, life couldn't be better, except for the Liprosy.

Maybe you haven't heard of that.

"Liprosy" is what you get when you let your lipstick wear off and then spend five hours in the sun at an amusement park surrounded by sixth grade boys and roller coasters. Because without lipstick on, you get a sunburn on your lips. I know! How weird is that? And then you have two days to wonder whether you've become allergic to your usual lip balm, and why isn't it working, and why are your lips two different colors, and what's with all the peeling?

So anyway, I'm all better now, but yesterday I'm afraid I looked ... a little unsavory.

So the moral of the story is: wear lipstick. Even if you're a guy.

The Mamas and the Tapas

So how was everyone's Mother's Day? Did everyone clean up big time? I did.

Of course, I earned it.

The day before Mother's Day, I acted as a chaperone for a school trip. This meant that I had to get up at 5:00 in the morning on a Saturday, get my children dressed in their concert finery, take them to school to be loaded on buses, ride to Gurnee, IL, sit through several performances, be re-loaded onto the buses, sit through more performances, and finally get to the big reward! for my chaperonage! and early morning middle-school concert attendance!

Which was to herd a gang of sixth-grade boys. Which is much like herding cats. Through Six Flags Great America. Which meant that I was stuck for five hours at an amusement park that fairly bristled with the kind of roller-coasters guaranteed to reduce me to a fear-stricken, jelly-legged, sobbing heap of protoplasm. While herding cats.

Well, I made it through the event unscathed. I didn't lose any of the boys. I didn't even lose my lunch. And I found out at 6:00 that my son's orchestra had totally kicked butt, having been awarded the highest grade awarded, even though they were competing against much, much larger schools. And when I got back home at 8:15 p.m., That Stud Muffin I Married had a Manhattan and a steak dinner waiting for me.

The combination of my straight-up Manhattan with my nearly empty stomach had me informing my children tearily how very, very proud of them I was before I tottered off to bed at 10:30.

So, you see, I earned the breakfast in bed, the Felco pruners, the three luscious books, the dinner out (not at Tapas Barcelona, though, because the other Mamas were hogging all the tables,) the brilliant concert, the cutting board made by my son and the colorful card made by my daughter.

Reality check.

This morning my husband told me he'd had a dream where one day had a high of 59 degrees, the next day was 89 degrees, and the day after that it was down to 40.

I told him that wasn't a dream; it was the weather in Chicago.

"This is such an elegant evening--such fun--more with you there. Hope you can make it!"

In case you've been wondering--that's what I've been writing. Not blogs. Enclosure cards for fundraiser invitations.

Over and over and over again.

Sometimes on the massive card stock provided by the Music of the Baroque. Sometimes on the tiny card stock provided by the Chicago Branch of the English-Speaking Union. Sometimes on the envelope itself, because the idiotic printer sealed the envelopes.

And over and over and over, always customized for the recipient. Is he or she a music lover--a party lover--an English major?

*...---+++###+++---......---+++###+++---......---+++###+++---...*

And in other news, on Sunday I booked a trip for the four of us. To Paris!

Why it never occurred to me that my children, who at 10 and 12 are long out of diapers, could actually handle an overseas flight--not to mention a vacation that did not revolve around waiting in line to get Minnie Mouse's autograph--escapes me. I mean, hello? They're out of diapers! The stroller is history! You can actually have a conversation with them now! Sort of.

So anyway, when a friend mentioned that's what she's planning for the summer, ze light bulb, she went off in my tiny brain, and I thought--hey, why not?

Well, there's the expense. That's one reason. And it's a pretty good one. As it turns out if you wait this long, airlines charge lots of money for round trip tickets.

But then there is the little matter of airline miles. Of which that Stud Muffin I Married had accumulated not a few. Methodically. For years. Like since 1991. And I think--honestly--we might have cashed in, say, three domestic coach round trips in all that time. So, free flights.

So, Paris in June! Sound good? Zut, yeah. Maybe more "with you there," as there are many readers whom I think it would be great fun to travel--but fun, anyway.

How does my garden grow? Glad you asked.

Today I finally managed to have some free time, some of which I will generously spend blogging (you're welcome.)

So I went out and dug in the garden for a while. I pruned the roses that weren't actually dead, and then dug up the remains of the ones that had snuffed it. (Word to the wise: if you live in an area considered Zone 5, do not plant perennials considered cold-hardy to Zone 5 unless you actually enjoy wasting money. In which case, have fun! Also, avoid planting anything named "Carefree" anything, because that's the first thing that will cock up its toes.)

So the eleven dead rose bushes went into the yard waste bag. Later on, when I was supposed to be purchasing food for my family to eat, I filled a cart with plants, instead. And not edible ones, either, and don't go all Martha Stewart on me and assure me that yes they are, too, because I don't know about you, but flowers that look this good are probably covered in Napalm and Retsin and Soylent Green, and aren't going anywhere near my digestive tract.

I bought pansies, daffodils, and muscari (known to the less-horticulturally-pretentious as "grape hyacinths," blackbird.)

I placed these around the yard in a vain attempt to distract my neighbors' attention from my driveway (which looks like ass--big crack and all). And my roof (which is growing a fine crop of moss). And these little yellow flowers, not dandelions, but equally pesky, which are taking over the parts of the lawn not already overgrown by scylla. (Which are, if you aren't as horticulturally-pretentious as I am, those little blue flowered bulbs that should be growing in a bed, where I had them planted, but instead are popping up randomly all over the place and looking very messy indeed.)

All this is making me nostalgic for the days when I kept a few pots out on the deck, grew chives, basil, and a few roses, and basically, because I wasn't doing anything to attract pigeons or rats, keeping my neighbors reasonably happy with very little effort.

As opposed to now.

So how was your day?

I see the White Hen Pantry in the waitress role

At times volunteering is eerily like having an actual real-live paying job. Without the paycheck or the benefits. Don't believe me? This was yesterday:

9:00 Dropped children's lost homework at school
9:15 Picked up four big trays of invitations from printer
Drove to Chicago
10:00 First of three meetings
11:00 Focus group
12:00 Lunch
1:30 Drove to Chicago Cultural Center for meeting; used Wi-Fi to work on agenda for 5:30 meeting
2:00 Meeting
3:00 finished and printed spreadsheet and agenda
4:30 Headed back to set up my 5:30 meeting
5:30 Ran meeting
7:15 Finally got to drive home

At times like this I wonder why I call myself a "housewife." I didn't see my house all day. I bet it went out with a couple of other houses, had a few beers, watched the game, and flirted with the waitress.