Discombobulation Station

"If you're really serious about putting a stop to gay sex, let them get married."

The above is just one quotable quote from this wise - and humorous - take on Prop 8 from an ACTUAL MORMON. Brave man.

Still having a bit of a problem absorbing last week as reality. E. witnessed the whole darn thing, so I KNOW it actually happened. We do not have a sad grampa and an idiot coming into office in January. OK. But. Obama does not have rainbows and unicorns coming out of his ears,  and we were not showered with Dow points and dollar bills upon his election, and the passing of Prop 8 clearly shows we have LOTS of work to do as a nation before we become a true beacon of tolerance and fairness.  And, uh, economy blah blah blah. But it's a start, right? Right?

We found out this morning that we are having a girl. A GIRL, in all of this whirl. I am also having trouble wrapping my brain around that one. A DAUGHTER.

So maybe we can look back at this crazy year and say: look, honey. A woman ran for president, and didn't lose because of being a woman, just for being sort of unloveable and having some baggage, and while we pretty much hate her, a female-person was almost VP (and probably would have been president at some point).  So, you can be president. Or a senator. Or a stay-at-home-mom. You can be a tuba player, or a weaver, or a soccer star, or a marketing executive, or a trial lawyer, or a whatever-the-heck-you-want. Because, at the very least, our nation has learned THAT lesson. Or is learning. It's a start. But first, we have some work to do. Hopefully the couple of decades will only get better. For all of us.

xoxo, A

Home Sweet Home

Oh and how good it is. You gotta love the holidays and all, but mayonnaise - am I glad they're over. I don't know how much longer I could tolerate the low level headache, the constant anxiety, the no end in sight. A few highlights:

* Sammy had a lovely graduation party put on by her father with a real live bartender and a large selection of cheese among other delictibles. R, hubby & baby came up to surprise her. We had stopped at the Christmas Story House and the West Side Market beforehand, where I had the best beef jerky I have ever tasted and was too shy to buy myself a pound or two.

*We then immediately departed for Columbus in dad's luxury auto-mobile (say it like in Sixteen Candles) and I wrapped all my presents in front of R's fire and hubby cooked us a gorgeous dinner of Chicken Athenas (? just say yum - wine reduction sauce ok?) and had an impromptu party and I broke into the Jameson and probably got hubby in trouble. Got to see even more extended Columbus friend-family in the a.m.

*Got church out of the way by going to midnight mass. Both good and bad, in a way.

*Got nice pressies and gave some too. It's always the ones you're most excited about that they're not though, innit? Got mom some lovely turquoise beads in SF, and made dad a coaster set of him driving tugboats and stuff, and they weren't too impressed with either of those items.

*Went out Christmas night to my friend R's house, R. of the wedding in October, and ran into my bass player from the band I was in when I was 17. Very exciting stuff, I text messaged two of my old bandmates at the discovery. He's some high level scientist in Athens and seems very smart and together. Which wasn't really a surprise yet...

*Crashed at my brother's that night and felt the most relaxed I had in a few days. Took note of this for future reference.

*Got through the family post-holiday party without popping any pharmas or drinking too much.

*Got a ride home with P-bone and caught up finally. Had similar experiences with cold houses and both glad to be crossing that skyway back into the big bad city.

A few roadblocks to perfect Christmas:

*both of my parents now appear to be hard of hearing, and very aggressively ask you to repeat about 90% of what you say. I know, I know, they're older, and I'm a brat, but its very frustrating.

*dad managed to make quite a few digs while simultaneously stalking me throughout the house. Sample morning:

E: Mrph. Morning parents.

Mom: Morning sweetheart.

Dad: (In a frenzy at 10am): What do you want for breakfast!?!

E: Tea. Toast.

Dad: What kind of toast do you want! Its all right there! What kind!

E: I dunno, mrph, wheat.

Dad: How many pieces? Hand me the pieces! How many pieces of toast do you want! What!?!

E: Dad. Seriously. You have to slow down, I just woke up.

Dad: How many pieces goddamit!?!

E: I'm not telling you.

And so on and so forth. I love my Chicago life.

xoxo

E.

Surviving a Parental Weekend

I love my parents to death. They are just entering their early 70s, in great health, happily retired and well-traveled already. It had been three years or so since they last visited and I was starting to take it personally. So arrangements were made, weekends canceled, then back on, and the date was suddenly upon me.

I was a bit distracted the week before they came. I didn't want dad to find the usual 2 inches of dust and cigarette debris on the ceiling fan, the dried up puddles of beer behind the garbage cans, the "we're not boys so we don't clean the toilet" affect that I seem to carry. I cleaned. The weekend before, the week of, the day of. I took the whole Friday off. And they arrived at 2pm just when I couldn't think of anything else to clean or straighten.

I met them downstairs as they got out of their gleaming new Buick. Dad gave me a wry smile and turned away, towards the trunk of the car. We had some things for my cousin and her new baby, namely a jogging stroller, so we got everything out except her stuff they had brought with them. I was happy to have them there, in much better form than I thought I would be. It was a bit alarming to see them struggle with their luggage, but they live in a ranch style house and aren't accustomed to stairs (and yes, my hands were full too for the record). So we finally sat down and had a pot of tea. Dad says he'd really like to get that stuff over to my cousin's. Mom says let's have our tea and then we'll think about that. Dad says someone might see the packages in the car and steal them. I say I hardly think he'd be worried about her gifts over his new car. Dad says we should call her when we're done with the tea because he'd really like to get it over with. See, there's no point in sitting around with him when he has something on his mind. You can say you're going to do something later but the anxiety is just dripping off of him. I get up to call my cousin and she thankfully says we can come over in a few hours.

There's No Place

...like home, they say. And that's where I'm headed tonight. Two nights and I packed my carry-on bag with all sorts of stuff. Not quite sure what I was going for since I'm in the midst of my winter to summer clothes switch up but it doesn't matter. Mom has cardigans and dad has hats.

I just found myself explaining to my cubicle neighbor the wonder which is chipped beef on toast. We like to have it after church on Sundays, and Easter sometimes yields a hard-boiled egg on toast concoction, which I like but my brother most certainly does not. So sometimes that doesn't happen. She asked me if it was an Irish-American thing and frankly, its just my family. Perhaps its because we're all saltaholics, but we love our chipped beef on toast. Also: I like to cut up my toast into little squares, and dad pointed out that they only did that cuz I was a kid. But he does it for me now anyways. Cute?

And I'm having a very religious week because Wednesday I was lucky enough to be invited to my first Seder, which I loved. By the end of the night, and the bottom of a bottle of wine, I was clapping and belting out the final song (about a cat who ate a goat?) in my best (or worst) Hebrew. Why don't the catholics have any ceremonies based on wine? Oh. Well, there's that one, but we're so precious about it. What's one little sip going to do? On a Sunday morning at that? I like these things that start at sundown.

But going to church will be fun, we reprise our old roles. Dad goes in the pew first, then me, then mom, then bro at the aisle. Because when we were kids my brother would bounce his knees too much and I would tell him to stop and he would get upset and well, we antagonized each other most of the time. And dad eats cherry flavored menthol sweets and offers them to me, he enthusiastically responds to all the refrains in garbeldeegook (PRAISE to youyasomethingyah), mom sings badly but sweetly, and I get ever the more freaked out by the strange incantations I know by heart but no longer feel quite right saying aloud. When we were younger sometimes we were instructed by dad to just keep walking after communion, right out the back door. But either which way, we leave and god is never mentioned until the next week, when they call and make me feel guilty for not going to church.

Sweet!

Happy Ester

E.

Knock knock
Who's there?
Easter bunny.
Easter bunny who?
Knock knock
Who's there?
Easter bunny!
Easter bunny who?
Knock knock
Who's there?
Boo!
Boo who?
Don't cry! Easter Bunny will be back next year!
*A tribute to Rachel, who tells this joke every year even tho we're like, 30.

Creeptastic

Have you ever heard of a 3 day seminar (oh sorry, 3.5 day seminar) in which your only leaving affliction is the desire to talk about yourself for the rest of your life, to anyone at all that you've ever met!? A friend of mine was lucky enough to know one of these such afflicted people (for about 24 hours), and unfortunately made it to his email list. I will attach as a word document as to not let these people google us and find us but all I can say is - creeeepy. Can anyone say brainwashing? Can anyone spell mind-numbingly self-centered? It sounds a lot like Scientology, although its not. Thoughts and reactions are most welcome.

E.

If You Feel Like I Feel, Sugar

Well I'll be! While our Islamic pals are out getting all riled up about cartoons, the Catholics are getting LAID.

Whee! And gay fornication too! It's OK!! Tell the gays!!! As long as you wear a condom you're a good Catholic!!!!

Seriously though, if you had to choose between this, bareback:

And this, all wrapped up:

 

Gimme some of that German hubba-hubba, and an econo pack of Trojans, please (hey, actually, I have one of those condoms marketed towards women floating around in my bedside table. Anybody try one of those?)!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I believe we have arrived at the apocalypse. Or perhaps, merely the era of does the Pope wear a rubber in the woods? jokes.

xoxo, A

Mid-Holiday Update

Well I'm back from the nether regions of Northeast Ohio and although I had a perfectly lovely time, I'm happy to be home.  Sorry for the lack of blogging, I was faithfully emailing our dear A., as we are wont to do from our respective dial up connections, which went something like this (improved somewhat by random photos I just uploaded):

Tis the end of Christmas day and I am indeed having my cig and beer in the basement! I would have drank all day if Uncle Tom came over but he caught a cold and stayed in bed. We had a gorgeous beef roast with mashed and gravy and we all got good presents even though dad said, before we opened presents, "let's start disappointment day!" He was very surprised at my gift of metal free suspenders (for the airport checks) and terrycloth robe (like he had on the QM2) and mom loved her atlas and j. his manga DVDs and shirts and i got a new ipod battery and j. & i got all geeked out trying to open the ipod and i chipped off nail polish while dad supervised.

R & M came to the door Christmas Eve dressed as Mr. & Mrs. Claus and we went to the Browns game to embarrassingly watch them get slaughtered [someone you know is quoted in that article] by the Pittsburgh Steelers (huge historical rivals) which was bad enough without the drunken kids behind us throwing peanuts at Pittsburgh kids but one of them finally got booted out so then i knew when to clap. i haven't gone out on the town yet but am angling for the car for tuesday so i can go to columbus to see more of r & m, am playing the "drop the idea and wait" game, i think its working. because t. doesn't want to head back until thursday i think i'll go crazy if i sit around here again like i did thanksgiving. gets a bit depressing and i'm feeling bloated already.

I did indeed get to Columbus but a bit worse for wear because our girl JP is a baaad influence on someone like me, who also cannot say "no" to more Chimay's (for me) and then later an invite from some boys to go for an after party. Wherein one sweet boy who wanted to hold my hand the whole way poured me a Guinness and then promptly passed out on JP's shoulder. Then mine. (Pic is of a chain link fence I so deftly took on the way to the "party.")  We watched Bride of Chucky on a hugantic TV and then came home by 4.30. So my ride to cowtowne in dad's truck was anything but pleasant, I was making myself pretty carsick and couldn't really even drink water. R took good care of me though and we kept our socializing just to immediate Columbus family and watched a very silly movie called The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, wherein all the boy characters were cheezy by a mile. I came back Wednesday for dinner, saw my bro's new apartment, watched said Manga DVD (Read or Die, to be precise, which was actually pretty good, altho silly) and went out for three drinks with Cleveland friends to the "traditional" (for me and them, we've decided) Five O'Clock lounge, where I once had my space/time continuum problems.

Our ride to Chicago today started off a bit rainy, then a bit snowy, there were about 5 accidents and accompanying slowdowns on the road, but I felt I was a brilliant co-pilot because my mom made us turkey sammiches and I lit cigarettes for my driver and bought a round of gas and got toll change out. We saw a few wacky things like this guy driving a colorfully decorated bus that read captainronshow.com which looking at the website now I can say I'm 99% sure that was him driving as well.  Also there was construction going on for the RV/MV Hall of Fame in Indiana, which has this fascinating website to share: goRVing.com.  Imagine! A hall of fame just for RVs. I hope they include a large enough parking lot. Otherwise, that would be a riot.

So that's about half of my wonderful week off done for, tomorrow A. comes in for her birthday bonanza, which is going to be fantastic. If you haven't already RSVP'd for dinner and mass chaos to follow, please do so as soon as possible.

E.

There's Something In My Pocket

DiscoStation continues to plumb the depths, moving from sex to religion for just a moment.

Because of my dating proclivities, well documented (and commented upon) herein, I have learned much about the mysterious ways of the Semites. Seriously, one of my exes went Hassid and now, lives in Connecticut, with a brood of kids, blessing deli meats, or something. But here is something I just don't get:

Why do the Jewish folks in my office bring their matzoh around with them? They don't carry baguettes around when it's not Pesach. Yes, I get the whole 'mitzvah eating matzoh' idea, but to bring it to the office?

My roommate likes to sum up all Jewish holidays thusly: "they tried to kill us, we won, let's eat."  How, really, does this translate into Bring Your Crackers to Work Week?

For this cracker, this shiksa, reader insight would be appreciated.

xoxo, A

Confusion is Sex

It happens every year.  On my way to work today, I was crossing the street near the Conde Nast building and I noticed a rather well-put-together woman with a huge smear on her forehead walking towards me. 

My pre-coffee brain laboriously roiled up a 'GAH! Soot falling from the sky?' response (pieces of this building sometimes leap off, perhaps to in an attempt to eradicate the capri-and-boot clad Nast-ies).  I was about to catch her eye and give her the old check-yrself! signal when I realized she was looking proud.  Holding that besmirched head HIGH.  She looked...virtuous. 

Oh ho! said me brains, and in clicked 'Ash Wednesday.'  Yes, I know why people do it but it freaks me out.

Perhaps my co-author is going to attempt to let up on the sauce for Lent?  I'm not Catholic but the idea is appealing to me as well.  So maybe you won't be reading our hilarious hungover posts for a bit.  Aren't you sad?

Except: evil forces conspire to keep me in the drink.  Earlier in this same walk, a mild looking fellow was handing out granola bars and postcards.  As I was in unemployed-actor zone (aka Hell's Kitchen) I assumed that he was promo guy for some new show.  And I was hungry, so I happily took the granola bar and ate it.  And THEN I looked at the postcard.

This was clearly the WRONG ORDER.  Postcard first! Postcard first!

The postcard was for...oh, I can't even say it.  Please go here to see for yourself what hath birthed my dismay (click on "Desparate Sex Lives" for the content of the card).  I can't decide which aspect is most hilariously grossgusting. 

And questions remain: was the granola bar indeed Holy Eucharist? Did I Eat Jesus for Breakfast?

Suffice it to say, I have been lusting after my other friend who starts with J -- no E., not the Actor (well, maybe him a little) --Mr. Daniels, since shortly before 9 am.

xoxo, A

Humpday = Frivolous

E.,

SuperSerious question: your girl in Brooklyn allegedly has  "ghetto booty" --  judged as such this weekend. Can it be true?

If you grow up superwhite -- indeed, from the whitest, fattest New England state -- can you have an noteworthy tush?   My friend was discombobulated from all of the snow, methinks. 

xoxo, A