My computer is on its last legs, much like a fatally wounded ant crawling around my office.
My husband has vowed that we are Getting A New Computer This Weekend and I, for one, CANNOT WAIT.
In the meantime! I have a post up at 5 Minutes For Parenting.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Things I Am Doing Instead of What I Should Be Doing
I have a long to-do list today. For one, I have to make strawberry jam since my fridge is FULL of strawberries from a berry-picking expedition on the weekend and they are NOT getting any fresher. And my kitchen floor needs to be washed. And there is, of course, laundry.
So instead of doing THAT, I've been making stupid lists in my head. Of course.
New Ideas for Blog Names For The "Baby", Who Is Four.
1. Ramona Quimby.
2. Sally, because it is her favorite name in the world.
3. Cindy Lou Who, because she still looks like this character from How the Grinch Stole Christmas:
6. Mama's Darlin'
1. Actually, just writing that amused me enough. Har!
How Looking At Pictures This Morning Of My Oldest Child - The One Currently At Summer Camp - Made Me Feel
1. Gutted
2. Proud
3. Weepy
4. Verklempt
5. Sentimental
6. Like singing that annoying "Sunrise, Sunset" song from Fiddler On The Roof.
Some Delicious At-Home-With-Kids-On-A-Weekday Lunches I Have Yet To See On A Restaurant Menu
1. Beanie-weanies
2. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
3. Kraft Dinner with a can of drained tuna dumped in it
4. Last night's supper
How Expired All Of The Pectin Was In My Cupboard, In Reverse Chronological Order
1. August 2008
2. May 2006
3. October 2005
4. December 1998
Things I Would Call My As-Yet-Unwritten First Novel, Based Entirely On This Post
1. How Expired Was My Pectin
2. Fear And Loathing And Lunchtime
3. Crybaby: Tales Of A Sentimental Mother And Her Annoyed Children
4. Dictionary Snob: How I Became THAT Guy
5. My Youngest Kid Thinks She Could Beat Up Your Honour Student
So instead of doing THAT, I've been making stupid lists in my head. Of course.
New Ideas for Blog Names For The "Baby", Who Is Four.
1. Ramona Quimby.
2. Sally, because it is her favorite name in the world.
3. Cindy Lou Who, because she still looks like this character from How the Grinch Stole Christmas:
Even though she acts more like this character from another classic work of children's literature:
6. Mama's Darlin'
7. The Teacher's Terror
1. Actually, just writing that amused me enough. Har!
How Looking At Pictures This Morning Of My Oldest Child - The One Currently At Summer Camp - Made Me Feel
1. Gutted
2. Proud
3. Weepy
4. Verklempt
5. Sentimental
6. Like singing that annoying "Sunrise, Sunset" song from Fiddler On The Roof.
Some Delicious At-Home-With-Kids-On-A-Weekday Lunches I Have Yet To See On A Restaurant Menu
1. Beanie-weanies
2. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
3. Kraft Dinner with a can of drained tuna dumped in it
4. Last night's supper
How Expired All Of The Pectin Was In My Cupboard, In Reverse Chronological Order
1. August 2008
2. May 2006
3. October 2005
4. December 1998
Things I Would Call My As-Yet-Unwritten First Novel, Based Entirely On This Post
1. How Expired Was My Pectin
2. Fear And Loathing And Lunchtime
3. Crybaby: Tales Of A Sentimental Mother And Her Annoyed Children
4. Dictionary Snob: How I Became THAT Guy
5. My Youngest Kid Thinks She Could Beat Up Your Honour Student
Friday, July 3, 2009
RANTING. RANTING ABOUT CUPCAKES.
Edited to add: seriously! It's a cupcake book review for the ages!
I am on a prolonged rant today in my review blog over a cupcake recipe book that truly got on my nerves. See you there, I hope!
I am on a prolonged rant today in my review blog over a cupcake recipe book that truly got on my nerves. See you there, I hope!
Thursday, July 2, 2009
I had to call Poison Control the other day!
.... and then I wrote about it. Go. Learn from my parenting misadventures. And possibly identify your yard plants BEFORE your kids eat 'em.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
It's Canada Day tomorrow!
... and that means that it's time to show your low-key but still patriotic affection for your country by making a kitschy dessert.
Like this one that I made last year:
Like this one that I made last year:
Yeah, that was magnificent. The recipe is here, should you feel inspired to make a (likely better) version yourself.
Or you could make a red-and-white Canada Day cake.
Or you could make some festive cupcakes.
Or you could express your True Patriot Love by drinking a Caesar.
So tomorrow, we'll be doing the small-town Canada Day thing. I hope that you have a fun and relaxing day tomorrow, whatever you'll be doing.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Angels
If you were a girl child in the 70s, Charlie's Angels probably figured largely in your life. This amuses me - who among us would even LET our young children watch a sleazy show like that now? Ah, the 70s, that era of just TERRIBLE parental judgement.
Anyhow.
I remember playing Charlie's Angels ALL the time on the schoolyard and with friends and I was always stuck being the turtleneck-wearing nerd Angel, Sabrina Garrett. I'm reading a lot of Charlie's Angels reminisces these days and the authors always claim that they voluntarily chose to be Sabrina, which causes me to make my skeptical face, since all of the little girls I knew fought viciously to be the sexy Angels - Jill Munroe, played by the ethereally gorgeous Farrah Fawcett, and to a much lesser extent, the brunette Kelly Garrett. NO ONE wanted to be Sabrina. EVERYONE wanted to be racecar-driving Jill Munroe with her perfect hair and her short shorts and her rollerskates, and that role was always reserved for the prettiest girl on the playground, her long straight blond hair waving behind her.
We learn to value other things as we get older, if we are lucky. If we were playing Charlie's Angels now, you and me, we probably would fight over who would get to be Sabrina, with her turtlenecks and her smarts, because adulthood - if we are lucky - brings with it the knowledge that some traits age better than others, that luminous golden beauty does not trail happiness in its wake. And Farrah Fawcett's life seems to be a prime example of this, a life that added up to... what, exactly? A hair-do, a few made-for-tv movies, a screw up for a kid, a final brave fight against cancer, and even her death was overwhelmed, in the end, by the death of a more famous weirdo.
Even so. I was sorry to hear of her death, sorry and sad to an extent that surprised me. Of course, her death was sad and hard and unearned - but death is often like that. What was I so sad about, I wondered, half-bemused? Was I sad for the flaky* b-list celebrity, sad for her final bit of heroism? Or was I sad for my own self, for being trapped in my own smart skin and watching a pretty blond girl run across the school yard being the prettiest girl in the world, sad for the flimsy fairy's gold of beauty, sad for childhood's end?
(*the "flaky" bit wasn't meant to be dismissive - it was based on an interview with Farrah where she'd dismissed herself rather heart-breakingly as a "blonde nothingness.")
Anyhow.
I remember playing Charlie's Angels ALL the time on the schoolyard and with friends and I was always stuck being the turtleneck-wearing nerd Angel, Sabrina Garrett. I'm reading a lot of Charlie's Angels reminisces these days and the authors always claim that they voluntarily chose to be Sabrina, which causes me to make my skeptical face, since all of the little girls I knew fought viciously to be the sexy Angels - Jill Munroe, played by the ethereally gorgeous Farrah Fawcett, and to a much lesser extent, the brunette Kelly Garrett. NO ONE wanted to be Sabrina. EVERYONE wanted to be racecar-driving Jill Munroe with her perfect hair and her short shorts and her rollerskates, and that role was always reserved for the prettiest girl on the playground, her long straight blond hair waving behind her.
We learn to value other things as we get older, if we are lucky. If we were playing Charlie's Angels now, you and me, we probably would fight over who would get to be Sabrina, with her turtlenecks and her smarts, because adulthood - if we are lucky - brings with it the knowledge that some traits age better than others, that luminous golden beauty does not trail happiness in its wake. And Farrah Fawcett's life seems to be a prime example of this, a life that added up to... what, exactly? A hair-do, a few made-for-tv movies, a screw up for a kid, a final brave fight against cancer, and even her death was overwhelmed, in the end, by the death of a more famous weirdo.
Even so. I was sorry to hear of her death, sorry and sad to an extent that surprised me. Of course, her death was sad and hard and unearned - but death is often like that. What was I so sad about, I wondered, half-bemused? Was I sad for the flaky* b-list celebrity, sad for her final bit of heroism? Or was I sad for my own self, for being trapped in my own smart skin and watching a pretty blond girl run across the school yard being the prettiest girl in the world, sad for the flimsy fairy's gold of beauty, sad for childhood's end?
(*the "flaky" bit wasn't meant to be dismissive - it was based on an interview with Farrah where she'd dismissed herself rather heart-breakingly as a "blonde nothingness.")
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Who's Bad?
So how much do we own the very famous?
Michael Jackson was one of the few remaining Very Famous left, famous not for his achievements - which mainly happened in the 80s, back when he was mainly known for being talented and only mildly eccentric - but as a personality, as The Person Who Wanted To Own The Elephant's Man's Bones And Was Best Friends With Elizabeth Taylor, as The Guy Who Dangled His Child Off A Hotel Balcony And Was Repeatedly Accused Of Being A Child Molester. Oh, AND THE MAN WHO WENT FROM BEING AN ATTRACTIVE BLACK MAN TO A FREAKY LOOKING BONE-WHITE PERSON OF NONSPECIFIC GENDER.
You know, THAT guy.
I don't think there's a new generation of the Very Famous coming up - Twitter is doing a dandy job of revealing the banal heart at the center of celebrity, as famous people who REALLY should have better things to do treat us to all of their dopey, pedantic, 140 characters or less thoughts. A friend recently found out that a long-time favorite actor is A GREAT BIG GOOF thanks to Twitter - and imagine that with every famous person out there right now, and what happens is a generation of celebrities who will never become more than the briefly interesting, a generation of micro-celebrities. And there's no big shared culture anymore, either, so we're all unlikely to buy the same cd like we did back in 1984. It's not going to happen again.
This is fine with me: how poorly do we think of ourselves that we've elevated some gap-toothed vulgarian like Madonna to the status of a Medici? Before we might have liked celebrities, but now - if all of the mean gossip sites are anything to go by, and I suspect they are - we REALLY hate them, these people with their good looks and their money and their drugged-up, misled lives. And our celebrities are more inherently hateable these days, I think, because what normal person would willingly sign themselves up for what any halfway intelligent person KNOWS comes along with celebrity? So there's pretty much nothing but addled attention junkies and their messed up lives and we're interested in them for 4 minutes until they get too gross and then we're off to the next one.
Joseph Merrick - the Elephant Man, victim of a cruel, deforming disease - was apparently of special significance to Jackson, who saw in him, perhaps, another person totally removed from the sea of normal humanity. Jackson had his publicist spread the story that he wanted to buy Merrick's bones, a story he later regretted, apparently, when it turned out that it would make people think he was really weird. No, REALLY?
But Joseph Merrick really was a victim, a human being who had almost no chance of living a reasonably normal life, victimized by a hideous disease that he had done nothing to deserve. Jackson - with his hits from 25 years ago and his stupid amusement park and his (AT THE LEAST) inappropriate relationship with little boys - has been cast as a victim, too. Was he victimized by his monstrous father? Was he victimized by poorly treated mental illness and easy access to drugs? Or was he victimized by the very celebrity that told him from a very early age that he was special, that he was set apart - was he victimized, in short, by us?
Michael Jackson was one of the few remaining Very Famous left, famous not for his achievements - which mainly happened in the 80s, back when he was mainly known for being talented and only mildly eccentric - but as a personality, as The Person Who Wanted To Own The Elephant's Man's Bones And Was Best Friends With Elizabeth Taylor, as The Guy Who Dangled His Child Off A Hotel Balcony And Was Repeatedly Accused Of Being A Child Molester. Oh, AND THE MAN WHO WENT FROM BEING AN ATTRACTIVE BLACK MAN TO A FREAKY LOOKING BONE-WHITE PERSON OF NONSPECIFIC GENDER.
You know, THAT guy.
I don't think there's a new generation of the Very Famous coming up - Twitter is doing a dandy job of revealing the banal heart at the center of celebrity, as famous people who REALLY should have better things to do treat us to all of their dopey, pedantic, 140 characters or less thoughts. A friend recently found out that a long-time favorite actor is A GREAT BIG GOOF thanks to Twitter - and imagine that with every famous person out there right now, and what happens is a generation of celebrities who will never become more than the briefly interesting, a generation of micro-celebrities. And there's no big shared culture anymore, either, so we're all unlikely to buy the same cd like we did back in 1984. It's not going to happen again.
This is fine with me: how poorly do we think of ourselves that we've elevated some gap-toothed vulgarian like Madonna to the status of a Medici? Before we might have liked celebrities, but now - if all of the mean gossip sites are anything to go by, and I suspect they are - we REALLY hate them, these people with their good looks and their money and their drugged-up, misled lives. And our celebrities are more inherently hateable these days, I think, because what normal person would willingly sign themselves up for what any halfway intelligent person KNOWS comes along with celebrity? So there's pretty much nothing but addled attention junkies and their messed up lives and we're interested in them for 4 minutes until they get too gross and then we're off to the next one.
Joseph Merrick - the Elephant Man, victim of a cruel, deforming disease - was apparently of special significance to Jackson, who saw in him, perhaps, another person totally removed from the sea of normal humanity. Jackson had his publicist spread the story that he wanted to buy Merrick's bones, a story he later regretted, apparently, when it turned out that it would make people think he was really weird. No, REALLY?
But Joseph Merrick really was a victim, a human being who had almost no chance of living a reasonably normal life, victimized by a hideous disease that he had done nothing to deserve. Jackson - with his hits from 25 years ago and his stupid amusement park and his (AT THE LEAST) inappropriate relationship with little boys - has been cast as a victim, too. Was he victimized by his monstrous father? Was he victimized by poorly treated mental illness and easy access to drugs? Or was he victimized by the very celebrity that told him from a very early age that he was special, that he was set apart - was he victimized, in short, by us?
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