Fussy

NaBloPoMo Day 7

2009-11-07T16:35:00.000-08:00

Somehow I ran across a wonderful tutorial on how to make landscape photos look like model train sets, so I tried it on a couple of old photos I had. The one above is the Riviera Market on Micheltorena Street in Santa Barbara; the one below is a building on Haley Street.

Originals:

Day 6: Your Moment of Zen

2009-11-06T14:14:00.001-08:00

Day the Fifth

2009-11-05T12:55:00.000-08:00

Last week I mentioned that I was not buying any clothes for a year. (On October 1, 2010, I plan to walk out of my house shedding the tattered remains of my dignity, drive straight to Nordstrom Rack, and buy whatever clump of garments I find closest to the door. If you see me standing at the register with an armload of ill-fitting sleeveless turtleneck sweaters in sherbet tones and crystal-studded capris, have pity. I'll probably knoweth not what I am doing.)

Ironically, one of the books I received at the Broad Summit weekend last month was an InStyle magazine book on how to dress. I sat down and looked at it the other day and realized a couple of things.

1. I have never bought into the whole flesh-toned pumps thing.

2. There's no real advice out there for women who want to dress their age. It's like life stops at 35, and after that it's either Chanel suits or a barrel held up by suspenders.

3. I had a whole bunch of not-terribly-flattering clothes in my closet, bought for the simple reason that I had no idea how to minimize this and play up that, bought because they were half-off, or bought because they looked good on someone who didn't look anything like me.

Oh, what a fool I'd been. Forgive me, Halle Berry!

Since I'd been filling up donation bags with Jackson's outgrown stuff anyway, I filled up three bags with puckering shirts, unfortunate trouser choices, and dresses that showed parts of my legs I need to pretend don't exist anymore. The bags are still in my trunk, waiting for me to figure out where to leave them since the Salvation Army closed and I don't seem to know how to work a Yellow Pages, or Google.

So now not only have I vowed before God and everybody not to buy clothes for a year, but I have even less of them to cover my sagging frame than ever before (which is to say, 4x as many as your average elegant Eritrean). My two remaining sweaters are looking at me very nervously, as are three bras, a Jorge Posada Yankees jersey, and some crumbling Birkenstocks.

#4, A Post About Bagels

2009-11-04T10:35:00.000-08:00

Three times a year Jack's mom sends us a big Zabar's box containing a dozen bagels, two things of lox, a bag of cinnamon rugelach, a pound of coffee, and two containers of the best, most fattiest, heart-attackenest cream cheese in all the world (one regular, one chive).

But we always sort of forget they're going to arrive. She normally sends one on Jack's birthday and one on Father's Day, but last Friday when a Zabar's box arrived at the door, Jack was all, Look! My mom sent us bagels for, uh, Halloween!

I think they're for our anniversary, I said.

Our what? said Jack.

Monday was our thirteenth anniversary. Traditionally, the gift for that one is lace, the Internet now tells me; modern alternatives are textiles and faux fur, which I just mistakenly read as tentacles and faux fur. The mind reels.

The thing is, last week I'd just bought a pound of lox and a dozen bagels down at Jerry's in Woodland Hills when I had lunch with Suzy, so all of a sudden our freezer looks like -- well, I don't know what it looks like, but it doesn't look like it belongs to a bunch of Irish Catholics (apart from the rosary frozen into the ice cube tray).

A person can only eat so much lox. That's just science. So eventually, as the days wear on, I start eating bagels with butter, just for a change. Or I'll spread some jam on there. This makes Jack insane. Like, the only respectful way to treat a bagel that's flown all the way from New York and given up its life in our toaster is to reverently smooth an inch of cream cheese over it's top with a silver knife and beg for its permission to take a bite. (And then feel really guilty about it.)

But what am I supposed to do? It's only Wednesday and I'm officially sick to death of lox. I don't want to see another cold slice of tomato or paper-thin ring of Bermuda onion until January. And for the love of God, don't open those capers in front of me!

This morning I ate half a sesame bagel covered in almond butter and Nutella. I expect Jack and I will be going into counseling next week.

Day 3

2009-11-03T18:26:00.000-08:00

I was on Flickr awhile back, wondering whether I ought to renew my "pro" account so that the world could have continuous access to pictures of the second time I tried and failed to grow out my hair (there you go! you're welcome!), when I stumbled over a photo in Sarah Brown's photostream that reminded me of a story I'd never told you. (The link to this photo is at the very bottom of this post because it might possibly be better to see it after you read the story that explains it, should you choose to take the leap and continue reading.)

In April of aught-seven I was flying to New York to work with Alice on this book idea we had that was so good we were sure someone would buy it right away, instead of two-and-a-half years later (about which time lag, no, I am NOT COMPLAINING). My flight was on Jet Blue out of Burbank, and I had an aisle seat. In my little three-seat section, a woman had the window seat and a man was in the middle and they were chatting pretty amiably when I got there so I figured I was off the hook, seat-chat-wise, for the next whatever, five hours.

But as soon as he realized the flight wasn't full, middle-seat guy said his farewells and bailed. Fuck, I thought. I'm not much on being anyone's airplane buddy, even though window-seat lady seemed OK, actually, as a person -- head-to-toe in black; fifty-ish; sorting out some audiobooks on her iPod; also not overtly interested in being best friends. At some point during the general shuffle of books and laptops the ice broke between us and I learned she was traveling to New York to be with her daughter and her daughter's new baby.

She also turned out to be somewhat of a nervous flyer. While we were still on the tarmac something in the baggage hold made a clunk and she pressed the call button. "What was that noise?" she pleaded to the flight attendant. "They just shut the door to the baggage hold, there's nothing wrong, it's completely normal," he said soothingly. Oh, he was good: so reassuring, so patient, a real "there are no stupid questions" kind of guy who could shake a bag of nacho cheese Doritos out of his sleeve for you and then land the plane single-handed while leading the passengers in a rousing chorus of Ain't No Stopping Us Now.

My seat-mate nodded and buckled in, but I could tell she was growing less happy by the minute. She completely white-knuckled the take-off. The flight attendant was strapped in a jump seat somewhere up front, so I tried to tell her sincerely that everything would be fine. "I'm so sorry," she kept saying helplessly. "I just hate flying and taking off and landing are the worst part." I knew it would be incredibly rude to find another seat at this point, but I had to admire middle-seat guy's boundaries. And his prescience.

Once we were up in the air the flight attendant took the initiative to check on her every ten minutes or so, for which we were both terribly grateful. ("What was that sound?!" "Landing gear, darling.") Eventually I reluctantly admitted to myself that it was my duty as a decent human being to chip open the stone facade that embraces my cold, cold heart and chat with her as a distraction from her suffering, so I put down my New Yorker and learned that she was a screenwriter, that she'd just been to a taping of This American Life, and that she had a piece of grilled salmon on a bed of baby greens that she wanted to split with me. Because she was a mom and a nice person, and I'm the type who believes she can make it from coast to coast on a Clif bar and half a Vitamin Water.

Eventually, I told her that I had a five-year-old son, and that my writing partner and I were working on a fake pregnancy book. "That would make a good screenplay," she said, musing. It was then that I began to question the virtue of sharing a creative idea with a creative and possibly well-connected person.

Oh, God, she was musing. She was making mental notes. She was constructing a virtual map with which to plunder our uncopyrighted creative treasure.

(It wasn't for another week that I'd learn a vital rule: Never tell anyone your book idea until you've sold it.)

I didn't know whether to back-pedal and tack some wild, invented tangent onto our book proposal idea to throw her off-course, or to just steer the conversation back to babies in general and hope she forgot what I'd told her. I guess I managed to do the latter because the next thing I knew she was showing me pictures of her grandchild on her iPod.

"Aw," I said. The baby was cute, so I didn't have to lie or anything. "Aw!" I said again, as she flipped through three, four, five photos. "What's her name?" "Ramona," she said. Ramona! Old fashioned yet urban. Ramona Quimby. The Ramones. The Real Ramona. "And here she is with her parents," she said slyly. And all of a sudden Ramona was sitting between a movie star and a guy who looked vaguely familiar.

The baby's mom was Maggie Gyllenhaal and the dad was Peter Sarsgaard.

She looked at me to see if I recognized her daughter. I marshaled every fiber of my being to emit another appreciative "Aw!" and then go hide in my New Yorker. She knew, though. She knew that I'd recognized her daughter and was impressed -- and I wanted to give her that. Because she should be proud of the reach her daughter has and the work she's done to earn it. But my unfortunate streak of Just Because You're Famous Doesn't Mean The Sun Shines Out Of Your Asshole, Dickwad was running directly against my well-worn grain of congenital But It's Fun To See Someone Famous!

So I was torn, and when I'm torn, I freeze. I play it cool. I admit to no feelings whatsoever about the subject at hand, no matter how urgent or how normal it would be to just let go and make some sort of honest, inappropriate, thoroughly reprehensible reaction. "Bleaaahhhwwhhaa?" I might have queried her. "You pushed the star of Secretary out of your vagina? And your son is fucking Reese Witherspoon? Tell me more!"

As luck would have it, of course, we ran into turbulence over the Rockies. And head winds. Rip tides, volcano plumes, a veritable smorgasbord of weather conditions. I was desperately trying to concentrate on my magazine, while MAGGIE AND JAKE GYLLENHAAL'S MOM was busy listening to her iPod and clutching her armrests. Until the captain announced that due to the extra effort the engines were making to fight the head winds, we were running low on fuel. Which meant we were being diverted to Buffalo to get more gas.

My screenwriting, famous-child-having seat-mate was stricken. There is nothing worse for a person who is terrified of take-offs and landings to suddenly have an extra one of each horrifying transition between air and earth inserted into what was supposed to be a direct flight. I felt terrible for her; she looked like she wanted to cry. The flight attendant gave her all the attention he had time to give her, but he had a plane full of angry passengers -- angry New Yorkers and Angelenos -- so I sucked it up and gave her what I had, which even on my best days isn't much. I held her hand.

When we finally landed at JFK (in the fog and in the dark, which I'm sure gave her whole Airplane Experience Cake an extra layer of Horror Frosting), she was limp. But she picked herself up and dusted herself off. She called her daughter, made a mental note (that I hope she forgot) to Google the word "Fussy," and as a parting gift she offered me a pack of cookies the flight attendant had handed her somewhere between Buffalo and New York City. "I think the baby's too young for these," she said. "Do you want them?"

Yes, I did.

NaBloPoMo Day 2

2009-11-02T14:10:00.000-08:00

National Blog Posting Month, Day 1

2009-11-01T09:54:00.000-08:00

things i do not like
(inspired by Amanda)

refrigerated fruit
gassy and/or bitey domestic animals
burnt meat
unheated swimming pools
martinis
NASCAR

things I do like

doing the dishes by hand
when Peewee snores with his eyes open
coconut popsicles
dying hydrangeas:

MORE Current Events

2009-10-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

Did everyone remember it's almost time for National Blog Posting Month? I've sort of been dreading it all year and then Ian set up the blogroll to work in such an elegant manner that I no longer have to chain myself to the couch, gain 10 pounds, and develop my annual case of carpal tunnel to do it by hand. It's our fourth year, and in case you hadn't heard, all you have to do is post something on your blog every day in November. If you sign up at nablopomo.com and enter your link onto the blogroll AND manage to post every day, you will be eligible for a PRIZE. Since I finally admitted to myself that I don't really like doing giveaways here on Fussy, I'm going to unload a whole bunch of stuff I've been holding back onto randomly selected NaBlo winners. Just so you know.

(Also, is it possible we've inspired a copycat site, or is it mere coincidence?)

Also, my socks shrunk.

I know you're sitting there all, Really? You put wool socks in the washing machine and expected them NOT to do that? Well, yes, I did, I did expect that. I bought superwash yarn, for fucking fuck's sake, doesn't that mean you're supposed to be able to wash it any old way you'd like without having your socks turn into felt mittens? Apparently I was mistaken. And now I have a pair of socks that fit my dog.

I Have Some News

2009-10-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

I've been holding back this news for so long now that I don't even know how to say it.

I'M REALLY A MAN.

No, ha ha! Actually, it's that Alice and I have a boo -- a bhhuuu -- oh, excuse me, I need a Kleenex.

Alice and I have a book deal.

I can still hardly believe it, and I've known for a month. I feel like I've been sitting on this news for so long I've hatched something. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem human, but I've taught it to answer the door and it's planning to cook Thanksgiving dinner all by itself!

But anyway! If all goes well, AND IT WILL, our expanded and illustrated book-version of the website Let's Panic About Babies! will be published next fall by St. Martin's Press, which is an actual publishing company with an office on Fifth Avenue, New York City, United States of America, Earth, the Solar System, the Milky Way, etc.

Oh my god, we have so much work to do.

Current Events

2009-10-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

1. In a sort of brilliant synthesis of a whole week of Monty Python and Sunday night's episode of Mad Men, during the scene at the kitchen table where Betty's grilling Don about his past, Jack said, "No one expects the Presbyterian Inquisition."

2. I have a post up on the PBS website about their show about Michael Pollan's wonderful and amazing book, "The Botany of Desire," which airs tonight! Michael Pollan is kind of hot stuff, in a wordy, organic, things-are-bad-but-don't-give-up-yet! kind of way. So two thumbs up for his brand of science-based, as opposed to guilt-based, environmental urgency.

3. I'm doing this thing where I'm not buying clothes for a year. I actually hadn't bought any clothes or shoes or anything since February, right before my job started, until I broke my streak by purchasing two new long-sleeved t-shirts at the Gap in September. Yes, I've read about the woman who's pledged to wear the same dress every day for a year, and while the idea certainly appeals, I don't actually own anything sturdy or versatile enough to wear 365 days in a row. I'm also kind of over trying to contribute my every pitiful outfit to the Wardrobe Remix pool. So I'm just going to wear my boring clothes and shoes and not shop for anything new until October 1, 2010. Exceptions to this rule include clothing gifts (I am currently accepting Prada boots and antique whalebone corsets, if you're interested in donating) and knitting projects that I began before January 1, 2009 but have only recently completed:

Why am I doing this? Because not only do I hate shopping, I have more than enough clothes for the purpose of sitting in bed and writing all day. Shopping is a terrible form of entertainment and I've nearly broken myself of the habit but I really want total control over that "but wouldn't it cheer me up to have something new to wear?" impulse.

I am at two with nature

2009-10-19T13:34:00.000-07:00

For reasons that must remain unexpressed at the moment, I am no longer employed. I am incredibly, dare I say joyously busy, just not in an office-clothes, twice-a-month-paycheck sort of way, and that being the case, I am now somewhat free to blog about my (former) job. "Somewhat" in that I still respect that boundary and would never do anything to jeopardize the goodwill I built with the people I worked with. Especially since some of them now read my blog. (Hi, Robyn!!)

My former boss was always trying to get me to pay attention to what was going on in the office, and rightly so. Part of my job was to make sure things were looking good / coffee was made / there were no slicks of vomit in the copy room. Usual admin. asst. stuff. But part of his big-picture view was to stretch everyone employed there beyond their boundaries. Which I thought was kind of great, him taking an active interest in our achievements, but since I travel in a magic bubble with a radius the length of a bratwurst, my uncertain boundaries and distinct lack of achievement came under his scrutiny almost daily.

I could cope with normal office demands -- I mean, if something was beeping I'd answer it, open it up, turn it off, or aim a fire extinguisher at it -- but it was the above-and-beyond stuff that revealed how intensely horizontal my learning curve could be. And one duty that was definitely above-and-beyond for a serial plant-killer like me was to keep an eye on the office greenery. Once my boss learned that keeping things alive* was a weak area for me, he was on me like a hornet.

*Plants, children, relationships . . .

"Do you know what kind of plant that is?" he asked me one day, gesturing toward a new inmate in a clay pot.

"Uh, some kind of fern?" I asked hopefully.

"It's a coffee plant. See how the leaves are drooping?"

". . ."

"They're not supposed to do that."

I took the hint and found a watering can. "You might want to get a book," he suggested.

"On plants?" I asked in amazement. "To read?" Clearly he had no understanding of how deep my strain of underachieving runs.

Meanwhile, it was also my duty to train the temp who came in on days I needed off, and apparently the universe's idea of a joke was to give me a temp with a botany degree.

"Does anyone take care of these plants?" she asked, hands on hips. She took nearly an hour to walk around the office and take stock of every life form confined to a pot. "Where are you getting your compost from?" she asked me seriously.

I told her. (I knew that! I knew where the compost was from! Ten points!)

"Well, it's the wrong kind," she said, shaking her head. "And those listeria albicans in the back have half an inch of water in their saucers! They don't like getting their feet wet, you know."

Uh, no, as a matter of fact, I didn't know.

The game of "Which Plant Is Eden Not Paying Attention To Today?" reached its climax two weeks ago when I was sitting at reception and my boss walked up to the counter, flicked a mouldering frond of autumn bouquet not two feet in front of my nose, and asked me if I thought its condition radiated anything other than SCREAMING DEATH.

I guess in my defense I should say that I was pretty good at other office stuff. I opened the mail without stabbing myself. And I wore shoes almost every single day!

A Broad Summit

2009-10-14T10:37:00.000-07:00

This oldish guy named Don was pouring slugs of wine that tasted like smoke up at the Hop Kiln winery, and he was all, "What's a Broad Summit?"

"It's a wide, flat place at the top of a mountain where a lot of people can stand together," I said.

He looked at Rebecca's shoes in confusion. "So, you all are mountain climbers?"

Favorite moment of the weekend:

Talk turned to blogging platforms and whatnot, and someone asked Mimi Smartypants, "How do you back up your blog?"

Mimi held up her fists like a boxer and said, "WITH THESE."

Second favorite moment: Alice's shoes.

Third favorite moment: When I felt a burn in my abdomen from laughing really hard.

(Tie for third favorite moment: Finally getting to tell Evany to her wonderful face how much I loved her book.)

Fourth favorite moment: Bryan telling me how they blew all the stumps out of the ground at the Korbel winery in the 1960s by letting the producers of Combat! pretend it was WWII Germany.

FM4b: Bryan graciously assenting when I fake-remembered that Larry Storch was in Combat! (Nope, that was F Troop. Brain? I think we have some usage issues.)

Fifth favorite moment: Oh, I don't know. Everything.

Blocked No More!

2009-10-02T12:12:00.000-07:00

A wise woman once told me something that I'll never forget. Well, I forget how she actually put it, but it was something about depression, and the cure -- no, the reason for some depression is that maybe, just maybe, there's someone out there you need to punch and you're just not doing it, for whatever. You're scared to admit the depth of your anger, or ever since that karaoke accident you're having trouble making a fist.

I thought about that, for like a whole week. Thinking that if I could just put my finger on exactly who that person was who I subconsciously wanted to punch in the fucking head but was instead taking that healthy impulse for self-defense and painfully sublimating it and directing that anger inward and becoming so miserably blog-writer's-blocked that I eioa ai;ohgW GNDFIoagi.

So I was sitting here the other day, wondering why I felt like taking this goddamned site down, and I decided to do a little self-examination. I made a list! List-making had the delightful side-effect of allowing me to step off and observe The Misery from the POV of an interested but disengaged spectator, which technique works wonders, if you can manage the mental bifurcation without freaking out that doing so will precipitate some sort of psychic episode. ONE NEVER KNOWS, DOES ONE.

Things That May Be To Blame For A Certain Tension In The Blogular Air

Q: Is it close to your Special Lady Time?

A: When ISN'T it?

Q: Has anyone close to you -- oh, I don't know, DIED recently?

A: You know, it's interesting. Once both my parents had left this vale of tears I realized that, given the oppressive silence in which I grew up, starting the blog was a huge step for me not just in finding a public voice, but in getting my parents to fucking listen to me for once. That may sound a leeetle crazy, but believe me: you have no idea. I had to start a public blog, in a space my father could not control, to start figuring out who I was. And now that the chief executors of My Silence are gone, it took awhile for me to figure out what my motivation for keeping up this site was. I'm free in a way I've never experienced before, and I'm still working on figuring out what that means. Infinite Summer ended up helping a lot. But: to be continued.

Q: Are you under incredible financial strain?

A: Yeah, but that's about to turn around, motherfuckers!!

Q. Has anyone acted like a vicious, ignorant, lying cunt to you online lately?

A: Gee, I don't know, I don't normally seek out that sort of stupidity.

If you, personally, can answer affirmatively to any of these questions along with me, why not take a look at this adorable picture before you punch anyone JUST YET:

Yay!

But you can't punch that adorable little toddler, can you? No! What an awful thing to even think of*! That child model did nothing to deserve your wrath. The child's mother, however, should be strung up and burned for exploiting her child, right? Are you with me? I don't have a picture of the mother, though. And even if I did I know you don't want to ruin your computer by slugging it, especially with that cast on your arm because of the whole karaoke thing.

No, what I'm going to do is print out a copy of that adorable picture and burn it. Then I'm going to flush the ashes down the toilet and visualize them flowing toward the healing, forgiving sewage treatment plant. Ahhh.

Life's too short not to blog about it in painful detail, amiright? Right. Let's move on!

*I can't believe you! I may have to unfollow you just for reading that sentence. And this one. STOP IT! ABUSER! CHILD ABUSER! CHILD PHOTO THOUGHT ABUSER!

Happy Endings

2009-09-09T12:32:00.000-07:00

Honestly, it wasn't my* idea; Jackson asked to see Julie & Julia. He loves movies. He's watched The Devil Wears Prada a dozen times; he knows Amy Adams was Amelia Earhart and that sort-of Princess in Enchanted. And I guess he's interested in cooking, too, for the usual reasons: it's fun to eat cookie dough, knives are awesome, and he sees his dad in the kitchen doing something amazing every night he has the wherewithal to remain upright and chop.

*It's no secret that I am working to stamp out sexism every time it rears its ignorant head in our house, so it's important to me to raise a boy who doesn't dismiss any movie without robots or dead bodies as a "chick flick," and whose exposure to that old-fashioned strain of "women aren't funny, they should just make babies" bullshit continues to be limited pretty successfully.

Plus, I needed a date, and Jack didn't want to go to the 2:00 show. (Or the 5:00 show, or the 7:45.) (Or leave the couch for any reason at any time. I knew I shouldn't have let him build one of these: )

Jackson (as we stand in line for popcorn): "Are there going to be any scary previews for this?"

Me: " I doubt it. There'll be, like, cooking and old person movie previews."

Jackson: "Ask."

Me (to girl behind concessions counter): "Are there any scary previews before this movie?"

Concessions girl: "I don't know. Here is your popcorn. Enjoy the show. My robotic smile is programmed to last another sixty seconds. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven."

Jackson: "I'm not going in."

Me: "Uh, okay. Let's go sit on that bench and eat popcorn and wait."

Thirty seconds go by.

Concessions robot: "Twenty-six. Twenty-five."

Me: "I'm going to ask the ticket guy."

I go outside and stand in line again to ask the ticket guy his opinion. He says there are scary previews. I come back inside and sit.

Me: "I can't take it. I KNOW there aren't any scary previews. I'm going to go check. Stay right here."

I go in. Renee Zellweger is arguing with Kevin Bacon. I come out again.

Me: "It's some movie about a woman looking for a husband, who learns in the end that she's just fine by herself."

Jackson: "Were there zombies in it?"

Me: "Uh, well, I guess Kevin Bacon's not as dewy as he used to be . . ."

Jackson: "I'm not going in."

We sit. I wait another minute and go back to see what the next preview is. Meryl Streep and Steve Martin are laughing joyously over drinks in the dining room of a Spanish colonial estate. I come back out.

Me: "Now it's a movie about middle-aged people dating."

Ticket Guy (having watched us for the last couple of minutes): "You know, I was wrong, I was thinking of the last movie we showed. There aren't actually any scary previews for this at all."

Me: "Hear that?"

Jackson: "Tell me when the movie starts, I'm not going in until then."

Me: "God, you are stubborn. The previews are over. Let's go in."

Jackson: "How do you know they're over?"

Me: "I JUST KNOW. Let's move it."

Jackson: "NO ZOMBIES! NO ZOMBIES! WAAHHH!"

So I let him stand outside the door to the theater until I assured him that the very last preview was over and he was safe from THE ZOMBIES.

The end.

P.S. He liked the movie a lot.

Personal Ads from My Closet

2009-09-04T12:06:00.000-07:00

Size 10 1/2 orange patent peep-toe wedges seeks LTR with compatible Autumn skirt or cuffed trousers. Likes: pedicures, creating blisters, Halloween. Dislikes: puppies, cobblestones, thick socks. Can we go together? Let's find out!

Peasant skirt, size 10 but I'll work on a 12 who likes a snug fit. Stiff imported cotton, thick floral border, my waistband is always erect. You: plush and hippy, like to have your fun standing up. Reply to box #1193

Missed Connections: Laundry hamper, Monday 8/31. Me: men's seersucker bathrobe of a certain age, I crisp up after a cold wash and a hot dryer. You: Buzz Lightyear beach towel infused with the bewitching scent of Coppertone. Our fibers mingled. Will our hearts? Reply to box #924

Victim of crafting accident seeks immediate medical attention. M*A*S*H episode gone awry, Frankenskirt constructed from Army surplus trousers and leftover kimono fabric. Torn and misunderstood, ISO Hawkeye who can trim loose threads, find lost button. Reply to box #271

What Jackson Learned from Watching "Casablanca"

2009-09-03T13:00:00.001-07:00

I don't want to go to school! Drop me off at 7-11!

I hate to think what you'd learn, sitting in the parking lot of 7-11 all day.

Drop me off, there's the exit!

Smoking cigarettes and shoplifting candy bars.

I want to learn to smoke cigarettes and shoplift candy bars, that sounds great!

Plenty of time for that, Sonny Jim.

I also want to learn to pick pockets.

Armadillo Cam!

2009-09-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

The Museum of Animal Perspectives:

2009-08-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

I'd like to thank Jeanine at PBS and Ramona at Frontline's Digital Nation for allowing me to have this Momversation with myself:

The British Spell Things Funny

2009-08-19T10:37:00.000-07:00

I normally have several games of Lexulous running at once, and one of them is always with Antonia. Since we can't be bothered to actually read one another's blogs, we use the little chat window in the game interface to communicate in 7-point Verdana.

Antonia: I thought of Let's Panic today when I saw a when I saw a glossy pregnancy magazine with AM I IN LABOUR? TELL-TALE SIGNS on the front.

Antonia: Is there a baby coming out your fanny? Then yes.

Eden: Is there blood all over the floor? Do you feel as though your guts are in a vise? Congratulations!

Antonia: Turn to page 91 for our stain-removal tips!

Antonia: Because of course you are reading a glossy magazine while squeezing a person out of your minge.

Eden: Minge. HA.

One result of Jackson's newfound interest in the Harry Potter saga has been that whenever he's surprised or confounded by anything he shouts "BLOODY HELL!" at it. Sometimes he'll then wave his (imaginary) wand at the thing, or give it a karate chop. His targets have included me (wand), the hamster (wand), Peewee dropping a slimy ball in his lap because he wants to play (karate chop, medium strength), his dinner (wand), and the news that he needs to put on some shoes before going outside (neither wand nor karate chop, but a sort of eye-rolling jinx of the sort I should probably get used to seeing more of as we round the corner into tweendom).

He's also using the whole "which is better, the movie or the book?" debate against me, since I made the mistake of letting him watch a DVD of the first HP movie while we were still only half-way through the book. I thought it would be fun to compare the way the story unfolded in two different mediums (media?). Also, he begged me. But of course, once he'd devoured the movie it took some arm twisting to get him back into the book. (Note to self: Henceforth, FINISH reading book before showing child movie. The capacity for delayed gratification is a strong predictor of future success, so don't fuck it up now.)

Jackson: "Movies are always better than books."

Me: "Sometimes."

Jackson: "No, always."

Me: (silently) ARRRGHGHHH.

What got him involved in the book again was finding that the movie had changed some of the details of the story, BLOODY HELL. He's still trying to wrap his mind around the point of being unfaithful to the original, and trying to hold both versions in his mind as we finish. What's the better choice, to have Hermione tell Harry and Ron to relax and the strangling plant will let them go (movie), or having Hermione remember that the plant hates light and shining a beam from her wand so that the plant lets go (book)? I don't have a definitive answer for that, but I very much enjoy listening to Jackson mull over the pros and cons. And then wrap his arms around my knees, yell WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA! and try to levitate me.

As luck would have it, Scholastic has agreed to let me give away five sets of the first three Harry Potter books, because Scholastic is awesome. If I were really on it I'd get Warner Bros. to chip in some DVDs for the total Jackson Kennedy experience, but I have no idea how to get them do that. ~~So if anyone's interested in~~ just reading the actual books, or even sharing them with your child(ren), details are over in the sidebar on the right. WE'RE DONE, all the books are spoken for and the winners will be contacted tonight. Thanks, you guys!

Just to clear up any confusion

2009-08-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

I realize that I've spent the whole summer neglecting to tell you that I've been spending the bulk of my Internet writing time = elsewhere. So just to get us all up to date, here is a bunch of posts I've written so far for Infinite Summer, that thing I mentioned a while back where we were all supposed to be reading the same book together. Remember? No? Yeah, well I'm still at it, believe it or not. I think I finally crossed the equator, which means now I can get that Howling Fantods tattoo I've always wanted, and I can pierce my eschatorial lobe, too. Some of what I've written over there makes sense, but don't expect any grave literary intonations from me, I don't possess that sort of mind. I'm more of the "I've got a crush on this character because he's funny" school of literary criticism, which may be why I got a lot of Cs in English.

Anyway, while I'm blathering on about myself I might as well link to the latest news over at Let's Panic! I'm having everso much fun writing over there with Alice because everything we post is just flat-out lies, pages and pages of them. Lies! There's a rumor that some exciting news is afoot for us so I'll let you know as soon as I find out more.

And no, I haven't updated yogabeans! for nearly a year, thank you very much, but somehow I still earned a mention in Blogs of Note last month.

Apparently 28% of your life can be crumbling around your ears and at the same time 47.3% of your brain can manage to flourish creatively. Who knew?

Let's take a look at some half-assed photos I've taken with my phone lately!

2009-08-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

I was at Fancy Ralph's on Carrillo a couple of weeks ago and I glanced up and, it being sort of early in the morning, thought that sign said REVENGE WATER. Then I went on this whole mental trip about what age bracket the manufacturers would target for their expanding line of "Satisfy Your Craving for REVENGE!" functional foods, but the whole thing got pretty ugly so I just bought three pints of organic half-and-half and went back to the office.

This one is because buh! Chocolate oysters with opalescent maple pearls! Chocolate Maya is one of those precious local Marie Antoinette-level shops that by all rights should fold during the recession, but is so pretty you hope it will hang in there, because there will come a day when the one thing you need is a $3.50 chocolate clownfish filled with lemon ganache and then what will you do? Cry salty tears all over your Butterfinger, that's what.

Anyway, Friday night Jackson's left nostril was really sore. He'd been complaining about having a lump inside there that he just couldn't dislodge using the (ahem) traditional method, and eventually I guess the whole thing got so infected that you could practically see it throbbing on the outside of his face. Having been through what I quickly diagnosed as the exact same ugliness, I -- well, I got a little panicked. And then he started crying. And then Jack walked in and saw us both weeping in despair at the fragility of life and he said WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN HERE?

So the next morning, I took Jackson to the urgent care clinic. It's right by a bunch of high-end car lots where the ratio of salespeople to customers is right around 11:1, but Jackson's going through some sort of car nut phase so I promised him we'd stop and look at some Porsches or whatever before going home.

We ended up in the BMW showroom where a nice salesman who clearly didn't have much else to do gave Jackson the full tour of the new BMW M3 convertible hardtop. Jackson was overjoyed when the top came down and clicked over his head.

I thanked the salesman for his patience and he said, "Oh, we all started out that way," indicating the other salesmen standing around. I guess he's just one of those guys who takes the long view. Get the kid attached to your brand (and be nice to his mom) and you'll have a customer for life.

Jackson: I so want this car.

Me: (If I instill a love of luxury cars in him, will it inspire him to work hard and save his money, or will it turn him into a materialistic creep?)

Jackson: Mom, why don't you buy this car. Your car is old and rusty and crappy.

Me: Nice try.

Salesman: (chuckles)

Me: But I tell you what. If you can save up $2,000 for a car by the time you're eighteen, I'll match it. I'll give you $2,000, and then you can get a $4,000 car.

Jackson: How much is this car?

Salesman: It's about $65,000, fully loaded.

Jackson: So if I save $31,000 . . .

Chicago: Paris of the Midwest

2009-07-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

I got to the Santa Barbara airport at 7:00 a.m. last Thursday and nine hours later I was at the Sheraton in Chicago ordering room service and trying to decide between "Confessions of a Shopaholic" and "I Love You, Man."

Chicago is awesome. Did you know that? You probably knew that.

There was a conference going on downstairs, a lot of bloggers milling around and thinking that everyone else looked vaguely familiar. Meanwhile, I'd settled on "I Love You, Man" and was sort of regretting my choice. I think everyone was doing the best they could, but I had higher hopes for that movie. I think in general I like my comedies to be a little angrier.

Yeah, so! I guess I didn't leave my room Thursday night, which I rationalized by telling myself that the conference didn't officially start until Friday morning.

Friday morning I got up and did my yoga practice on the surprisingly-slippery-yet-also-inconveniently-grippy hotel room carpet. I made some somewhat terrible in-room coffee with a Starbucks "pod" and a tiny container of unrefrigerated half-and-half that perhaps had been irradiated or somehow futuristically modified never to expire. Countless informative blogging sessions were going on downstairs and there I was locked in my room, happy just to BE ALONE for god's sake. I love my husband and my son and my dog and my tortoise and I guess even the hamster but I could not in any satisfying way justify piercing the veil of this rare solitude.

Oh, wait, yes I could! I had a lunch date with mimi smartypants.

Mimi, like Chicago itself, is formidable from a distance and yet approachable once you get within, uh, spitting distance*. She asked me to meet her and Nora at this place in Wicker Park that had such a long menu of crazy sandwiches that I started to wish that I'd taken her more seriously when she'd sent me a link to it a week in advance and suggested that I might want to take a few days to decide what I wanted**.

*Let the record show that it never occurred to me to spit on, or near, mimi smartypants.

**Brie, apple, basil and chutney on Tuscan white, as it turns out. It was very good.

Nora was wonderfully impressive as well. She showed me her loose teeth, the "Beast Quest" book she was currently reading, her sweet Converse kicks, and her badass ink.

NORAAAAA!

I made it back to my room and began to prepare for my event, the Community Keynote, that was due to start at 4:45. I had gone to a Walgreens near the hotel to pick up some index cards, and then I busied myself writing out introductions for all 21 speakers. I'd given myself about ninety minutes to do that, which was a BIG MISTAKE. I didn't realize until I was actually on stage how wildly inconsistent and scribbled my introductions had become the closer I got to showtime. And I was horrified to find I had no index card at all for Catherine Connors.

Catherine waves at me before discovering what a giant dork I am, while Tanis coolly remains above the fray.

I had meant to take pictures of all the readers and blah blah blah, but in fact I ended up just doing my bit and listening to everyone instead. How about that! I fully participated in the event instead of spending three-quarters of my time wondering what I was going to post about it. Surely they'll suspend my blogging license when word gets out.

This year's event was just as much of a rollercoaster ride as last year's. Posts that I'd thought were terrific on-screen turned out to be far more funny and/or heartbreaking when performed by the people who'd actually lived through the events described. (The list of readers and links to the posts they read is here.)

Afterward, I stood in the lobby and began the long and rewarding process of calming the fuck down. Heather B. helped by being disarmingly lovable, as usual:

Look, it's Polly again! Honestly, she looks like about twelve of my cousins:

Basking in the afterglow as well were readers Nina and Danielle, who both kicked ass.

I missed having my usual gang of lady friends with me, but going it alone gave me more freedom to ~~hide in my room drinking beer~~ hang a little longer with people I normally see once a year for two minutes, like Kelly:

who has some stories, my friends. I sat with Kelly and Heather in the hotel bar and finally relaxed into this whole conference thing. For me BlogHer continues to be a purely social event. Earlier that day I had poked my head into a session about monetizing your brand, but as someone who thinks the point of blogging is to be funny and awesome, the main thing I got out of the session is that I love Liz. And that I need to write more about cleaning products.

And then I saw a unicorn!

There was some incredible thunder at the end of the night, which I enjoyed from the 19th floor.

Saturday morning, I had a much-anticipated date with the aforementioned Danielle to go meet the Byrneunit.

HENRYYYYY!!!

These Chicago kids sport some tuff ink, I tell you what. Henry has long been one of my Flickr favorites, and it was a joy to meet him in person and to really get to the bottom of the Swedish fish vs. lollipops conundrum.

We met Henry and his mom and dad at a place called the Eleven City Diner. I got a plate of lox and a bagel because THE RABBIS TOLD ME TO.

I don't know if I've ever been in the presence of so many awe-inspiring tattoos.

The Byrneunit abides.

The rest of Saturday was spent dorking around the hotel, doing an interview for Frontline, and wishing I had the strength to go to the devastatingly generous Isabel's CheeseBurgHer party. But I was starting to exhaust myself and was frankly still somewhat emotionally fragile what with the events of the last few months and all, so I retreated to my bed with my giant book so I could get up at the crack and find my way back to California in the morning.

There were a lot of people I missed seeing in Chicago and I'm sorry about that. I was pretty selfish about my time there, but I think that was the only way I could have made it through without losing my shit altogether.

I think my Twitter feed sums it up best from here on out:

Oakley outlet at O'Hare blasting Led Zep's "Going to California" at 8am, just for me. 6:29 AM Jul 26th from TwitterFon

should have been in the air an hour ago. 9:01 AM Jul 26th from TwitterFon

Some airlines personnel are taken aback when you chuckle blackly at the news that you'll be home 7 hours later than expected. 9:09 AM Jul 26th from TwitterFon

United airlines owes me dinner if they're going to fuck me like this. 9:48 AM Jul 26th from TwitterFon

Rerouted from SFO to LAX, so I'll be flying *over* my house but it will take me an extra 4 hours to actually get there. 2:40 PM Jul 26th from TwitterFon

I've found the cloaca of LAX and am drinking a beer within its glistening mucoidal folds. 5:23 PM Jul 26th from TwitterFon

But at least I've been able to read a lot of Infinite Jest. In fact I may have read about 2,000 more pages than DFW actually wrote. #infsum 5:38 PM Jul 26th from TwitterFon

16 HOURS from Chicago to Santa Barbara. I shall now remove my bonnet and beat my calico dress against a rock, then feast on mini pretzels. 9:28 PM Jul 26th from web

SNAP OUT OF IT

2009-07-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

I am as tired of being sad as you probably are of avoiding reading about my being sad, so let's take a look at some old family photos and have one last good cry. No, ha ha! Let's make fun of old family photos, and then be wistful, and then wonder how many generations of Gustafsons wore those overalls.

When I met Polly Pagenhart at last year's BlogHer conference it was all I could do to keep from running up to her, grabbing her by the shoulders, and shouting, "YOU LOOK LIKE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY MOTHER'S RELATIVES, ARE YOU FROM MINNESOTA?!" Actually, I didn't keep myself from doing that at all, except I said it in a measured tone and I didn't actually grab her, though it was hard not to, as she is such a peach.

Now, at last, I have rounded up the evidence. On the left, we have Polly:

(Lindsay Ferrier is on the right)

and here, from left to right, are my aunt Caroline, my aunt Joyce, and my mom.

CAN YOU NOW SEE WHY I WANTED TO TAKE POLLY HOME AND DEMAND THAT SHE MAKE ME WAFFLES FOR DINNER?!

Fuck, what time is it? I have to get ready for work. But okay, here's one more photo of my mom and her family re-enacting a scene from Paper Moon:

God, they're beautiful. My mom is on the left with the braid on the top of her head. I adore the way the one kid, whoever she is, is sucking on a lollipop like she's (quite believably) smoking a cigarette. My grandfather is on the right, looking tough. He loved his girls, though:

Next time on Fussy.org: "My Mom Wore Bobby Socks!" As well as, "My Dad In Post-War Japan: He Was Quite The Cut-Up":

When You Gotta Go

2009-07-03T23:07:00.000-07:00

As I was driving down to LAX this morning I was mindful of holiday statistics, thinking, "Okay, how many barbecue drunks could there be on the road at 7:30 a.m. on a Friday?"

When we got in the car Jackson immediately plugged himself into his own iPod using the little green frog ear buds I gave him for his birthday. I wasn't feeling quite sharp enough for NPR and I thought it would be rude to plug in my iPod and get into some sort of weird hearing-loss battle, so I just drove. Ninety miles of an unselfconscious little boy singing in that half-tuneless, badly-enunciated way people do when they can't hear themselves was probably the better choice anyway because honestly, running all that Kanye West and Katy Perry through the Jackson Filter was far more entertaining than listening to it first-hand.

The commute down the 1 through Malibu was a surprisingly noncompetitive, and while I was swerving back and forth, thinking not just about all the half-naked surfers changing out of their wetsuits by their cars on the side of the road -- I totally do that thing where if I'm looking to the right I'll also pull the wheel to the right, whoops! My bad! -- but also about unattractive people who die in unexpected, disease-free ways, how everyone always mocks them afterward. "Sure, he lived on broccoli juice and hemp crackers, his cholesterol was zero, he had the unblemished heart of a lumberjack, and the strength of his erections could have pushed the leaning tower of Pisa back to plumb -- and he got hit by a bus! Haw haw haw." As though you should never do another sit-up again and live on bacon cheeseburgers on the off chance the downtown express will run a light and paste you and your last lard smoothie all over Cliff Drive.

But what if being hit by a bus was God's reward for showing respect and goodwill to that corpse-to-be you're currently calling home? What if God reserved only the most instantaneous, never-saw-it-coming deaths for the people who took care of their gifts? Took your vitamins, wore comfortable shoes, and strove to develop an enlightened and giving political voice? BOOM, you get hit by lightening before you ever had a chance to decline physically or mentally, see ya. Kissed your wife with all your heart, every single time? Here, have a fatal heart attack in your favorite chair when your team wins the championship.

I'm back in Denver for my mom's funeral, so I'm afraid it's just a deathy kind of thought-weekend. Now that she's gone we can really get into the meat of this house, all the chipped trinkets and unfinished thoughts and unlabeled photographs of people we vaguely resemble but will never be able to name. I'm going to take pictures of everything that means anything and then it can all go to Goodwill. My brothers very kindly gave me my mother's wedding band and now that's the only souvenir I really care to walk away with. Well, and maybe that kimono. And I'll see if that sundress fits.

What a Life

2009-06-26T08:07:00.000-07:00

My favorite Michael Jackson video is actually a Janet Jackson video. It's also my son Jackson's* favorite Jackson video.

* Despite some minor speculation on almost no one's part, Jackson wasn't named for the Jackson 5, or Reggie Jackson, or even Phil Jackson, despite their dearness to our hearts. No, here in California, as in ancient times, one names one's son for his father and just tacks "son" on the end, and prays he won't end up being named Larry Bird.