Elvis Presley disguised as a Japanese man smoking a cigarette. Sideburns. Glasses. Glittery gold vest. 1:30 pm on a suburban side street.
Another suburban side street called Oliver, disguised as an alley, ending after three houses in a large field of grass with a swingset and several large tires for playing in. Near the magical corner of 3rd St. and 3rd Ave.
A cat shimmying down – DOWN – a telephone pole. Like a furry little firefighter.
Today I was on my belly on the carpet, wrestling with The Strongest Baby in the Universe and I noticed that he is working on his pincer grasp. That’s the thumb and forefinger. That’s the motion that means he can pinch my neck even more effectively, wedge his thumb up my nostril and use the index to squeeze and, most importantly, start to eat finger foods.
Contrary to his beliefs, finger food does not mean squeeze the nipple that has sustained you for the last 32 weeks. Finger foods means cheerios, hunks of pear, eventually cheese. Kid. You listening or what?
Anyway, while I was on my belly on the carpet, I noticed he was practising his pincer grasp – on specks of dirt. Chip crumbs. Clutches of catt hair (and, let’s be quite honest, people hair too). Yes, the filthy, filthy wall-to-wall carpet. I knew I would hate it. Didn’t I say, about a year ago, “no, the place we’re buying isn’t perfect; for example it has wall-to-wall white carpet”? Yes, I did. And the carpet is spotted with coffee stains, as I predicted, and the carpet near the kitchen is sloppy with dirt from outside, plus glops of baby-type food that has somehow managed to not go in his mouth? But been flung by a spoon? Have you heard of this? and the carpet in the living room, where we do all of our playing, has pee on it and one [small] poop stain and handfuls of hair and probably foul insect larvae for all I know and I DON’T want to know and neither did you but hey – at least now you have advance warning and can think of reasons not to come over before I invite you.
I do vacuum. Last week, pre-visit from family, I even vacuumed up the stairs. All three flights. I developed a great system where I would rake the step with my right hand and then use the hose of the vaccum to suck up what I’d raked. Oh, it’s disgusting.
We know, though, that we will not be attempting to sell this house with the carpet intact. We knew moving in that before we moved out the carpet would have to be replaced. Our plan is to replace all the carpet with laminate floor before we leave. So, much as it is a nest of ick and I fear that Trombone’s first finger food will be, well, something black and speck-like that he manages to harvest from the floor, I am committed to letting it be until it isn’t anymore. No home improvement till after we get the car.
But I can revamp my blog in less than an hour and for free. This person? made this theme I’m using. It makes me chortle with spring-like laughter. I hope it does for you too.
On Saturday we went to Superstore. I love Superstore. I think I probably shouldn’t, because it’s Big Box and it puts all the Little Boxes out of the Box Business but I shop Little Box when I can. Like, all the time. I am surrounded by Little Boxes. OK.
I love Superstore. Affordable canned goods, the ice cream I like, no-name brand food that tastes better and has fewer additives than brand-name food (my cousin, who was in town last week, told me the only baby formula she found that didn’t have MSG in it was the Superstore no-name brand) and now they also sell clothes. The clothes are called Joe. $8 t-shirts. $19 pants. When I go back to work I am totally going to Superstore for my new wardrobe and I’ll have enough money left over to stock my bottom desk drawer with crackers that will go stale and strange animal candy that will harden with age. Three cheers for the administrative assistant! She always has weird shit in her drawer!
On Saturday we went to Superstore. We had booked a car for a few days so that Trombone and I could move freely to my parents’ place and back since the aunt, the cousin & her two kids were visiting. It was a station wagon so we figured we’d stock up on groceries and now that Trombone is 7.5 months old we figured he was ready for Superstore.
Without getting all gauche, we spent a lot of money at Superstore. Buttloads. We bought two of everything in the store because who knows when we’ll be back. As the checkout clerk was swiping our last item, she said, “Do you want the free gift?”
“Uh,” said I.
“It’s 3 lbs of Alaskan King Crab Legs,” she said, bored with it. She had probably already made this pitch a few times – it was almost 4 pm. But we had never qualified for a gift! We didn’t even know there was a gift!
“Uh,” said I.
“Sure!” said Saint Aardvark.
Because. We like free stuff. But crab legs?
Now every time I open the freezer, which is not infrequently because my ice cream is in there, I am startled by the reddish-pink, two-foot long crab legs that fit perfectly in the top shelf of the freezer door. They look like giant spider legs. They look like nothing I have kept in a freezer of mine, ever. Right, I think, once my heart has slowed to its normal rhythm again, crab legs. And then I giggle.
Around this time of year a little ditty starts bouncing off my brain’s walls. Go ahead, hit play while you read the rest.
If astrology makes you furious with frustration at the fraility of the human condition, skip down a few paragraphs.
Here are some Aquarian qualities, in case you are unfortunate enough not to have any Aquarians as friends. (Me, I have approximately One Bazillion Aquarian friends, which is no small feat if you consider the characteristics of an Aquarius) Behold:
Individuals born under this sign are thought to have a creative, challenging, entertaining, progressive, stimulating, and independent character, but one which is also prone to rebelliousness, coldness, erraticism, cowardice, and impracticality. In terms of anatomy, Aquarius is said to rule the legs from knees to ankles and the circulation of blood (from wikipedia because all the astrology websites had so much flash and spinning, glittery lights I felt a touch of the epilepsy coming on.)
Saint Aardvark is also an Aquarius but because he doesn’t believe in fairy dusters, patchouli sniffers and such unscientific claptrap as astrology, we won’t discuss him here except to say that he is as Aquarian as I am. Our house is filled to the gills with weirdness and we have so much cowardice between us that we rarely discuss anything more contentious than whether or not ketchup is a food.
Or here, maybe this is clearer:
Aquarius has a strong need for independence and individualism, and while members of this sign can be somewhat idiosyncratic they are also very original and inventive. Aquarius is visionary and creative, but rebellious, too. Aquarius’ job is to challenge authority, tear down existing structures, and replace the outdated with something better. Thus, Aquarius can be capable of great extremes. This sign acts in rather sudden and unexpected ways, thanks to being ruled by Uranus, the planet of surprise. (from Astrology Zone.)
When I read these descriptions of my astrological sign I feel kind of bad that I haven’t been living up to it lately. Yes, I have been as idiosyncratic as ever, but I certainly have not been tearing down existing structures, nor have I been challenging authority. I have been huffing the fumes of visionary, progressive unusualness without actually starting my engine. This is a metaphor for too much blogreading, not enough blogwriting. You probably got that all on your own.
This time of year, though, my brain gets a psychic boost; the days are getting longer, the rain is abating somewhat and I get cake, so I feel confident enough to commit to a revitalized, ankle-ruling Aquarian me.
Moving right along:
I was unsure at first whether I would live to this day, my 33rd birthday, because shortly after I took my leave of the Internet, Donald Trump was a guest on the Tyra Banks Show and I thought certainly the world would end at 5 pm pacific time, after that show finished, on account of the egosplosion. I recall that Tyra called Donald a pimp and then clarified, “…but the good kind, you know?” He did.
Guess the world just isn’t ready to end yet. That’s cool.
I’ve made some resolutions regarding this blog. I’m not going to tell you what they are, but they include less thorough editing because to my mind, this is the lesser of two evils. I am meticulous, as listed on my resume, which is a good quality in an employee but in an unpaid blogger who does it for The Fun, not so much. Kind of like cutting off your ears to sell to a black market ear-harvester so that you can afford tickets to a John Mayer show.
In light of this, here are some notes I made in notebooks over the last two weeks while I was not surfing the Internet nor blogging:
– Dove is PRO AGE not ANTI AGE that is why they are selling you AGE-SPECIFIC PIT STICK using AGED MODELS. Yes, I like the idea of real sized women modeling. What are they selling? Oh, FIRMING CREAM. Excellent. We love you just the way you are so buy our firming cream. Hey old ladies, we love you just the way you are, that’s why we developed this special moisturizer just for you to keep you looking young!
– Old man on the street with his dog. Dog is half a block away from him on one of those stretchy leashes. Dog is staring at the street. It’s one of those dogs with an underbite. Man is waiting patiently. As I walk by, man says “he’s a stubborn old dog,” and I say “yes?” The man says, “he just wants to stand there and look at the world. But it’s the same world every day! There’s nothing new!” I laugh. Wonder what the dog sees.
– Put on shoes, put the baby in the car, drive the car out of the parking garage, pop in Ben Folds Five, hit the highway, drive really really fast. Fucking awesome.
– Dear World: McSHUTUP and stop McMcing everything dammit. Most annoying trend ever. Plus I started it years ago. I’m so innovative. It’s an Aquarian trait.
– Tyra Banks is my height and weight exactly! How exciting for me! By now, you all know she uttered heartfelt pleas to the world to allow everyone to be her own size and to be happy as such. Some tabloid called her fat or something. She cried. Her audience cried. That’s all nice and everything but it cements my belief that America’s Next Top Model Tyra and Tyra Banks Show Tyra are two different Tyras. I know – 2 women that crazy? I know. But how else do you explain that ANTM Tyra is someone who judges women on their beauty – conventional beauty, accepted beauty, skinny butt beauty – while Tyra Banks Show Tyra is telling the world not to judge women based on their appearances. See? How else could Tyra Banks Show Tyra do a show on eating disorders and NOT ONCE mention that she created and dragon-breathes-the-fire-into a television show that gathers young, impressionable women from across the country, chooses or doesn’t a handful of them to compete against one another so that one – ONLY ONE – can have the privilege of then using her face, body, hair and “fierceness” to sell products (but not Dove products because they are all about Real Women) to other young, impressionable women who think that using X product will make them look like the girl who models X which is commonly accepted as the best way to look and guess what none of these women has the same body as me or Tyra. No ma’am.
The Two Tyras. Someday, someone will make a Godzilla-type movie about a tall, crazy ex-supermodel with more ego than Diddy and Trump combined and how she encounters her doppleganger in New York City and then they battle it out using high-rises as light-sabers and their stilletto heels as weapons. Only one Tyra can win.
Didja miss me? I’m not bringing sexy back but I am bringing something. A fruit platter. A planetary confluence. An odd numbered year with subtitles. Nonsense. Whimsy. Animal noises. Chocolate pudding. Thanks for reading.
Long ago and far away I grew to enjoy blogging because it granted me instant gratification for writing. At the time I was also working on a novel and several short stories, under the assumption that sooner than later I would be in a position to enjoy longer-term rewards for my hard work: publication of an actual, true work of fiction Created By Me. In order to reconcile the delay of that gratification and keep working, I made a place where I could publish instantly.
Of late, though, I have discovered that blogging is interrupting rather than satisfying or enhancing my creativity. I want to update here – actually I feel like I have to – but I really have nothing to say and nothing good to say about it. I figure you all already know how to swear at the TV. I don’t need to explain it to you.
I surf instead of read; I surf instead of write, I surf instead of listen to music. It’s a little out of control. I own a lot of books. I own a lot of pens and half-full notebooks. I own a lot of CDs.
So I am quitting surfing for a while. Because I am NOT powerless over my addiction – and I like to quit things. That’s how the cheeseblog got started, after all.
Unfortunately I cannot blog here about how I am quitting surfing so you will just have to believe me and come back here on February 12, which is my 33rd birthday
(1+2 is 3!
3×3 is 9!
2007 added up is 9!
9 + 9 is 18!
1 + 8 is 9!
9 is my lucky number!
Yes! I am insane!)
and I will provide an update.
Until then: be good.
Here are some blogs I have been enjoying of late:
Iowa Drift
Bub and Pie
I Do All My Own Stunts
And here are a couple of pictures of wee Trombone. For good measure.
PS: The two bottom teeth have made it just out of the gums. How long till they’re all the way in and he stops trying to gnaw on my collarbone? Anyone? Lie if you have to; I am weak.
