Some Pig

A Universal Truth

I dare any of you - double DOG dare you - not to feel your spirits soar when you're riding along in your car, listening to the radio, and suddenly you hear the first few chords of "Rock 'n' Roll High School."  I don't care how long I spend on this mortal coil, anything by Joey, Deedee and co. makes me smile.  If I'm ninety years old and wheelchair bound, I bet "I Wanna Be Sedated" will get me popping wheelies and snapping towels at my fellow oldsters.

Tell me - what other songs immediately put you in your happy place?

Meanwhile, I Remain Semi-Conscious in the Suburbs

Sex in the City opens tomorrow!
Sex in the City opens tomorrow!!
SEX IN THE CITY OPENS TOMORROW!!!!

I'm hoping Warren won't mind if I desert him for the night leave him with the kids for the evening.

I'll leave you with this fabulous pic of the girls hanging out across the pond:

OMG. Is SJP not in full Carrie mode, rocking that chapeau?  I'm afraid she didn't quite hit the same high note in the NYC premier:
Um, SJP?  You need to go tell the seamstress she forgot to finish the hem of the dress.  It looks like a high school "Elements of Fashion Sewing" final gone horribly awry.  And the semi-seventies half-straight/half-wavy hairdo isn't helping.  But!  I will forgive all when I hear that anthemic theme music.  I just wish I could go to the theater in my jammies with a pint of ice cream, since those are the circumstances under which I usually saw the show... Would people find it strange to be sitting next to a woman in flannel pj pants and a stained t-shirt with fuzzy slippers on, noshing on chocolate fudge brownie chip ice cream with her feet up on the chair in front of her?

Weather or Not

We're getting the hell out of Dodge!  I've been packing for a lovely long weekend in The State Formerly Known As Home, where we will celebrate the birth of our eldest daughter.  The problem with packing for a late spring weekend is that "late spring" as the rest of the country knows it doesn't exist in Maine. So I have to be prepared for temperatures ranging from fifty degrees and raining to eighty degrees and sunny, and any permutation thereof.  The only thing we don't usually get this time of year is snow, although I'm sure there's some old timer out there chewing his gums and reminiscing about how this is the anniversary of the freak snowstorm of '32.

Weather forecasts, which are of some help most of the year, aren't of much use in a New England spring.  Barometers, anenometers, all that stuff might as well be oracle bones.  You have to take the predictions, even from the gummint, with a large grain of salt.  When someone tells you what the weather is definitely going to do, it's best just to nod and smile politely and then plan for the exact opposite.  As a case in point, we've been told to expect rain showers for the past three days and exactly none have materialized.  This is why I've packed shorts, jeans, tshirts, fleeces, wool socks, sandals, aaaaand rain gear.  Happy Memorial Day!

UPDATED TO ADD:
We left the First In The Nation Primary State two hours ago (75 degrees, sunny) and arrived here only to dig out our long sleeves and sweaters (61 degrees, brisk wind, clouds and sun).  The weather oracles had promised me seventy-degrees-plus all weekend.  See what I mean?

I Likes Me Some Old Guys, Part Deux

My goodness, I had no idea there were so many fellow oldsterophiles out there!  I had six comments in one day!  That's, like, 42 comments in dog years!  Why yes, I am a shameless attention hound, why do you ask?

Anyhoo, I realized after posting this that I forgot a few fabulous faces. I also added a couple based on popular acclaim.  I hope none of these guys hold it against me that they didn't make the first round when I'm looking for Mr. Some Pig #2.  So without further ado, here are some more superannuated hotties:

Mmm, MMMM.  What is there to say about this guy that hasn't already been said?

Oh, Misha, Misha!  I forgive you for leading Carrie astray on SITC that last season.  You can take me on a sleigh ride through Central Park a-nee-TIME.

I do like a man who looks good in a tux, and (to quote the song) nobody does it better ... makes me feel bad for the rest.  Nobody does it half as good as you, baby, you're the best!  Yeah, yeah, I know Daniel Craig is the new face of Bond, he's a little edgier, gives Bond a bit of rough after too much smooth, blah blah blah yadda yadda.  The upshot is, THIS guy is Bond in my book, world without end, amen.

Here's one added by popular acclaim:
Proof positive that a misspent youth doesn't mean you have to wind up looking like a Slim Jim!  Either this man is graced by one phenomenal set of genes or there's a picture-of-Dorian-Grey thing going on here and Keith Richards gets all Robbie's wrinkles.  (I'm sorry, Keith.  I keep cracking on you, which is really picking the low-hanging fruit, don't you think?)

I had SUCH a thing for Gabriel Byrne when I was in grad school.  I drooled all over the theater when I went to see Little Women (generally not considered a chick flick in the traditional romantic-comedy sense).
Yeah, I wouldn't mind being "In Treatment" with him!  (Snort, snort.  I am such a dork.)

This one's for Toasty.  Harry doesn't really do it for me, especially since he went and got hooked up with a human praying mantis a female Skeletor Calista Flockhart, but as my Latin teacher useta say, De gustibus ... Yeah, I know.  This leaves me in the "meh" zone, too.

I canNOT believe I forgot the mellifluously voiced Jean-Luc Picard, otherwise known as the (very accomplished Shakespearean actor) Patrick Stewart:
Proof positive that excessive testosterone IS an asset. 

Okay, this is my last one and then I'm going back to REAL posts (i.e., bitching about stuff that happens to me).  This particular person doesn't make the "A" list because I read some rumor somewhere that he was stepping out on his wife with some arm candy many years decades his junior.  Official notice, buster - you're on the bubble!  One false move and you're dead to me.
But, uh, nice going on that little sideline you have with that Third World debt/hunger/Africa stuff.  You keep it up and someday you'll make something of yourself.

Some Monday Stuff

Me to India:
"If you don't stop fussing, I'm going to take your dresses away."

India (wailing):
"If you do that, I'll STARVE!"
[wait for it]
"Mommy, what does 'starve' mean?"

***
We are at T minus four weeks and counting with our seniors.  I have one senior girl in my Econ class (she's a three-peat; I swear she could teach this stuff better than I can by now) who disappeared about a month ago.  I have one boy in my Government class who has done a near-total disappearing act in the past week.  Again, this is his second or third go-round with this info, AND (irony of ironies) he's a total political junkie.  He knows more about the excesses of the Bush-Cheney administration than they do themselves. The girl was always a long shot, but the boy is a surprise - except for the fact that he's just a wee bit immature, he seemed on track.  I suspect a touch of puer aeternus is to blame, that and a subliminal fear of actually making it through graduation.  Still, I have to ask (and have never had answered satisfactorily), how on earth does a kid make it through three-quarters of their senior year and then decide to flake out?

***
I found this somewhere in my blog meanderings today:

D'OH!!!!

Cold Comfort

Mr. Cold Virus
Somewhere in My Sinus Cavities
My Head
First in the Nation Primary State, USA

Dear Mr. Cold Virus,

First, for the sake of verisimilitude, I guess this should state, "Dear Bister Code Virus," but writing that will get old fast.  I suppose I'm overanthropomorphising your germ-ridden little self, calling you by a male title.  Still, that's how I see you, all hunched over like Snidely Whiplash and rubbing your (many, many thousands of) hands maniacally as you chortle evilly over my sinuses the way your namesake did over the young maid tied to the railroad tracks.  I gather you think you're in for a reprise of the infamous pre-birth-of-Celeste epic head cold, but since I'm allowed drugs this time, I say, HA!  Take THAT, Mr. Virus Man!   That'll teach you and your little phages and ... and ... whatever-they-call-em from Bio class ... to do ... whatever it is you do that makes people sick!  [Ed. note:  I just referenced the Hawley-Smoot Tariff in the previous post, people, I can't remember everything y'all were supposed to learn in high school in every subject, ya know!  At least I do remember that there's no point taking antibiotics for viruses because viruses aren't biotic anyway.  Which isn't the same thing as 'bionic,' either, you nitwits, so if you were picturing Lindsay Wagner leaping around my nasal cavities, just STOP.]

Oh, I know you think you're so clever, you head cold you, lurking around in my kids' day care classrooms, waiting for the juuuuuust the right moment to hop onto a sticky finger or a damp face.  You already knew that neither hand-washing nor surface-wiping nor gloom of night will stop you from your appointed rounds when a soggy toddler wants a hug.  You thought it was so much fun watching me go to work in a cold-induced haze, the kind of sick where everything ... takes ... a .... really ... long ... time ... to ... process.  I had to mentally coach myself through every move I made (Okay, now we're going to pick UP the pen.  That's it, thaaaat's it.  Good!  Now let's take off the cap.  Yep, here we go.  We're doing it now.  We're taking off that cap.), only to discover I was staring off into space for moments at a time (Huh?  Whu?  What was I?  Oh yeah.  Pen.  Cap.  Here we go.)  I know you think it's so funny when I go to class looking like Rudolf, thanks to the cheap, scratchy tissues, and sounding like Elmer Fudd, thanks to - well, thanks to YOU. 

But you know what? 

The joke's on YOU, my friend! 

Wanna know why? 

First, my period seven class?  My hyper, annoying, unmotivated, school-skipping, authority-flouting, work-not-completing period seven class?  Is MUCH, MUCH MORE BEARABLE when I'm out of it than when I'm fully functional and alert.  Which leads me to my next, and more important point, which is:

PHARMACEUTICALS, BABY!! 

I got one of every kind of cold capsule, liqui-gel, gel-cap, gel-tab, day formula, night formula, tussin and phedrine product going.  I got expectorants making things runny and decongestants drying them up.  I got the zinc tabs for the homeopathy, the vitamin C drink for the immune system, and the plain ole over-the-counter meds to round things out.  I got the extra-fawncy tissues with the lotion AND the aloe (not that it's doing my poor sore beezer any good at this juncture, but I'm sure it'll kick in soon).  I got so much crap in my bloodstream, you're going to be crying like a bitch and begging - BEGGING - me to let you leave and go infest some other poor sucker with a houseful of snotty-nosed babies.  And if worse comes to worse, I got so much "nighttime cold aid" sloshing around in my system, I'll be rendered unconscious long enough to forget (for awhile, anyway) that I'm playing unwilling host to a frat party of disease in my cranium. 

And if you ask me real nice, maybe I'll even autograph a pair of boxing gloves for you on your way OUT. 

Smell ya later (at least, when my sense of smell returns, thank you),

Some Pig

Do I Have To Do This? Is This Homework? Can I Get Extra Credit?

Oh sweet Christ.  I've been tagged for a meme!  I got tagged for one once, by Carrie.  It was only slightly less complex than nuclear fission, so I passed; unfortunately, this one's pretty straightforward, so I guess I should play nice and do it.  Let me just say that when I first started blogging, I would have died to be tagged; I saw that as confirmation that my presence in the blogosphere had been noted and found worthy.  It was the bloggy equivalent of having the cool kids invite you to sit at their lunch table.  However, over time, my natural laziness and curmudgeonly tendencies reasserted themselves and I got to the point where I took a sort of perverse pride that I *hadn't* been tagged much in my blogging life.  Oh well.  Now the only reverse-cool cred I can cling to is my refusal to go to BlogHer.  Having said all this, I am glad my friend Robin tagged me because I like her.  So, with no further ado, I present:

SIX QUIRKY THINGS ABOUT ME

1.  On the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, I used to be an extrovert, but over time I have moved farther and farther into the introvert category, to the point where I now score right up there with those cave-dwelling shrimp who have lived in the dark so long, they're transparent.  I used to be a cheerleader in high school, and now I'm so averse to doing anything that would attract attention, I won't even dress up on Halloween except for the token witch's hat, which I whip off at the earliest opportunity.  I find interacting with people so draining at times, I won't answer the phone unless it's Warren or my parents.  People who know me from school generally don't believe me since I'm fairly outgoing there, but that's because it's a structured environment and I know I can go home at the end of the day and not talk to anyone.

2.  I am quite possibly the most socially awkward person you've ever met.  [Here's proof:  I really, really wanted to end that sentence with, "who's not identified on the Aspberger's scale," and it was only through an extreme act of will that I managed not to.]  I grew up in a family that prized sarcasm and wisecracks.  In college, it took me a long time to realize that these were not valued attributes, and that, as a girl, I was supposed to squeal and jump up and down a lot when I ran into other girls I had just seen fifteen minutes earlier.  Now I make dumb jokes in front of other moms I just met at the playground and, while I often feel horribly embarrassed for the moment, I accept that as the price of doing business with the real world.

3.  Despite the fact that I have a goofy sense of humor, I don't find fart jokes funny.  As my friend Linda says, there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who enjoy fart humor and those who don't.  I'm in the latter group.  I don't even want to hear about farts, except for the phrase, "I'm sorry about that."  The only exception is that I nearly die of cuteness overload when India talks about "toots".

4.  Even though my fashion sense can charitably be called "average," or more realistically "boring," I am attracted to anything pink, glittery, sparkly, or shiny.  I think I'm part crow. If  it didn't look ridiculous for a forty-year-old woman who is not the Queen of England to wear a tiara as part of her everyday wardrobe (with jeans and a sweater, of course), I would.

5.  I am almost completely and thoroughly devoid of common sense.  That, combined with the demise of my short-term memory after my second pregnancy, means that I am a walking hazard to life and limb.  It is only a matter of time before I burn the house down whilst leaving the baby unattended in the bathtub as I walk around holding a knife held blade-outward. 

6. I didn't tie my shoes until I was seven, ride a bike until I was nine, kiss a boy until I was sixteen or drive until I was eighteen.  Yeah, I'm the quintessential late bloomer. 

The Rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you: Hi, Robin!

2. Mention the rules on your blog. (I just copied them wholesale from Robin's post, because, did I mention I'm lazy?)

3. Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.

4. Tag 6 bloggers and link them. I tag:  Madge, Nitro Vista, Elaine, Becky, Carrie, and anyone else who needs a blog post idea and wants to do this.  I would tag Anonymous Co-worker, but he probably hates this kind of shiznit and would make horrendous fun of me on his blog, and I'm too proud/insecure/afraid of the power of his rapier wit to do that.

5. Notify taggees by leaving a comment on their blog. AND DON'T ANYONE ELSE THINK ABOUT DOING THIS TO ME, ESPECIALLY THAT ONE ABOUT TURNING TO PAGE WHATEVER IN THE BOOK.  I'm reading a book on toilet training right now; do you really want to go there??? 

Lest You Think I Exaggerate

I had to break out the early-winter parkas today to go to the playground - not the heavy-duty, snow-on-the-ground parkas, true, but winter parkas nonetheless.  Also, while we were there, I found a pair of mittens in the car and gladly put them on the baby's hands because, after ten minutes of holding onto metal swing chains, they were turning blue.  And none of this would be worthy of any note, except that it is MAY SECOND and there's just something fundamentally wrong about putting mittens on your kid on MAY SECOND. 

Also, I had to take the facking rubber sheet off the bed for laundering AGAIN.  I just got done wrestling it back onto the bed and I swear I tore a lat.  At least, I think it's a lat. It's been so long since I've done anything remotely resembling organized exercise, I've forgotten what a "lat" is.  I swear, I'm just going to wrap the whole damn mattress in Saran Wrap and be done with it.

Unreality Check; Or, How I Spent My Spring Vacation

Any of my regular readers will tell you that I am a busy, busy girl.  To prove it, here is a partial list of things I've done with my time off this week:

• Spent way too much time on the interwebternets
• ditched left my kids at day care on alternate days for "quality" time with the other kid
• Finally saw A MOVIE with GROWNUP PEOPLE at my friend Robin's hizzouse (holla!)
• Discovered a GREAT $10 red wine at the above and NO, I will not tell you the name of it
• Sat and stared into space more frequently than I care to remember
• Sat and stared at the clutter and chaos I call my house without lifting a finger to do anything about it
• Washed pee sheets (see previous post)

What do all of these have in common?  They are productive uses of my time.  Even the staring blankly into space served a purpose, which was to remind me that I saw the cat hork up a hairball in that very spot not too long ago and I forgot to scrub up after removing the solid chunks because Celeste was evincing way too much interest in the evidence and it needed to be disposed of toot sweet, preferably in a cement vault whose defenses she couldn't breach.    Unfortunately, I also have to fess up to a terribly embarrassing truth, which is that I also did the following:

• Watched part of an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians

I know! I know!  I'm really, really ashamed of myself, too, and you are talking to the girl who had a standing date with her roommates each week to watch Chains of Love on UPN.  It's bad for my self-image as an aspiring Bobo, one with an advanced degree and the college loan bills to match, but I am a sucker for reality TV.  I will willingly admit to spending an entire half-hour?  hour?  enthralled by an episode of Ace of Cakes (you know, the one where they make the birthday cake that looks like a meatball), and this is a show about people who spread frosting on cake to make a living.  I don't claim to be a Survivor aficionado, but I like it and usually watch about every other season, and I'm always thrilled when PBS coughs up a Frontier House or Colonial House so I can cloak my love for voyeuristic trash in a thin veneer of historicity. 

So as you can see, I am not immune to the siren song of the unscripted program.  But, geez, even *I* have standards, low though they may be, and KUWTK fails to meet even that lowest of thresholds.  My main requirement is that the people involved in the show actually have something to do with themselves, whether it be to attempt to cheat on their partners guilt-free or climb the social ladder in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world.  A successful reality show has some kind of hook -  that other slice-of-family-life show The Osbournes was incredibly compelling because of the so-warped-they're-normal vibe it had going on.  What do the Kardashians do, aside from mangle the spelling of perfectly fine names like Courtney and Chloe?  Well, judging from the fifteen minutes-minus-commercials that I watched, the Kardashian women, um, go out, text people who aren't on camera to the exclusion of talking to the people in front of them, and bitch about other family members when they leave the room.  The busty one thrusts her chest forward like a pouter pigeon and sulks a lot, and the tall one lumbers off to the corner to sob quietly when the busty one gets mad at her.  On this they base a reality show???!?!?  Hello, development execs, they run this show 180 days a year, give or take, in every town in America - it's called high school.  The only notable difference between KUWTK and, say, sixth period study hall, is that the famille Kardashian throws around gobs of disposable income while they engage in these ultimately not-terribly-interesting behaviors.

After watching half an episode of this show, I felt like clawing the eyeballs out of my sockets the way Oedipus did after realizing he'd schtupped his mama, it was that revolting.  It doesn't help that throughout the show, Bruce Jenner - Bruce Jenner!  The Olympic hero!  The man on the Wheaties box! - wanders in and out appearing totally oblivious to everything except his radio-controlled helicopter and what he looks like.  It doesn't help that I've been watching the series Carrier on PBS, which shows people, most of whom are barely out of high school, struggling to cope with life and love and career and families and relationships, all while getting paid squat-diddly and, oh yes, putting their lives on the line for their country at the same time.  When I snapped off the TV I felt like I'd lost about fifty IQ points and a whole lotta self-respect (and again, you're talking to the girl who watched AND enjoyed Joe Millionaire ).

I'm thinking of suing E!.  I want those fifteen minutes of my life back.

Alternate Realities

I'm showing an episode of The West Wing to my Government classes the last class before break. (Shut up.  We're studying the judicial branch and the episode centers on the appointment and ratification of Supreme Court justices.  It's VERY TOPICAL.)  Being totally disgusted, depressed and demoralized by the current monkeyshines masquerading as a political process we're enduring, I've come to a decision.  I'm just going to pretend that Josiah Bartlet's the president in my own little parallel universe. Oh, and by the way, chocolate doesn't make you fat in my world, either.  Come on over and join me.