Category: My Life

Overheard: Tattoo

Scenario: Girl in her mid-twenties talks to a friend on the street corner.

Girl: …and on my calf I want a heart and a cloud with a rainbow. Then coming out of the cloud, I want like little hearts and stars and lightening bolts. Friend: (Dubious look.) Girl: Like, not hell of um, but a few.

Worse

– … He was a magician comedian.
– Oh man! The only thing worse than a magician is a “funny” magician.
– No, it could be worse. What would be worse?
– Magician comedian mime.
– Magician comedian renaissance mime.
– Magician comedian renaissance mime for Christ.

#42 Make Your Time Line

Prompt on page 49 of
No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog.

My first decade:

Age 1: I do not cry when hungry or tired. The doctor says I’m probably slow.

Age 2: My mom and dad stare down at me. Dad says, “I think she’s lying.” Mom says, “I don’t think she knows how to lie.” I am lying.

Age 3: I would like to wear dresses and shiny shoes all the time, please.

Age 4: Dustin tries to “hump” my leg in the kindergarten recess line, and I shove him. Forever after, I will find the name Dustin slightly irritating.

Age 5: I carry a red purse with a long strap, and fill it with pennies. One day while Joey and I are chasing each other around the playground, I swing it excitedly and hit him in the back. His face is so surprised and pained that the memory of it still makes me cringe.

Age 6: Mrs. Bartlett sends my best friend home because she has a hole in her sweater. I cry because I know her family is poor, and I have to stand the corner as punishment for crying. I attend a new school for third grade.

Age 7: While swinging, I realize I have no impending doctor or dentist appointments, and experience a surge of pure joy.

Age 8: My father dies. At his body viewing, a young man who works at the funeral home takes me to the refrigerated florist shop to buy me a flower. I choose a carnation, a white one with red stripes.

Age 9: Mrs. Ross is my happy, curly-haired fourth grade teacher, and she assigns us poetry exercises. Her note on my first haiku says “Great imagery! You will be an excellent writer one day.”

Age 10: “Mom?” I say. “How do gay people have sex?” Mom takes a deep breath and pauses. She says, “I am very uncomfortable telling you this, but they say that if you’re old enough to ask, you’re old enough to know… Gay people have sex in the butt.”

  • ine

    • They Glow in the Dark

    Since Hank came along, my hand washing has vastly increased. In addition to bathroom-related hand washing, I wash my hands after I change a diaper, before I fix a bottle or clip his nails, after I come inside from spending time out in the city, and so on. The rest of me is covered in dried baby food and spit up, but I could safely perform surgery with zero notice.

    Mighty Menu

    More menu madness! How do I maintain my edge in the face of meal-planning tips? I type naked. (Except for my socks. My feet are always cold.)

    Anyway, in my continuing quest to lose baby weight, I’ve been reading You on a Diet by Dr. Oz. It isn’t so much a diet book as a “Potato Chips are Not a Breakfast Food” book.

    The book suggested adopting one meal choice that becomes a habit. You could have steel-cut oatmeal every morning for breakfast, a turkey sandwich on whole-wheat bread every day for lunch, or a bowl of nine-grain gruel for dinner. This dramatically reduces the wild-card meals where you might accidentally eat an entire wheel of triple-cream brie.

    I decided to adopt habit meals that have endless variations, so I’m having smoothies for breakfast and salads for lunch. For dinner, I’m freezing a bunch of soups that we’ll have whenever we’re too tired to cook or order pizza.

    BREAKFAST SMOOTHIES

    *Update: I added serving info and measurements to more adequately reflect the amount of fruit you’re getting per serving. If you’re making a smoothie for just you, you’ll want to halve the ingredients.

    Makes two servings:
    1 cup Orange juice
    1 cup Lowfat plain yogurt
    1 Banana
    2 tsp. Cinnamon (a natural appetite suppressant)
    3 tbsp. Psyllium husk (for fiber)
    Flax seed oil (for delicious Omega 3 acids)

    1 cup of frozen fruit, whatever you prefer:
    raspberries
    blueberries
    mangoes
    strawberries

    Maybes:
    fresh ginger
    whatever fruit is about to spoil in the fridge (sometimes I’ll throw it in the freezer right before it spoils for extra longevity and smoothie slushiness)

    LUNCH SALADS

    Mixed greens or spinach
    Tomatoes or cherry tomatoes
    Carrots
    raw sunflower seeds
    hard boiled eggs
    cooked beets

    Maybes:
    oranges or tangerines
    mangoes
    cooked chicken
    smoked salmon

    DINNER SOUPS

    From Chic Simple Cooking
    Chicken soup with lemon zest, thyme, and potatoes
    Curried vegetable soup with fresh gingeroot
    Winter borscht

    From Bill’s Sydney Food
    Spring vegetable soup

    From Bill’s Open Kitchen
    Spiced zucchini soup

    SNACKS

    Crudite
    -snap peas
    -celery leftover from soups
    -cherry tomatoes
    -baby carrots

    Raw almonds
    Raw walnuts
    almond butter on whole grain frozen waffles
    dried apricots
    fresh fruit
    ak mak whole wheat crackers

    Today

    The SUV next to me is booming with bass, playing rap at top volume.

    I look over to see the driver, a young blond woman with a precise haircut. Her hands are in small fists below her chin. She punches at the air and shrugs her shoulders to the beat. Everything is fine with her. Things are going okay.