Decisions, decisions

It's the classic liberal conundrum: Do I watch the PBS POV documentary following four Americans without health insurance? Or do I skip it since it starts at 9 and goes for 90 minutes, thereby cutting into my Rachel Zoe-watching?

I think if I watch one right after another my head might explode.

Stormy weather

Well there's an apparent genetic predisposition amongst the McP progeny to flat-out love watching enormous four-legged animals attempt to pull sleds loaded with tons of concrete blocks. I sat next to Little Brother at the oxen pull at the Deerfield Fair on Saturday and he was into it, yelling "digdigdigdigdigdig" and whooping with the crowd when the underoxen (led by a young guy who jumped up and down like Rumplestiltskin when the team got going) won.

But there was a touch of melancholy to the competition, and it wasn't just due to the rain. The stars of the fair when it comes to oxen are a team of huge white muscled creatures who are well-behaved and gentle and beautiful. They belong to an uncle of one of Dr. Moo's friends. He was killed in a farm accident earlier this year; I think his head got squished.

There was a minute of silence (which is longer than you'd think) for him before the competition got started and while his team (handled by his brother) pulled the first sled like it was loaded with kittens, they were quickly eliminated.

Later, when I went to give one ox a scratch, I overheard the brother remarking, quietly, that they hadn't done much pulling that year.

Your wish has been granted...

I had to stop watching after the first minute but I am sure you will make it all the way through...

Fiddle-dee-dee

So hopefully I soon will not be feeling like the raccoons in the video below. I tried a little experiment with the ADD meds this morning. I had some Ritalin left over from a long time ago and took it instead of Adderall. My thinking was that the Ritalin would be more effective and then when I went back to the Adderall on another day it would then be more effective.

Unfortunately I just felt spacey and have craploads of work to do and I was having trouble focusing on that work, kind of a lot of trouble. So I took an Adderall on top of the Ritalin. Now kids these days do shiat like this all the time recreationally and even crush the stuff up and snort it so I know I'm not going to keel over. I just hope I don't end up running around in circles. Lesson learned: save the ADD meds experimentation for the weekend.

The only thing wrong with this video is that it's too short

Bunny love

Well I'm still tired and just got back from picking up L's CSA (L's job has her in NY for much of this fall and I am going to hang with her at her sweet apartment in Midtown soon!) and will be heading to watch miss Daisy N shortly, while her parents go to a program at her school. Then it's off to host F or B. (On the posting of episodes subject, it costs 20 bucks to get the shows online and I don't have it so unless my cohost deems one of our episodes post-worthy we are all SOL. Sorry!)

Anyhoo a bright spot in the day would have to be picking up the CSA. There's something nice about getting a milk crate full of veggies grown nearby. She got lots and lots of lovely greens -- mizuna, boston lettuce, cilantro --and I made a small salad using them, plus some chopped celery and beet greens and radishes. Everything smelled divine and gave rabbit food a much better reputation. I would consider bunnyhood if all my vegetables tasted this good! OK and also if I could still eat breakfast sausage and cake.

I remain...

...utterly devoid of anything interesting to say. I am in fact thinking many interesting things, but too many people read this blog now and when I think about those people I clam right up. (Of course I am not referring to you.)

I'm fumbling my way through budgeting my time and when I say fumbling I mean it. I spent a fair amount of today up to my eyeballs proofreading and it plumb wore me out. So I stopped at 5:00. I'd started my workday at 8:00 but gone for a run and watched a little GH in between but that's just how I roll. It's how I have to roll. Normally I would keep going with working/etc. until 7 but again with the tired. So I knit and watched myself some Rachel Zoe while Daphne-Moon napped part on my hip and part on one of the squishy pillows on my sofa of mindfulness. I call it the sofa of mindfulness because it is 100 percent white and thus requires all who sit upon it to be on top of their game. It's good practice, really. Along with being a sofa of mindfulness it is comfy, pretty, and was free. Yay sofa!

Anyhoo following knitting the Daphs had a case of the friskies. And now she is asleep in her basket and I am going to eat some leftover chicken I roasted and, oh, I don't know, solve all the world's problems until Rachel Zoe comes on again at 10:00.

Or maybe I will just knit some more. Tomayto, tomahto.

Yawwwwwwwwwwwwn

I think I'm season-weary. Seriously. I've spent so much of the summer indoors that I feel like I missed it. I didn't go hiking at all. Which is weird. And now that fall's here it's as though my body was still in spring somehow and confused and hence, I have low energy. I'm not sleeping that well on top of it and if I try to compensate by napping it's worse so I just muddle through instead.

Come to think of it this post is boring. So the title is even more apt! To spice it up, try reading it in your underpants.

The Hold Steady

On my way home from the gym this morning I passed a Guido-y guy with a dachsund in a TOTALLY Guido-y sweatshirt. It was grey, loose, and the sleeves were rolled up. I could tell the dog owner was looking at me as I looked at his wiener (dog). It was all I could do to not squat down and scratch that wiener, exclaiming over and over again how adorable he was. Just one whispered ohyouaresoCUTE escaped my mouth and I was on my way.

Then I passed a house with a lot of free stuff out front: a couple rusty iron head and foot boards, one of those wire shopping baskets with wheels and a giant, pretty fantastic old mirror...that weighed like a thousand pounds, which I found out when I tried to pick it up. I briefly considered trying my best to haul it several blocks back to my apartment but what was I going to do with it if I managed to somehow drag it there without dropping and breaking it or some vital part of my body? (And I consider all my body parts vital. OK my gut maybe not so much or my Polish flappy arm-wings but the rest I like.)

So I went home empty-handed.

I find Rachel Zoe fascinating.

There. I've said it. I watched one hour of her show this week and it flew by. Flew. Then I went online and watched clips. And I wish there was a marathon of her show already because I would lay on my sofa and watch it.

I don't know what it is about her...she really does, as she says herself, look like ET. She has a giant bobble head and a teeny skinny body and bags under her eyes and she drapes herself in wackadoo outfits and says stupid things in a weirdly accented voice and perches in her bathrobe on her husband's lap like an underfed, overly-made-up field mouse. And I cannot get enough of her.

I wonder if there is something the matter with me.

WINNAH!!!

Well L and I did not see a single solitary adorable boy at the Whole Foods buuuuuuuuut we did win a 25 dollar gift card in a scavenger hunt and I won a giant basket filled with fatty salty snacky treats like four different kinds of chips, cheese-pretzel sandwiches, a tin of oysters, a salami (heh heh) and some olives stuffed with feta cheese.

So even though I did not get a man the basket is the perfect size for Daphne-Moon and I can gorge myself on the fatty salty snacks which will both sate me and kill me off quicker so -- fewer years alone!

Whole Something

Well I agreed to accompany L to a singles night...at Whole Foods. We will not arrive until 7 and the event only goes until 8, which means the torture will be short-lived...although I don't want to miss out on the scavenger hunt, raffle or free samples! Like a typical WF shopper I can't get there earlier because I will be at my yoga class.

I wish I wasn't such a B.A. Baracus about the event but accepting the reality of being a single thirtysomething is hard, OK? I am of course open to meeting a lovely man or two at the grocery store. But not before riding to that grocery store in a waaahmbulance of my own making.

Tee-hee

Lookee here! It's the note Jamie-Lynn Spears wrote her mom to let her know she was pregnant.

Space Cadet

Am waiting for a file to upload, hence the many blog posts...

Anyhoo I do not know what is up with me but today I discovered I had put my laundry detergent in the refrigerator, top shelf, right next to the half and half. Meanwhile, my cheese grater was where the laundry detergent would normally be. Which would not be the fridge, FYI.

Streetwise

I just reblondified myself and am still in the Courtney Love phase. I need a few more shampoos to achieve Gwyneth Paltrow. And my hair is frizzy and split-endy. While walking to the post office a little while ago I was thinking, gee, I really need a trim. On the way back from the post office a cabbie pulled his car over as I was walking up my street to say "Hey, beautiful hair, beautiful hair."

Yup. It's time for a haircut.

Chihuahuahuahuahuahuahuahua

Saturday afternoon L and I headed downtown for a little shopping. I was catsitting and so pretended like that was extra cash and bought myself a turtleneck for 12 dollars. Then we ate soup at obonpan and then later it was off to Starbucks for a coffee for me and a pee break for L.

Outside was a bald man with a fancy bike that had several baskets on it. Into those baskets, one at a time, two to each basket, the bald man placed a total of four chihuahuas, carefully moving them from their chairs in front of Starbucks, where I assume they each had their own lattes, to the bike.

Monster in my closet

I'll be 35 in less than a month.

I was bitching about this to McMumsy last night who reminded me that she was none too happy about having turned 60.

Stay in the now, stay in the now, stay in the now. That's my new mantra.

I have no words...

No wait, I do: What's Jesus doing hanging around with this guy?

Poor kitty...

Friends of mine have to put one of their kitties to sleep tonight at 5. I'm with them with feeling it's horrible to have to make an appointment like that. Just thinking about their kitty makes me cry and I've only met her a few times. I don't know how I'd deal with it if it were Daphne-Moon. I just hope I'm married with some kids and some other critters if and when that day comes. (Because after all she could die quietly under the bed at age 22.)

So if you have a moment, please send some love to them and to all kitties everywhere...

Straight out of central casting...

...must be where they found the sweet little old lady selling "Vt Garlic" at the farmer's market today. She was seated by herself next to the info booth, wearing a straw hat with bright flowers on it, and a flowery dress topped with, you guessed it, a flowery apron. What little garlic she had left by the time I got there--at 12:55, and the market opened at noon--was in a big basket in her lap. "Seventy-five cents each," she replied in her sweet-little-old-lady warble when I asked her the price. "Northeast Kingdom" was her warbled response to my question about what part of the state she was from.

I dug three quarters out of my change purse and plopped them in her outstretched hand, then grabbed a dusty bulb from her basket and headed home. What I really wanted to do was hitch a ride with her so I could sit on the swing on her sleeping porch eating cookies off mismatched chipped porcelain plates and drinking milk from a glass bottle while she told me stories about the good old days. I sort of wanted to gobble her up, and I hightailed it out of there so as not to freak her out with my I-wish-my-great-aunt-Eileen-was-still-alive-longing. Because that's who she reminded me of and all my memories of great-aunt Eileen are sweet.

Progress

Even though I am freaked out by the idea that we could end up with another set of Republicans in office and am considering fleeing with McMumsy to Ireland if it happens, I must say it's been a great year for humanity. We've got an African-American running for President, a woman running for Vice-President, and a major talk show host is running a video of her marriage to another woman on her program today. Less than a century ago, none of this would have been possible.

Siggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I do not like my foul mood
Nor my defeatist attitude
My gut's like five fat pork fillets
And I could go for all my days
Without PMS

Bonus points if you can guess which poem inspired this.

Me brain...

...is a pile of gloobery jello. I've been working on various project-related spreadsheets on and off since 10 this morning. And a girl can only do so much of that before her eyes roll back in her head and she begins to drool.

I did enjoy watching a video clip of Palin's daughter's babydaddy chawing on some gum (or was it chewin' tabaccy?) in a surly manner while ON STAGE at the CONVENTION. But oh where are my manners? It is not nice to make fun of other people...like Palin did for nearly her entire speech. She was pretty captivating, tho', got to give her that.

In other news, a hurricane's a-comin'! OK really just the remnants of a tropical storm. I might have to get myself out to the ocean to take a look.

Fun with Presidential residences

So this past weekend McMumsy came to stay not for one but for two nights. And I have to say it was quite nice. We watched Barack Obama's speech together, plus a lot of MSNBC, CNN and FOX. Also Project Runway.

On Friday morning we took the T to Quincy where we met Heidi for some geeky fun. First stop was the birthplaces of John and John Quincy Adams, located in a busy intersection. It sort of felt like the houses had fallen from the sky and crushed a couple of mini-marts.

Our tour was led by a Eugene Levy lookalike/Ben Stein ("Bueller. Bueller") soundalike fellow. The houses were more shells with some random pieces of reproduction furniture thrown in here and there than living monuments and the tour guide seemed similarly blah.

Which made what he did in the second house so unexpected. He reached into a reflector oven, once used to cook things on the hearth. Things like...a rubber chicken with bug eyes and a mouth open in a lurid, blow-up dollesque O. "This," said EugeBen LevyStein, drolly, "is what you might imagine the reaction of a chicken to be upon being stuffed in this oven."

At which point he gave the chicken a slooooooooooow squeeze and let go. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuukkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk," said the chicken. "And this is probably how he'd sound," said EugeBen. McMumsy, Heidi and I all laughed. Nobody else made a peep. We moved on.

As we exited the house Heidi thanked the tour guide. His response, in his same droll voice and before shutting the door behind her, was "Ta."

Priceless.

Paging Dr. Dingle

I took Daphs to a new vet last week and it was clear from the waiting room that he is popular among the CCLs (crazy cat ladies). One woman had two kitties and one of those kitties was named Cream Cheese because of his big white belly.

The other excellent kitty moniker I heard recently is Dr. Barry Dingle. This naturally is a nickname given only to long-haired cats.

Two old men, one young woman, and the sea: Fini

...I caught a keeper! It was a fine haddock, maybe eight pounds, of which only two or so were fillet. But the rest gets eaten by other creatures; nothing goes to waste. It takes a surprising amount of arm strength to reel in even a fish of that size -- I got a bruise on one forearm where the pole was pressing against it. PolackPappy was very proud of me. Want to know how I could tell? Of course you do. He yelled back to D that I had caught the fish Polack-style, because when my arms got tired I somehow managed to twist myself into a pretzel yet continue to reel. Also I got so excited I started yelling "I'm going to eat you, fishie! I'm going to eat you!"

And eat him I did, with a salt, pepper, and cornmeal crust. I had four friends over to share in the feast. He was delicious.