I wish there was more of this

I took season one of Extras out of the library recently. It is hilarious. Especially this scene. But really nearly every single one.

In other McPolack news I had a voice mail from McMumsy Sunday. "Check out the Vows section of the New York Times," she crowed. "There's a couple that met on Catholic Match!"

I checked and called her back. "Did you see how she married him despite the picture of him in the funny hat?" she said.

I told her I did. Then I reminded her what I'd found on Catholic Match: fat mustachioed men from Bridgewater, also home to the state prison. (OK one fat mustachioed man from Bridgewater plus an assortment of other weirdys.) And let her know that while the article DID say the guy had on a strange hat in one of his online pictures and it was a wedding announcement, it decidedly did NOT say what McMumsy was implying: That she went out on a date with him despite his appearing to be a tall drink of crazy.

Holy Frijoles

I almost cannot believe that we're going to be swearing in the first African-American POTUS tomorrow. The MLK day celebration Walnut and I attended this afternoon did help make it a little more real. Paul Farmer spoke, and there was poetry, music and dance. Walnut noted the energy seemed a little off. This was due in part to there seeming to be no one manning the ship that was the event...and also to the crowd which was, naturally, full of Bostonians, a group not known for their joie de vivre.

Anticpating a late lunch, I had brought a container of crunchy salty snacks, and during a long period of dead space caused by no one manning the ship, during which the audience was darn near silent, I bit into an almond. It was LOUD. Walnut said maybe I should have a Clif bar instead because once you get the wrapper open it's a silent food. But I just waited a couple of minutes and crunched while the gospel choir was singing.

It is truly an amazing thing to have moved in a lifetime (though my parents', not mine) from how we used to treat African-Americans in this country to having an African-American President. Too amazing for words, actually. Walnut said she said she wanted to thank her parents for having her when they did. Oh and for being part of the generation that helped make what's going to happen tomorrow possible.

And so to McMumsy and PolackPappy I say thank you. McMumsy worked in inner-city (yes, NH inner city but you go where you're needed) teaching reading for many years. PolackPappy, inspired by JFK, served in the Peace Corps in the sixties. They both continue their service to those in need today. I'm proud of them and wish I was more like them. Good job, Mm and Pp...

and GObama!

Past Lives

McMumsy says she gets the distinct feeling Harry the chinchilla was a human in his most recent spin around the wheel of existence because of the look in his eyes. She's kidding, but not really.

I was talking with a track coach the other day about his star runner, a kid who apparently never, never ever runs as fast as he is capable of. He always holds back. I told the guy that maybe this kid was a bunny in a past life, and when he ran as fast as he could he ended up getting run over by a car.

I don't have a lot of insight into my own past lives but if it turns out the Buddhists are right I'll be back. Hopefully not as a chinchilla.

Crocuses and squirrels

Along with lavishing attention on their three pets and prodding my sister and I towards marriage and babies (with my prospects growing dimmer by the day apparently, as at lunch last week McMumsy eagerly asked Dr. Moo to set me up with a five-times-a-father farmer called "Rude Dog"), my parents also spend their time as empty-nesters volunteering at a local homeless shelter. Unlike most of the shelters in town, people can come to this one drunk. Which is nice, I think, partly because it's dangerous for more serious alcoholics to just stop drinking suddenly.

Anyhoo while they can come to the shelter drunk, they can't bring their booze in. Come spring, all around the building, you see vodka bottles instead of crocuses slowly emerging from the melting snow.

The shelter guests, one volunteer told McMumsy, are like squirrels, only instead of burying and forgetting their nuts it's their bottles of hootch.

Hack hack wheeze

Christmas Day dawned for me with a chest full of phlegm and a crackly voice; by the end of the day, my voice was gone. It's still not back. Kudos to cousin Tim, who kept saying "What?" over and over again at dinner whenever I tried to whisper him anything, Dr. Moo, who kept farting on me and laughing because I couldn't yell at her, and McMumsy, who recommended that I "learn to sign, like that gorilla."

More on Christmas later. Just wanted to check in. Hope the holidays treated everyone kindly.

It takes an irritant to make a pearl

My real name, as opposed to my blog name, means "pearl." I'm definitely still in the irritant stage. I feel like I'm in a dust storm lately: everything stings and nothing is clear. I do not like it. Part of the problem is I'm not in touch with any of my mentors, which is where I, and I think everybody else should, go for advice. Save McMumsy and PolackPappy, I'm not in touch with anyone like that right now, and it sucks. So I'm putting the message out there to the (and it makes me gag a little to say this but I'm working with what I know) universe that I need some guidance, please.

Turkey Day Highlights

* Second Cousin M's filthy-talking stuffed parrot on a swing, which he mentioned to me early in the evening. "You have to listen when there are no kids around!" True to form, he did not forget, and after dessert found me, shooed the four-year old out of the room, and switched the button from filthy to extra-filthy. (The parrot has two settings.) I will give you the edited version here: "Polly wants a &^%^&% cracker." Polly wanted other inappropriate things that I will not mention.

* First cousin M commenting that McMumsy and PolackPappy were getting a "little frisky" on the sofa. Mm's hand was on Pp's thigh. For New Englanders, and especially our family, this is equivalent to full-on making out.

* PolackPappy's new Christmas carol. It's a work in progress; he's hoping to have it complete for Christmas Eve. It's called "Dingle Balls" and is sung to the tune of "Jingle Bells." Here is a sample: "Dashing through the snow/With my butt hair full of &#it/Shaking side to side/Trying to get rid of it."

I figured out how to work the scanner!

But didn't have enough time to really fiddle. To get a closer look, click on the image. I'd say this is maybe 1977...it's hard to tell. Moo was born in '78, when I was five. Anyhoo, Friar Tuck (aka Little Brother) and Porkchop (aka me) are enjoying a fine meal of Chinese food. Note the salad, no doubt prepared by health-conscious McMumsy, who heard that fat children became fat adults and was freaked out by the butterballs she kept giving birth to.

I believe I am wearing matching green pants in this picture. I am filthy in many of my childhood photos. This is due not to lack of soap but (I am told) to my love of running around outside.

Some things never change.

"Urine next!"

...would be what the wife of a urologist said to me as she tottered tipsily from the loo Sunday night at Hammersley's Bistro, where McMumsy had taken me to eat. It is Little Brother's favorite restaurant (I had the shock of my life eating roast chicken prepared by LB using their famous recipe. My previous chicken experiences with him involved Hungry Man.) and it was tasty but dang is it expensive! 25 to 38 dollars an entree and if you want broccoli it'll cost you an additional eight bucks. The food is of course divine, and you do get plenty to eat even if you don't get broccoli.

Anyhoo I had this fiddling-while-Rome-burns feeling eating there, what with the economy in the shitter and all, even though I was eating on McMumsy's dime. I think it was the urologist's wife that sealed it for me, that and feeling very contentedly closed off from the big ugly world while eating tasty food like this was something we did every night.

And in fact it has become something I do every night, at least this week...last night L, my German friend, and Carmen took me to a fancy pizza joint and sang happy birthday over a pink candle stuck in a tub of avocado; tonight my friend A is bringing me to Persephone. She is a food editor and has been "invited" to a dinner there so I am hoping for all manners of swank deliciousness. And honestly, it all makes sense given the way my own life has been going lately: if I experienced lack in a bull market, why shouldn't I experience luxury in a bear one?

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.

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.

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.

Small Furry South American Critters

* I was quite excited to find that the No Reservations episode where Anthony Bourdain goes to Peru was rerunning on the Travel Channel recently because I know how much Pp loves the country...AND its guinea pigs...AAAAAND the episode featured them, both in their live adorable fuzzy state and their dead delectable (according to some) munchy state.

I have noted before how much Pp loved Sheila Wheila Monster, the long-haired piggie that was a member of the McPolack family for many years. I've always been surprised by how people can so love something that they are eventually going to eat. (We never ate Sheila, just in case you were wondering.) I remember meeting a boy at the Deerfield Fair who was laying against his prizewinning beef cow...a cow that would soon be turned into hamburger, hamburger that he would eat. He seemed entirely unfazed by this fact.

Recently I learned of a guinea pig festival. It's held in Peru and the piggies are dressed up in adorable costumes. And then they are eaten. I asked Pp if he could explain to me why they did this and he told me "What you've got to understand is they live with these creatures everyday...they're running around on the kitchen floor. They love them." Of course it is a good thing, a VERY good thing, to treat the creature you are going to eat with love and respect. It seems healthy, honestly. I don't really know where I'm going with this so I'm moving on to...

*A chinchilla update: Harry the Wonder Chinchilla now has free reign of the family room. He's been working PP for quite some time now, sitting on his haunches, holding the bars of his cage with one paw and an apple twig in the other, staring at my dad and silently munching. I told McMumsy that Harry would eventually have the run of the entire house.

McMumsy and McPolack in the City

McMumsy showed up yesterday afternoon for our evening of adventure. And by adventure I mean we went to the Kennedy Library and sat with a large group of people McMumsy's age and older to hear Nancy Pelosi speak. Unfortunately, we couldn't do any good fancy-person watching (one of Ted Kennedy's children, plus a Supreme Court justice were in the audience) because despite getting there 35 minutes early the main hall was full; we had to sit in an overflow theater and watch NP on a movie screen.

What struck me as I looked around was how filled the room was with older folks. Pretty much entirely. There are very few people my age who actually make the effort to go out and see things like this, which is one of the things I've been telling myself to make myself feel better about the fact that a recent survey showed that out of the top five cities in the US with the most single people, Boston is number five, Somerville (where I live) is number three and Cambridge (on whose border I live) is number two. WTF? I am not seeing all these single people.

Anyhoo, as I was commenting on the age of the room to MM she said I had gotten the "political bug" from her, and it's true. I just find stuff like getting to see the Speaker of the House, well, speak, fascinating. When MM was in high school she used to get into fights with her little brother over who got to read Newsweek first.

Then we settled in to listen to NP, who was pretty good, but kudos to MM for commenting on the fact that NP's trip from "the kitchen to Congress" didn't just happen out of the blue, which is how NP was playing it. She's the daughter of one mayor of Baltimore and the sister of another; really she's been in politics her whole life. I take issue with people in her position saying "oh, anyone can do this" when clearly she's had significant advantages others don't. I just don't think you should set unrealistic expectations. This could be a little conspiracy theorist for me, but who's to say she wasn't placed in her position of power by men? Eh, I don't know. I do think regardless of how she got there it is a fantastic accomplishment and when she mentioned that when she first assumed her role she heard -- literally -- the women who'd come before her, upon whose shoulders she was standing -- say "we finally have our place at the table," I believed her.

Holy crap

New Hampshire, oh noes!

Deerfield is where Babcia is buried, right next to the house PolackPappy's oldest friend lives in.

Candia (near the hard-hit areas) is where McMumsy grew up. Still have some family there. Haven't heard anything but I have the feeling they're OK. Tried calling the McPolack homestead and got no answer but again I'm not too worried. They're farther away.

But my poor sweet home state!

Stardom

McMumsy and PolackPappy paid for an ad in the back of my college yearbook that said they hoped I'd one day take Eleanor Clift's seat on the McLaughlin Group.

Well last night I pulled someone's finger on live TV. Eleanor, you'd better watch your back.

Love Thy Neighbor

Following what was practically a drive-by visit in which McMumsy decided the geraniums we'd gotten for Babcia's grave would be better planted "in her memory" at home we sped back to the McPolack homestead. One of the neighbors up the hill, who raised his own family in the McP homestead and now lives within spitting distance of it, helped McMumsy, PolackPappy and I open up the pool.

Then I set to work tearing out thick pelts of blue flags from one of McMumsy's gardens. A couple of hours in, I took a break, and drank ice-cold lemon water and ate cherries while sitting under an awning on the deck. Oh and I belched, loudly and repeatedly. Then I looked up and, whoopsie! There was the neighbor, working in his yard. I can just imagine what he was thinking: "Hmmm, now I see why their oldest child remains unmarried."

Chinchilla Update

Harry and PolackPappy continue to grow their relationship. As Harry became more comfortable in his environment, he started taking bites from every chewable surface in the bathroom, where he takes his daily out-of-cage exercise. He was eating, in no specific order, the toilet paper, the soap, the toothpaste, the baseboard, and the walls.

So now PolackPappy sits with him and reads a book, which Harry also chews. But first Harry likes to take bank shots around the room for several minutes. Because he is locked up in a cage most of the day Pp has taken to calling him "The Prisoner of Zenda." Pp called Dr. Moo recently asking if she could take Harry for the summer as there is no AC in the room Harry's cage is in. McMumsy said she'd install it and then lock Pp and Harry up with it until September.

Fortunately they came to a compromise: Move Harry out to the family room, where Pp watches movies at night, and put an AC unit in there.

Oh and according to McMumsy Harry is now a Chub Scout.

Meditation

I've been doing this more lately, which, when added in to Sunday Mass and yoga is coming close to a daily spiritual practice. I met with a friend and mentor on Sunday afternoon; we sat under a tree in Cambridge Common and talked about life. She recently lost her mother. She said that it took her mom's passing (at a ripe old age after a good long life) to really clarify for that the best way to love your mom is to live a good life and to be happy.

McMumsy stopped reading my blog because it was making her sad. I don't know what to make of this.

Anyhoo, my friend on Sunday said "Well you know what I mean, and it's harder for you because you're even more like that." What she meant was that she understood why it was harder for me in the world. The first boy I ever kissed told me "Life is going to be hard for you."

I tried out a positive affirmation meditation last night. In it, I imagined myself living somewhere woodsy, with a family -- husband, dog, kitty-cat, kids. While the husband was away at work I was working at my job, which at that moment was learning about the mushrooms that had sprouted up in the backyard overnight, after a rain. I feel guilty for wanting this and at the same time fiercely protective of it.

This is TOTALLY going to thrill McMumsy

Today at church a single man sat down behind me and then ANOTHER one sat next to me in the SAME PEW. He looked a little nervous. I peace-be-withed you both of them but that's as far as it went. I am so not up on the rules when it comes to picking up men at Mass.