Tee hee!

Reminds me of the years when I used to give people thyme for Secret Santa gifts, because "every working person needs more thyme!"

26 Candles

Happy birthday, Frenchy! We're only two years apart again now! I hope the 26th will be a good one for you.

Smudged Porcelain

I have often talked, self-deprecatingly, about my habit of cleaning the bathroom before anyone comes over. It is a remnant of my mother (although she is most certainly not dead, at least not last week when I talked to her), a vestige of her influence, a tidbit of training. I simply cannot have guests over, even for ten minutes, knowing that my bathroom is not sparkly and lemon-scented.

My mom would make me clean each bathroom in the house (yes, even the basement one) whenever we were having guests. Guests, in her mind, included anyone who did not have a bedroom in said house. This meant that each time my grandmother or great-aunt came over, I would be dispatched to the loo bearing a bucket of Soft Scrub.*

(* It has just occurred to me that in addition to being a good hostess and showing guests that she keeps a clean house, this might have also been a symptom of proving herself to her mother. I emphatically sympathize.)

And so I find myself doing the same. There is a small voice over my shoulder, that says "But they will notice, and they will judge!" When I have people over, even if I know there's no possible chance they will have to use the bathroom, out comes the sponge. I can clean a toilet, sink and mirror in six minutes, and a tub in another eight. Practice, baby, practice.

I have guests over this weekend, friends of mine from a former life. I know perfectly well that they will not think less of me for having smudged porcelain, but nevertheless I was up at midnight last night, scouring and wiping and polishing. As I did so, I thought about my mom, about the profound influence she has had on my actions. I decided to start an early Mothers Day gift, a list of ways that she has changed me and things she has taught me.

1. Cleaning the bathroom when guests come. Must be done. No exceptions.
2. Tea is infinitely superior to coffee. (nb: Well, sometimes. Dad's influence is in there, too.)
3. A balanced meal consists of a protein, a vegetable and a starch. No more is necessary, and no less is acceptable. You may not have two starches; that is carbohydrate overload.
4. It is possible, and desirable, to use wrapping paper more than nine times. Gift boxes may be used infinitely.
5. Clothes should fit, and can be altered to fit. Although I draw the line at having skirts sit at my natural waist.
6. There is a right way to load the drying rack/dishwasher, and a wrong way. Mine is the the correct one.
7. You can always add more water to the orange juice concentrate to get a couple extra glasses out of the can.
8. I can fit three weeks' worth of clothing into a weekend bag, and I can do it in four and a half minutes. (I'm rather proud of this fact.)

Okay, the mother in question just IM'ed me. Tootles!

Pike County

When we were little, we had an agreement in our house: on the hour-long trip to the lake house on Friday nights, we'd listen to "kid" songs, and on the Sunday return trip we'd listen to "parent" songs. I usually hollered loudest for the Wee Sing America tapes, and I'd close my eyes and belt out the words that transported me to Cape Cod ("Cape Cod girls they have no pins, heave-a-way, heave-a-way, they pin their gowns with codfish fins"), to the railways ("all the live-long day") or to the very foundations of my country (those ubiquitous spacious skies and amber waves of grain). Even back then the lure of time and space travel had gotten to me.

I prided myself on always being able to memorize the lyrics, even for songs with dozens of verses. I oculd always spit out the correct words to the tongue-twister songs, when my sisters got tripped up on the one about mules having two legs behind.

So it has been that much more distressing to me that for the past two weeks I've had the refrain and part of the verses from Sweet Betsy from Pike traveling through my head. Except that I only remember the first half of one verse and the second half of another verse (and the rhyming parody that we made up to the same tune, Sweet Nancy from Zike). And even after having caught myself humming "too ray lie ooh ray lie ohh ray lie ay" more times than I care to admit, I still couldn't put together the missing chunks. So today I gave up and googled Betsy.

The Wee Sing people must have figured that their target audience was short of RAM, because out of about a zillion verses to the original folk tune, only three made it into the Wee Sing America book (pictured here is a more recent edition than the old-school blue-bordered one we had). In addition, they were hedging their bets on the fact that the eighties were clearly a more innocent time, since the words that I remember have her crossing the wide prairies with her husband Ike.

Well, go have a look at those words and come back here. That whore Betsy left for California before she got married, traveled across the country with her lover, played with guns, drank whiskey and made a habit of mooning people. What a slut!

Melted!

Late Saturday evening, a certain member of our apartmenthold went on a late-night ice cream raid.* I woke up the next morning and found the freezer door standing two inches open.

* Identity hidden to protect Frenchy

ALL the food inside was completely thawed, and so we spent the morning cooking: browning ground beef, boiling shrimp, cubing and cooking chicken, poaching fish. We've been eating pretty well this week!

Except this evening. I got all industrious and went grocery shopping after work. I marinated salmon, made an apple crisp and planned to have a great dinner ready for Frenchy when he came home grumpy from work. After that was done, I vacuumed the entire floor and cleaned the bathroom from tub to tile.

Then Frenchy calls and says he's going to poker night after all, when he had all but decided last night he wouldn't go. I hate it when he does this!

Let it go, Liesl. Breathe.

I am going to hell

Things to say when your redneck-teacher-Bridezilla-ex-friend gloats that she's pregnant and you're not.

"Gosh, I thought you wouldn't ever do anything to make your hips even wider."

"You already live with someone who has the mental age of a five-year-old. Are you sure you want another one?

"What stage is it at now? Does it look like a turd or an alien?"

"That's okay, I llike not puking every morning."

"Well, it's a good thing your students got used to getting less attention from you during your wedding planning--they'll be used to it."

"Congratulations! And you won't even need to have a baby shower, because you already have all the stuff from your husband's other two kids.....oh wait....he's a deadbeat dad."

"Are those the same hormones that made you grouchy for the nine months before your wedding, too?"

"Oh no, I've heard it's always the end of a friendship when one girl gets pregnant and the other one doesn't!"

"Great, now you can finally come to girls' night every week, because your husband won't be home alone--the baby can keep him company!"

"I'll buy you a Toby Keith album to play to your bump--that way the baby will recognize her kind when she comes out."

"Gosh, it's such a pity our house isn't baby-proof."

"Maybe you should consider switching to M condoms instead of XL. They do have a history of slipping off, you know."

"So, how's that baby savings account going?"

Hot

This is how I feel.

Or would you prefer this?


Sweet haunches of Hades, it's HOT here! When we moved in, I vaguely knew that the lack of AC would be an issue, but I conveniently shelved my worries in the more pressing need of getting away from the roommates. Now, well into July, the problem has reared its sweaty head.

Tips for surviving New York summers on a fourth-floor walkup with no AC
* Spend as long as possible at Borders in the evenings, basking in the glorious chill.
* Take multiple showers--one when you come home and frantically peel off all your clothes, one when you've washed the dinner dishes, and one when you go to bed. And possibly one when you wake up from the heat at 1 am, 3:45 am and 6 am.
* Get over the fact that the neighbors are probably enjoying watching you walk around naked. It's hot. You're past caring.
* Do as little as possible. This means housework, of course.

No really, I'm dying here. Frenchy didn't believe me when I told him that stand-alone air conditioners were $500. So I took him to see. Now he believes me. He wants to try and stick it out. I want to tell him to drop the last word in that sentence! I think I'm coming down with heat rash. Someone get me a cool cloth.