girlfiend

A few thoughts on American Idol before tonight’s result show. In bullets, because full sentences and paragraphs are just too much for me this week.

• Paula gets more and more bizarre. Drugs? Nerve damage? Either way, bitch is crazy.
• Watching AI I’ve learned that vests have made a comeback. Please. Vests have to go. Tight, cleavage enhancing vests should join ponchos and shrugs in a special fashion pit of hell.
• I can’t stand the dedication videos.
• Celine Dion songs should be banned from the competition.
• Celine Dion songs should just be banned in general.

• None of the guys are spectacular. Chris Sligh was my favorite, but his last two songs haven’t impressed me all that much.
• At least Blake’s interesting. The beatboxing reminds me of that a capella group at UPenn that does the techno songs.
• The other Chris has really grown on me. He’s my new favorite.
• I still don’t see the appeal of Sundance. I didn’t get it on the audition show and I certainly don’t get it now.
• Brandon is super hot, but dude is picking all the wrong songs.
• Sanjaya’s got to shave before he performs. The dirty looking moustache is a bad choice.
• AJ and the others just aren’t that interesting. Obviously they haven’t made an impression if I can’t remember their names.

• I don’t like Gina all that much.
• Antonella Barba is terrible and if she’s not voted off it’s because America wants to believe that she really is the chick in the blowjob pictures.
• Alaina Alexander is almost as bad as Antonella. Totally off key. Terrible song choice. And she, fortunately or unfortunately depending on how people vote, doesn’t have the wet t-shirt pictures online.
• Melinda and Lakisha are both incredible, but I’ll be shocked if either of them win.
• I like Stephanie, but her song this week wasn’t that great. Crazy in Love would have been more fun.
• Leslie is quirky and cute, but not good enough.
• Who did Haley’s hair? Crimp ‘N Curl Barbie?
• Sabrina’s great.

• I really like the Vote for the Worst website.
• Speaking of television websites, because I’m a loser, I found myself reading a site dedicated to Rory and Logan’s relationship yesterday.

I know I’ve done this many times and there’s very little regular readers don’t already know, but since I’ve been tagged by  lisamechelle I’ll do it again.

RULES: Each player of this game starts off with 10 weird things/habits/little known facts about yourself. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 10 weird habits/things/little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you need to choose 5-10 people to be tagged and list their names. No tag backs…

1. I’d have a Bert-style unibrow if I didn’t pluck obsessively.

2. After reading the book Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret when I was five or six I practiced raising my left eyebrow in the mirror until I could do it effortlessly. Now my eyebrows are uncontrollable. I have no poker face because my eyebrows give everything away.

3. People tell me I smile all of the time, which I find difficult to believe since I’m usually so damned cranky.

4. I read ridiculously quickly without trying. It was always painful in school when we had to read in class because I’d finish a good 10 minutes before everyone else.

5. The same goes with test taking. I always finish first and go back over my answers two or three times waiting until at least one other person has finished before turning it in. The standardized tests like the Praxis, where you’re not allowed to do anything when you finish are painful.

6. My fingernails are always dirty and uneven.

7. I am a terrible dancer. Truly terrible. So bad I had friends who used to show the part of their wedding video that featured my spastic dancing to everyone who visited their house. Fuckers.

8. My nickname for the Fiendling is Smooshy. Or Smushy. How would you spell it?

9. Aside from typos and a few lapses- Smooshy vs. Smushy- I am a naturally good speller.

10. When Uggs got popular a few years ago I was slightly bitter because the Uggs that I’ve worn as winter boots since 1997 were too water-stained to be fashionable. I’m not the type to wear them with miniskirts anyway.
I’m not tagging anyone, but if you choose to participate let me know in the comments and I’ll check it out.

1. I still haven’t gotten around to doing anything about the chapstick fiasco. The clothes are still sitting in the laundry room covered with wax. Awesome.

2. Today I checked two blogs I haven’t seen in a while only to learn that both bloggers are just into the second trimester of pregnancy. How do people keep their mouths shut? I lasted like a week before I blabbed all over the internet.

3. What’s up with people at the gym who insist on doing their hour long yoga practice on the stretching mats? There are two empty rooms with mats and mirrors at their disposal but they prefer to practice in the place that 90% of the gym members use to stretch and do ab work. It’s bright, it’s noisy, and frankly, the mats are pretty fucking nasty. Why not take a class? And people who talk on the phone on the treadmill? Shut up already.

4. What do you get people who have everything for a housewarming gift?

Since I gave up on the 50 books blog long, long ago, here are a few very short reviews of the last books of 2006. Happy New Year!

44. The Sea of Trolls

Excellent. Trolls, dragons, and adventure.

45. Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs

Chuck Klosterman’s essays should be read in very small doses, not all at once. His pop-culture irony gets old after a while.

46. Prom

Not Laurie Halse Anderson’s best book, but it was fun. The prom committee’s faculty sponsor spends all the money and Ashley who claims she’s not interested saves the day.

47. Charmed

A terrible book about a Canadian teenage girl who ends up a prostitute. That’ll teach her to cut school and smoke pot.
48. Party Girl
This book was either really bad or else I’m just not interested in stories about gangbanging Mexican teenage girls.

49. Wrecked

Loved it. E.R. Frank is a great writer.

50. Alice alone

Lame. Really, really lame. I don’t understand the appeal of the Alice series.

Lawmummy tagged me for this meme which I’m pretty sure I’ve done before, but I can’t find it in the archives so I’ll give it another go.

Five things you might not know about me.
1. I seriously considered moving to Portugal to be with a guy I met on vacation.
2. Howard 100 is my favorite radio station, closely followed by Sirius 26, Left of Center.

3. When it came to dance and gymnastics I was hopelessly uncoordinated and I was always incredibly embarrassed when I was forced to engage in those activities in elementary school and summer camp. I could never do the grapevine properly and I once caused an entire line of people to fall when I turned in the wrong direction during an open dress rehearsal for a musical.

4. Last weekend I got a haircut and I hate it.
5. I’m five books away from completing the 50 Book Challenge and I have only two more days in which to do it. Last night, because I hadn’t read it and it seemed like an easy read, I picked up a book that I’d otherwise never consider reading from my pre-teen library. I got to page eleven in about two minutes, and it was so bad I had to put it down. The book? The Boy-Oh-Boy Next Door, a Full House book about Stephanie.

Because it only cost $50, my mom (Jew) purchased a Christmas dinner for eight (ham) from the culinary arts teacher at her school and threw a small dinner party. I’d written a whole story about it, but now that time has passed, I think I’m better off listing some of the events that make it a typical gathering with my mom.
1. My mom threw her dinner party in her studio apartment. She lives at the shore most of the time so she has next to nothing in the apartment. She bought plates from the dollar store for the occasion and served pink martinis in a coffee press. Nothing says Cosmo like coffee grinds.

2. A few hours before the party half of her guests, a family of four, bailed. She had to scramble to find two other guests.

3. One of the last-minute guests, a guy she works with, has a tattoo of his nickname on his arm. Classy. (And I’m sorry if any of you were once drunk enough to get your own fucking name tattooed on your body, but really, it’s asinine)

4. After dinner my mom handed out a few gifts. She regifted some Bliss products my cousin gave her for Chanukah to her good friend, and gave us gifts from family friends. The Fiendling got a book. Boyfiend and I received a cake knife and server set.

5. After the gifts she served dessert. She asked me for the cake server I’d just opened. I told her no.

6. The first dessert, a yule log with meringue mushrooms, was horrible. She offered coconut custard pie as an alternative. She cut an enormous slice of pie and handed it to me. I told her it was way too big and Boyfiend offered to share it with me. He grabbed a fork and with my fingers I popped a coconut flake in my mouth.

7. I almost spit it out. “It’s salty,” I whispered. Boyfiend took a whiff of the pie and nearly gagged. “It smells bad,” he said, and passed it to my mom’s good friend who smelled it, wrinkled her nose and burst out laughing.

8.We stood around the plate giggling and my mom asked what the problem was. We told her and she said, “Oh no. I must have taken the seafood quiche out of my car instead of the coconut custard.”

9. We all gaped. The conversation went something like this:

“Wait, you have food in the trunk of your car?”

“Yes, I’m having another dinner party on Christmas Eve at the shore and I have a dinner for someone from work. I don’t have room in the fridge here.”

“But it’s 50 degrees outside, you can’t keep food in your car.”

“It’s not that warm.”

“Yes, it is, and tomorrow’s supposed to be 60. You have a seafood quiche and a ham in the trunk of your car? That’s not safe.”

“Two hams, some sides, a few pies and a quiche. It will be fine, leave me alone.”

10. I don’t think leaving a ham in the trunk of your car on a sunny day is ever fine, nor is it a particularly good idea.

11. Leaving eggs and seafood in the hot trunk of one’s car is even worse than leaving a ham.

12. Before we left my mother encouraged me to purchase a meal from the culinary arts teacher for Easter. I declined.

13. Upon arriving home Boyfiend and I both felt ill. In time we realized that it was the idea of the food, not the food itself, that was the culprit.

• I just had a really hard time deciding whether or not to watch the Gilmore Girls or One Tree Hill. Gilmore Girls won, but only because it recorded a day earlier. Boyfiend and the Fiendling are both sick now that I’m well (well being relative since I still have bronchitis which only seems to strike in the middle of the night through the early morning hours) which means that I get the TV to myself after 9.30. No Eagles, no Flyers, no shows on the History channel that I’d probably find interesting but refuse to give the chance. So here I am drinking wine (a lovely 2001 Merlot) and watching Gilmore, which was actually pretty good last week, though I’m underwhelmed so far this viewing.
• Earlier today I found myself pondering that the toilet flusher gets stuck sometimes and the water runs and runs.  However it seems like it only runs after I’ve pooped. Is that because I flush the toilet extra hard? Or is it merely coincidence?
• Yesterday the following sentence came out of my mouth as a truck refused to let me cross even though I was fully in the street when it passed: “Nice. You’re so fucking Jesusy with the cross hanging from the rearview mirror that you have to cut off a woman with a stroller.”
• The Fiendling has an amazon wishlist, yet I’m too embarrassed to pass the link on the appropriate parties. I don’t want it to seem like begging, yet I don’t want a buttload of inappropriate toys that will just clutter up the house. It’s a conundrum.
• I planned on hosting a Hanukkah dinner Sunday night because my mom (Jew) told me she wanted to come over Sunday to make latkes. Then my dad (non-Jew) called last night and asked why I was having Hanukkah a week early. I looked it up and sure enough he was right and my mom was wrong. So I emailed everyone and told them I was an idiot and rescheduled for next weekend.
• This past weekend it occurred to me just how much I miss Junkiegirl. Waah.
• The Gilmore Girls is so lame I may have to stop it and watch OTH instead. I am so cool.

Brining a turkey makes all the difference.

Paula Deen’s country stuffing is good, but regular stuffing is better.

One should never try new vegetable recipes on Thanksgiving. Everyone’s too busy eating the other stuff to care.

Banana Republic is finally selling shirts that hit below the waist. Belly shirts be damned.

A stomach virus, though I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, is a great way to lose the rest of the baby weight.

The combination of a stomach virus and a new, longer-length shirt from Banana Republic ensures that people will say, “You don’t look like you just had a baby,” at your high school reunion.

Nothing pleases a woman more than hearing the phrase, “You don’t look like you just had a baby,” from a number of different people.

No one on my mother’s side of the family can be trusted. They are all crazy in different ways and no matter how I try to stay out of it, I’ll always be dragged in.

Headbands look awfully cute on a short haircut.

One.9 Merlot isn’t bad at all, even if you’re not watching your carbs.

Three of the following are subjects of emails from people I know. The rest are spam. First person who gets all three wins a prize.

• bad predictions
• gay pedophilia
• frontal witchcraft
• fuel
• hi onion
• hunchback intellectually
• entomologist download
• good old boy Episcopalian
• one well-defined
• ad lib climax
• global orgasm project
• black magic UN
• stain indignantly
• salsa adornment
• sleight of hand lust

(edited to specify you should guess the real email subjects, not the spam. or was that clear already?)

Adding to my now outdated list of 100 things
101. I have three black hairs that I pluck obsessively- one on my chin, one on my cheek and one on my neck. These are in no way like my superlong eyelash that grows to be three inches long and gets split ends when left alone
102. The older I get the more I turn into my father. I’m becoming even more nutty about cleanliness and I’m constantly muttering about other drivers (they’re all assholes who shouldn’t be on the road, especially the ones who speed up to cut you off when you try to merge or the ones who stop in the middle of the street for no reason without blinkers or without pulling into one of the five available parking spots- see I’m getting all worked up) when I’m driving
103. I am far more relaxed about motherhood than I ever imagined. It’s all really, really good.
104. Back to the father thing, right now all I want to do is vacuum the rug but I can’t because the Fiendling has unfortunately entered a stage where he doesn’t like the vacuum.
105. Lately I’ve been seeing a number of women with kids who have nose rings which sort of makes me want to put mine back in. What’s stopping me you ask? The Fiendling would immediately try to rip it out of my nose and my father would ask, “what’s that thing in your nose?” and “when are you getting rid of that thing in your nose?” every time he sees me.
106. I was not expecting my dad to be such an influence in this section of the list.
107. I’m smug about breastfeeding which isn’t really fair because I know that despite the troubles I’ve had that I’ve had it relatively easy. I understand low supply and I understand allergies and I understand all of the other obstacles that women face like having nowhere to pump but a dirty restroom stall. But I can’t understand formula feeding just because you don’t want to breastfeed.
108. I went through about two years- 9th and 10th grade- where I was unhealthily self-centered and I just wasn’t very nice. So I’m really sorry if you knew me then and I treated you badly. You probably deserved better.
109. One of the best things about breastfeeding is the Fiendling’s sweet, milky smell.
110. Unless they’re no-show low-rider socks I always seem to have an issue with socks leaving elastic marks around my legs. I hate that.