Le Freak C'est Chic! (Sp?)*

Left: Me today Right: The NY Times!

You may have noticed lately that I have been posting a lot about feeling fat... and along with feeling fat, feeling scrubby... and underlying that, boring, old and cheap.

Geez, that sounds like a list of Snow White's Dwarves for the new millennium: Fatty, Scrubby, Boring (y?) Oldie, and Cheapy.

Any hoo, scratch all that because today I am chic and fashionable!
(Chic-y and Fashionable-y?)

Today I logged on to the NY Times and found this article and I said 'Whoa, that's my look today!'

And lo, I am born again. I am Audrey-esque, I am gallic, I am peppery. I am insolent and not uptight. Not at all!

I am Beat!

So let's all snap our fingers and go rent some Jean-Luc Godard films! I'm feeling quirky and rebellious! I am modern! Or moderne - ifyouplease.

I should go sit at Cafe DeVille and drink Campari and soda (Heather's drink!) from tiny glasses – while reading some Jack Kerouac.

Oh, Happy Day! Finally life has some meaning.

Or if it doesn't, maybe I'll find real meaning in the pages of this Septembers 700+ page Vogue.

Can't wait!

If I don't find meaning, at least my arms will get a workout from the 5 lb monster. Don't they look like they need it?

And did I mention that I have the right shoes on today too? I am so very pleased with myself.

Couldn't you tell from all of the exclamation points?


* I would like to point out that the reason I don't know how to spell in french is that Mom would not let me take french, because Heather took french. I had to take spanish. Riddle me that!

Finally I get to blame Mom for something!

I Am No Yogi

Clearly, this is not me.

So last night I went back to the gym. I know that you are impressed! I'm averaging a whopping once a week which is dissapointing considering my goal to fit into some of my sadly unwearable pants.

However, considering that my weekend included a wholly unexpected hike down a mountainside carrying a squirming two year old, and my monday was spent participating in team sports with my co-workers, this is turning into a pretty physically active week.

Any hoo, as I was saying, I went back to the gym last night and took my first yoga class in three years. There was a time when I was taking yoga classes once or twice a week and, even at that particular high point in my yoga career, I was no good at it.

Nothing has changed.

I am convinced that there is an extra tendon in each of my joints that is reinforced with titanium and constricts any sort of flexibility I might be trying to achieve.

Every other person in class can touch their heels to the ground in downward dog. Everyone else can pop right up to full wheel. And as I struggle to touch my fingertips to the ground when folding forward during my sun salutations, everyone else has their palms pressed firmly to the floor.

And doing any binding moves? Psych!

Now, I have good balance and I have the stamina to make it through the class... but the flexibility thing really bothers me. The sloppiest person in class is more flexible than me and it's pathetic!

Meanwhile, the yoga teacher is this very cut and dried fellow with big nostrils who breathes like a wild stallion while doing breath of fire. His nostrils were so distracting that I couldn't look at him during the class because, like a pimple or a birth mark, my eyes were magnetically drawn to his nose. This did not help my form.

On the positive side though, since part of what I love about a yoga class is the usual craziness of the instructors, it kept me engaged. Waiting to see what his nostrils would do next.

I've had other teachers who looked like super cute cheerleaders (hi Nicole! Stop innapropriately 'adjusting' my husband!), hippy grandmothers and german automatons (shades of Heidi Klum). But I have never had a teacher who was as un-yoga-instructor-like as the guy I had last night. No chanty music, no stories about the hindu gods. Only one resonant 'Ommmmmm' at the end. But with oxygen-quaffing nostrils like his, how could he resist?

My favorite instructor had a beard down to his navel and a buddah belly. He would mutter during the entire class and every once in a while you'd pick up just the end of a though...

"... and now we are breeeeeeeathing through our yoni as we roooooooooll down into reclining goddess pose... feel aaaaaaaall the energy come in through your yoni right up! to the tip of your head where your lotus flower rests, waiting patiently to unfuuuuuuuurl like the lotus of the blue elephant headed god Ganesh..."

And so on.

He looked like a member of ZZ Top and I was convinced that after class he would pull of the fake beard and rasta hat and look like a mild mannered accountant.

That's why I'll go back to yoga. I may suck at it, but the entertainment is worth it.

Sadly, my karma is now probably imbalanced because I've been mocking my instructors.

The Summer We Were Single

It's been a good summer here in Seattle. It's been a hot summer, the kind of hot where there's a rush on fans, and your windows are always propped open but still your apartment is hot, and you give up on trying not to be sweaty all the time and you sit on your couch in your underwear reading and eating popsicles and looking forward to the sun going down because it's too hot to go outside.

I'm a heat wimp, I'll admit. I'm a wimp about a lot of things, actually. I'm a wimp about being too cold, and in the Thai restaurant when they ask you how many stars, I always say "No stars, I'm a spice wimp." I am a wimp about answering the door for the pizza delivery guy. I don't know what it is about that, but I'd rather pay for the whole pizza than have to answer the door myself.

There are also a lot of things I am not wimpy about though. I'm not wimpy about twelve hour days at work, or about telling people things they don't want to hear, when I know they need to hear those things anyway. I am not a wimpy bridesmaid, or a wimpy HR professional, or a wimpy daughter. There are a lot of reasons why I might have let certain relationships go on too long, but being wimpy when it comes to ending things is not one of them.

Some people are wimpy about being single (no, I'm not talking about any of you, so stop thinking that). I am not. We have had a good summer of being single, Susan and I. Most weekends, we spend one or two mornings at Caffe Fiorre. I knit, Susan plays with the computer sometimes, and we talk about god knows what. I get raisin toast, Susan gets rosemary. Neither of us take jam. We look at all the dads who are there with their grubby little rosy-cheeked toddlers, and make jokes about how they might look all cute and ideal on the outside, but really at home, there is a mom who is sick of all their cuteness, and has kicked them out, saying "Get the hell out of my house for the day and take your devil spawn with you!".

Later on in the afternoon, maybe I go to the library, and then maybe in the evening we watch tivoed episodes of Project Runway while I do my laundry at her house. Sometimes we walk to the market by her house, and get a six-pack of Skinny Dip or a pack of ice cream sandwhiches and some kind of hydrating beverage. We talk about how the guy at the register would be cute if he didn't have those things in his ears, and then we walk back to her place through the playground at the school by her house, stepping over the big chalk drawing of a puppy on the way.

Most of these days, it's just a day, no big deal, we kind of coast through it. They are easy days. We can do what we want, and I might say that I'm going to go clear out my storage space or do my dishes, but probably I don't, and who cares anyway?

This is going to be the summer my apartment was messy. The summer I was lazy. The summer I rode around in Natalie with the top down, wondering why she was pulling to the left until the tire went all the way flat a block before the winery where I was going to see Pink Martini. The summer I wore out my Jack Rogers sandals while I knit 6 pairs of socks. The summer Kristine taught me how to pick up stitches along an edge, and weave neat seams for the baby sweaters for Dakota and Jenn. It will be the first summer someone had a baby at the Planter for 4th of July, and the last summer there was only one. The summer I always carried a notebook around with me, and sometimes wrote in it, and every once in a while dragged out my half-broken $35 laptop and typed something up, the summer my apartment was covered in piles of printed copies of bits of the novel, different versions of the pages, pages with comments in turquoise or purple pen from Barb, or sections with Lesley's carefully typed-up comments, or the chapters Pam sent back with her comments written diagonally across the back. The comments that I wouldn't let myself read until I was ready to fire up the computer and really dive in to the revisions, the comments that ended on the second page with something that delighted me, something like "And, I want you to ride my horse when you're here, if you want."

It will be the summer where the cute boys were Darren and Nate and Bobby and Andy and Henry, Quentin and Gary and Logan and the guys who unload the wine at Central Market in Mill Creek and sometimes, Doug.

Most of all, this will be the summer I spent with Susan. The Summer We Were Single.

Toodleoo!

Is that how you spell it? I have no idea. I stole this photo from one of my fellow writing group members - I think it's a great peek into what I will be doing a week from now.

I'll miss you at the blog! I'll try to post if I can.

XOXO
H

Other Ways in Which I am Famous (Besides for Drinking)

See that pretty photo on the cover of Communication Arts? That's a photo from a book I did design work on, Botanica, which is featured as one of their best books of photography for the year. They don't show the book as it was designed, rather, they show prints from the book but it's still pretty nice.

It's also pretty nice that I have a huge print of the photograph, inscribed to Eugene and I, from the photographer. Wishing us a 'happy life'. It's framed and hanging in our bathroom in Vermont.

Don't laugh. In a timberframe house, it's hard to find wallspace for something that size. And the frame is really nice!

Also mentioned in the same issue is the In Character; Actors Acting book that I also worked on. And they mention how handsomely designed it is. Unfortunately, I think I am only credited with page layout or something, but it's still nice. And since I am not the one who spends years conceptualizing and photographing the subjects for the books, I am okay with that.

I told you that we saw Robert Howell at the launch party for that book didn't I? He was working for the company that produced the event. Small world, no? Robert is still, well, Robert.

In case you are interested, the other books I have worked on with Howard are Athlete and Nude Body Nude. And apparently we are doing another book this fall. Woohoo!

Suffice to say, when you need your book cover designed, if you don't call me I will be devistated.

Crushed.

Really.

I'll cry myself to sleep weeping silent tears of desperation every night.

No pressure though!

Surreal Day at the Malcolm Sisters Blog

Wow, what a dream. I just don't even know what to say. Though I do like the idea of decorating using cute handknit baby sweaters. I'm worried - is the lion Jesus? You know, like in the chronicles of Narnia.

In other mysterious news today, Nate sent me the photo above, with the note below:

I thought you would appreciate this note that someone left me outside my house. When I came out to take this photo, an old woman was reading it. She asked me if I was the "handsome math nerd" and I said I supposed I probably was. When I told her I had no idea who wrote it, she said she was just imagining who it might be and where she would live and what kind of woman she would grow up to be. All I know is that who ever it is knows where I live, what I do for a living, and as Jackie-Rae pointed out, is able to acquire and make use of chalk.

He is so right, I did appreciate the note. But I couldn't really read the text in the photo above, so when I asked what it said, he told me this:

It reads:
Oh, handSOME
MATH NERD!!
... AND ALL I
REALLY WANT
TO KNOW WHY
THERE LECHEROUS
EYES AND NOT
YOURS?!

I believe an 'IS' should be supplied in line 5.

So, figure that one out, while you're at it.

Crazy Dream No. 1

So last night I had a crazy dream. Actually, I have a fair number of crazy dreams so I thought they might make for a good blogging subject.

I'll tell you the crazy dream and you can tell me what you think it means. Here goes.

Euge and I are back in Seattle. It's nighttime, pitch black and raining. We are driving around like crazy people, careening about overpasses and up and down hills.

We go to meet up with Dakota and Clay. We meet them at a pizza parlor - more Two Boots than Sbarros... kind of like Pagliaccis but nicer. The room is painted a dark orange - almost burnt sienna - and lining the walls at about a 6 foot height are square shadowboxes with little hand-knit baby sweaters in them. We are sitting in a booth.

Suddenly, the door opens and a women, who I don't recognize, rushes in wearing a yellow rain slicker. She seems to be there to meet a man at another table, and she tries to close the door behind herself. Before she can, a big, shaggy haired lion bursts through.

Eugene tries to feed the lion peanut butter from his fingertips.

And then I woke up.

Props

Some guys - or people, or whoever - deserve some props because they are willing to drive 4 hours to help rip your roof off and they are, possible, willing to speak to you after you get them stranded in BF Egypt Connecticut after your poor car dies.

And they are also willing to make silly faces for your camera. Silly, pouty faces.

Jooooooeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!! Eeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiicccccccc!!!!!!

Yo, you guys are solid.

Kim gets props for helping to burn the roof. But I have no photos of that.

p.s. Check out the huge hole from the mice. Yes, that square in the photo that Euge cut out of the roof. I am going to kill all of them. Kill all the mice!

No, I Really Did Work on The Manuscript

It's true, I did! Okay, right after this picture was taken, I stopped writing whatever I was writing and goofed around with Susan a bit, but I had already been at the coffee shop scribbling for a while when she took this. And I will be tapping on the computer for more hours tonight.

Which makes it a damn good thing that I LOVE the manuscript. Don't take that in the "I think I'm such a great writer" way, because that's not how I mean it. It's just that something happened, and now I live in that place that writers talk about, where the characters take on a life of their own, the story takes on a life of its own, and you know that when you sit down to start working on it, something is going to happen.

Last night, on a break from the manuscript (lots of breaks, very important when you are in love with your own work), I watched one of the DVD extras from Lost in Translation - the making of, or whatever. Sophia Coppola was talking about how happy she was that she got to work with Bill Murray, and how she couldn't believe that she got to dress him just the way she wanted to, and have him sit on the hotel bed looking glum the way she imagined, like in that photo for the poster, and I just thought "yeah, that's exactly how it feels". I love the manuscript like it was my child, the way Bill Murray's Lost In Translation character says that your children grow up to be "the most delightful people you've ever met".

Maybe all of this is really vague if you aren't into writing, but I think most of us have something we do that we can look at and say "I like that" about. I know you have that as a designer, Ali, and sometimes I also feel it about my knitting.

But feeling it about my novel is just a different thing. It came from me, but it has this weird life, I can step outside it, I can read the book and appreciate it as a reader. I think a lot of this is just a meditation on the magic of language, the way you can pick a word, but the word has an iridescence to it. It's as though you picked red, but what you got was red underneath, with a lot of other colors that you didn't anticipate, shimmering over the top. It has more meaning than you necessarily put in it - the words just give you that. This especially happens when you get to the point where your piece is long enough that the old stuff you haven't touched in a while is almost new to you.

People ask me what the book is about all the time. After last night, I wanted to tell people that it's like the Lost In Translation of novels. Two people who are lost sort-of bump into each other and you see these little sketches of their worlds.

I hate to say it, because I worry what people will think, but it's also about grief. A lot of loss in this book. But it's also my attempt to talk about some of the things that hold me to this earth, and my two characters are like the parts of me that are not sure they want to stay here, but do. I started writing this book when I was in the worst part of things with Steven, and while I knew I would never hurt myself, for various reasons, being close to him meant being close to suicide as a question people ask themselves about the world.

I haven't been close to that question much in the last ten years, but before that, I put myself in its way a lot. I was close to that question when I was tending bar in NY, when among my regulars was a man who would sometimes go out into the night, quietly, and lay down in the middle of 2nd Ave to be run over. His fellow drinkers would go out and drag him back into the bar, but he was really only coming inside to kill himself another way, wasn't he?

Only a few years later there was Pauly, and there are numerous other people I've been close to whose grip on any kind of healthy existence... well, if you said that grip was slipping, you might be accused of being WAY too optimistic.

It isn't an accident that the only men in the manuscript so far are ghosts. Stephen King says that he writes about his worst fears, and with this first book, in some ways I can say the same thing. I have always felt that I could help my girlfriends, that we made a vital difference to each other and could keep each other going through the worst stuff. And my girlfriends have seen some hard things, every kind of loss. The kind of loss that can make me tear up now just thinking about it, more than a year away from most of it. I'm sorry to say that, while I have some kind of faith that my girlfriends and I can keep each other going, the only really close friend I've had who committed suicide was a woman.

But the original seed of fear that this book started with has to do with how hard it's been to be close to men that I didn't feel I could do much for. Or at least, that was the surface thought, until I got deeper into the book, and realized that it was about something else, something that I might talk about some other time.

I was thinking about all this when I drove to work this morning, pondering the finishing touches I wanted to put on the love letter to Nate. I was thinking about the love letter to Nate and the love letter to Bobby, and the unwritten love letter to the cowboys, and I realized that these guys are showing up as a kind of counterbalance to the ghosts in the novel. I was inspired to write about these men who give me some kind of delight with their existence, and I like the pattern that writing about them makes. I like knowing why they are important to me, what they mean in my world right now and why I feel so grateful to them. What matters to me most right now is not my relationship to any of them, but that they exist.

Maybe the second book will be short stories, after all.

Swimmin' Hole

Your post got me thinking about summer, and what that means to me, and how this summer hasn't really felt like much of a summer at all - and why that might be.

Normally, during the summer we are at our most active. Kayaking, rafting, barbequeing, hiking and climbing and being all wet and sandy and smelly and sunburned. This summer hasn't been so much like that.

This summer has been just the pure drudgery of roofing weekend after weekend.*

This weekend, though, we knocked off work early on saturday and went to our town swimming hole. And it was a pure delight.

It's a small swimming hole, just a deep bend in a creek really. But it's deep enough to jump into and warm enough that you can still breathe when you surface for air.

When we got there, a father was standing on shore watching his two daughters and their dog fool around in the water. The girls were little - just nine and six, I'm guessing. They wore little sporty bikinis, sandals and - in the case of the younger girl - a huge snorkeling mask.

The older sister was all limbs and suntan and the younger sister was all belly and wet, rat-tailed hair. While the eldest was comanding the dog to come here and go there, the younger was prattling on to us about how they'd found an amphibian with its tail still attached and how we should be extra careful not to step on it.

Eugene jumped in the water and was having a fine old time playing with their dog, but I was mostly just watching the girls. The youngest was being silly, taking her shorts off and the older was playing the responsible (and horrified) older sister roll to the hilt.

The Dad looked like he wasn't quite sure what to do with them.

After a while, he tried to get the whole group together to head home, but the little sister didn't want to get out. She kept climbing out of the water and jumping back in, saying just one more time! just one more time! every time.

Finally the Dad said come on, don't you want to roast marshmallows? She was out of the water like a shot.

While they were walking away, I was laughing to myself at the site of her little bum half-hanging out of her bathing suit, and I had the strangest feeling. This weird feeling of in-between.

Remembering what it was like to be that little, jumping in the cool water, fascinated by a frog, delighted by the idea of a good marshmallow roasting. And all at once feeling like an adult watching from the shore in wistful anticipation of my own kids' antics.

And that was altogether too serious so I jumped in the water with all my clothes on.



* Except that weekend in LaConner of course, with the sun and the cowboys and whatnot.

What I End Up Writing When I Should Be Writing For a Manuscript Submission

I should have taken a picture of Nate’s shoes. Or of just the frayed button placket on the shirt he was wearing.

Nate is the kind of guy who, if you try to take a picture of him, stops doing whatever he was doing that made you want to take a picture in the first place. He’ll turn his head, or straighten up to face the camera, maybe try a smile, like he doesn’t know what you want to see through the camera lens, or what you were seeing before you lifted the viewfinder to your eye.

So, I think of these little visual details, and I imagine I could have gotten more intimate pictures of him through those things than I got when I took a picture of him directly. If I had trained a camera on his shoe, he woud have just let me take the picture. Maybe he would have laughed, or asked me what was doing. I can’t say for sure, though, he’s a mystery to me.

I, on the other hand, am no mystery when I’m around Nate. I go all talkative, almost as talkative as I was on Friday night with my girlfriends and a mojito.

Still, “when I’m around Nate” is a funny thing to say about a person who I hadn’t seen in a year until Saturday, and who I hadn’t spent much time with at all before that. It’s a phrase that conjures up some kind of intimacy that wouldn’t seem to make sense for the kind of minor characters Nate and I are in each other’s lives. But there are some funny things about intimacy – like how a few hours spent looking at someone’s button placket can create it, or how you can feel it with someone who is a mystery to you, someone you know you do not know. It happens when you let that person feel familiar to you anyway.

On Saturday, Nate rang the intercom to my apartment at 5:17 PM (according to my phone), and at 10:23 PM, I was back in my apartment on my own, checking the messages my phone had collected while I was out.

It felt like a long five hours, and I mean that in the best way. It was an adventurous 5 hours.

We started with coffee at Fiorre. Now, I know what you all are starting to think about me and that place, but he asked for coffee, he talked about how Seattle has such good coffee, all he wants to do is drink coffee when he’s here. Anyway, I like being in love with Fiorre. Summer is for being in love. Being in love and leaving the house with your hair wet and wearing sandals with your jeans and bikini tops under t-shirts, and summer is for eating outside, even if there are bees.

All of which I did on Saturday.

So, after Fiorre, we had dinner at Agua Verde, or rather, at the park next to Agua Verde, with the bees, where Nate saw a guy he doesn’t really know from Vancouver, and they talked about taking bike rides, and I looked at the guy’s old school brown sneakers, which he was wearing on a bike that had those tiny pedals that are meant for you to clip into. The five or ten minutes the guy was there and then especially the moment he rode his bike away felt like a scene from the movie “Slacker”.

But anyway, after all that, Nate said “Should we go to Seattle Center or wherever it is with the rides?” the way a boyfriend you’ve lived with for a while would say “Sh’we go to the grocery store?”, without even bothering to finish saying the word “should” at the beginning of the sentence. Only I was a whole lot happier than I would have been if he was suggesting we go to the grocery store. He knew I wanted to go on the rides because I sent him a text message the night before that, through some technological fluke, was delivered to him at 4AM.

We just watched the rides for a while before we finally got on one. The problem with watching the rides at Seattle Center is that only about half of them are being ridden at any given time. The attendant for the Orbiter sat in one of the ride’s grimy cars like he was grounded, kicking his legs out in front of him and slouching. There was a thorough purity to his boredom that I had not seen since high school trigonometry class. It was like he was sitting in a trig class that didn’t have a single hot chick worth lifting an eyelid for.

I loved it. Because sometimes summer is also for boredom.

After Nate and I actually rode the Orbiter, though, its attendant’s boredom seemed almost perverse. Here, right over his head, is one of the most intense kinesthetic experiences you can have on this earth. Or at least that’s how I felt about it when I tried to walk afterwards. Now, I know that it is not the most intense amusement park ride, and that people jump out of planes etc. But really, on any given day most of us are doing fairly ordinary things with our bodies. We get from here to there, maybe we get the heart rate up a little, exercising or what have you.

The Orbiter is just a different kind of reality from all that. The Orbiter reminds you that physics is no joke. It reminds you that gravity is mostly gentle with us earthlings, that centrifugal force does not have to handle us so tenderly, and yet, mostly, it does.

There was more to the evening than the Orbiter. There was an anemic attempt at skee ball, a game of dayglo air hockey that Nate won handily, and there was Nate looking for a kid to give our extra ride tickets.

Towards the end, we went up in the Space Needle. It’s different now, crowded, with the whole ground floor around the base turned into a donut of a gift shop, and just before you get in the elevator, they try to take your picture in front of a phony Seattle skyline, like you were at the prom. Still, I find the observation deck of the Space Needle an utterly satisfying place to be and I wished we could have stayed there long enough to really get bored.

One lasting effect of the night is that I have an annual pass to the Needle again, so next time it gets too hot on Queen Anne Hill, I say we all pile in the elevator and sit on the benches up top for a good long time. The old bar that made you feel like you were in an airport is gone, and while I mourn the loss of it, there’s a concession stand now, and I’m thinking maybe we can get some ice cream there instead.

Because of course, summer is for ice cream, and for going somewhere to look at the view, and for being in love with more of the world than usual, including cute boys wearing navy blue suede sneakers and $5 mirrored sunglasses. The kind of sunglasses that you try to see past your own reflection into, and sometimes can. But the sunglasses remind you that the boy with the brown eyes behind them is really seeking only a conversational mathematical intimacy that you can’t offer him. Still, I’m the kind of girl who can sympathize, and who knows how to love a guy just a little bit less than the amount that would make his girlfriend start to mind.

And that’s what I did on Saturday.

Prepare Yourself for a Complete Waste of your Time

Blegh!

I am soooooo uninspired to write this week.

Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's the fact that Euge has been working non-stop. Maybe it's the lingering effects of last weekends debacles.

There are supposed to be rainstorms tonight. Maybe that will clear my head.

Beyond my inability to express myself here, I am also suffering a creative block at work. Of course, with work, I have years of experience designing crap - so I can pretty much fake it.

Or do busy work until something comes to me.

That's the good thing about Corporate America - there is always busy work.

It's also the good thing about having a 'creative' job. The ability to fake it until something genuine comes along. Of course exploiting the ability to fake it is completely antithetical to how one is supposed to think about being a creative.

I think of it as being akin to plastering a smile on your face when you are in a bad mood. Eventually the smile is contagious and your mood turns around. With design I can just keep throwing stuff together until something makes me go 'hmmm...'

Sometimes I visit other websites that are devoted to designers all getting together and collectively examining their design navels and I wonder what it is that I am missing. Or I laugh at how full of themselves they are. It's not brain surgery people! It's making pretty pictures!

I do usually have a concept. I mean, I am not a complete fake. For example, I was designing a brochure for a property in rural New Hampshire so I used quilting as a starting off point. Apropos, no? And I thought that the finished piece was very successful. Maybe next I'll do one with knitting as a starting off point. Hee.

In any case, this post is complete blather. I hoped that if I kept writing something interesting or funny would come to me. Hasn't happened has it?

And now it's time for me to go home.

Thanks for wasting your time with me.

What's up with the Car Kharma? and thank God for Knitting

Okay, so, I have even MORE sympathy for your weekend of disaster now, since last night, there was another loss in the family. Natalie appears to have died.

Her check engine light came on, then it felt like the clutch was going, then it was okay. Then when I parked her, the coolant came bubbling up from the radiator into the coolant reservoir, then, moments later, it was gone. All gone! NO coolant in the reservoir!!!

I left her at the barn and got a ride to the Target in Redmond. Then I waited for Elvis to come get me. It's a good thing I had my knitting with me. The Target bench where I sat waiting was not nearly as lovely a setting as the LCS pictured above, but I was knitting on those very socks and as long as I kept my eyes on the yarn, everything was pretty.

But let me just say, no one will ever get me into a Target again.

Cutest Ever

It's official, this is the cutest thing I ever made. This sweater is cute, but really, Dakota is even cuter. So cute that when she opened the bag and pulled out this sweater and I looked at her sweet face, I started to cry. I did.

This is why I knit, people. Because there is going to be a Dakota baby, and that Dakota baby is going to wear my sweater made with my own hands!

All the teeny little stitches, the $100 trips to the yarn store, the hand cramps, the cursing, the mad dashes to Kristine's Wednesday night drop-in knitting class so that she can soothe me with whiskey tea and help me figure out how the hell to put all those little pieces together without having them end up all wonky and lumpy - all of that, totally worth it when you see Mrs. Keene Marsh holding up a little stripey sweater you made at her baby shower.

She made it double worth it when she gave me the Cowboy Mix CD that will serve as commemorative materials for our night in the Woolley, Summer '06. Juice Newton, that's all I have to say. Juice. Newton! Wow!

P.S. The sleeves are supposedly to be mis-matchedy

Masters of Disaster

My husband, Destro the Destroyer*

So this weekend was a bit of a disaster.

We were having our friends Kim, Eric (aka KillaWatts) and Joe (Jo-ey!!) help us with the further demolition and reconstruction of our roof (props to all of them!) and from moment one it was problem after problem.

Phase One: Leaving town. Friday night and everyone is ready to go. Except Eugene. Stuck at work until 9:30, we don't leave until ten - meaning an arrival time of 1:30 in the morning. An early morning start is unlikely.

Phase Two: Actual demo. There's nothing like ripping off your perfectly fine looking roof and disovering that you have water damage, ant damage and a mice condo rotting your roof. And then having a freak rainstorm start right after you have excavated a lot of the damage - leaving a huge hole in your roof. And then, while waiting for the rain to pass, seeing a big water spot develop on your ceiling. Hee! Home ownership is great!

Phase Three: Reconstruction. Things actually went relatively smoothly on Sunday. Some of our neighbors came over and helped and no more major disasters presented themselves until...

Phase Four: Going Home. We left VT around 9pm, pleased that the problems with the roof had been corrected - to the degree that they could be - and the whole thing had gotten its waterproof covering. Granted, we could have left earlier but the work crew was enjoying some beers and a few moments of actual relaxation.

Almost three hours later, in the hinterlands of Connecticut, our car decided it had had enough of all this driving stuff and quit on us. We managed to make our way to an exit (the Parkway we were on had no shoulder - yikes!) and into a Park n' Ride parking lot.

Unfortunately, the Park n' Ride lot was not actually adjacent to any form of public transportation - a mystery for the ages to be sure. It mostly seemed like a likely place for clandestine meetings. Numerous vehicles pulled in and, upon seeing the group of us standing there, pulled out. Either they were looking for a hook-up, or we are all a lot scarier looking than I thought.

So, we call AAA and try to figure our next move. A very surly State Trooper (I know, it's redundant as all State Troopers seem to be surly) stops and gives us virtually no useful information aside from the fact that the train station is "far away" and you can get toll-free (!!!) information by calling 1.800.373.3411 (1.800.FREE.411 - clever). He then drives away - unconcerned by our plight.

Luckily, Eugene has a cousin who lives in the area (the benefits of having a family that practically blankets the tri-state area finally emerges!) and she - hereafter and forever to be referred to as 'Saint April' - was willing to come to our aid. She showed up with her SUV and a shockingly cheerful mood - for someone so rudely awakened at 12:30 on a sunday night.

What ensued was an oddysey of train stations, subaru dealerships, motels and rest areas that didn't conclude until almost almost 4 am. Or at least that was when we all got to go to sleep at April's condo. We then had to catch a 7:36 am train into New York so that we could all, exhausted as we were, drag ourselves to our respective jobs.

My apologies, again, to all parties involved.

My especial apology to our credit card, which will have to bear the brunt of the $1200 it will cost to get our car fixed plus the $100 or so that it cost to get it towed. Not to mention the $500 or so that we had to spend on additional roofing materials to deal with the mess that was uncovered.

Good thing we are made of money! And have a money tree planted in the back yard!

When we look to buy a primary residence, I am thinking co-op. Let somebody else worry about the roof and the pipes and the multitude of other things that are bound to go wrong with a house.

My husband, the masochist, is still thinking 'house, house, house.'


*This is the nickname that he was given by Eric - based on his love for Halloween cotumes that involve body paint and, naturally, his baldness... but it seems particlarly apropos to this weekend.

What I'm Knitting Now

Dear Readers,

I know you've been missing the knitting content. I'm sorry. I'll try to make it up to you this week.

It will undoubtedly interest you to know that I am working on three pairs of socks right now, including the ones you see above. On Saturday I was at my local coffee shop (which shall be referred to hereafter as LCS, since apparently it needs to be referred to frequently) and a man I often see there said to me "When I met my wife nine years ago, she was knitting in a coffee shop."

So now I just need to teach Susan how to knit again and then we'll get her married off right quick. Hee hee!

Our Roots, Yo

So this is the trailer where Dad spent his teenage years in Alaska.

It's in North Pole - yes THE North Pole - and it is surrounded by fast food restaurants. There is no conceivable reason why this trailer - sorry Dad - wanagan survives fifty years later. I am fairly sure that it was old even when Dad lived there. So I have to assume that it is meant to be a memorial of sorts.

Proof of our white trash roots.

So, with that in mind, I am off to buy some cheetos, a super big gulp of diet coke, and some blue eyeliner. This weekend I will head over to Walmart to get me some Juicy Couture knock-off track suits (hopefully with some pithy saying written in a particularly virulent color across my ass) and some midriff-baring tank tops.

I've been trying to decide what tattoo to get but the location is a natural. Somewhere on my bosoms. Preferably in my visible cleavage. I'm thinking Tasmanian Devil, Drunken Mushroom, or - in my future baby daddy's honor - a leprechaun with a big erection. What do you think?

I'm also thinking that the Subaru Outback has to go. We need something cooler. A bronco with jacked-up suspension and a vanity plate that says 'BORNWLD'? A van with an airbrushed tiger on the side, plush carpeting and a captain's chair? What to do, what to do.

I'll be quitting my job next week. I've decided that the career prospects at Hooters are really promising.

In case you think that all of this is a joke, you're wrong. Remember, I did enter a Busweiser bikini contest. That was just practice. It's on now, yo.

I Am a Famous Wino! I Mean Oenophile..

Today I am quoted in the NY Post! I am talking about our neighborhood wine shop which has wine tasting dispensers.

I happened to be there, discussing my co-worker Maragaret's wedding plans and showing off the neighborhoods newest attraction (FREE WINE!) when the reporter from the Post approached us. They also took our picture, but I guess we weren't as cute as the 21-year-old celebrating her birthday. However, they quoted ME and not HER!

The above photo is only a means of illustrating me drinking. It's water, not wine.

Eyes on the Road!

Will have to let a photo speak for me today, no time to post!

My, How the MIghty Have Fallen

If I wear a helmet all the time - do you think it would make the rest of my body look smaller?

So this morning we went to the gym. For the second time in two months. And the second time in one week.

What motivated this revolutionary new attitude towards gym going? Last friday my company had a casual day. Which meant that I got to wear pants to work.

PANTS!

(Yes, it's true that on, literally, every day of my working life I wear a skirt of some sort. I've come to terms with it and so can everyone else. I think of it as a very convenient separation of church and state in my closet. Much like Mr. Rogers and his sweaters and sneakers, when I get home from work I ritualistically change out of my skirt into something more comfortable. It works for me, okay?)

So, in preparation for this day of freedom, I tried on all the pants in my pants drawer. All of them. The percentage that fit me? 30. Thirty. Three-Oh.

None of the lovely Joseph pants fit. Not one pair. Even my jeans from last summer didn't fit. Nor did my Agnes B black cotton trousers. Well, they buttoned - but were so tight around my roly-poly waist that I looked like an ant. Of what did fit, a shameful percentage involved either stretch fabrics, drawstring or elastic waists, or the mental note of 'fat pants.'

I realized that my skirts are more forgiving. They can ride up a little higher and still fit. So in a way, my skirt uniform has contributed to the gradual, barely noticed - but very real - expansion of my ass. So, if for no other reason, damn my skirt uniform!

I ended up wearing my Seven for All Mankind jeans that I bought with you and Eugene last fall. They fit. They have lycra in them. God bless the person who thought to put lycra in jeans.

Any hoo, I find the state of my physique to be wanting. After this horrible exercise in futility I looked more closely at the state of things and noticed some dimpling that I had not seen before. Dimpling is bad. Dimpling is very hard to get to go away.

Then I did some math and realized the sheer volume of cash we were wasting not going to the gym. I could buy lots of new pants with that money, but I would rather not allow the Great Ass Expansion to proceed any further. I take my stand here. This is where it ends! Huzzah!

So this morning we got up at 6:45 and went to the gym. I ran around the track (yay air conditioning!) I ran around the sand volleyball court (good lord that was HARD!) I did abs, I did arms, I did The Exercise Which Hath No Name, which a personal trainer taught me and is the single most painful thing you can conceivably do to your ass and outer thighs. Ask me and I will show you sometime. And it will hurt you too.

And I will be back tomorrow. Those Joseph pants are too expensive to throw away.

And I don't look good in dimples.

I Brake for Ferris Wheels

Saturday morning I met Susan at the coffee shop and we drank our iced lattes. They were made by Andy, who was hungover, and that was funny because he was still all clean-looking and tall, but looking carefully, you could see that his eyes were just a little bit red - usually they are very bright and clear. I don't think he appreciated my noticing that.
Eventually I wandered home and pulled together my knitting and other amusements, put on a summer dress and zipped up north to the company picnic in Snohomish. I did have a nice time, and I ate popsicles and watermelon and took my shoes off and walked in the grass and found out that one of our VPs somehow found our blog!!! (Hi I.G.!)
After the picnic (and I'm sad to report that there was no piglet show because apparently the piglets got out of their pen and the eagles who nest in a tree near the Farm swooped down and had some tender bacon for breakfast one morning) I pulled out my Lynyrd Skynyrd box set and got Natalie back on those country roads. One of the country roads took us by Klahaya days outside of Snohomish, and what Klahaya days seemed to mean was a travelling carnival with funnel cakes and a ring toss where you could win a bowl of goldfish, and carnies the color of a leather handbag for whom a cigarette was really a kind of 11th finger.

When I saw the ferris wheel featured above, I had to stop. This is the kind of girl I am, the kind of girl I make a conscious effort to be. I will stop to ride the ferris wheel, even if I have to do it all by myself. Actually, in some ways it's more amusing to stop and ride the ferris wheel all by yourself.

But I didn't end up riding the ferris wheel all by myself. Turns out, if you don't weight the ferris wheel appropriately "you can try to stop the thing, but it'll just keep on going. even if you put it in reverse, it'll keep right on going forward". At least, that's what the guy running it told us. I wasn't going to challenge him on this. So he put me in a car with a long-haired grizzly dude and his little son, who had spectacles and seemed a little tentative about it all. I took their photo together up at the top and he gave me the thumbs-up sign.

On the way down, the little boy said "My eyeballs don't feel too good."
"Your eyeballs?"
"Yeah, my eyeballs feel like they're gonna barf!"

And that, my friends, is going in the book for sure.

You Can't Handle the Cuteness!

Hi there,

Love the NY monsoon post!

Here's another of Charlotte, with her mama Chelsea. I've got a full weekend, including Sunday brunch with these ladies.

This is going to be one of those Summer Weekends. It's Hot here. Not just Seattle Hot, but even Everywhere Else Hot. It would be hot even if we were in NY. I'll have the top down on the car and probably get a sunburn and change clothes several times a day, but that's okay, because it's fun to take a shower in the middle of the day, and go outside with your hair wet and flip-slops on your feet and just a summer dress.

The SGEN company picnic happens tomorrow. I'll get up in the morning and have an iced latte at my Local Coffee Shop (I'm into capitalization today). Maybe Bobby will make it - he's my local barista, you know. That was a riddle in the Ode to Bobby post, but I don't think anyone figured it out. Then I'll drive north to a place near Snohomish where I can take my shoes off and have my feet in the grass, and the picnic will be more fun than usual, because it's been such a lovely month at work, and now that people know about my writing and the ranch adventure, there are a few more non-work topics to talk about.

After the picnic, I'll zip down to Boss Kirsten's house, probably shower again in her big house, and then head out with her to see Pink Martini at the winery. Have I told you about her group of girlfriends? They are all a few years older than me, and were sorority sisters together at Western. If you are like me, the phrase "sorority sisters" may not conjure up the best images, but sorority girls from Western seem to be considerably less noxious than the Typical Sorority Girl. They are a very close and loyal group and I've been impressed by the way they have supported each other over the years. They call me "New Girl", even though I first met them several years ago. They could be very entertaining at the concert, since they like their wine.

Josh S. is having a party that same night, maybe I'll drop by. Did you know he lives on 18th and Aloha now? Everyone's moving back to the hill.

Then Sunday there's the brunch, and I really need to do some laundry and some writing. The next Pamfa workshop starts August 14! We'll be there the weekend before for Pam's Take Back the Ranch party. Can you imagine it?

Tonight, right now, I'm about to pack up and have dinner with friends, Mikalea and Henry and their two kids. After that, I drop by to get my presents from Elvis. Apparently he brought me trinkets from Europe.

Have a great weekend!
XOXO
H

What's wrong with this picture?

So off we went to the Philharmonic in Central Park. Aren't we classy? I know you're looking at that picture thinking just how classy we are.

It was hot, hot, hot. We thought that this would dissuade some of the usual thousands of people from showing up. Wrong, wrong, wrong. You can see from the above photo just how wrong we were.

The Great Lawn was packed. People had some pretty elaborate setups too, with tables, candles, iceboxes, lounging chairs and decorative serving bowls for their picnics. We kept it old school with a blanket, chips and salsa and guacomole (from Whole Foods yo!) and some frosty beverages that had spent the day chillin' in the freezer.

Our friend Trish had already saved us a spot and we were to find her by tracking down her orange and yellow balloons. There must have been a massive sale on orange and yellow balloons though, because those were literally the only colors we saw. And there were a lot of them. Orange and yellow balloons to the horizon. Luckily, Trish had mentioned that hers were light orange and yellow balloons so, because of my advanced graphical sensibilities, we were able to track her down.

I can't say that we listened to the music overmuch. We were distracted by the antics of the three-year old topless girl on the adjacent blanket. And the contact high from the ganja being smoked on another blankeet was pretty diverting too.

It didn't seem that anyone else was paying much attention to the music either until Bethoven's Fifth was being played. Then everyone was whooping it up because they actually recognized it! And they pumped the volume waaaay up. The Great Lawn was rockin'.

At the end of the concert there was a fireworks show - not as great as LaConner, but then how could a burg like Manhattan expect to compete with the reservation? Certainly the fireworks did not go off all night, like in LaConner. And there were no exciting brush fires, like in LaConner. And we didn't have the charming bartender from the LaConner pub, but all in all it was okay. Oh, and we weren't playing Crazy Eights - so LaConner fireworks definetly beat Central Park fireworks hands down.

Then, after the fireworks, we were loitering - waiting for most of the hordes to depart - when

BOOM!


The water saturated skies opened up and let loose upon us.

As most people who live (or have lived) in New York know, summer rains in New York are like mini-monsoons. They drop water like buckets - torrential buckets - and blow themselves out in half an hour.

If you are lucky enough to be indoors or near shelter when this happens, you can stay put and wait it out with a minimum of fuss or dampness (provided you remembered to shut your window, but that's another story). However, if you are caught out in the open - in the middle of the Great Lawn, for example - there is really no hope for you.

People were running around like lunatics with plastic bags over their heads, sheets draped over themselves, fold-up seats as makeshift umbrellas and many equally absurd attempts to stay dry.

Euge and I were just laughing. It was HOT WATER. Like being in a shower. And it was everywhere, there was no escaping it. You could really only embrace it.




These rains are actually one of the things I love most about summers in New York. They are so wild and brief. Like the teenage boys of the weather spectrum.

People were streaming out of the park - ignoring the beauty of the water cascading down the glass windows of the Temple of Dendur in the Met, ignoring the vast lawns in favor of the water - and people - logged paths. Trying, ridiculously, to keep dry. It was hysterical.

We caught a bus on Fifth Avenue, along with 60 other soaked individuals, and laughed our way home. It was almost the best part of the evening.

Actually, it was the best part of the evening.

What's In the Box?

There it is. The truth about Allison, revealed, in the form of a music box. This, my friends, is just one of the many items belonging to Allison that I have moved around with me over the last 6 years. Alright, I bear some of the blame for never having opened said box, but can you blame me? The box had "Allison's Doll Collection" written clearly across the front of it. I understand the sentimental value of such a box, but don't really feel the need to see the dolls myself. It was only recently that I decided to open the box, thinking, ah yes, this will be a funny blog entry, we'll take scary photos of the dolls!

Well.

The box was not full of dolls. The box was full of banana combs with velvet poufs on them, a commemorative booklet from Fergie and Andrew's wedding (Allison was once quite the Anglophile, at least when it comes to the royalty), some old nylon stockings, a Snoopy pin, loose beads, single earrings and also, this music box.

This box is a time capsule. This box is a peek into Allison's soul, circa 1986.

I think it will look really nice in her Manhattan pied a terre, don't you?

Look who came to visit!

Beryl and Amber took the train up to visit me last week. Doesn't Beryl hurt your eyes with her cuteness? She's such a funny girl. She will have a very serious thoughtful little look on her face, then name something, just say a word and give you that big smile you see in the middle. It's like she's not just trying to remember the word, she's actually thinking about what that name does to the thing she is trying to label. I have a purple stuffed monster that Elvis gave me, and she held it, looked at it, and said "Monster." and looked up at Amber, then looked at it again, and said "Baby." and looked at Amber again. So sweet and earnest.

I thought the funniest thing was that she would look at her mom, and tilt her chin down and say "Hot" and pull at her diaper. Now, everyone knows that my apt. does tend towards the warm side, for sure, but really the funny part was that she understands the word to have a double meaning, the description of temperature but also "take my diaper off!!".

We all slept in my bed and it was a very delightful thing to wake up in the morning with this little being, all gleeful and curious. I imagined that I was getting a teeny little peek into the best part of what it might be like to have my own kid.

I have a great photo of her with her gorgeous mama that I will post later in the week.

A Scrappy Hair Week

That's what this is. A scrappy hair week.

It's hot and humid. When you're inside it's air-conditioning cranked to 10 and when you're outside it's like walking through a wall of solid warm water. Smelly warm water.

Or a wet sponge. A wet mildewy sponge.

Suffice to say, it has robbed me of all creative juices. Sorry.

It has also robbed me of good hair, dammit!

Tonight we are going to Central Park to see a concert - the Philharmonic or some nonsense. It's really just an excuse to sit out in the park and drink some wine and eat some snacks and conversate. That's right, I said conversate. That's how far I've fallen.

Perhaps I will have some charming anecdotes - culturally enriched anecdotes - to share tomorrow.

In the meantime, I am just going to try to ignore how scappy my hair looks. I mean, I'm married - who really cares what I look like anyways?

I picked a Winner!

Anyone who has ever spent time at a racetrack knows that Thoroughbreds are horses built for speed - their light frames and long elegant limbs, just a part of the evidence. Horse people also know them for their sensitive and spirited natures, and those of us lucky to have known a good one will tell you that we also love them for their big hearts and willing dispositions.

If Bobby were a Thoroughbred, his name would be Here Comes Trouble.

On Sunday he ran the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation race for the Seattle Genetics team. Now, maybe this race was a dropdown for him, but he didn't sulk, in spite of the fact that he led the field by a minute at the end.

If Bobby were a Thoroughbred, he'd be a 5 year old - too old for the Derby, still young enough to love speed as much as any 3 year old, still too young to safely be called bomb-proof. He may even be a little green still, but he has the kind of big brown eyes that would make a person call a good horse an old soul. Some horses are charmers, and Bobby would be one of those. You'd have to watch your ginger snaps.

If Bobby were a middle school heart-throb, he'd be a friendlier Ryan, messy brown hair and all, and his partner in crime at the coffee shop, Andy, would be a pretty 8th-grade Pete. They'd rule the school, without ever making you feel like maybe they knew it just a little too well.

If Bobby were a summer song, he wouldn't be the song you played at sunset. He might be the song the Mountain Dew people wished they had thought of for that commercial where every face has the bloom of youth and everyone is jumping off a wooden dock in to a warm summer lake with all the exuberance their perfect bodies can muster. Or maybe he would be the song you pick to start a long road trip, the one that takes you through city after city of people you can't wait to see.

Several times a week, he's the first person I smile at all day, and that gives a guy a special place in my heart. Then, when he raced and won on our behalf? Well... then I knew he deserved a love letter on the blog.

He topped it all off when he bought my latte today. He didn't have to do that. But that's a Thoroughbred for you.

Dirty Biter II

Yeah, I am pretty much buried under a load of work here so sorry I'm a bad blogger! Here's this year's Dirty Biter photo. XOXO HM

PRAA

My Name is Allison and I am a Project Runway Addict.

Last night the First Episode and Casting Special (!) for Season 3 were on. And my heart swelled with joy. And the shaking stopped. And now you know where you can find me every Wednesday night.

And if you call me on Wednesday night, I will not answer until it is over. I will, however be available for text-messaging.

Every time I watch the show, I get so prideful of my alma mater. THERE IT IS! THAT'S MY SCHOOL!!!! It's amazing that Eugene can live with me. Maybe they'll do a product design reality show at Carnegie Mellon, and then he can see how it feels. Haha PSYCH! Who cares about product design? It's all about fashion baby!

My initial thoughts?

LIKE:

Alison - Naturally, though I think my husband might also like her - a bit too much. Cute, cute, cute! If I knew her in real life I would spend all of my time being enviousness of her cuteness. She looks like a playboy bunny from 1976.

Keith - I felt bad for him in the interview, but he took it like a man and proved he had skills in the very first challenge. Plus I think he's kind of cute, even if he is gay! gay! gay!

Laura - You have to love a mother of five (though I suspect some of them are step-kids) who can look so elegant and rock the bright red hair and lipstick. My favorite quote? "It's a slippery slope to sweats and a mini-van... I just don't go there" and "I'm an ARCHITECT!"

HATE:

Malan - My god! The fakety fake british accent and greasy hair! You just want to jump through the screen and slap him and then force his head under a faucet with about a gallon of head & shoulders!

Jeffrey - What is up with the neck tattoo people?!!!! For little baby jesus' sake - it makes you look like you have 15 flat chins and the single one that you DO have isn't substantial enough to stand up for itself! And the stupid hood! Stephen Sprouse did it in the eighties! It's been DONE DONE DONE! Stop torturing me with your rock starness!

Anyways. Those are my intital thoughts.

By the way - I think Heidi Klum is pregnant AGAIN! My goodness, her and Seal must plan to populate the planet with their kids!

The Roof - the Roof - the Roof is on Fire!

No - not really.

Or at least I hope not. Yikes!

I just wanted to provide some photographic evidence that we are actually working on our house. And be 'we' of course I mean primarily Eugene with some minor assist by me.

Any hoo, here it is - several stages back. We (again - Eugene and petit moi) finished the first section and are demo-ing the second section in this photo. The second section is now almost finished with the re-roofing part and then we move onto the backside of the house. Haha I said 'backside'!

This weekend while Eugene was roofing, I was having an All! New! Recipes! Weekend! I made:

Cambodian Beef Salad - It was delicious and lime-y. From that limey Nigella Lawson's How to Eat cookbook. (Get it? British = limey? whatever). My advice though? If you are using the fresh chili peppers, remember to wear the gloves. That shit HURTS!

Haddock with Leeks and Sugar Snap Peas - This was from The Minimalist. Again yum - but with significantly less pain to my fingers. Leeks don't bite as much as chili peppers. And sugar snap peas are so sweet, how could they hurt anyone? They taste as sweet as baby cheeks!

Wholes Roast Chicken and Simple Green Salad - Okay - this isn't new to me, so perhaps it was more of an All New Recipes Saturday. However, aren't you happy to know that I shoved a lemon up a chicken's butt this weekend? And I did make a pan gravy I'd never made before.

So, despite the fact that he tried to work his ass off this weekend, Eugene did not succeed because I feed him so well.

I will be back with pictures of Alaska. Pinky swear.

A Note to the Bitches at Cascade Pizza Inn

Hey Bitches!

Have you seen this girl?

This is my sister Heather. This is my sister Heather with those two cute cowboys you hoped you might get lucky with after the Loggerodeo.

Sorry!

I know that when they turned down your I-Love-You-thong-wearing-ass you were shocked. Shocked! But the sad truth is that she laid her hands on them first.

And they will never be the same.

See that smile? That's the smile of pure Heather fun. That's the smile of the hostess with the mostess. That's the smile that would have a cowboy willingly cross an open field - in view of all his cowboy friends - carrying her handbag.

So, while your Wet-n-Wild lipglossed mouth was trying to get their attention, they were thinking about that smile.

And when you were making sure that they noticed your oh-so-subtle thong jewelry poking out of your muffin-topped jeans, they were thinking how cute a Jackson Hole t-shirt can look on a slender little body.

She'll be back next year. Fair warning!

Ouch! Ow! My EYES!!!

You think you got cuteness? I'll show you the cuteness. Check this girl out. This is Charlotte, my friend Chelsea's daughter. She should be featured on Cute Overload, really. So cute it hurts.

For You, Some Cuteness

Don't Wear Your Clogs to the Rodeo

Ha! I got here first today! Which means I get to post the first rodeo-fallout photo. Here we are, inspecting the evidence from the Woolley. I am probably still drunk. Allison has the Polaroid evidence, which will be on display at the Wall of Fame by the end of the weekend.

Miss Me?

I'm back.

Since we've been 'outed' to Mom, Eugene and his family, and our favorite Dave Zebrowski, I will have to put a bit more thought into my posts. Yikes.

Unfortunately, I am - as Mom would say - incandescent with exhaustion. So inspiration (and typing) is not coming so easily to me today.

In the meantime, Husband gets props for giving me his upgraded seat in First Class. Props to Eugene!!!

He has now fully paid me back for the seven am drive to the airport that I had to do to bring him his passport last month. All I.O.U.s are now invalid. I no longer have any supreme gestures to lord over him. Dammit!

First Class was almost like being back on the cruise with the people being all nice to me and bringing me all the food and stuff. Yes miss, I would like more warm nuts! Bring me more crab salad! What do you mean, you are out of the duck breast? Unacceptable! Massage my feet!

I likes the First Class.

I will write more on that when my brain is fully caffienated and functional.

Dirty Biter

Here's me with the beloved Dirty Biter statue. Dirty Biter was apparently the town dog in LaConner for a while, and there's that plaque next to us to prove it. I think Dirty Biter is the All-Time Greatest Dog Name ever!

Allison, you will be there soon, you will get to pet Dirty Biter!

Sorry for the lame post, I'm fresh out of inspiration without you!

A Shipboard Haiku

At thirty-five cents
A minute I have not got
Much to say but hi


ps. I couldn't fit cowgirl hat into my lugage, but I have the trashy top, jeans and cowgirl-ish boots covered. Bring on the Budweiser tallboys, I say! And it's the same rodeo as last year, so I think it's legit.

pps. I kicked ass at black jack last night (then Euge lost all my winnings) and tonight is karaoke. I plan to bring it, y'all!

ppps. The Mendels do drink. I should not have impugned them prematurely.

pppps. I am sorry to report that I am actually having a pretty good time.

xoxo

Le Puppy Sarah

Calling All Cowgirls

Hey, what's up cruise lady? I'm looking forward to seeing you soon in LaConner! Did you bring your cowboy hat for the rodeo? I'm trying to recruit a couple more cowgirls (Susan and Kirstin) for next Sunday - which rodeo is it that we are going to, anyway? And would we be using the term "rodeo" loosely here?

I was trying to think what to bring to add to the fun - any ideas? I'm definitely bringing a case of my new favorite beer, Skinny Dip, and clearly there will need to be some sock knitting, but other than that? What? Let me know so I can be properly equipped!

Madness is right

I have to say, I wouldn't willingly sign up for any vacation that involved waking up at 4AM either. I like to stay up late too much. I stayed up until 2AM watching Veronica Mars last night. I'm on disc 4 of season 1, in case you want to know, the episode where Logan breaks down and cries in Veronica's arms in a hotel lobby because he thought his mom had faked her suicide and was staying in the hotel, but it turns out to be his bitchy half-sister who is using his mom's credit card and wearing her clothes.

That's also the episode where Meg makes Veronica go to the 80s dance, and Meg dresses up in a dress like the one Molly Ringwald made for herself in Pretty in Pink and that dress is just not cute, and little teeny Veronica dresses up in a Madonna outfit, with her hair all crimped and a black bustier and all the bracelets and even the boy toy belt and I fell asleep thinking about how it was supposed to be a thing where Meg talked her into going at the last minute so how come Veronica just had all that stuff to dress up in, because you know it isn't Meg's stuff since her parents are all religious and crazy and she mostly wears pink sweaters and a prim but sweet expression.

Oh, and it's the episode where Duncan is dressed up like Ducky from Pretty In Pink and how does he know that Meg was going as Molly Ringwald since he is supposed to be her SECRET admirer, so obviously he didn't talk to her about it beforehand and plan it out! And the police officer shows up and sort-of rescues Veronica from crying in her LeBaron convertible in the parking lot, and he's dressed up in a Miami Vice outfit and you realize he's really short because he and Veronica are almost the same height and she is teensy. And Logan shows up drunk and dressed up like Tom Cruise in Risky Business and if all this doesn't convince the non-believers to watch Veronica Mars, I don't know what will.

Don't bother with Dukes of Hazzard the movie though, even if you love Willie Nelson. Trust me.

Mountain Madness

I don't have much to say. Except that we got up at four this morning to see Mt. McKinley (Denali, y'all - for those who wanna keep it real).

It's HUGE! Bizarrely, it was hidden by clouds for the last week. As hard to imagine as it is that something so large could just dissappear. Of course, anyone from Seattle can imagine - with Mt. Rainier lurking around in your back yard.

Now I am tired.

I am going back to bed.

Every morning I have to have our luggage ready to move on at seven am. That part of this land cruise thing sucketh.

We get on the boat today and then I'll get myself some lobster and chocolate decadence! Heeeee!

xoxo
Nanook of the North

Helloooooooo!!!! From Alaska

I have a moment or two to say hey y'all!

It's cold. And rainy. But we've seen two mooses (moosi?) a fox, and some beavers. So far, Alaska is a lot like Vermont.

We got into Fairbanks Wednesday night and drove to see the house that Dad lived in here. I use the word 'house' loosely and generously. It was really a trailer with a bit of a shed built around it.

We're trailer trash, y'all! Woohoo!

I will post pictures later taters, I just thought you might like some validation of your suspicions. The Malcolm Sisters are a fraud! A sham! The veneer of sophistication is about a millimeter thick!

The really shocking part is that the trailer is still here some 40+ years later. When you see the pictures, you'll understands why I say that.

Any hoo, I'm off to catch a train. In the rain. So far the food is not all you can eat... but when we get on the boat .... step back folks!

xoxo

Bagel Face

I Know This Is What You've Been Waiting For!

More knitting content! Hey, look the funny blogger is gone, okay, too bad. She's off on her cruise, probably digging in to her second plate of lobster and chocolate decadence from the Buffet (emphasis on the first syllable, please!) as I write this. It's just me here, and I do what I can.

This weekend, I am hoping to spend some quality time with my knitting. The middle sock was chosen from these three by one of the members of my writing group, so I will set the other two aside and work my way towards the toe for her. Did you know that if I was going to sell my socks, they would have to cost about $150 a pair? Think about that if you ever find yourself on the receiving end of these beauties. Anyone want a grey and beige pair, men's size 11, I think? Ha ha. See May 1 if you care what I'm talking about.


I'm sure we'll have more interesting posting material on Monday, including my obsession with "AM Gold" and Lindsay Wagner's hair.

Baby Love

Do you love him, or what? This is my baby Rhone. I got to smooch him and give him his bottle last night while Kirstin was setting our big Thai feast out on the table. We had such a nice visit. It was clearly the longest day of the year since it was still light out close to 10, which is my excuse for why I didn't leave until then. Even though I meant to go home a lot earlier than that.

One thing I really appreciate about Kirstin is that I feel so loved when I am with her! Some people just have a talent for making you feel that way. When I got to her house last night I just felt myself breath a little sigh of relief, and everything in the world seemed good. Good thai food good beer (Skinny Dip, which Candice introduced me to) and two beautiful kids. Madelyn was particularly zany last night - I will provide photographic proof of her zaniness in a future blog post. I love that girl. She wanted to learn how to knit, but the only knitting I had with me was my socks (I know you wanna see those, don't you? No worries, I'll get to those in a day or two as well) and when I did a row in front of her she said "Oh, that's hard." Which I thought was funny for some reason. I promised her I would bring something easier for her to knit next time.

Pretty good week of girlfriend love, wasn't it? Now if only Kristen, Candice, and Amber were here....

More Girl Power

I keep getting all distracted from the post I mean to do, but here was my original idea... Over the past week, I've seen or am going to see most of my best Seattle-based girlfriends, so I thought I would talk about that. The photo above is me and Gena at her bachelorette party. I looked through the photos again and they made me laugh and I wanted to include more, but the still life of the wind-up penis with a whipped cream dessert? Well, I didn't want to be banned from Blogger for obscenity. Wait, can that happen? Maybe I need to know...

Anyway, on Monday night, Gena and my other fabulous colleagues from the old days at Pathogenesis, Pam and Erin, met me at Crow which was good, but not really great until we got to the dessert sharing part of the evening. The ladies WERE great though, as they always are. We try to get together one Monday a month, and every time I leave, I am always saying to myself "O! I love those ladies!" They are witty and wise.

I think the week of fabulous girlfriends started with last Wednesday, doing my writing date with the lovely and hilarious Lillian. We went to a wine bar near my house and nibbled on cheese and a drank a rose wine, which I was a little non-plussed about. Lillian helpfully informed me that if I didn't like that rose wine, I probably didn't like rose wine at all, since it was a typical rose wine. Now we all know something about me that we didn't know before. Aren't you glad? The best part was the cheese, though. Of course. We had a lovely cheese plate, including something from Cowgirl Creamery that was the best, though I liked the blue that was cured (or whatever) over smoked hazelnut shells, or some such thing. There was also a stinky runny cheese that I liked, but I don't think it did much for Lillian. Then I put Lillian in the Miata and drove her home, while we talked about cars with mold in them. Not that Natalie is moldy, mind you, but she has been known to leak.

Then of course there is always weekend fun with Susan.

This time that involved having a conversation that prompted the barista who made our lattes to say "Are you talking about boys?" and then when we said yes, to nod and say "Boys? Are dumb." Then we sat outside and watch the Queen Annies walk by and howled with laughter and just generally were loud. Then we took a walk. To the grocery store, where I bought mashed potatos for dinner.

Sunday was the Fremont Street Fair with Jenn, and that was lovely, except for the part about the loin cloths. She ate corn from the street vendors, the kind that's all roasted and dripping in butter, and then there's that counter where you can add about a million toppings. Jenn knows what she's doing at those counters, and I remember envying the corn she put together at Bumbershoot too. That girl knows what she's doing as far as the corn goes. Well, okay, as far as everything goes, really. And that makes sense for a woman who is just as good a roommate in a small town like Santa Fe as she is in the wilds of New York City.

And you know about the marathon catch-up fest (but not ketchup fest, more like guacamole fest) with Regan and Alexis Sunday night. We will have to feature Alexis sometime here. Oh wait, here she is - scroll down for the photo. She produces films, among other things. Quite the talent. Very ambituous knitter. And you know that's a quality to be commended.

Tonight! I get to see Kirstin. I hope! Right, Kirstin?

Still Heeeeerrrrrrrreeeeee!!!! For the Moment.

We leave for Alaska tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning I go for a haircut, then come home for the last minute packing spree. A horror show if ever there was one... then we go to Newark and fly (via SEATTLE!!!) to Fairbanks.

Wanna meet me at the airport for an hour? Didn't think so.

Any hoo, Oogie is now Elite so we get to hang out in the fancy-pants lounge with all the free cheese. That's right, folks, FREEE CHEEEEEESE!

Then we get into Fairbanks and one of Dad's cronies, I mean friends, meets us and will take us for a tour of North Pole. Where Papa became a man. A mountain man. He shot rats. He told me so.

Then we go to the Bear Creek Lodge and the Malcolm/Carroll/Mendel family bacchanalia (sp? you know what I mean) begins. Not much of one though, cuz the Mendel Famiglia doesn't drink.

Not ten days - as I originally thought - but ELEVEN! I am a lucky lady. Right?

There are two formal nights and many hiking/climbing excursions. So I continue to struggle with the packing. I am struggling right now - can't you see me? I may actually have to bring a real suitcase, instead of the carry-on that usually suffices. Yikes. A suitcase.

When did I become a person who packed a real suitcase? When did I become a person who goes on cruises?

At least I will be prepared for formal night in LaConner, right? We could wear evening gowns to the rodeo, right?

Looking forward to seeing you! I will check in on the blog before I leave. Maybe there are Internets aboard the ship. Right now I have to go research whether or not there are irons in our rooms aboard the ship.

We have a balcony. Did I mention the balcony?

Hugs and squishes

Bagel Face

NO! OMG! WAIT!!

Allisod! ALLEEEE-SOD!

Are you still there? Are you gone on your cruise? When willI hear from you again???!?

Waxing Poetic

I could say all sorts of things about the benefits of marriage but since I am about to embark on a ten day travel ADVENTURE with my in-laws, I think I will refrain until my return.

If I make it back, that is.

And if my marriage survives the trip.

Or, rather, if my husband survives the trip.

Right now I am CRAZY. BUSY.

And yesterday was a CRAZY. MONDAY.

It started with me realizing that I had left my wallet in our apartment. With my keys. Right after our self-locking door had shut. So I had to hike to Euge's office to get his spare keys. Then I had to go back to our apartment to get my keys and wallet. THEN high-tail it to a press check.

Then, at lunch, I went on yet another fruitless shopping trek to attempt to find a sundress that doesn't make me look like a completely drumstick-armed-pot-bellied-cow. Needless to say, I left Saks with significantly less self-esteem than I entered it with.

At least I wasn't looking for a bathingsuit.

When I got back to my office, I was blissfully walking the halls when one of my co-workers pulled me aside to inform me that I had neglected to zip up the back of my skirt.

Oh well, at least I had a charming white lace thong on. that must have given some people something to think about, hmmm?

Then after work (and a fortifying cocktail) I had to go for the dreaded waxing.

You see, when I am in my bikini on this cruise, I want to blind everyone with my voluptuous whiteness and I wouldn't want any stubble detracting from this. I even had my underarms waxed.

Can we say 'ouch' all together now?

The woman who was ministering to my bikini line was a bit distracted, but she said she was nepalese. So maybe she was meditating on the state of my thighs.

Any hoo, then I went home and tried on some of the dresses I already own. Then I wept my bitter tears silently (hi fellow-Pam-writing-workshop-people!)

At 2 am I realized that I had gotten some food poisoning from the Thai food I picked up for dinner and spent the rest of the night waking up every two hours to see if I could throw up yet.

The end.

BUT - at least I am not the lady I saw trip and fall down in the middle of the street in Herald Square today. She was dressed all in white and skinned her knee. You could hear the collective gasps of five grillion tourists as she tripped.

That would have been awful.

Coming Attractions

Tomorrow - more on my week of girlfriend love - in the form of photos from Gena's bachelorette partay!

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong

Hey there,

So, I wanted to put this post up to talk about all the girlfriend love and excellent dessert I've been getting over the last week or so. My friend Regan is next to me in this picture - could she be any more cute? Sunday night, Alexis and Regan and I went out to El Camino for dinner and drinks. We had my fave quesadillas with shrimp and fantastic coconut cake. The three of us hadn't seen each other in MONTHS so there was a lot to catch up on. One of the big announcements was that Regan and her boyfriend PETE NELSON! Oh, that's right, you know PETE NELSON from his South Shore Middle School heart-throb days!!! Ha! Anyway, they just got engaged. Pete's on the far left, in case you didn't recognize him.

The smiley guy next to glum Steven is another friend from high school, Scott, and the lovely lady in green in his fiance. They are madly in love to the point where we were making fun of them at a wedding last summer for the way they were gravitating towards the edges of things, dark corners, etc to make out . Love love love!

When I look at this photo, it reminds me of the studies they've done about how married men are healthier and happier than single men. Duh!