Tired And Bored With Myself

But then how do you think I made it out to California?

A Few Words About Jane Seymour

Such wholesome, good fun.
Even when she's naughty.

I Sure Am Having Fun Spellchecking My 313 Page Novel, Which Does Seem To Have A Lot Of Errors. This Is Taking For-Eeever!

Aah…conformity.

Seriously. Proper spelling is for people who think inside the box.

Oh well. I guess this is what I get for turning off that red squiggly line thing that corrects while you type. But it was getting so distracting! I mean, I am not just a bad speller, I am a bad typist, just so you understand the situation here. I miss a lot of letters.

Mavis Beacon, you did me no good, although maybe that was because I never took you out of the box.

If I Got My Mom A *Really* *Good* Christmas Present Last Year, Does That Mean I Can Give Her Nothing This Year?

A skein of the luxurious wool yarn (in delicate mauve) that I used to hand knit my mother a scarf for last year's Christmas gift.

How am I supposed to top that?
Also, that is mauve, isn't it? Does anyone besides interior decorators really know what mauve is? All I know, it is definitely my mother's color.
Also also, do you need any mauve yarn? I have leftovers.

Kitty Kat Time

A post-holiday nap is always better with a trusty sidekick.

'Nuff said. And happy napping.

Short Films About My Life

Unfortunately, for the pictorial portion of the blog, my camera is out of batteries.

On Sunday, the movie was called 'The Catastrophist.' That all with my boyfriend turned out to be sort of fine.

Last night the movie was called 'Cooking with Martha,' or really, more appropriately, 'Watching My Boyfriend Cook With Martha' as he carefully prepared two pies for this year's Thanksgiving repast. Pecan and blackberry, thank you very much. But don't worry. I will be kept very busy tomorrow stirring the mashed potato flakes into the boiling water.

(Yes Martha. The mashed potatoes are coming from a box. I've already sampled a few portions during a fish dinner sometime last week and they are creamy and delicious.)

Today the movie is called 'Cinderella' because I will be stuck at home cleaning while my wicked stepsister, my boyfriend, leaves the house for a glamorous day sweating over his desk as an engineer in the solar energy industry. He only has to work 10 hours a day and do the job of a small army, so I'd say I might be getting the short end of the stick.

Hmm. Maybe if the weather gets nicer, I'll head to the pool after I clean the bathroom, which could have been done this weekend had someone (me) not said she would do it later.

Of course, the feature film event doesn't happen until tomorrow and I have no idea what it will be called, but certainly the word 'ham' will be in the title because that is what we are serving. Or, on the other hand, perhaps simply 'Meat Thermometer' will suffice. Thank you.

I Think My Boyfriend's Going To Break Up With Me Because I Broke The Car For Good

How This Makes Me Feel

1.
It gives me a stomachache that all the lingonberry soda in the world won't settle.

2.
It makes me wish I had a time machine so I could go back in said time and notice the exact moment when the check engine light came on while I was driving 75 mph on the freeway in the moist, dark night so that I could have pulled off the road in a more timely manner and before the situation really came to a head.

3.
Did I mention the stomachache?

4.
Actually, this situation makes me wish a lot of things and is not at all funny. For example, I wish I were a different person. Also, if I get dumped, all the cuddling in the world with my cat, Gerald Butler is not going to make me feel better.

5.
Any better at all…Am I catastrophizing right now? Or just being realistic? Is the whole world going to hell in a hand basket? Where's that lingonberry soda? I seriously need it right now.

6.
Because my stomach still hurts.

7.
Why can't I be normal? Why was I feeling so anxious about driving and the upcoming social event that instead of carefully monitoring the instrument panel at appropriate intervals, I failed to notice the check engine light? After all, I monitor my speed constantly.

(In the background, Cher sings "If I could turn back time.")

7 (1): Because Kaiser Permanente is stingy with their therapy sessions;

and 7(2): see above.

8.
Really, last night was not a good night for me. I should have stayed home. I was just not feeling 'it,' as they say. Plus I had forgotten to unmute the GPS and the uncanny silence was unnerving me.

9.
Definitely should have stayed home. I could have spent last night watching Farscape on DVD and now instead I am in mountains of shit, dog-house style.

10.
Look away. This might get ugly.

No, I Am Not Dressed Up Like Harry Potter, Today. Why The Frack Would I Be?

I am Harry Potter. I do not need to dress the part. I need to do important, everyday Harry Potter things like clean out my cat, Gerard Butler's litter box, which he has recently befouled. Then I have to pick up yesterday's clothing from the bedroom floor and carry it to the hamper because I was far too lazy to do this last night and instead just left it all in an amorphous heap over 2 or 3 pairs of shoes.

I might even do laundry and then go to Target for green bean-mushroom soup casserole ingredients, which I somehow forgot about when I went to Target yesterday.

All in all, a pretty boring, dreary day.

In Which I Anxiously Await The 11/30 Release Of 'Valhalla Rising.'

As you may guess from the title, Valhalla Rising is a movie about Vikings. Therefore I would like to make one of two predictions.

Prediction #1

The movie will be very, very good and I will like it.

Prediction #2

The movie will be very, very bad and I will like it.

Thank you.

One Lucky Turkey

Because as it turns out, I am serving ham this Thanksgiving. I am pretty excited about this because it involves a lack of turkey, a particular meat I do not like to eat ever since a childhood of watching my mother eat boiled gizzards. Intestines are gross.

Regardless, next week is going to be fun. (Really, it's only a week from now that I have to start cooking/baking/etc.)

For example, 5 year old twins are staying at my house for three whole days. I can't wait to see how my cat will react to that. Actually, I think I know. He will hiss at them and then go hide in the closet.

We are going to go swimming and sailing.

Probably a "time-out" zone will have to be established at some point, because, as many of you know, little boys do not always behave. Thus, they need a little time and space to think about just what they've done. (To be honest, I often feel the same way about myself.)

Ah, but to revisit the small infractions of childhood. I wish I could go back in time and chart the trajectory of stealing cookies from the cookie jar to filching warm Bartles & James wine coolers from my dad's basement stash in order to see exactly what went wrong.

Actually, I drank a lot of warm, cheap beer too. Really, I should have insisted on quality. Nothing but the best. Because I'm worth it. Thank you.

WTF? I Am On The Ocean!

This is not a Hyundai I am driving.

Really, sometimes I feel like I can barely drive. Still, I obviously made it through driver's ed. However there is no such thing as driver's ed for a sailboat, at least not that I know about. It is more like flying by the seat of your pants while your boyfriend--the real sailor--goes below to take a piss.

The real sailor tells me I don't have anything to be ashamed of. Apparently when most people take the helm at sea for the first time, or the second time, or the third time, or the fourth time, the boat just turns in wayward circles and they sort of scream in the delight and the thrill of it all. Losing control just never felt so exhilarating. Sort of like being on a roller coaster. Except that the ocean is not a theme park. In fact, it might be fair to say that you are the ocean's bitch.

On the other hand, I had the darned boat pointed in the correct direction from the very beginning. Which is great for me. But internally it wasn't so cool because I thought if I made one single, itty-bitty mistake, we were all OMG going to die right this instant. (This should tell you a lot about me: someone raised me to think I have to be perfect; and I catastrophize. Which is a fancy word I learned recently in a, ahem, certain milieu.) Equally possible, one of us would escape but the other would be trapped in the boat like Jeff Bridges' wife in White Squall. So I would either 'enjoy' a watery death or feel guilty for the rest of my life. Or worse, we would all be eaten by pilot whales, which normally seem pretty harmless.

Trust me. I saw a few the other day after I finally started to relax.

Which is the point I wanted to make. About relaxing. Which I did. You would never relax on a roller coaster. But a beautiful day to sail upon the sea sort of does a lot to unwind tension and anxiety.

Also, the ocean is full of dolphins. Did I mention the dolphins? A colossal pod of winsome creatures of the sea. Some swam right near the boat.

Wild dolphin make everything alright. I am left like a little kid at Christmas in their presence. Please don't eat the tuna. Thank you.

Some Excuses for the Colossal Grammatical Lapse in Yesterday's Facebook Post

From now on, I vow to read this entire book before posting anything online.

"The more I learn about my grandfather's WWII experience, the more lucky I realize I am to have ever gotten to meet him."

I should have said 'luckier.' I apologize to you, the internet, and all my many instructors who have taught me far, far better than that.


The Excuses (In No Particular Order)

1.
Hey my Masters degree is in poetry, not grammar.

2.
Clearly I am some sort of hooligan of grammar. By choice. By eradicating the conventional structure of grammar, I was attempting to rebuild it. Uh, yeah.

3.
Most of my English grammar books were written in other languages. Like in Russian or German. And while I may still read enough Russian to find my way through the completely untranslated DVD menu for a (by the way) really faithfully adapted television mini-series based on The Idiot by the late great Fyodor Dostoevsky, I fall down when it comes to the comparison of adjectives.

4.
My mother corrected my grammar continuously as I was growing up. See what I'm trying to say here? Nagging never gets the job done.

5.
I like to end sentences on prepositions too. Especially in daily speech. Do you have a problem with that? Either way, the whole language is going to pot. You might as well just crack open a frosty cold one and enjoy the view.

6.
My fancy-ass private college did not make students who passed the writing entrance exam take composition. Therefore my actual instruction in English grammar ended freshman year of high school. Of course, this total ignorance of the guts and bowels of my native language hampered me somewhat when I was teaching in graduate school. WTF? I still don't know what a dangling modifier is. Please don't try to explain. You will only be disappointed in my lack of comprehension. It's sort of a sore spot for me. Sort of how I can never remember what 'alterity' means.

7.
'Alterity' has something to do with 'otherness,' as in switching one's perspective for that of the other. Try writing a dangling modifier about that, bitches!

8.
Excuse me for calling you a bitch. I got excited.

9.
Okay, that's it people. Look away from my internet shame. There are worse grammatical catastrophes than bungled comparatives. Here are a few gems.

You're welcome.

There Is A Nightclub In Vegas Named After Me

Yup. Just me and my nightclub.

Did I say 'nightclub?' Drai's is an after hours club. The establishment's wide red and black doors don't even open until 1 am (and close at dawn), which, inconveniently for this blog episode, means I have no idea what goes on inside. (For example, do they provide cots if you suddenly get tired and have to lie down right this minute?) One thing stands certain. This Drai will probably never find out because this Drai goes to bed at 10 pm, even in Vegas.

Well, alright. That last statement does involve a touch of hyperbole. There are a number of things I will stay up for and I'm sure you can think of at least one of them. And I am not talking about dragging my tired ass around to make a walloping $2.50 on the slot machines while breezing through 'Paris,' which is the name of a casino/resort on the Las Vegas strip that boasts an Eiffel Tower growing out of its bowels. Like most things on the strip, this behemoth is a copy of something else, and in this case fashions itself after Paris, a real city that brags, I dare say (among its other accomplishments), a better-dressed citizenry. But all of this aside, I am not, and never will be, a night owl.

(No way did I belong in the real Paris that night. You should have seen me by the time I actually went to bed. My eyes were glassed over and my hair was starting to look as if a baboon were living in it.)

However, my deserved lack of membership in the night owl club does not mean I am some sort of prancing, trilling lark singing songs at heaven's gate at 6 in the blasted morning, which is about when my boyfriend started playing with the electronic curtains in our hotel room because he is an engineer and finds moving parts fascinating.

Of course we did have a nice breakfast at a little place in the 'Venetian' and then he surprised me by whisking me over to Drai's 'After Dark' for a quick photo opportunity.

Are you a Smith or a Clark or a Williams? Note to you: with a name like Drai, you could go your whole life never meeting anyone at all with the same name as yours unless they're family, let alone ever see a sign emblazoned with that weirdly truncated yet old world vowelly moniker, so it's oddly thrilling when it happens. Not thrilling enough to risk bumping into a crowd of drunken vampires by making it over to the club when it actually opens. At 1 am. But thrilling nonetheless.

And then. And then.

And then, my friends, we went to the Hoover Dam, which was breathtaking.

Yup. We did that last part right in the middle of the day. Just the way I like it.

In Which I Whine About My Cola Problem, Which Is A Really Big Deal, Trust Me.

If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.

Man, do I ever enjoy the taste of a crisp, fresh cola beverage. Whether straight from the can or over ice, I just cannot get enough of this effervescent bombardment of the senses. (Unless it is Coke, that is. Coke is gross. It is cloyingly sweet and leaves a nasty aftertaste so if you don't carry gum or toothpaste with you at all times, you are screwed.)

So what's the problem? Well I am 35 now and although I am by no means 'fat,' I am definitely not in any danger of fitting into those really cute pants I bought at H&M when I was 22 and living in Europe, pants that I still own now because they continue to be very cute and I cannot bear to let the dream die. In other words, all these empty, (delicious), empty calories are a big no-no.

So why not just have a diet Pepsi? Diet Pepsi, after all, tastes clean and crisp. (Obviously I won't be having a diet Coke.) What a great idea except that fake sugar still makes you fat and has been linked to seizures in individuals susceptible to them--yeah, okay, the cases in question were of people drinking 20-22 cans of diet soda a day, but you can never be too careful. Seizures, just in case you didn't know, can make you piss on your leg, or hit your head, or crash your car, or maybe just see King Canute, the Danish King of England, in your living room. But still. 'Nuff said.

Thus, Zevia, a calorie-free cola beverage sweetened with natural stevia extract (which the rest of the world has been using for decades) really leapt out at me from the grocery shelf at my local Henry's Farmers' Market.

I lugged a 6-pack home.

I carefully extracted one of the frosted beverage mugs from the freezer and filled it with ice. Cracked open the soda. The ice popped and fizzed.

Heady with anticipation, I took the first sip.

As it turns out, Zevia tastes like Coke. Who makes these decisions?

My Weekend At The Races: If I Ever Had A Daughter, She Is So Not Leaving The House Dressed Like That

Out of energy drink? Cat food has some of the same ingredients!

Does every short course off-road race car driver dream of standing on the podium in order to have his leg rubbed by one of the minimally-dressed "Rock Star Girls"--one of a squadron of size zero promotional workers for Rock Star Energy Drink, available in lemonade barf or cola barf flavors--or do some of them kind of see through the whole charade as the girls smile their makeup encrusted smiles and hold up shimmering cans of Rock Star Energy Drink, available in lemonade barf or cola barf flavors? Do you want to try some? They're giving cans away for free. In fact, small children are walking around drinking up this miasma of intoxicating energy serum. Take it from this former nanny, but that is insane. Children do not need more energy. They need sedatives, just like cats on road trips.

However, the real issue with the Rock Star Girls is their inappropriate for the situation footwear--high heeled black boots in an area where the ground is covered in a thick layer of gravel. Literally, they could not walk without aid and also had trouble climbing up the steep ramp to the awards platform in order to dole out phallic-shaped trophies in the form of spark plugs. Really, it's hard to do the job right of promoting Rock Star Energy Drink, available in blah blah blah (you already know the drill), when you cannot even propel yourself, able-bodied woman that you normally are, from location A to location B without some douchebag getting involved who really is just trying to peer into your decollatage.

All in all though, this weekend helped me to re-commit to a few fashion rules, as if my clothing and I were a married couple renewing our vows to each other in a heartfelt garden ceremony, but with the entire viewing public in attendance.

Actually, there are only two rules.

1.
If you look in the mirror and it looks like you are wearing a shirt with no pants, your dress is not long enough.

2.
Shoes are made for walking, not stumbling.

But really, none of this is the Rock Star Girls' fault. Instead, I think we can safely thank the Rock Star marketing team and even more importantly, all the skanky-ass men who think women made helpless by their wardrobe are attractive. Rant now over. Thank you.

One Analogy To Writing A Novel

The novel is the tiger.
You are Roy.

You try to tame its unruly themes and run-on sentences by tapping said 'novel' on the nose with a Pilot G-2 rollerball pen, but the the great beast of would-be fiction just leaps up and disfigures you for life.

(My lame boyfriend says Siegfried and Roy jokes are in poor taste, but clearly tigers are our superiors and should not be trifled with. R.I.P. Tatiana! Also, tigers were my dearly departed grandfather's favorite animal. To the point that he had a Schillcraft latch hook rug with the face of a tiger emblazoned across its fibery surface. Also also, I am leaving for Vegas in about an hour so perhaps you can understand the tie-in.)

I swear I am mostly a nice person.
Poor Roy. He loved those tigers.

Yours in exceedingly poor taste. Thank you.

A Little Message To The Unknown Asian Language Living On The Comments Page Of The Last Post On My Blog

My cat, Gerard Butler, prepares to cast a spell on you.

Okay, bitches. I just write this review for a reading series where the establishment that is Sara Mumolo makes sure that everyone can have access to both great cheese and spectacular poetry and you repay my efforts with this effusion of nonsensical writing!?

I'd also like to point out that the muse of this blog is Beowulf, not your weird Chinese poetry, and although there may be dragons in both, Beowulf does not speak Chinese. He is very upset with you. Not upset enough to bother deleting all of the comments, but that is mostly because Beowulf is (probably) from the fifth century and thereby does not know how to use a computer. Which leaves this important task to My Cat, Gerard Butler, who is ultimately dim-witted and lacks opposable thumbs, which leaves me. Which leaves no one. Thank you.

Wait. I think I found the on button.