Saturday, April 22, 2006

Quotable Quote

Heard (thankfully not seen) last week:

"You think you're hot? My balls are sticking to the insides of my legs."

PROBLEM
red hots...get yer red hots
SOLUTION
the coconut is like a soothing balm

Friday, April 21, 2006

So Ray, my guy, and I were foolin' around at home on Friday night - as the marrieds do...we don't go out and troll in bars, a happy consequence of being hitched.

In post-coital chat we somehow got around to my parents (eww?) and how they have a code phrase for their foolin' around. It's "Putting up a Shelf." Ray was hanging a fresh towel on the hook, so I offered "Hanging up a Towel" for us. Doesn't have the same ring. In any case, Ray vetoed it. He said, like the body parts, there will be no cute "phrases" (said with the quotation gesture) or "nicknames" (again with the finger dits). "Besides, " he says, as he's walking out of the bedroom door, "if we're going to code name it anything...we're going with 'boning'."

Yep, you got it. His grande exit was complete with the quotation gesture.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Esquired

You know that sickly feeling, when you think you may have effed up and someone snags you on it? Like the IRS letter that makes the pit of your stomache bottom out? Like that feeling you get when you are caught in an uncompromising position by someone who just isn't going to compromise? Like the phone call that I just got from a lawyer?
Massive headache, shame burned cheeks, and a desire to run, run away.

Yeah.

Just got that call.

Not Blowing Smoke Up Anybody's Ass

My darling nephew Kiefer - he's a sliver off three - is at the stage of development where Kiddie Tourette's is flirting with his little brain.

Last reported by mom Elizabeth:

So we're walking out of a store and he turns to look at a lady with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. He turns back to me and says loud enough for all to hear, "Mommy? Why does she want to die?"


Monday, April 17, 2006

Remington Steel and Concrete

I got up really early and went to the gym on Sunday. On my way back, puce-faced from 45 mins on the elliptical, avec salt bagels - one toasted with Nova schmear, one untoasted with butter - I heard a teaser on NPR. "What do you do when your beloved typewriter breaks?" I said to the radio waves, "Take it to the Flatiron Building!" There's a little hovel of an office with floor to ceiling, nut to butt, ass over tea kettle typewriters in various stages of disrepair on the 8th floor - the same floor where Ray works when in the city. On the day I came to visit Ray's office for the first time, we passed this guy's repair shop door (always open apparently). I was fascinated. I wondered what that guy's story was. Ray said he'd been there since the dawn of time, fixing the typewriters like some sort of Remington savant.

NPR comes back on after a short break and they repeat the question, "What do you do when your beloved typewriter breaks? Well in New York City, you take it immediately to the 8th floor of the Flatiron Building!"

I squealed. I felt in-the-know. I felt a part of the NY circle.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

The Ultimate Question

For three days now, Ray and I have been ignoring something on our back patio. We have a mat out there, it's beige, something to wipe the feet before sliding to one's death on the tile in the kitchen. I am usually sans glasses in the morning, so I've been wondering what the curled up string on the mat was. I finally got my glasses to investigate.

Turns out it's a dried-up dead worm.

My best guess is that it was seeking refuge from the massive rain we had three days ago. It has to be that because there is no way that the cat, who has no killer instinct at all (except when Ray scratches her haunches), stalked it, dealt it the striking death chomp, and left it prettily packaged for the "people who feed me" to find. Simply implausible. This worm just must have crawled to what he thought was a relatively dry place, only to find that the Florida rain often swipes sideways and soaks the mat. I think the poor thing drowned. Here's the thing.

It died in the shape of a question mark, as if to say with his last dying breath, "What the...?"

Friday, April 14, 2006

I Cried My Thais Out

So I was adventurous yesterday and decided to make Thai food for the first time ever...

(Thai food involves capsaicin, right...?)

So I chopped ginger, pulverized cilantro, added 3 seeded and chopped jalapeno peppers. The onions were next (I promised myself I wouldn't cry). I chopped determinedly, only to burst out in tears, well, not really, but I welled up pretty good. Off to the bathroom to daub with a Kleenex. Back to the kitchen. Damn eyes are still wet. One pinky swipes under the right eye.

Holy CRAP!!!!

Jalapeno oil under the eye is almost as excruciating as boureeing for two hours dancing a Willis in the tragic full length ballet Giselle with an angry corn wedged between your third and fourth toes. And the pain is almost as long lasting.

All I wanted was to have a nice (new) dinner prepared when Ray came home from 5 days in Anaheim and NY. What did he get? A Tammy Faye lookin' puffy-eyed leaky mess in his upstairs bathroom with half a dinner made in the abandoned kitchen.

*sigh*

It was damn tasty though.

Next time I'm wearing goggles.