Baby me

While visiting my parents, I dug up some photos of me as a baby. My folks don’t have a scanner, so I resorted to photographing the pictures right in the album.

Maybe I do look like Cormac. Or vice-versa.

Some of these I’ve never seen before. It’s crazy. I can’t believe that cute kid on the duck (chicken? rooster?) is me. Look at me! With all my original teeth. And blonde hair.

Kind of sad to think of all the awful things that will happen — I mean, not terrible. But still — broken hearts and broken jaws and hurt feelings and cruelty and everything that happens to a person. Kind of sad to think that such things will have to happen to Owen and Cormac, too.

I need some chocolate.

August 16, 2007 | Filed Under baby, other | 7 Comments

Vacation to Amland

We went camping last weekend, up at our land in northwestern PA. The Amish live up there. I am calling it Amland in honor of my favorite fictional paper salesman, Dwight Schrute. Lovely, lovely Amland.

August 16, 2007 | Filed Under other | 9 Comments

Seeking Baltimore advice re: Truck caps

Halooo? Any a’ y’all Baltimoreans know where a gal can find a good fiberglass short-bed truck cap? To fit, say, a 4-door Dodge? I’d be much obliged: marybeth@supamb.com. Grazie.

June 22, 2007 | Filed Under baltimore, other | 2 Comments

Not forever, just for now.

hiatus

Come on. You saw it coming.

September 12, 2006 | Filed Under other | Comments Off

bury me under blankets and pretend I’m not here

It’s so weirdly quiet and lonely. Am possessed by urgent need to go to Target and spend great quantities of money on brainless celebrity magazines and high-calorie, low-nutritive-value snacks. Have at least stopped crying.
Trying desperately not to think of bad things that could happen without my being there to stop them.

God. It’s like being dumped. I thought this was supposed to taste like freedom but it’s sour, instead.

July 6, 2006 | Filed Under other | 6 Comments

Secrets of the Banana

Remember, children, I blogged it first. ‘Know how I know? Because monkeys don’t have blogs.

Yet.

So I’m talking to my buddy Matt this evening, and he has a pleasant new-home-owner/sierra-nevada buzz going on, and we’ve been tossing around thoughts on virtual Windows environments and Obama for President and proper gin::tonic ratios when he instructs me, quite firmly, to go get a banana.

Now, our conversations have from time to time touched on quite a wealth of diverse topics including, but by no means limited to, home repair, outdoor recreation, familial interpersonal relationships, Volkswagens, and my ass, but never have I been told in such clear tones to find and, more importantly, lay hands to, a piece of produce, domestic, imported or otherwise. However, I’m nothing if not game, so I produce the banana and also my camera, because I have a feeling that if I have been commanded to pick up a banana it could only be for the highest, purest and most worthy intentions. In that noble faith I was not mistaken.

My only challenge is to do sufficient justice to the retelling of …

THE SECRETS OF THE BANANA.

Well, just the one secret. So that would be THE SECRET, singular. The Secret of the Banana. Starring Harrison Ford! Don’t miss the next exciting episode!

Right. So. Join me on this journey, won’t you? As we uncover the age-old mystery of the Banana? I promise you the results will be so life-changing you won’t be disappointed.

First, since this is a voyage of the mind, and THEN a voyage of the banana, I want you to close your eyes. Now, open them and read the next sentence and then close them again. Picture a banana. Now — pssst! Keep reading, OK? Maybe just close your eyes like after a paragraph. Otherwise this train is just going to kind of stall at the station, or whatever the methaphor — I mean, ha, metaphor — is. Methaphor. Sounds like an antibacterial cleanser.

OK! So. Picture a banana. Imagine you are going to eat this banana. What do you do? You go to the top of the banana, right? The stemmy part. And you yank on it and rip at it and try to cause the peel of the banana to break away from the stemmy bit and also from the meat of the banana itself. Guess what? Even in your mind’s eye it’s not working! Because it’s not separating and then you have to kind of dig your thumbnail in there and the top of the banana gets all smushy and you root around in the silverwear drawer to get something a little sharper than a butter knife and a little less sharp than a butcher knife — maybe a nice piece of Chef Tony craftsmanship, like this here steak knife — and you slice the end off and THEN you unpeel the banana.

Well, my friends, this is madness. You’re thinking, “There’s got to be a better way!”

There is!

Very handy for my story, that there’s a better way and that it’s a secret to you until the next paragraph.

Here’s the secret. And I have no qualms telling you that I did not invent the secret. And Matt did not invent the secret. And the four-year-old girl from whom he heard the secret did not invent the secret, either (although, for posterity’s sake, let it be known that credit for this brilliant tale goes 50 percent to Matt for the telling and 50 percent to the four-year-old girl who shared the secret in the first place. Just because, you know, people keep count on this sort of thing).

(All right, so you had to wait an extra paragraph for the secret. I’m not sorry.)

THE SECRET IS … (Owen is doing a very enthusiastic drumroll for your benefit, please clap at the end, it builds his self-esteem) … Open the banana from the bottom.

No shit. Know why? Because, and I quote, verbatim-like, only third-hand: “That’s the way the monkeys do it.” And goddamn it, if it’s good enough for the monkeys, for Darwin’s sake, it’s good enough for me!

Also, please try this at home. Just pop off the bottom knubby part of the banana and witness the brilliant rays of light which will signify that you, out of millions or even billions of 21st century people, have figured out what the monkeys knew all along: the most efficient way to open and peel a banana.

Thank you.

Perfectly peeled banana: What's the secret?

If you would like a transcript of this episode of SECRETS OF THE BANANA, you could probably just print this page from your browser, and then fold it up in quarters, and slip it into an envelope, and stick it on top of the microwave in your kitchen, near the bananas.

May 3, 2006 | Filed Under blather, other | 12 Comments

For the record

Things I have said that I’d write about and never did:

The phantom pee-er
money re: our budget
OMG blog drama
Owen’s birth story
moving and where to
reasons to be jaded

I’m sure there’s more. I feel like I do that all the time: promise (or threaten) to write more about something, and then I never do. I’m a little too conscious of who’s reading to be truly honest here. For that matter, you should see what I have still in the ol’ drafts folder. Hoooo-ee.

Ugh. Gotta cut this short, I’m coughing and disrupting the other patrons.

April 4, 2006 | Filed Under auto-categorized, other | Leave a Comment

Gonna be a stoned blogging party inside my mouth

… and you’re invited!

I’m getting my wisdom teeth pulled on Thursday. Woohoo, general anesthetic!

And my mom is coming in from Ohio tomorrow afternoon to play with the baby while I recover. Woo hoo, familial support!

So, next time I’m on here I’ll probably be donked up on some high quality codeine, dribbling milkshake down my chin and staring through bleary squinty eyes as my brain goes CHOO CHOO CRAZY from the drugs and the pain. Woohoo!

Bring it! Get these fuckers out of my mouth!

March 28, 2006 | Filed Under other | 10 Comments

Rules: Baby Einstein Drinking Game

Allow me to present the currently Official Rules and Regulations of the Baby Einstein Drinking Game, the rules I so longed for whilst imbibing my Yuengling the other evening, the rules for which the genius masterminding credit goes to Matt, who has no blog for me to link to, and instead will be linked to his last comment, in which he presented to me the aformentioned Rules.

You might want to wait until your children are grown and out of the house to play this.

Without much further ado — really, only a tinky winky bit of ado — here goes —

THE RULES

Phrase spoken in any language you know firsthand: 1 drink

Phrase spoken in a language you SAID you understand but cannot translate: 2 drinks (requires challenge from the gallery)

Phrase spoken in any language known by any of your current sexual partner(s): skip next drink

Lying about sleeping with women speaking French or Japanese: 2 drinks, or Midori shooters if you have them you lying poseur.

Toy train: drink

Wind-up toy: drink

Name-that-symphony correct answer: saves from next drink

Name-that-symphony incorrect answer (gallery): two drinks ‘cause you thought you were so smart, smartypants

Wind up toy crawling backward on ceiling to sounds of Underworld: switch back to beer

Presentation of idea
Also debuted on Supafine: Official Rules to the NUMB3RS drinking game.

February 6, 2006 | Filed Under other | 5 Comments