I have been trying to buy new clothes and every time it results in BIG MASSIVE FAIL. Here are some of my problems:

1. I have no patience for the hunt. None. I want to go to one place and walk out with clothing.
2. Regardless of whether this is objectively true or not, I feel like I am too young for “classic” and too old for “cool.”
3. I have a weird in-between workplace. I cannot wear jeans, but I do not have to “dress up.”
4. I have a weird body. Don’t get me wrong, if you were lucky enough to get me naked you would probably die of delight, but fitting my deliciousness into commercially produced clothes is another matter. I am short. I am skinny in some places and thick in others. It adds up to an off-the-rack disaster.
5. I only sort of care. I want to be comfortable, I want to feel like I look good, and I want most things to be machine washable. Beyond that I sometimes get an attitude, like I have more important things to worry about than clothes. The only problem with this attitude is that I end up in crises like the current one, where I have about three or four outfits I actively like and many others that I tolerate.
6. I am kind of cheap. Or maybe it’s not so much “cheap” as “stuck in the past.” I am like a shopping grandma: “Fifty dollars! For that rag! Back in my day…” Yeah well. Back in “my day” I got most of my clothing either from the thrift store in my economically-depressed college town or actually out of a dumpster. Now I am trying to hit Michigan Avenue chain stores on my lunch hour. There is a…bit of a price differential.

Should I give up and call upon a higher power, like one of those department store personal-shopper folk? Should I cultivate an ever-snootier who-cares attitude, and continue to swath my physical person in the boringest, blandest, most neutral-colored fabric I can find at Target? Is there more to life than another knee-length black skirt and another cashmere v-neck sweater? Should I simply look forward to the day when we all wear disposable nanofiber uniforms or are just brains in jars? Help me, internet.

NORA-RELATED, APOLOGIES FOR VIRTUAL BABY BOOK

1. She turned 9! There was some Friday evening bowling with about seven of her maniac friends. You can infer something about our privileged magnet-school demographic (which I lovingly mock at every opportunity) by the fact that all the kids were thrilled, amazed, and stoked that there was SODA provided at the bowling alley. They all sucked down the soda like the rare party treat it is, and many bowling hijinks ensued. A pitcher of Dr Pepper is the third-grade equivalent of tequila shots.

2. There was also a family party. My parents arrived bearing gifts, one of which was a five-foot length of clear PVC pipe with gift wrap at the top and at the base. I thought she was a little young for a bong and told them so, but it turned out to be a bank shaped like a parking meter.

3. Another gift was an experiment kit called “Magic Science.” The box makes me mad every time I look at it because CONTRADICTION IN TERMS, YO.

4. The other day at breakfast she went on this weird anti-humanity rant that unsettled me a bit. We were talking about the luna moth, which only lives for one week and does not even have a mouth.

Me: You have to wonder what is the point of an animal like that. I mean, why it evolved.
Nora: Maybe other things eat it.
Me: Yeah maybe. Everything has some purpose.
Nora: But what’s OUR purpose?
Me [thinking philosophically]: Heh, people have been trying to figure that out for a long time.
Nora: I mean, some people are DESTROYING THE EARTH! The Earth would be fine if it weren’t for people! What is the point of evolving if we just evolved to wreck everything? [more slightly incoherent third-grade-environmentalist content here]
Me: Well, humanity has also, uh, done some good stuff, like art, and science that can maybe solve some of those very problems, and…
Nora [not listening]: And nothing even EATS us!

MORE HUMAN/NATURE RELATIONSHIPS GONE WRONG

Recently we went back to the Shedd Aquarium, my favorite museum in Chicago. Normally I do not even bother with the so-called “Oceanarium” part, because the regular fish are so cool, and I am not sure I entirely agree with the keeping of whales and dolphins and big things like that. I agree even less now that I have seen the whale trainers practicing the belugas’ tricks with them. Most were normal, fetching balls and touching targets and so forth, but at one point a trainer blew her ultrasonic whistle and made a certain hand motion and the beluga moved the lump of fat on its head back and forth in a rhythmic fashion. This was totally disgusting and I cannot fathom why you would want the animal to do it on purpose. I would give it a fish reward to stop doing that.

Here, have a revolting Wikipedia quote about the beluga’s fat head. You won’t want lunch after this.

Its head is unlike that of any other cetacean. Like most toothed whales it has a melon—an oily, fatty tissue lump found at the center of the forehead. The beluga’s melon is extremely bulbous and even malleable.

EXTREMELY BULBOUS. Googling “extremely bulbous” gives you an extremely bulbous mixed bag of results, from plastic surgery disasters to hot air balloons to alien abduction. And icky whale headlumps, of course.

—mimi smartypants shouldn’t judge.

LT gave me a massage gift certificate for my birthday. Normally I hate massage (everyone hurts me ow ow stop that), but this place does both Thai massage and craniosacral. I had the latter once and loved it—afterward I felt like I had taken a very mild dose of shrooms and floated around smiling at everyone. Maybe that’s how craniosacral therapy should promote itself: socially acceptable hallucinogens for grown-ups! You have life responsibilities, and you can no longer tie colored ribbons to your wrists and run around the prairie for twelve hours! Your baby will not appreciate you fingerpainting with the diaper cream, your boss does not care how good the stapler feels pressed against your cheek. Go get some bodywork instead.

I decided on the Thai yoga massage this time though, for the novelty and stretchiness and because Sarah came highly recommended. As I was getting ready to leave:

LT: If it gets sexy, tell me all about it, okay?

Me: Oh grow up. It’s not that kind of massage.

LT: I’m just saying, if it does.

Me: It won’t. Life is not a porno.

LT: I guess that’s a good thing, in the long run. But. [sad face]

Obviously nothing weird happened during my massage, nor did I expect it to, but during periods when my mind was not 100% focused on the stretchy feelings (bad yogi!) I kept thinking about the unexpected. What if Sarah just screamed and punched me in the stomach right now? What if the soft new-wave music on the iPod in here suddenly changed to some painfully loud gong-laden Boredoms track? I would think it would be almost impossible for a massage therapist to resist trolling like that, at least once. And the fact that I think this is why I would not be a very good massage therapist.

I am about to overshare, but curiosity overwhelms me. After getting home from the massage, I experienced some, uh, bathroom frequency. Nothing horrific, but not particularly fun either. Could there be truth to the woo-woo massage legend of “toxins leaving the body”? Was it a delayed reaction to the previous night’s cheese and wine? Opinions?

MORE EVIDENCE OF BEING A TERRIBLE PERSON

Sometimes I like to make stern faces at babies and little children, when their parents aren’t looking. Sometimes I even give my head a little “no” shake while doing it. None of the babies or children have ever gotten visibly upset* (because really, who am I to them?), but they stare and stare like they are trying to figure out why I am so unhappy.

*The one time I did upset a strange kid, I was trying to be nice! This toddler was whining with every step, his mom was clearly over it and ignoring him (good call!), and I caught his eye and smiled/made a silly (friendly!) face. He started freaking out and yelling NO! and I nodded back “yes” while still smiling, which only made him madder, and as I passed this little street scene he was still crying/whining and yelling NO NO NO. His mom was probably thinking that he had just gone from normal fussy toddler to full-on batshit meltdown, which is not all that abnormal for the age, so I got away clean! No one would suspect me! Smile at a child? Why would I do such a thing?

MY DAMAGED CAT

I have already talked at length about Rocko, my emo mess of a pet. He is no better, and the Prozac seems to have made very little difference. He still overgrooms his belly and legs, he still is completely unable to be alone in a room, he still presses his skull into my armpit like one of those sensory-seeking children who need to crawl through the tight squishy tunnel to feel okay.

Normally I am just like whatever: he’s crazy but he’s mine. But the latest has me concerned—whenever I go down to the basement Rocko follows me, and then meows and paces around nervously in front of his litterbox. One time I picked him up and put him in there, and he immediately peed and seemed much happier. Of course now it is a routine. Rocko needs a friend to pee.

A MUCH MORE MENTALLY HEALTHY DOG

What a good puppy!

WITH CERTAINTY, I SAY

On a television promo for some dumb Animal Planet show about looking for Bigfoot, one of the searchers comes across some broken branches and says something like, “Oh yeah, this is definitely the work of a squatch.” This cracks me up, not because of the word “squatch” (although it is marvelous), but because of the word “definitely.”

—mimi smartypants will not debate ontology with cryptozoologists.

One of the things Facebook really did right is the notion of unsubscribing vs. unfriending. “I do not wish to cause drama, but I simply cannot continue to view your Jesus/Tim Tebow/kombucha/pro-spanking/homeopathy baloney anymore. Not to mention the incessant Flaming Lips videos.”

(Those Facebook sins are not all from the same person.)

(That would be one heck of a person.)

(And what if homeopathy-believers were also spanking believers? Homeopathic spanking! Get over here and drink this water that I slapped!)

There should also be an option to unsubscribe to anything that even faintly smells of politics. I can handle talking about issues. I cannot handle talking about politics. To quote David Foster Wallace:

…it’s almost irresistibly tempting to fall in with some established dogmatic camp and to follow that camp’s line on the issue and to let your position harden within the camp and become inflexible and to believe that the other camps are either evil or insane and to spend all your time and energy trying to shout over them.

Multiply that times one million billion when it comes to Facebook soundbites. Liberal, conservative, or in-between: it is all simplistic, shouty, and stupid.

Plus, I have next to no faith in the sort of person who would ever want to become President. I will vote for whoever most closely lines up with my views, but I am under no illusion that the things fucking over this planet will be solved by the person who manages to raise enough money and kiss enough ass to get elected.

Well that was cheerful! I could have saved you all a lot of time and bile just by letting this cat have the last word on Facebook, politics, and people who choose taking sides over taking a position:

SHE IS NOT QUITE LIKE US

At the water park, Nora (re)discovered her love of terrifying thrills. I went down the water slide with her several times because it was the kind where you ride on a tube and do not get very wet. Still terrifying because of the sheer speed, but without near-drowning added to the mix. LT consented to do it only once, said NEVER AGAIN, and went to go recover in the hot tub.

A summary of Nora’s weekend getaway: hours and hours of swimming, hours and hours of terrifying water slide, some anti-nutrition from a “kids menu” at a Wisconsin diner, some Skee-Ball at an arcade, more swimming, and then five minutes of flopping about grumpily on the hotel bed, insisting that she will never be able to sleeeeeeeeeeepzzzzzzzzzz.

I think the chlorine may have gone to her brain, though. We got home, unpacked, did laundry, and had LT’s birthday cake with my family. (Yes, both of us are now entering a decrepit new decade of life. We are celebrating by adding one new kink or vice a year, until retirement age, when we should have enough.) When I finally got Nora into bed that night, we had the following exchange:

Nora [showing me a small hole on one of her stuffed animals]: Can Dad sew this?

Me: Maybe, but not now, dude. Bedtime.

Nora: Well, it’s really small. It’s not a huge problem.

Me: No, it’s not.

Nora: Unless the hole is really… [spooky voice] A PORTAL.

Me: … [WTF]

Maybe the chlorine also went to the brains of the water park management, for they displayed a very strange sign (I should have taken a picture but it slipped my mind, what with being all damp/terrified). The sign told water park patrons not to be alarmed if they saw a baby floating face-down in the pool, as periodically the head lifeguard tosses a baby-sized mannequin in there to keep the other lifeguards on their toes. I’m sorry, what? I absolutely will become “alarmed” at the sight of a floating dead baby, and you can’t make me stop.

Also, do we want to be purposely desensitizing people to the sight of a baby face-down in the pool? *puffs cigarette* Ahhh, fuck it. Probably a doll. I saw a sign about it once. Let’s go get nachos.

—-mimi smartypants mmmmm, nachos.

I read another whaling book, a history of American whaling called Leviathan. In fact, now that I am Googling the book to make a link I see that the subtitle is indeed “A History of Whaling in America,” how about that. I already knew most of the whaling facts and accounts in this book, because I am kind of a whaling freak, but the author had some awesome phrases that cheered me up, such as “the peeling commenced” (referring to blubber, of course), and “slurry of putridity” (referring to what you have after the peeling). That second one in particular could refer to so many things. The winter-boot slop sloshing all over the rubber floors of El cars. The gunk at the bottom of the fish tank. Whatever horror was overflowing the bathrooms of that one loft party.

TELEVISON’S POOR VOCABULARY

I am very tired of the word “devastated” and I am hearing it more and more often. But that is probably my fault because I masochistically watched some of the Intervention marathon (with a big glass of wine, naturally), and man, everything is “devastating,” everyone is “devastated.” Now having an addicted loved one (or having an addiction yourself) is not an anal-sex/champagne-and-lobster picnic, but I just feel like this word is getting overused. (Headlines like “Android Tablet Sales Devastatingly Low” do nothing to change my mind, either.)

Even though I am an Intervention fan, I get kind of bored during it and either fast-forward or find myself distracted by strange little details. Did anyone see the most recent one, with mother-and-daughter meth addicts? Much of the tweaky action took place in the mother’s house and it was SO frighteningly decorated—the kind of “hearts, geese, and dried flowers” Cracker-Barrel shit that literally gives me panic attacks—but my favorite part was all the random wall stencils. They were not just used as borders (which would have been bad enough) but often were just smack in the middle of a wall. Oh here’s some blank space! Let me stencil a goddamned bow and some geese right here! I guess that is the danger of combining meth use and an affinity for countrified crap. More! More stencils! More milk churns! A larger wardrobe for my concrete porch goose!

HIP-HOP’S HUBRIS

In the 90s there was almost a sub-sub-genre of rap music that was mostly about being dorky and unsuccessful with girls. Young MC’s “Bust A Move” (although the protagonist is victorious at the end), that Skee-Lo song about wishing to be taller, all of De La Soul’s trouble with crabby girlfriends, and probably more that I don’t remember. Can we go back to that? Less bragging, more striking out and rapping about it.

MY WEIRD FEARS

1. Ever since that horrific NYC elevator accident, you can find me practically doing a barrel roll or standing front-tuck flip to get into the office elevator. I get in and out as fast as possible and if there is a long line of people shuffling in I will bail and wait for the next one.

2. Christ, finally. I don’t eat meat, but resistant bacteria and food-borne illnesses give me the heebie-jeebies. As a vulnerable new mom, I read a sad and graphic description of the toddler who died from the Jack-in-the-Box hamburger contamination, and I still won’t let Nora eat ground beef because of it.

3. This is not a fear, exactly, but I have been very uninterested in leaving the house lately. It is not an antisocial thing—you are welcome to come and drink my booze and eat my food. We can talk talk talk, make fun of Intervention, and have a rousing game of Mario Kart on the Wii. (Warning: I suck. I go off-road a lot and I like to be Koopa Troopa, just so I can yell KOOPA TROOPA! in a silly voice, which annoys Nora a lot.) It might be a side effect of having a house that I really love and that feels exactly like home, in a way the condo never did. I know, home is the people and not the place—but the place helps. (Does that make me a shallow vapid bitch? The kind who judges meth-addict décor? Yes. But come over anyway! I have wine!)

TIME TO FAKE A NOSEBLEED AND LEAVE

I had the most classically Dilbertian meeting yesterday. It really should have been videotaped and put into some archive of Corporate Ridiculousness.

Different Team: OMG the people want a thing! We must implement this thing! Quick, modify the stuff!

My Team: What does the thing look like? Who creates it? Where does it go? Are we sure the stuff and the thing will play nicely together? [insert about a dozen other questions here]

DT: We don’t know!

MT: Did you ask the people? I mean, if they want a thing, they should have an idea about how they want the thing delivered.

DT: We asked, but they haven’t replied yet! Okay! Now who is going to start to work on the thing?

Sure, I will! I assume that with no instructions I can just do what I want, so please deliver a box of pasta and a ball of yarn to my office so I can start on everyone’s macaroni necklaces. Thanks.

I have a few days’ respite from the crazy people, though, as we are briefly off to some Wisconsin (indoor) water park, which will be all kinds of fun for Nora and mildly amusing for us. I am actually not the hugest fan of getting wet, but I do adore a certain sort of Wisconsin Tacky. I hope to drink canned beer in at least one wood-paneled establishment. Bonus points for fried cheese curds.

—mimi smartypants sat on her tuffet.

However, I think I may have blasted through that now, with the help of upping my green tea intake (caffeine really is a mood elevator! No, YOU shut up!), scouring out the inside of my head with wall-of-bent-chords Kevin-Shields-style music played at very loud volumes, and reading a lot. So with my mumbleteenth cup of tea, I am going to sit here all glasses-sliding-down-nose* and not deleting (typos excepted) for thirty minutes. Let’s see what happens.

*I bought these glasses online last summer and they are too damn big for my face. They look okay, but I have to push them up like Urkel (Old-Person Cultural Reference Alert!) all the time, and they have a tendency to flop off altogether if I spend too much time in adho mukha svanasana. It is annoying, but on the other hand I keep seeing hipster girls with enormous slidey-down glasses, so maybe it is the hipster thing to do now. Mimi Smartypants, accidental hipster.

EVIL USES NO LUBE WHATSOEVER

I recently read a novel called The Dead Path by Stephen M. Irwin. Or rather I read about three-fifths of it, because toward the end I was just like come on, showdown betwixt good and evil already, let’s go. Not badly written, but ultimately it was just too much horror classicism for me and back to the library it went. But first, there are two things I want to tell you about this book.

1. The lettering on the book jacket is glow-in-the-dark. I think this was supposed to be all FREAKY and SPOOKY and OOOOOOH, and maybe I am a snobby literature person who is no fun at all, but really? Come on, book designers. Come on.

2. The main character gets a handjob from a demon witch, while an enormous spider squats on his chest. (It might go without saying that this is a forcible handjob, for demonic purposes, that he does not enjoy—but I’ll say it anyway, just to be clear.)

Although I personally did not love The Dead Path, that alone might be enough to recommend it to others. “It wasn’t that great…but there is a scene where a guy gets a handjob from a demon witch while a spider sits on his chest.” It might be the only book with demon-witch handjobs and large otherworldly spiders; that is not a very common trope in Western literature. Well, it was the underlying theme in Middlemarch, but other than that. (What? You didn’t get that? I pity the state of your literary education, I really do.)

So. Demon-provided spider-witnessed handjobs! That’s festive, man. That’s the holiday spirit right there. They should market The Dead Path as a Christmas book. It even has ghosts, just like A Christmas Carol! No handjobs in A Christmas Carol, though, unless you put them there yourself, during your holiday read-aloud or your fringe theater production.

OUTTA HERE LIKE HANDJOB SANTA

Already had my work holiday party, with lasagna and quietly making fun of other people’s holiday sweaters. (Although it was semi-tedious, it was also a welcome distraction from my lengthy email fight with a genetics researcher about the random use of headings and italics in his paper. Sorry, not going to change style and possibly even break the DTD just to make your little researcher heart happy, so get over it.) LT’s is tonight, with booze and getting introduced to people I don’t know. (Underneath my planned outfit, assuming I don’t chuck it all out the window in a fit of petulance, will be my first-ever item of “shapewear.” Yes, it makes the dress look better. No, it is not comfortable. Yes, I totally hate myself for striking this bargain with the beauty-industrial complex.)

Then there is Nora’s ridiculous “Winter Assembly,” where (to her mortification) the third grade will be performing some sort of Polynesian dance. This is the last year she will be forced to perform, unless later she joins choir or band or something like that. (Fat chance. Maybe if school starts a competitive powerlifting team, but otherwise no.) After that there are several family things, then my Christ-free Christmas itself, then MY BIRTHDAY and New Year’s and all that jazz. And handjob-giving demons, and their pet spiders. Deck the halls with creepy sex scenes! Fa la la la la la la la oh shit!

—mimi smartypants can’t get it out of her head.

Iris Murdoch is dead and not around to be offended, so maybe it’s okay for me to say: I don’t care if it did win the Booker Prize, The Sea, The Sea is possibly the worst title for a novel I have ever heard. I know it’s a quote from Xenophon, and I have nothing against Xenophon (except for being more important than readable). But why The Sea, The Sea (oh, there it is) instead of The Sea! The Sea! (yay, there it is!) Or for that matter, why use someone’s unpunctuated cry of surprise, alarm, or jubilation as a literary title at all? There are no novels (yet) called What Happened Here or Goddammit, Dog or There’s Cake in the Break Room.

However, there is an Iris Murdoch novel called A Severed Head, which is an excellent title and a pretty good book.

WINNER, CHICKEN DINNER

My favorite Trader Joe’s employee bested me in banter recently. I had run over there during the workday to get two things I needed, which happened to be their excellent organic mayonnaise and the king of cereals, Barbara’s Bakery Peanut Butter Puffins.

Me: I don’t plan to eat these together.

Trader Joe’s Dude: I don’t know. Could be good.

Me: You’re a sick man.

TJD: You don’t know the half of it.

Me: Okay, I don’t need to hear about all your gross fetishes now.

TJD: Adult diapers aren’t gross.

Me: I SAID OKAY. YOU WIN.

PLANNING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

Nora’s Xmas list includes a sleeping bag, a Swiss Army knife, Nerf guns, and one of those fire-making steel flint things. I am considering the first three items but not the last, because we don’t need any more accidental conflagrations around here. She also wants some normal stuff like video games and “cool skateboard clothes,” but the survival gear was at the top of the list. I should get her some MREs, she would probably love them.

HAPPY SMOKESGIVING

Thanksgiving at my house was awesome, except for the part where Martha Stewart was a lying skank. That thing about soaking the cheesecloth in butter and wine and draping it over the turkey breast results in nothing but a shrieking fire alarm, frightened cats, and an oven full of smoke. Luckily this all happened before any guests arrived, so LT just pulled the whole cheesecloth mess off with barbecue tongs and threw it in the sink. Quit trolling, Martha. People (me) actually believed that cheesecloth nonsense. I’ma gonna get you back, lady.

I am quite glad Thanksgiving is over, because the planny planny-ness of it was driving me insane. I enjoy making lists and spreadsheets and plans of attack, but I can get a little obsessed with efficiency. When things get really bad I realize that I am not only multitasking, but mentally rerouting my actual steps to maximize my efforts (I will take the laundry downstairs and bring X and Y on the way, that will save me a trip, blah blah blah). There is no prize for doing everything correctly, you know? At the end, we’re all just dead, no matter how sensibly and rationally we complete our activities of daily living.

(Oh, do you come to this website for the cheering thoughts? Sorry.)

Time for some chaos, then, to counteract the compulsive Doing Things Right. Chaos and darkness! I don’t know exactly what that means at my age, though. Twenty years ago I would have been atop a fire escape in the freezing rain, holes in my tights and cigarette burns on my sweater sleeves, declaiming some Rimbaud to an uncaring sky. Now I will probably drink an extra (three) glasses of wine, leave the laundry in the dryer all night, skip my second dose of fish oil. Also, come to think of it, maybe the holidays are not the very best time to embrace the crazy, and I should hang on to the fascist spirit of capitalism and orderliness a bit longer. Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Wrap my gifts and add a festive ribbon! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Decorate the house, bake the cookies! Robot apartments!

—mimi smartypants bit detectives in the neck.

I have a touch of hippie woo lurking inside me when it comes to personal-care products. I am all about avoiding “fragrance,” I don’t trust SLS or parabens, and lately I have been using pretty much nothing but jojoba oil on my face. All that goes out the window when it comes to teeth, though. Give me fluoride! Give me foaming agents and whitening power! Yes please! Ingesting toxic chemicals (alcohol, caffeine, whatever the hell is in toothpaste) is apparently just fine with me, I just don’t want them smeared on my skin. That doesn’t make sense, you say? Yes, I am aware! Deal with it.

The best non-hippie toothpaste in the world is Crest Barrage of Adjectives. Actually it is called (deep breath) Crest Multi-Benefit Extra White Plus Scope Dual-Blast, Fresh Mint flavor. The ads for this toothpaste show a jet of mouthwash pulverizing an onion in mid-air, and that is an accurate metaphor. Perhaps it is only the illusion of fresh breath, and the chemicals are killing all the bacteria in my mouth and all the cells of my oral mucosa as well, but it sure feels great. You could probably blow a hobo down by the train tracks after using this toothpaste and still have fresh breath. If you end up liking the hobo (like maybe this started out as just another blowjob-for-crack scenario but you are actually starting to get along), you could even share the toothpaste and the two of you could have a minty-fresh makeout session.

HEARD ON THE TRAIN

“I don’t know what you are talking about, nigga! THERE WAS NO PENGUIN. They had snowmen and Santas, but NO FUCKING PENGUINS. You feel me?”

HEARD ON TV

“Donna was a retired ventriloquist.”

HEARD FROM MY KID

After hearing two of her friends describe a fictional character’s hair as “ugly,” Nora interrupted and said, “How can hair be ugly?” (Oh. I love her.)

A line from Nora’s most recent book report: “Freaking out is not very heroic.”

THE GIVING OF THE THANKS

Thanksgiving this year is mine, all mine! I get to shop, I get to be all control-freaky about the menu, I get to cook everything and tell other people what to bring! (I don’t fuck with pie, that is best left to experts). I get to buy cheesecloth! I have never bought cheesecloth before, but the roasting recipe for the fancy free-range turkey suggests soaking cheesecloth in butter and wine and laying that over the breast, which sounds so fun and medieval (aren’t you basically making a poultice?) that I must try it. Besides turkey and dressing (baked in a pan), I am mostly making various versions of potatoes and roasted vegetables. I dislike salad on Thanksgiving, so we’ll have Brussels sprouts for the “green thing” and the haters will just have to suffer. Oh, and I’m also making a macaroni-and-cheese-type-thing with butternut squash and Gruyere, because god forbid we don’t have enough carbs, salt, and fat. And there will be lots of wine.

Because I host Thanksgiving every other year, this may be the last year that my ugly kitchen makes an appearance. We had some contractors over to talk about the kitchen, and later they came back with some seriously big, expensive-sounding plans. This part of the space is wasted and let’s move the fridge to the other side of the room and let’s do a built-in thing over here and cut a hole in your wall for a new door and build new porch steps and put a window where the door was and WOW. It sounded cool at first but now I don’t know and I am thinking of contacting them with my own, more modest plan—which still makes use of the “wasted space”* but scales back on other things and doesn’t involve moving the DOOR. Will I make the architect sad by asking for a less-intense plan? Will he mope about and throw his T-square across the room and scratch at his architect wrist with a drafting pencil? I do not know.

*The cats would like to point out that the “wasted space” is where their food bowls are, thank you very much.

MILFING IT UP AT THE GROCERY STORE

I am not working this week, which is fabulous. It will not truly take three full days to shop and prep dinner and clean the house, but I can pretend like it will and add in lots of screwing-around time as well. Now I am off to Trader Joe’s like Chicago’s biggest cliché, with my yoga pants and reusable bags. I will have to listen to ultra-violent gangsta rap on the way there, just to help get over myself.

—mimi smartypants keeps it (somewhat) real.

So: dreary Monday in November. Odd backache from the weekend that will not go away (could I have really thrown my back out just being a late-night drunk on Twitter?) The piss-flavored icing on this filthy gutter cake would of course be CTA drama. My fancy transit card did not work this morning, and the attendant told me that “code 57” meant that it had been reported lost or stolen. Huh? Last week I did ask a question of the CTA, using their “contact us” web form, but in no way did I report the card lost or stolen. How good to know that the CTA’s default option for any inquiry is ARMAGEDDON BLOW IT UP RUIN EVERYTHING. If the CTA were a married human, and its spouse asked where it wanted to go for dinner, the CTA would probably file for divorce and burn the house down.

I paid for a non-smart card like a common prole, got on the damn train, and called the CTA. The customer service agent was one of those incredibly touchy types who seemed to mistake my businesslike inquiries for “attitude,” and she called me “ma’am” with a lot of special emphasis, as if I were highly unreasonable for not wanting my transportation card randomly cancelled without my knowledge. They are sending me a new card (even though I did not NEED ONE), they assure me that this will not change the way I pay (pre-tax payroll deductions) although I am not sure I believe that, and in the meantime I get to be annoyed by the extra half-second it takes to stick the ordinary card into the turnstile. MY TIME IS PRECIOUS, YO.

Immediately after I hung up with the CTA a man sat down next to me. I guess his penis must have been about four feet long and two feet wide, because I can think of no other reason why he felt the need to spread his knees apart like he was visiting the gynecologist. He also reeked of cigarettes to the point that I was involuntarily coughing and crafting a gas mask out of my scarf, and I swear my left pant leg still smells of smoke in the place where his disgusting knee was touching it. I nearly had a full CTA bingo card today, man: administrative hassle, inconsiderate bastards, and inexplicable “waiting for signals” delay. Too bad it was the Brown Line so I could not fill in the “ranting alcoholic” or “rapping homeless dude” squares.

BOOKS AND ARTICLES AND MEMES AND SHOWS (AND AUXILIARY SHOWS)

1. If you are a masochist like me and need more things to worry about, you should read Everything Is Going To Kill Everybody. It is written by a Cracked.com contributor, and the jokey swear-word-filled commentary can get a little wearying in book form, but it is full of interesting facts about ways you (and the rest of humanity) can die horribly. Now doesn’t that sound nice? Very relaxing.

2. I read The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. It was okay. When I started to read it I grabbed a bookmark out of my bookmark bowl, but it had a naked lady on it so I switched it for another one. Notorious literary perv Nicholson Baker does not need a naked-lady bookmark in his book.

3. Do you like neuroscience and feminism and snarky feminist neuroscientists? You must read Delusions of Gender. It is awesome. Particularly (a) the stuff about how our implicit sexism is so often at odds with our conscious attitudes and (b) the absolute evisceration of John Gray (the “men/Mars, women/Venus” dude).

4. Now I am reading this creepy noir thing called Before I Go to Sleep and it is not so good for sleeping.

5. Leave Pedro and Buddy alone, man! Is there a way to protest this?

6. I prefer Linguist Lioness to the Linguist Llama. Can’t explain why, I just do.

7. I am watching Breaking Bad on Netflix and have quickly become obsessed, to the point of fangirl shit like listening to the “insider” podcast. But if you are a Breaking Bad dork like me, I do recommend it—each podcast is about a half-hour and always has Vince Gilligan plus various other crew or cast members who tell little stories about how the episode was written/edited/shot, whatever. It is good for the treadmill and I dig it.

NOT BREAKING BAD AT ALL

I was waiting at an intersection near my office for the light to change, and a lot of other pedestrians were just looking both ways and crossing the street since there was not much traffic yet. A random guy, business-casual, small goatee, was waiting with me as we watched all those jaywalkers get where they were going. Suddenly he said, “Law-abiding citizens! Yeah!” and held out his fist for a bump. I said, “Fuck yeah” and hooked a brother up, the light changed and we legally crossed the street, and I felt better about the world for a few hours. Thanks, dude.

WELCOME TO CLUB MYOPIA AND CAFÉ UNINTENTIONAL INNUENDO

Nora got glasses! She had complained about not seeing very well and the eye doctor said yup, about a -1 in each eye. Which sounded like crazy happy eyeball news to nearly-legally-blind me, but I guess it’s enough to warrant correction. In fact, for the first few days I got a little sick of hearing endless rhapsodies from Nora about how CLEAR everything is and OH MY GOODNESS I CAN SEE _____ FROM HERE and I CAN READ THIS LICENSE PLATE NOW I WILL BE A BETTER CRIMEFIGHTER.

Also, this weekend she covered one forearm with temporary tattoos—this particular set was sports-related, with a football, basketball, baseball, and soccer ball. We were reading our separate books in my bed and Nora suddenly exclaims, “Look at these wrinkly balls!” I managed not to swallow my tongue and mildly replied that yes, those temporary tattoos had gotten a bit scrunched up, sometimes that happens, but Nora had several more sentences about the balls being wrinkled while I made noncommittal noises with my eyes on my book and my fist shoved in my mouth. Oh my word.

—mimi smartypants knows full well they’re wrinkled.

ESCALATION OF HOSTILITIES

Nora is playing a computer game, one of those weird time-management things where you have to run a farm or serve virtual pizza or something. She likes to be in charge of stuff.

Me: I’m going to go take a shower.

Nora: Do you want me to play you some music while you shower?

Me: Uh, okay.

Upstairs I am naked and washing while outside the shower curtain Nora is hammering out beats on her little DJ machine. I refrain from funk dancing because of the slip-and-fall factor, but from the thumps and shuffles I can hear that Nora is doing her spider-having-a-seizure breakdance thing. Then she starts seriously messing with the beats, so they get all stuttery and arrhythmic, and things get surreal:

Nora: Mommy! You are in the army!

Me: …

Nora: You are going to a WAR!

Me: Okay…

Nora: Wow, SO MUCH BLOOD!

Me: Oh.

Nora [changing her beats to something more old-skool hip-hop] Okay, war is over. You won! It’s a party! Go ahead and dance!

Me: Well, I like that better than a war.

Nora: There was no food at the party, and people are getting mad. [starts distorting her beats again.] OH NO! ANOTHER WAR!

All you political science majors best step off, because Nora has got this one covered. (Although if you loosely interpret “no food at the party,” it really does turn out to be the root cause of many wars.)

BY REQUEST

Email from a lovely stranger says this:

I tend to click on the little links* you provide in your posts, and today I found this:

“I once helped a friend spraypaint a pig carcass, which very nearly resulted in his arrest by the FBI”

Please tell me that you told this story somewhere.  For the love of all that is holy.

*By this she means the times I link to other posts of mine, which always feels stupid and masturbatory when I do it, but on the other hand it seems equally arrogant to always assume you know what I’m talking about. The pig-carcass story was referenced here, but I don’t think I ever did explain. Well why not now! It’s No-Delete Thursday and I’m in a typing mood!

I attended a middle-of-the-prairie small liberal arts college that tolerated a lot of shenanigans. But as it turned out, they had their limits!

My friend Martin was an art major, often specializing in strange confrontational performances accompanied by terrifying distorted noises. He and I once performed a death-metal song at an open mic about the gross cafeteria cake, with him on guitar and me on Cookie-Monster vocals. (I could barely talk for days afterwards. How do those guys do it?) Some group had a pig roast out in the country, and Martin begged for the leftover carcass and was gifted with such, and managed to scam a ride from someone with a pickup truck to get the thing back to campus. I like picturing Martin riding in the back of a truck along with a huge slab of pig torso, enjoying the crisp Midwestern night. Anyway, he asked me for help with the project and of course I agreed, so way after midnight I found myself out in a remote campus field, helping him hang the pig carcass from a tree and spray-paint it all different colors, with symbols and random words too. We also set up some lanterns around it in the grass, and tacked pieces of paper to other trees with more rambling stream-of-consciousness manifestos about death and decay and blah blah.

The next day I heard that Martin had been called down to the Dean’s office, and had spent part of the day being questioned by the FBI. Someone had seen the tableau and freaked out, called the cops, who also freaked out and called someone on a “cult crimes” or “satanic rituals” task force (seriously) and whatever podunk FBI office existed in that part of the country sent someone down to talk to Martin. Very shortly they found out that he was an art major, and I heard that they kept wearily asking him, “Was this art? If it was art, kid, just say so.” And Martin (being Martin) was all performance-artist agitated and, reluctant to have his statement dismissed on the basis of “art,” kept yelling things like, “No! It was meant to UPSET YOU!” Also, he misguidedly did not bring my name into it, so I could not be the cute little white college girl who admits that yeah, it was art, and thus the whole thing took a lot longer than it needed to take. No one got in any permanent trouble though, and I guess some groundskeeper hauled away the pig carcass on a golf cart, which is something I would have liked to have seen.

VIDEO TIME

Kraftwurst.

Metal as fuck.

Life is short, man.

This turns it into a happy tune!

You wouldn’t want pure white. That would be disturbing.

Not your usual cute-kid song.

FREE, TONIGHT, AT YOUR LOCAL INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE

I sure as hell don’t want to turn this into a dream blog or anything, but I am dedicated to recording the dreams I have that are related to business or entrepreneurial ventures, such as Presidential Shampoo, earthquake spray, or Gaia Walrus.  In the latest installment I was a book publicist, and I was very busy putting together a book tour for the autobiography of Adam Podlesh. He is the current punter for the Chicago Bears, and in my waking life I don’t ever think about him. But asleep, I was working hard on promoting his book, which had the unfortunate title of PODLESH PODLESH. I can even remember the cover: both Podlesh-es were stacked on top of each other in a giant heavy font like so:

 PODLESH

PODLESH

I remember thinking the title was unfortunate, and since the book was clearly ghostwritten* I wondered why the writer didn’t think of a better one, but in the dream I was a plucky little publicist and was going to hype the hell out of the book despite these obstacles.

*I typed this on No-Delete Thursday and then worried  that without a disclaimer Adam Podlesh would read this and infer that I think he’s stupid. I am sure you are perfectly capable of writing your own autobiography, Adam Podlesh, although I’m not quite as sure that anyone wants to read it. (Oh shit! I did it again! Adam Podlesh is going to come kick me with his giant leg!)

—mimi smartypants signaled for a fair catch.

Lately I have been in some weird twilight zone where people respond to things I did not say, or miss my point entirely, or otherwise FAIL at communication in a big way.

1. I sent out a notice at work that used the phrase “through the end of the year” and someone took the time to put fingertips to e-mail client and ask me if I meant 2011 or 2012. I know monthly publishing is wacky, and in my brain it has been 2012 for a while now that we are deep into January issues, but come on. “The” year. That’s this year. *snaps fingers in front of your face* Wake up!

2. A new coworker had pictures of a very cute baby up on her cube wall.

Me: Aw! Is that your baby?

New Coworker [shocked, maybe even a bit offended]: NO! God no! That’s my nephew. I’m not even married!

Me: Well, uh, babies don’t come from wedding rings, you know. Anyway, your nephew is cute!

3. This time it was my turn to be obtuse.

Nora: You can’t really tell if a baby is a boy or a girl, sometimes.

Me: Yeah, babies mostly look alike. Unless their parents have dressed them in a very “boy” or “girl” way.

Nora: It’s a little easier with kids, and mostly really easy with grownups.

Me [still thinking about gendered fashion]: True…men’s and women’s clothes are mostly pretty different…even for standard things like pants and jeans…

Nora [giving me the “you’re an idiot” look]: No. BREASTS.

Me: Oh yeah, breasts. I forgot about breasts.

3. The same delightful child is making me crazy, though, with a horrid new habit: if I say, ever-so-mildly, “Nora, please don’t [fill in the blank],” she often responds with “I’m not trying to” or “I didn’t do it on purpose.” Hey freak, where did I bring up the question of intent? You are doing a thing, I want you to stop, whether or not you meant to do it is not the issue at hand.

Anyway, sometimes it’s a good thing she’s cute. And happy adoption day to us! Eight years ago she looked like this:

And then she came to our house and got happier and looked like this:

And now she looks like this:

I liked and loved Nora right away, even on the first day with her runny nose and her mosquito bites and her bewildered expression. But I had no idea how cool she would turn out to be. Yay.

CATS HID MY WALLET

I worked from home all day yesterday and it might be good that I don’t do that full-time. Because when I work from home I talk to the cats just a little too much. I like to get into mock fights with them. I like to walk in the kitchen and say, Fuck you, Rocko. Are you just going to sleep on the couch all day? Huh? When are you going to be a man? Get a job. Go back to school. Do SOMETHING. Because you sure are not going to live under my roof and eat my food and poop in that box that I bought with my hard-earned money for much longer. It’s time to learn the meaning of maturity, shitbag.

Lola I am not quite so hard on, perhaps because she is more scarce during the day and is usually hanging out in Nora’s room upstairs. If the cats are together, I like to speak to them as a duo, usually with the Midwestern form of group address known as “guys,” and always with a fake sense of excited urgency. Guys! Guys! Guys! Guess what? I’m going to make a sandwich! And go to Target! And then come back and work on preparing this goddamn report while answering a bunch of bullshit emails!

A good thing about working from home is that you can sneak away and run quick little errands, like going to Target, which saves time. Unless you are me and get a full cart of Target supplies, and then realize you have forgotten your wallet just before getting in line to pay. I suppose it could have been worse, as I could have unloaded everything and then realized that I had no wallet when it came time to pay. Pay with what? My good looks? My priceless advice? Sexual favors? (Oh please no. Those red polo shirts are not my jam.) A Target dude put my cart aside while I sped home just long enough to turn off the alarm, insult the cats, get my wallet, turn the alarm back on, and drive back to stupid Target. Oh hey Working-From-Home Mimi, why did it take you so long to answer my bullshit email? BECAUSE TARGET.

Speaking of cats, I had a very detailed dream that I gave one to the state of Iowa. I went to an animal shelter, very carefully picked out a cat, and drove to Iowa to present it to the governor at some ceremony. There were many staged photographs of me handing over the cat (a standard-issue gray striped thing) to Governor Branstad at the state capitol in Des Moines, and I was presented with some kind of key to the state, a thing which I do not even think exists. And although the recounting of this dream is not very interesting, except the puzzle of what prompted my generous dreamtime cat donation (a shortage of Iowa cats? or was this some special symbolic cat?), it is interesting that one can be awarded a key to the city, but apparently not a key to the state. No key big enough, I guess.

—mimi smartypants liked it, should have put a ring on it.