Yuck-O!!!!!

As I have mentioned before.....I watch a lot of the Food Network. Currently on my tivo line-up are: Everyday Italian, Barefoot Contessa, Paula's Home Cooking, Iron Chef America, Road Tasted and Paula's Party....and I'm contemplating adding Nigella Barker's new show, but I can't commit.

The ever-present barrage of cooking shows has been handled with extreme grace and patience from Fiance, who quietly plays online poker while I constantly ask him, "would you eat that?" or "do you think I could make that?"

One of the reasons our happy home is quite harmonious is that we agree on one simple rule: NO RACHAEL RAY AT ANY TIME.

It's actually too bad, and you know why? Her food is quite good. But her accent? QUITE BAD. And calling extra virgin olive oil "EVOO"? Excrutiating. And her constant usage of "Yumm-o?" I want to rip her arms off and beat her with them.

And there are her jeans.....which just always appear to ride slightly too high and are usually paired with some body-hugging t-shirt that does nothing for a short, curvy girl......and I'm a short, curvy girl, so I can freely comment on her fashion sense.

Rachael Ray is getting a lot of mileage these days....with her magazine and her talk show and multiple cook books. I'm cool with that, even though I find her more irritating then nails on a chalkboard, because I think we need more short, curvy women who like to eat as role-models out there. As long as I can turn off the TV and not listen to her.....I'm fine with her success. Mazel Tov, I say.

However....THIS.......I was completely unprepared for. This is WRONG.

This is going to haunt my dreams......and not in a good way.

A guest blogger: HotMom

My friend HotMom is a dear friend from college, where we attended Journalism school together. HotMom has left our fair city by the bay to live in the Burbs with her lovely husband and adorable 2-year-old son. We correspond daily, and today she sent me this. I enjoyed it thorougly and I expect you will too:

I thought it would be nice to go have a picnic dinner with Kai at the park last night, just like my mom and I used to do before we went grocery shopping each week. She and I would eat burritos from Taco Bell, but we got hot dogs and hamburgers instead. Rather than getting fries, I opted for the ever-so-healthy carrot sticks and apple sauce side combo…

So we went to the park and we ate and stared up at the big trees and ran around the playground and dug in the dirt had a lovely time. We ate our dinner and Kai saved his carrot sticks for the car ride home. He sat so quietly in the back seat, gleefully eating the carrots while I sang and sang along to the radio, completely oblivious to the sinister goings-on in the back seat.

When we arrived home, he said “Mommy, carrot... nose.” Obviously this was just silly toddler babble! There was no carrot on his nose! “No mommy, IN nose!” Um… let me see. No, I don’t see anything. Enough with the crazy talk!

But he persisted, so I got out a flashlight and lo and behold – there was a carrot in his nose. Lodged waaaay up there where the sun don’t shine. It looked tiny enough, so I tried to make him blow it out. To no avail. I tried to smush it down from the outside. That seemed to hurt. I stuck that bulb aspirator thing up there and tried to suck it out. It didn’t budge.

I called our pediatrician, fearing that Kai would suffocate in the middle of the night if I didn’t get this thing out. He actually picked up the phone (which never happens), and said that the real concern was that Kai could contract a nasty and painful sinus infection if we didn’t get it out of there. And so we went to Urgent Care. At 7:30pm. With no sign of Daddy in sight (he’s in Atlanta on a business trip, and had his RINGER OFF the entire night because he was at dinner. Doghouse!).

Miraculously, there was only one other person in the waiting room. She was holding her stomach as though she was suffering from an excruciating and highly contagious virus of some sort, so we sat waaay across the room from her. But there was a bright yellow sign above the registrations desk – something about “staffing shortages… longer than average wait times…” Oh joy!

Kai was bouncing off the walls. Literally. Squealing. Up down up down up down. On the floor (gross!). Playing drums on the chairs. Non stop. For an hour. While 10 other injured and sick people came crawling in to join us.

We finally saw a physician’s assistant who said he wasn’t sure he could get the carrot out. Kai was quite a trooper, actually excited to see the “doctor”, sit in the big boy examination chair, etc. Until he came in with The Stick. He laid Kai back, shined a light up his nose, and proceeded to dig up his nostril farther than I thought humanly possible. Kai SCREAMED something awful and out it flew. The offending carrot! It was way bigger than I imagined it would be. Especially compared to his little 2-year-old nostrils. So I held him and calmed him down and took a photo of the carrot chunk lying there on the table with my camera phone.

Just when you think your highly intelligent child would never run out in traffic, eat glue, smear his poo on the couch, shove a carrot up his nose, etc, he does it! And that is the moral of this story. Expect the unexpected.

Reading.....Kenneth's Blog

Reading…..

Kenneth is a lot funnier than me. No, he really is. It has taken me 6 years of friendship with him to realize that he is, quite simply, my superior when it comes to humor. And I’m ok with that.

So I’m deferring to his blog entry to further discuss why and how much we LOVE LOVE LOVE Team Kentucky on The Amazing Race.

I do, however, have a lot more hair than he does. Yeah, thems fightin' words Kenneth!

Hurry Up, Quack, Quack!

Ok, I'm back on The Amazing Race Bus after a brief hiatus. This season has all the components I need to be instantly hooked: best friends, horrible couples just minutes from breaking up, couples who have been dating for about two minutes, fathers and daughters and The Gays. (I can write that. I’m a Friend of the Gay.) One thing that has changed is that teams can be booted off at any point in the trip for being in last place, not just at a Pit Stop.

I can’t be bothered to care about all the teams this early in the game, so here are my early favorites.

Team Kentucky: Oh, for crying out loud. I love love LOVE these two. I love it that our collective assumption is that backwoodsy Appalachians are small-minded, homophobic, wife beaters (or is that just MY small-minded assumption?), and then CBS goes and proves us wrong! Team Kentucky was polite, supportive of each other (particularly when Kentucky Husband tells his wife their kids will be proud of her for scaling the Great Wall of China), supportive of other teams and supportive of The Gays (am I the ONLY one who heard Kentucky Wife say “Hi Ladies!” to The Gays?. HiLARious.) And then Kentucky Wife went and uttered my favorite line EVER to a Chinese taxi driver…..”HURRY UP, QUACK QUACK!” It’s like she and I speak the same language.

Team India: They seemed like they have a really strong relationship and I love to see couples who don’t verbally and physically abuse each other on national TV, a la Victoria and Jonathan. Plus Fiancé thought Arti is really pretty, which she totally is. Oh wait. They are already out. Team India, we shall miss you.

Team Gay: Just cuz they are such girls and they say all the right Gay things.I hope they keep hanging out and doing cheers with Team Spirit.

Here’s who I CANNOT STAND:

Team Rehab: Oh, please. My good friend Kenneth and I were discussing that “they were probably jazzed up on Tina” for a weekend and decided that it would be, like, so hot for their careers to go 12-stepping. Bored now. Moving on.

Team Peg Leg (Look, I never said I wasn’t going straight to hell, ok?): All I’m saying is that if girlfriend can run to get to the plane (not to mention run a triathlon) she should not be playing the invalid card to get special boarding privileges. Although, points back for stating that “she’s leaking hydraulic fluid.”

Team Let’s Take This To The Next Step (LTTTTNS): Haven’t we been here before? Haven’t we met these two already? In the form of a former beauty pageant queen and a POW who broke up in an airport on national television? Look kids, if you are having doubts about your relationship…..going on TV, getting very little sleep, eating next to nothing and getting dropped in the middle of a 3rd World country with no money is NOT going to provide any clarity. Just don’t do it. Break up over email…..like the rest of us, ok?

Yeah, I have no actual commentary on the show. That’s not what I’m here for.

Review: Honeymoon with my Brother

I think I’m going through a mid-life crisis. Ok, not really, but I'm definitely going through this thing where I'm all, "what should I do with my life?" and "what am I good at?" and "why don't I care more about my career?" and most importantly, "why can't I retire and travel around the world?"

Here’s my shortlist: I want to tango in Argentina. I want to see the glaciers in Iceland. I want to hike Machu Picchu. I want to see the cherry blossoms in Kyoto. I want to go on Safari in Botswana. I want to drive through Ireland and stop at every pub for a Guinness.

More and more lately, a recurring thought has been running through my brain: There has GOT to be a better way to spend 48 weeks out of my year than stuck inside my cubicle looking at powerpoint decks.

And yet, for every time I visit lonelyplanet.com, I'm also experiencing this odd, yet completely natural urge to find an apartment with a bigger kitchen, to get married to fiancé (June 9, 2007, by the way) to stop taking making my birth control and have adorable brown-haired, brown-eyed children that hopefully will have Fiancé’s thick hair and my freckles.

These opposing feelings.....they are confusing me.

Which is why I picked up this book. The author, Franz Wisner was 34 when his long-term fiancé called off their wedding the week before. Wisner, devastated, invited his brother on this honeymoon to Costa Rica. The good times they had on the trip prompted them to quit their jobs, sell their houses and embark on a 2 year trip around the world to find themselves and their personal happiness. Their trip began in Europe, moved east to Asia, then down to South America and ended in Africa.

I really was hoping this book would inspire me. I wanted to hear about fantastic beaches and beautiful wildlife and life-altering moments of clarity on the side of a mountain that would compel me to make a decision about my own life, but that’s not what I got. What I got was a poorly-written, very long diary entry from an extremely shallow and annoying Republican.

Wisner, a former press secretary for Governor Pete Wilson (strike number 1), tries so hard to convey personal growth and inner peace through a thinly veiled literary technique involving emotional letters to his ailing grandmother (strike number 2….hello, editors, we’re not idiots!), yet describes in excruciating detail his desire to feel his ex-fiancé’s breast augmentation (Ew! Strike 3!). He insults backpackers on a global level (including calling Germans “ugly”). He alarmingly describes having sex with a woman in Prague and being extremely annoyed she wanted to hang out with him the next day.

But here is what really got me about the book: Wisner describes, in great detail, a burning desire to re-connect emotionally with his brother, to forge a new bond, to seek forgiveness for 10 years of being so wrapped up in his own career and relationship that he never noticed his brother going through a painful divorce. Well, about 300 pages into the book, they FINALLY talk about it, and the conversation kinda went like this.

Wisner: Dude, I’m sorry about your divorce.
Brother: Whatever dude. It’s over.
Wisner: Yeah, but like, I shoulda been there for you, dude.
Brother: I’m cool, dude.

And that was it.

I’m giving this book a major thumb’s down for being boring, annoying and trite. Or maybe I’m just in a bad mood because I’m writing this from my cubicle while Wisner is currently traveling the world researching his next poorly written book.

Project Zaftig

What would Tim Gunn say about this, I wonder.

1988

In 1988, I was a junior in high school and my US government teacher assigned us to watch both the Republican and Democratic national convention speeches.

This lady, her keynote address and her commitment to women's rights convinced me to become a card carrying member of the democratic party.

RIP, Ann Richards.

reading

"The Dead of September 11"
By Toni Morrison
Written September 13, 2001

Some have God's words; others have songs of comfort for the bereaved. If I can pluck courage here, I would like to speak directly to the dead-the September dead.

Those children of ancestors born in every continent on the planet: Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas… born of ancestors who wore kilts, obis, saris, geles, wide straw hats, yarmulkes, goatskin, wooden shoes, feathers, and cloths to cover their hair. But I would not say a word until I could set aside all I know or believe about nations, war, leaders, the governed and ungovernable; all I suspect about armor and entrails. First I would freshen my tongue, abandon sentences crafted to know evil-wanton or studied; explosive or quietly sinister, whether born of a sated appetite or hunger; of vengeance or the simple compulsion to stand up before falling down. I would purge my language of hyperbole; of its eagerness to analyze the levels of wickedness; ranking them, calculating their higher or lower status among others of its kind.

Speaking to the broken and the dead is too difficult for a mouth full of blood. Too holy an act for impure thoughts. Because the dead are free, absolute; they cannot be seduced by blitz.

To speak to you, the dead of September, I must not claim false intimacy or summon an overheated heart glazed just in time for a camera. I must be steady and I must be clear, knowing all the time that I have nothing to say-no words stronger than the steel that pressed you into itself; no scripture older or more elegant than the ancient atoms you have become.

And I have nothing to give either-except this gesture, this thread thrown between your humanity and mine: I want to hold you in my arms and as your soul got shot of its box of flesh to understand, as you have done, the wit of eternity: its gift of unhinged release tearing through the darkness of its knell.

Yum.

So, much to Fiance's annoyance, I have added another cooking show to our TIVO.....Barefoot Contessa. I just love her. Her voice is so relaxing, I just want to lay on the sofa with my eyes closed and have her soothe me to sleep as she talks about fresh bay leaves and button mushrooms.

Anyway, last week I caught an episode where she was making her husband a beef stew made with an entire bottle of wine. Yeah, I'm in.

So, last night I made this. In my brand spanking new Le Creuset dutch oven.

It was seriously the best dish I have ever made.

Make it. You won't be disappointed.

oh jordan catalano.....

Ok, so back high school and Angela was totally in love with you but she was sorta nerdy and you didn't really want to admit that you liked a nerdy girl it was OKAY to act aloof and angsty and totally bored with life.

But Jordan, it's been, like, 15 years since Your So Called (high school) Life, and you and Angela have been broken up for a really long time because her parents totally hated you and she has never gotten over you and it's RUINED her to the point where she stole TOTALLY had an affair with that hot guy from Almost Famous and broken up his relationship with that chick from Weeds and every magazine was talking about what a horrible person she is.

Haven't you done enough? Do you REALLY need to attend the VMAs looking like this?