Barking Mad

Because Mother Nature Was Feeling Generous ...

...and brought with her usual (and annoying) monthly gift, a volcano!   And can you guess where she placed it?  Anyone? 

On my face. 

Along with the monthly reminder that I'm still nowhere near close to getting rid of the curse, she, Mother Nature, Aunt Flo; whatever you want to call her, placed an active volcano - one which is ready to erupt, ON MY FACE!  This wouldn't be a huge deal because she does this a few times a year.  Except then, they are those invisible-but-utterly-painful zits that you know are there, you can feel, and are aware of, but when you try and point it out to anyone else, they think you're delusional.   This time not only does Mt. Vesuvius hurt like a motherf something really bad, I'm pretty sure the entire North American continent can see it. 

If you've been experiencing cooler than normal temperatures, or perhaps there was an occasional blotting out of the sun...never fear, it's only the emergence of Mt. Vesuvius on my face.  My 41 year old face.  Come on Mother Nature, aren't we getting a little old for this?  This thing is so huge that I wouldn't be surprised if Al Gore called a nationally televised press conference to announce that due to global warming, the earth had now shifted off it's axis.  Nope, Mr. Gore, it's simply the Mother-of-all-Zits on my face. 

Small children and animals can be seen running from the monstrosity on my face.  Gaby has told me repeatedly that my zit is going to give her "scary dreams...make it go away mommy!"   Well darling, I hate to tell you this, but there isn't enough benzoil peroxide on the planet to get rid of what's probably going to end up taking over my entire face.

I should have known this month was going to be a little worse than most because there was this seagull at the beach over the weekend that was bound and determined to completely piss me off. He was just standing around, starting at me.

Just look at those beady little eyes, just boring holes through me.  I tell you, it was creepy.  If Hitchcock was still alive he could have penned the script for a follow up to "The Birds"...and called it, "The Gulls." 

Everytime I'd move my lens to focus on something cool, like my kid playing in the surf, or the shoreline, he'd casually angle himself right into the frame and just stare at me.  He stared to really creep me out a bit, too.  So I named him Damien.  I should have known that he was an Omen of Mother Nature's sick sense of humor!

I moved to one side and he hopped over to the same side...

I moved, and he moved as well.

He just stood there the entire time.  I spent close to an hour trying to capture something interesting, and during that time, he managed to get himself into almost every shot.  He even tried to steal the scene from Gaby as she ran along the shore...

For a good five minutes, he flew directly overhead as she ran to and fro.  I was beginning to worry that he'd poop on her as retribution for me calling him nasty names and tossing some driftwood at him to get him out of my line of sight.   Thankfully he didn't resort to relieving himself on my frolicking little girl.

Damien eventually made his way back towards my encampment on the beach but this time he wasn't alone.  He brought a couple of his evil friends (if you haven't already gotten the hint, I hate birds.  They utterly terrify me!), with him...Beelzebub and Lucifer. 

There they stood for more than 45 minutes, staring at me, and then when I'd turn my lens on them, they'd look the other way.   It's almost as if they were taunting me...teasing me, and tempting me to throw something at them again.  But, I didn't.  I know better than to truly tempt fate.  Otherwise I might have ended up with not only Mt. Vesuvius on my face, but his American cousin, Mt. St. Helens!

Anyhow, due to the volcanic eruption on my face, I'm too lazy to come up with an interesting post today.    Not only that but am I the only one who gets completely turned around when we have a long weekend?  I woke up this morning not entirely sure what day of the week it was.  To be honest, I'm still not sure what day it is.   Whatever day tomorrow does end up being, I'll post more photos from this weekend, sans Damien and his cronies.

An Analog Girl Living in a Digital World

Do you ever sit and wonder what life is going to be like, 25, or even 30 years down the line?  When I was a little girl, I used to.  I'd lay on my stomach on the floor whilst watching The Jestons on TV and imagine a world where Rosie the Robot would bring me a grilled cheese sandwhich and Coke, where I'd never have to intentionally ignore my mother's shouts to pick up the poop from our robotic dog, Astro, because HELLO, robotic dogs don't poop, and then on Sunday afternoons, we'd all pile into our car and zoom around the stratosphere, maybe stopping on Jupiter to pick up something to eat.  

It seems silly but that's really as much as I thought about what life would be like in the future and how cool it would be to have all these gizmos and gadgets and things that would make our lives easier.   But now that I'm here (sans the flying car and robotic dog), I don't know if all these gadgets are so cool, or if they really make my life any easier.    Sure, all of our snazy advances in technology has made it easier for me to overshare share the numerous details of our lives with anyone and everyone, and I can even order pizza online, (although it still takes more than an hour to get to me - they haven't quite worked out the kinks on that one yet), notwithstanding all these neato advances, some of which are meant to bring us closer together, I kinda of feel like we're moving further and further from one another, in spite of the fact that we're all connected to each other, virtually 24 hours a day!  Does that make sense?

With Facebook, Twitter, email and text messaging, we really don't even need to talk to one another on the phone anymore or even pick up a pen and write a letter.  Instead of sending a nice personal card for your grandmother's birthday, you can just send her a convenient e-card.   You don't even have to walk into the local branch of your bank any more...you can take care of that all, online.  Because of all of these wonderful technological and internet advances, you really don't have to interact with anyone, on a personl level, anymore if you don't want to.  You can confine your life to a world almost entirely made up of virtual interaction.  Thankfully though, if you want to have a family, you still have to do that, the old fashioned way!   However, if you need help hooking up with someone to start that family with, you can let your fingers do the walking.  There are a plethora of online dating sites that will match you with a potential mate, for a nominal fee of course, which may or may not include your first born.

In our own home we each have cell phones (which, are in fact smart phones but have a habit of making us feel really stupid!), computers, MP3 players, DVR's and a few other electronic gadgets.  I pay most of our bills online and because of this, I only write one check a month...our rent.  Recently, I had to stop and think about the actual physical act of writing the check because I just don't do it often at all anymore.  I kept looking at it to make sure I'd filled it out the correct way.  It's funny, but I recall opening my very first checking account and being so excited when my first box of checks arrived in the mail.  I ran my hands over my name, imprinted at the top and felt like a real adult.  And now the act of writing a check is almost an annoyance. 

I might be in the minority but I'm not as excited about all these technological gizmos that Apple and Microsoft, AT&T and Sony are telling me I need to have.  I have a cell phone because...well, because I have one.  I suppose I'd survive if I didn't have one, just like I did when I didn't have one.  Even though having to carry it around with me all over the place is annoying, it does come in handy in the event of an emergency.  I just don't see the need to be able to do everything from an object the size of a deck of cards, that I can do from my personal computer.  And I'm so annoyed with texting sometimes that it's easier to just call the person I want to send the message to!   I've even heard people say that they hate talking on the phone at all because texting is so much easier.  Hmmm, I guess I know why a lot of my calls have been going to voice mail lately.

The one current digital craze out there that I absolutely refuse to have anything to do with is the "e-reader."  I can't do it.  I want to hold a book in my hands and have the tangible, physical experience of reading an actual book.   I want to be able to smell the crisp, white pages, hot off the presses and run my hands along the binding.    I have so many books that I've had for more than 25 years.  I can open up an old paperback copy of Stephen King's Salem's Lot and when I turn to page 227 there is a book marker there which was an old perfume insert from an ancient copy of 17 Magazine that I'd had.  It still smells like "Malibu Musk."   I can recall how I was 16 when I first read that book and slept with the lights on for an entire week because I was so scared that Barlow was going to come crawling out from under my bed and attack me!

I can open other books, like my copy of Anne of Green Gables that I've had forever and it still smells like my Aunt Meta's home (where the book was kept in a box for years and years) -  a mixture of Noxzema skin cream, instant coffee and Estee Lauder pressed powder.   I can close my eyes and remember sitting on her screened-in back porch on the glider, reading about Anne's adventures in Avonlea, while the bees buzzed in the roses around me, and the "shuk shuk shuk" of the sprinklers showered the grass of my aunt's back garden.  All I need to do is open that book and I'm instantly transported back to her house.

Books are a very physical experience for me, one which I've tried to share with each of my kids.  So far, Meaghan and Gaby are really the only ones that share my love of books, but I cherish the moments when I've sat with them in my lap, cuddled close and read the words, over and over again through the years...

Last night while I lay thinking here
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old Whatif song:

Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?...

..from Shel Silverstien's A Light in the Attic, one of our favorites.   The jacket of that book has long since disapeared, and the pages are tattered and worn.  But it tells a story and has a history, something an e-reader will never have.  It has crayon doodles from where Matt and Meaghan took turns "writing" in it when they were three.  It is missing a couple of pages that Zach ate when he was one and it has teeth indentations from being teethed on while Gaby was cutting her bottom teeth. 

Books, real, physical books, have an intimacy associated with them.   That's something that can never be conveyed by a flat white screen with black text scrolling across it.  It's cold and hard.   I'd never feel comfortable taking a pricey e-reader to the beach because I'd be too worried about getting sand in it and damaging it, whereas with a book, I can toss it down on the beach if I suddenly need to run after my 4 year old.

And there's a lot to be said for the act of walking into a book store, especially the tiny, hole-in-the-wall independent sellers, and buying a book, getting to the check out counter and having a discussion with the sales clerk about the books you've bought.

I overheard someone say that books would be obsolete in about 25 years.  So that's what the future might hold?  Cold metal pressed against flesh, whether it's phone, i-prooduct or e-reader...that's just so impersonal.  So many people rejoice in the age of connectivity we're currently living in, but sometimes I wonder if all of this social media and connectivity through various metal boxes just makes it easier for us to really avoid true personal interaction in the guise of communicating through all of this stuff.  And really, that's all it is...stuff.  Stuff we all seem so bent on having, myself included.  

Whilst one of these days I may very well cave to finally getting my own iPod (everyone else around me has one, including Gaby!), I can say, emphatically, that I can't see myself ever being enthusiastic about reading Green Eggs and Ham via something called a Nook or a Kindle.  I kinda think Dr. Seuss is rolling over in his grave just at the thought of it!

In the meantime, you can find me sitting here with an ancient copy of The Raven, drinking an ice cold Coke out of a real glass bottle, and listening to my beat up CD of Paul McCartney's Live and Let Die. 

Dear Hollywood, Stop It!

Could someone please explain to me what the fascination is with Hollywood taking perfectly good films, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Godzilla, Psycho, (seriously?  Who thought this would be a good idea?  No one could ever out-perform Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins!), and The Stepford Wives to name just a few, and remaking them?

Is Hollywood so completely and hopelessly out of original material or brilliant minds to create original material that they are left with little else to do than overpay already highly overpaid and over-rated actors and actresses to ruin films that, despite some being made not even twenty years ago, are still relevant and beloved?

What's next, remakes of all the classic John Hughes tormented teen angst movies that I grew up with, and still, to this day, love?  Don't even think about it!  You can't improve on Andrew McCarthy, James Spader and Molly Ringwald!  You just can't!

And please, for the love of popcorn, someone please please please tell me that the rumor about the possible remake of Edward Scissorhands is simply that...a rumor!  I've heard, in certain circles, that the Powers That Be are even considering casting Robert Pattinson in the leading role. NO!!!!!

Not even RPatz could improve upon the perfection that was, is, and always will be, Johnny Depp.  RPatz is totally and completely wrong!  Hollywood, just leave well enough alone...otherwise this is what we're likely to end up with...

image credit courtesy of my uber-poor Photoshop skillz

I rest my case!

Seriously? Don't I Already Have Enough Stuff on My Nightstand?

I crawled upstairs, bleary-eyed and wanting nothing more than to take a nap this afternoon (seeing as how Gaby didn't manage to fall asleep until 3AM this morning!), walked around the side of the bed and bent over to plug my cell phone into the charger in the wall and place it on the nightstand when I noticed more crap than usual on said nightstand...

all photos brought to you courtesy of my droid...great phone, not so great camera!

Pardon the askew lampshade.  It's the furball's fault.

My nightstand is already piled high with books, a clock, lotions and potions that make me smell like the Pillsbury Dough-boy after he's been rolled in vanilla and sugar, some seashells and other odds and ends.  Now there was a huge orange furball to add to the collection.

I looked at him and said, "Griffy, honestly!  Get down before you knock the lamp over and cause me to have a heartastroke!"

I don't know what exactly it is in my tone of voice when I chastise Griffy, but the other large, white and cocoa colored furball always comes running whenever he hears me howl at Griffy.  He insists on sticking his nose into everything!  Before I know it, I have not one feline nightstand accessory, but a pair!

The swish of that huge fluffy brown tail of Geronimo's sent the alarm clock crashing to the floor behind the nightstand and the lotions and potions went flying everywhere!

I'm not sure why I was so surprised that Griffy has decided to commandeer my nigthstand as his new hangout.  After all, he seems to think he's the perfect household accoutrement in almost any setting...

Actually, both of them do!

 

The One Where My British Husband Has His First American "At Bat"

We are not a very athletically inclined family.  No, really, we aren't.  I think it's safe to say that the cats are more athletic than Gareth and me.  And then there's Gaby.  She can run circles around anyone else.  Anyone.  And that's without the addition of any sugar at all!   But this isn't really about my 4 year old who is naturally hopped up on life (Oh my goodness, never ever ever give this kid ANYTHING with caffeine in it.  Just take my word, it's bad. REAL BAD!), what this is about, is my darling British hubby and his first time playing American softball.

That's right, he actually engaged in a sport other than that odd combination of baseball and golf that uses a spanking paddle...I think they call it "Cricket" over on the other side of the pond.  Or  that game, as he says, "Proper FOOTBALL" which we Yankees commonly refer to as soccer, or Rugby - which I can't watch because I'm pretty sure I hear bones crunch every time I do. But he hasn't participated in any of these sports this side of the pond. Namely because, did I mention, we aren't athletic? At all.

Gareth comes home from the office last week and says, "Hello luv, next Wednesday evening I'll be playing softball with the blokes from work!"  I'm pretty sure I dropped whatever I had in my hands and went over and felt his forehead to see if he was feeling well.  I asked him, "The folks at your office do know you're British, right? And maybe you ought to clue them in that as close as we get to playing any kind of sports at home are tossing wadded up socks at one another when I'm sorting the laundry!"  Gareth just laughed at me and walked away while I stood there imagining all sorts of horrible scenarios.  I pictured him with two black eyes from where the softball hit him repeatedly in the face, or being called in the middle of giving Gaby a bath to rush to urgent care where they were sewing him back together after some sort of freak softball accident, or worse yet, I pictured him coming home, baseball cap on backwards and spitting chewing tobacco into a little cup and taking the remote control out of my hands and switching it to ESPN so he could watch the Red Sox clobber the Yankees.

Despite my gruesome scenarios, pretty much nothing could dissuade Gareth from playing softball.  There was only one thing left to do...go to the game and be there to document the carnage.

I arrived 4 innings in and my husband proudly walked up to me and with a look of glee in his eyes not unlike a kid who'd just scored a home run!  He lifted the leg of his shorts and showed me his knee - like it was some gross prize he'd won in a morbid box of Cracker Jacks!

Before I could say anything, I noticed he was limping and then he told me, "Oh and one of the blokes was wearing cleats and crushed my toes!"   I thought he was exagerating when he said, "...crushed my toes!"  Turns out he wasn't!

I'm pretty sure that toenail is going to be history in the next several days.

Despite the obvious battle wounds, I was able to get some shots for the scrapbook I've lovingly titled, "Milestones of a Brit Living with the Yankees." Oh how I'll cherish showing our grandkids these pictures and we can all have a laugh at Grandpops expense athletic endeavors!

Gareth got to play 2nd base.

I have no clue what he's doing in this next shot.  I think he's fraternizing with a runner from the other team...who actually happened to be someone from his office, but for some strange reason I thought they were playing against some of the sub-contractors and contractors from his job site.  Anyhow, I didn't think you were supposed to get too chummy with the base runners because wouldn't that sort of put a kink in your desire to clobber them when they come running at you in order to score a base?  And did I mention that we are not athletic....AT ALL?  My comprehension of sports is limited at best.  Well unless it has to do with a snowboard.  But we aren't talking about snowboarding now, are we?

Here he is getting ready to take the plate...

...and he SWINGS!!!

I think it was a pop fly...or something like that.  I was distracted from my husband trying to hit what looked like an overinflated tennis ball (why are some softballs green?), by such amazing cuteness and sweetness that my teeth actually hurt!

While her daddy was having the time of his life getting battered and beaten and aiming at flying green balls, Gaby was making a friend!

Harley is a Shiba Inu mix that belongs to a really nice man that Gareth works with whose name I have completely forgotten.  Sometimes it's hard for me to remember silly little things like names when my husband is running around like a loon, excited about a scraped knee and some busted toes.

Gaby was oblivious to all things softball related.  She and Harley became fast friends!

And this next picture is just about the sweetest thing this side of a huge cotton candy factory, except maybe even sweeter.  I am totally crushing on this photo and want to run out and get a puppy for my little girl despite having three cats that are still recovering from our Goldendoodle puppy who now lives with our contractor and his three rambunctious boys, on 52 acres back in Maine.   For a few minutes I managed to forget, after staring at this photo, that I um...well, errrr...I kinda hate puppies.   Give me an adult dog any day of the week, but puppies?  Yeah, they're cute for all of 5 minutes, tops!

Harley, the sweetest two year old you will ever meet...try and not melt after looking at this photo.  Come on, I dare you!

So now I've got a 4 year old who wants to know when Harley can come over for a play date and husband, who, whilst pretty banged up, is looking forward to playing softball...again.  That's all well and good Gareth, but if I so much see you spit, you're benched for the rest of the season!  Oh and give me that damned remote back!  I hear they lynch people 'round these parts (NY...where we live!) for admitting they like the Red Sox!