But Call Me Betsy

I added some photos that Celia took to the Saturday post. You should take a look. Below, you will find the typical picture of Emma Carol--caught in mid-meow with her crazy eyes. This is just before she ran to see Celia and lick her on the knee. Ernesto looks on with lazy disgust at her display. If you click on this little picture, you can see her in full bloom. My floor looks much cleaner than it is from this particular angle, that's for sure. A phenomenon that I've noticed in our culture of late...The use of the phrase: "It is what it is." On first blush, this phrase seems to imply a sort of Buddha-like acceptance to life's annoyances and problems; no judgment passed, no real anxiety attributed to whatever the "it" is (have I written about this before? I feel like I have). However, you never hear this in a positive context. Like, you never hear a guy saying to his friend, who has just gotten a new guitar: "Man! It is what it is !" You only hea...

Liz's comment on my last post reminded me of something I saw this morning. Shirtless men: 1. Please keep in mind that this was during a very short period of time--the ten minutes it takes me to walk from my apartment to the subway. This guy was not jogging. He was carrying a large piece of wood across his shoulders. No shirt, jogging pants, a hat, and a beard circa Jesus in his late twenties. And the way he carried the piece of wood was uncannily reminiscent of Jesus on the way to the crucifixion. Only nonJesus thing about him was that he had visible hair on his back--enough that it was noticeable from say...3 blocks? Okay, and while we're on the topic, I will confess to watching 3 straight hours of the Style Network; three shows I've never heard of before. I was also doing crafts, but still, that's a lot of television for one evening. But it was hypnotic. First, I watched How Do I Look?, hosted by that British lady who used to be on General Hospital. For the first half...

Caught some of the reality TV show The Two Corey's last night, which features those Corey's from The Lost Boys --Haim and Feldman or Faim and Heldman, who knows. Let's call the dark-haired Corey 1 and the other Corey 2. Corey 1 used to have a serious heroin addiction. The other Corey was the cute-button faced kid who I always got confused with Kirk Cameron. Oh, okay, I just looked it up and Corey Feldman is the dark-haired kid (now an adult, though he looks exactly the same as he did twenty years ago). Well, the Corey Haim guy (Kirk) is absolutely a crystal meth addict. He can't sit still for more than.05 seconds and he talks too fast and doesn't make much sense. He constantly high-fives everyone and last night, it appeared that he accidentally licked Corey #1's wife's arm when she was trying to console him after he found out that he's not invited to be in The Lost Boys sequel. And he smokes constantly and won't stop embracing everyone and saying, ...

Have done my usual walking around on the weekends--met up with Celia yesterday and we trekked to Circle Thrift and then over to my house so she could admire the cats and cat dustballs. She noticed right away that Emma Carol has crazy eyes. Like, she always looks like she's about to take off running or attack a fly or turn in spastic circles. There may be photos of her tomorrow. I should keep a meter of the things I typically see. Yesterday: Crazy homeless person: 1. This was a skinny Black woman who was waving plastic bags in the air in a stairwell on Broad St. near Circle Thrift. Celia guessed that she was either on crack or crystal meth. The woman kept swatting at imaginary things and organizing the bags and then flailig them every which way as though landing an unseen plane. Then she got up and walked across the busy street wearing men's bedroom slippers. Below, please note two men on Broad St. One is pointing to the homeless lady. Funny cats: 1. This particular cat had its ...

Molly and I are going to 10 Stone after work today to pick up Irish men/leprechauns (no offense, Paddy). I wish that City Liz would join us....

This morning, I decided again to go to the Walnut/Locust subway stop rather than the Tasker/Morris one. It takes about 25 minutes to get there and is always an interesting walk and is a good way to get in some exercise, particularly if I know I won't be able to go to the gym later. Highlights of today: *The chickens, pigeons, doves and a rooster in cages on Passyunk Avenue. I paused to look at them and they all stopped what they were doing to stare at me and make chicken noises. Then they resumed gobbling up the seed, unaware of their fate. I had a brief fantasy of liberating the pigeons/doves. Running up to the cage and tipping it open and scattering them. Some would invariably dash into the street and be run over. But why are they in cages in the first place? Where are they going? Into Chinese food? I'm serious--do people eat pigeons? *A drugged out skinny man in a wife beater tee with badly done blue tattoos up and down his thin arms. It was not quite 8 a.m. and his eyes we...

I had one of those so typical dreams last night where I was late for a high school test on a book I hadn't read in ages. I arrived after everyone else had started and my pencil needed sharpening. In the dream, I had the opportunity to earn extra points if I could list and write a little bit about the history of dukedom (??). I don't think I finished. I know my sentences weren't coming out correctly. At the end, I was so stressed out that I yelled at the entire class--screamed, actually, and embarrassed myself. I think I ran from the room. Later, I ran into an old ex-boyfriend and his new partner and I screamed at them too. I think I said to him, But look at her face! She has a man's face and man's hands! She's bigger than you. He said, Well, that's never been a problem for me. We can wear the same shoes. Don't remember what else happened except that later, I was watching a scene study between two people I work with and neither one of them would refer to ...

Everyone loses the name-that-tail contest and now you all have to buy me dinner at DQ instead. And Henri gets to come, which he knows, which is why he's licking his chops.

Here's the thing. I have been eating a lot healthier these days, including adding vegetables to my diet (by which I mean "lettuce"). This is an improvement, believe me, from the last two decades of my eating habits which consisted mainly of microwave popcorn, diet soda, coffee, cigarettes, cheap wine and chocolate (when available from others). So now I have given up all diet soda, most cheap wine, and haven't had chocolate in awhile either (only b/c no one has brought it in). My familiar food companions have been replaced by soy pudding, whole wheat bread, salads, granola bars, organic milk, tons of water and recently I decided to cut up some celery and bring it in for a healthy snack. It is healthy. Celery has about 19 calories per square acre. But you have to eat it with peanut butter and that is not so good. Two tablespoons of pb contain 200 calories. Lots of protein, but also lots of extra fatness. It is so so so good though. I had to restrain myself from clawing...

First person to answer correctly wins a free dinner paid for by me! At the DQ of your choice! Some time in the near future! This is the tail of an animal who lives in my very own home. S/he is strategically hiding under my bed (notice the lovely quilt handmade especially for me by my mom) and s/he seems to believe the adage that "out of sight, out of mind" applies completely, especially when s/he can't see you. I have many more photos taken of my house and will post them every once in awhile until I run out. Maybe by then I will have a digital camera but I wouldn't count on it. In other news, my new/used ipod arrived today. Now I must wait a torturous three hours before I will be home and able to load music onto it. Meanwhile, I found a neat pattern for making a nano case if you're interested. I might make a few for my friends, using this link (for those who have normal-sized ipods). I wandered around the city on Sat. and Sunday--mostly on South Street Sunday an...

Emma Carol loves nothing more than to catch flies and eat them. I just watched her do it with killer precision about five seconds ago. She also makes a peeping noise whenever she jumps from one place to another which is quite often. She is Tigger. Shawn saw their food bowls the other day and he said, Oh, look, there's the vomitoriam (sp?). Emma does get way too excited when she gets fed. She eats and eats and eats. She doesn't get sick though. She just gets fatter. Ernesto is less of a pig, except for that he gets up in my face if I eat anything on the couch. He dove his head into a bag of tortilla chips and stole one when I wasn't paying attention the other day. Then he ran off to eat it in the corner, like a little starving, abused child. I promise I will not write any more about my cats for awhile. We had an all-day work conference at the Loews Hotel yesterday and so I was Wireless all day long. I also left my cell phone at work on Thursday and so couldn't be reached...

From Irina

At lunch the other day, we had an in-depth discussion concerning the following rhetorical question: Would you rather have gills or an animal tail? You'd think that on the surface, the answer would be fairly clear, because gills are much cooler since they allow you to swim underwater without having to come up for air. However, most people needed a few more specifics. Irina wanted to know what kind of tail it would be. She said, Because if it's a horse tail, I could just grow my hair and let it blend in. And, she pointed out, horse's really have hair instead of fur, so she could cut it and donate it to cancer patients. We decided that it could be a horse tail, if that's what she wanted. She chose gills. Celia wanted to clarification as to where the gills would appear. Like, it would be much nicer if the gills were on your sides, somewhere inconspicuous. It might be a more difficult choice if the gills were in your neck and if they puffed out when you got emotional. That ...

Jodie has this really cute t-shirt with a girl on a motorcycle and it reads "My Other Ride is Your Boyfriend." I want one of those (she also has a t-shirt that Padhraig gave her that says "Fuck Yoga"). I don't currently own any t-shirts with sayings on them, except for the one that Dave had made for me one year that has "help me" on it. Okay, so I confess that I watched Age of A-holes again last night. I honestly had to look away from the TV on more than one occasion. I couldn't bear to watch the women's plastic faces as they applied yet another layer of foundation before going out on a group date to the beach with the guy of indeterminate pedigree (actually, I believe he's Italian-Australian). I am starting to feel sorry for him. He does have cute dimples and he is always opening his eyes widely, shocked by the different ways that the women have of making idiots of themselves. Here's something else I don't understand: what's t...

We were talking today at lunch about drugs--pushers we have known and loved, boyfriends with habitual pot use and bad trips that may or may not have been caused by drugs laced with cyanide (Mom: those other girls were talking about it, not me. Although I know you have used pot before, so you can't get too mad if I considered doing it like once or twice). I don't know why I didn't turn into a stoner. Well, yes, I do. I was a goodie-goodie. And drugs scared the hell out of me. Every eleven year old should be made to read Go Ask Alice , the supposed real diary of a girl who is slipped LSD at a party one night and becomes a total druggie in a matter of minutes. That book single-handedly kept me bff with Chuckie the Canine Drug Dog at elementary and middle school. And then in high school, I didn't hang out with a crazy wild crowd. I do remember that I got drunk the first time ever with my friend down the street Wallis, but it was ridiculous. We didn't know what we w...

It probably wouldn't be a very good idea for me to have a digital camera b/c then every entry to this blog would include a slightly blurry photograph of one of my cats. And really, they don't do anything interesting at all. They walk around and lay down and stare out the window or hide under the bed. That's it. But I still want a digital camera. I'm sure I would take lots of pictures of myself too since it's so easy to delete them. I'd only keep the good ones. I would seriously probably take 500 pictures in a row to get one that I liked. My coworker Joe gave blood today and he won't shut up about it. Apparently, the nurse did this thing where she took out extra blood, then removed the special important blood globules and stuck the plasma back into his veins and he could feel the plasma and the saline circulating through his bloodstream because it was cold. The last time I gave blood was probably in college. I had a bad experience where the needle wasn't ...

1. The Dow Jones Industrial Report by Farmers 2. What is the What by Dave Eggers 3. The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini (haven't read this but it was recommended by a very literary person) 4. Temple Review , our quarterly alumni magazine 5. Jasmine by Bharahti Mukherjee (from my summer grad class) 6. Equus but don't read the play, go see it starring a naked Harry Potter (see previous post) Meanwhile, I continue to slog through The Da Vinci Code , reading probably fifty pages before bed. It's an easy read, particularly if you're someone like me who skips some of the description and the historical stories which are the crux of the book. Disclaimer: Don't read any further if you plan on getting the book, but really, who cares, the book isn't very good. According to ancient druid legend/historical truth, Mary Magdalene was a true companion of (read: married to) Jesus Christ. The story of her being a whore is something made up to take away from her standing. She an...

I accidentally watched that reality show about the forty-year old and twenty-year old women competing for one cheesy guy with an indeterminate accent. Is he Australian? British? Irish? Or does he just have a speech impediment? I'll tell you that if he had a Bronx brogue, he would be less attractive--he's built like a cheesy Italian dude, slicked back hair, out of control eyebrows, and a huge face. But of course, all the women pretend to love him. The big competition is that this 30 year old ambassador of cheddar cheese from Swedizterland has to decide who he likes; the old ladies or the young hot chicks. The women are really interchangeable despite the age difference. Oh, and one of the younger ones keeps bursting into tears but I think she's just PMS-ing. The older women understand. They are having pre-menopausal hot flashes. Last night, the girls/old maids had to compete in a triatholon on a tandem bike and a surf board. I forget who won, but the very blond girl who clos...

I didn't think so! Not when that 13 year old boy is Harry Potter . He's magic! He's really like 15 maturity level-wise . No, truthfully, I haven't followed the Harry Potter craze. I believe I read the first book and liked it fine and could see why it would be popular for kids, but I have never seen one of the movies, though I feel like I have because they always play so many trailers before each one is released. Well, I think it was Liz who asked me if I wanted to see the movie and I gave her a lukewarm reaction, so she dis-invited me. But the girls on Go Fug Yourself featured two of the little girl actors on their site and this led me to look up the Harry Potter page and then I realized that Harry Potter is going through adolescence (there are several pictures of him, including one where he kisses this girl) and I bet all of the producers of the movie series are so happy that he didn't turn out to be totally ugly. You can't know for sure. If I had been casting...

That is not entirely true. I started reading a copy of the uber popular The DaVinci Code the other night--Liz gave it to me among the books she was casting off and I had a sneer on my face for the first several chapters. An albino? Really? Haven't albinos endured enough? You never ever see an albino playing a good guy unless he's like really meant to be Andy Warhol. Then you also have these stock figures--the crooked, fairly ineffectual law figure, the earnest, tough as nails sexy brilliant woman with the mysterious past, and the well-liked, rumpled and attractive central character. I wonder if the main guy (Robert?) and the cartographer will get it on? Also the chapters are really short as though the writer doesn't trust that he can sustain the readers interest without cutting back and forth between these different scenes. In addition, so far, the characters do things that scream "exposition;" behaving like these puppets the writer is manuipulating to explain so...

Instead of writing yesterday on my day off, I reread these old yellow writing tablets circa 1996 when I lived in Chicago and worked at the law school. They are alternately funny and terrifying--have I learned nothing? Very little. One of my bestest friends from that time was a very funny and silly and adorable girl Annie McConnell--she was also an excellent writer. We met in a writing workshop at Northwestern and I wanted to be her friend right away because she always wore the best shoes. Anyway, she forced me to make a list of the reasons not to date this guy anymore. Here's the list: 1. He's an asshole. 2. He doesn't deserve me. 3. He will someday tie me to a bed and set me on fire. 4. It makes Annie sick to think of me being nice to him when he's treated me like shit. 5. She thinks we should spit in his fat, ugly, pasty face. 6. He's also a creep, a loser, a psychotic mania, a freak. I remember he also met my neighbor boy--this painter who I shared a window with...

Here's my email to my bestest friend in high school...We just recently got in touch and she wrote me back. Her responses are in caps (slightly edited to protect the not so innocent): Jen A Bee! Sorry for the delay in responding--I am have a crazy couple of weeks, though that's no real excuse. You were in my dream last night--I was at my home in Florida and you dropped off a package that had all these photos in it that showed what you'd been doing for the last 10 years. ((WAS MY NEW SLAM BOOK INCLUDED??)) How much more obvious could a dream be? You looked really cute--same Jen, curly hair and well put together outfit. ((SAME CURLY HAIR, YEP - NOW RED TO COVER-UP ALL THE GREY. NOT SO PUT TOGETHER ANYMORE - QUITE LAZY.)) I can't believe Haley is on the pill. Isn't she still like 7 years old? ((17 IN OCTOBER! SHE'S COMING THIS SUMMER WITH HER BOYFRIEND! WHY DIDN'T OUR PARENTS LET US SMOKE POT AND SHAG OUR BOYFRIENDS IN THIER HOUSE? (WITH THEM KNOWING?)JUST KIDDI...

I am having an extremely difficult time getting motivated today. Stayed up too late last night watching back-to-back episodes of Bravo's Kathy Griffin show. I had no idea she was so funny or that she swore so much in her stand up. She has had too much plastic surgery, but I like her a lot and think we would be fast friends. I have the next two days off from work and am hoping to work on a short story for the four week class that starts next Tuesday. I have a piece I found the other day about some cowboy named Colby. I have no idea where the idea came from or when I wrote it, but it's not horrible. I also need to work on the organ donation story. With like 14 more drafts, it could be readable. Per a recommendation from Health magazine, I signed up for this thing called sparkpeople.com--it's an online health and fitness page that helps you track what you eat, how often you exercise, how much water you drink, etc. They have an extremely user friendly system. They even provide...

I have two friends who are currently gestating and both will need to name their offspring at some point. Jess and Kali are both expecting in the fall or the winter, around a few months from now. I don't think either one of them wants to know the gender of the baby before he/she/it is born, so we have to come up with stellar names for both boys and girls. I always want the baby to be a girl. Always. But then Julie had Owen and I realized that I always want the baby to be a girl unless the baby is Owen. I have used up all of my favorite names on cats, Emma, Gretel, Henri, Ernesto, and Fido. But there are still a few names that I would consider. I suppose we could start with the most obvious popular girl names: Lyndsey, Paris, Nicole, Ashley, Mary Kate and Kiera. Or, we could go with the most obvious popular girl names from the 80s-90s: Molly, Winona, Courtney, Ally, and Kate. For boys from the 80s: Rob (Jess can't use this because it's her dad and her brother's name), Jud...

I am having an off-day because I keep having the de ja vu (the clinical name for it is " simple partial seizures "). It's a form of epilepsy, characterized in my case by extreme de ja vu. It's an odd sensation, not entirely unpleasant but disconcerting because during the seizure (lasts between 10-25 seconds), I have the feeling that I dreamt all of this before, that I am in a dream state again, everything is odd and significant and connected to something important, but then the seizure fades and I can't remember anything I was just thinking about. No image, no word, nothing, though during the seizure, it's very poignant and I feel sick and out of it, actually experience a tingling in my arm and an out of body sensation (it just happened again as I was typing this). Maybe it's closer to five seconds, but I have to stop and wait it out. I feel fine once it's over, maybe a tinge nauseous and it's probably making me more tired than I would normally fee...