But Call Me Betsy

One way, I guess, would be to go out to Washington Avenue at midnight wearing a purple tube dress that falls just below one's ass, five-inch red heels, matching lipstick (also five-inches thick) and giganto hoop earrings. Another way would be to hang out at a local South Philly bar doing shots of tequila and tying cherries in knots with your tongue while wearing a cut-off Phillies tank top, stone-washed short shorts and sneakers with white socks. The third way that I know of is to write about a friend of mine who shall remain nameless who has made a deal with me that he will take me away for a weekend if I write a blog post that reflects his awesomeness. But I'm not sure how much I can honestly write about him without being too personal. And since my mom reads this blog and since you never know what fifth grader girls might be searching the web looking for tips on how to "tie cherries in knots," I am reluctant to give full disclosure of any adventures I may have ha...

Our novel for next Monday is Wharton's Ethan Frome . Finished it last night and was very irritated by the cruelty of the ending and also distraught be the fact that I could not imagine anyone else as the character of Ethan except for Liam Neeson , who played him in the movie version I have never seen. But anyway, poor Ethan! He's in love with the beautiful, innocent, blond, crooked toothed in a cute way, mirthful, whimsical, delicious Mattie (as imagined as Patricia Arquette ). However, he is also married to the stern and silent woman who could not be described any more unfavorably by Wharton unless she had added warts and chronic flatulence. Zeena , the wife, is a sickly, pale, hatched-faced, brooding woman who breathes loudly. Seriously. Wharton cannot let her have one good attribute. This is how she describes Ethan's experience of lying in bed next to this creature. Oh, darn, the book is at home, but it's something like, "After leaving the warmth of light in M...

Liz and I are currently watching this over-tanned lady from Days of Our Lives announce the weight lose of these very nice overweight people on The Biggest Loser . Might I add that Liz can do the math faster than this chick from the soap. "Thank you," Liz says. "Only when it's even numbers." While watching the show, we are eating crumpets with strawberry jelly, McDonald's French fries, ham, lard (with a spoon) and Spam with cheese melted on top and ketchup. I wish this show gave more tips on weight lose and exercise and I wish it didn't seem to take a sort of sadistic, voyeuristic pleasure in humiliating the contestants. For instance, they had to do a 100 yard dash and their competition was....kids! How awesome! How awesome that grown adults get to compete against third graders and fail. Commerical break where we are shown the other shows that we could be watching, such as E.R . Is Luka still on it? That woman from that other half hour comedy that I like...

Welcome to The Bachelor , Season #11. He's from Texas and I think he just lost six pounds sweating to death. The awkward moments keep multiplying and the show has only been on for three minutes. He has hugged each and every one of them in this totally stilted way and said, " Hisonicetomeetyou . Please go inside now. I have already forgotten your name. Nice tits. Nice to meet ya'll ." He is attractive, but what's with the Party of Five unshaven look? He's a millionaire and has an identical twin brother. Hilarious hi jinks with switching places will no doubt ensue in the middle of making out with one of them, not like the women would notice. No one ever says, "I hope I like him. I hope he's not a total dud!" Now the last ten women are bringing their chachas and (as Celia might say) their Mary Green's to him. They always pause after stepping out of the car as though going to a beauty pageant and then say, Bah-bye. Oh, why can't one of them ...

I saw two episodes of Animal Planet's pathos-filled Meerkat Manor and was startled to discover that I currently live with three meerkats of my own. They burrow into things, shake their tails when they are threatened, run around crazily with no seeming purpose, eat bugs, and have a definite hierarchy of power. In the meerkat kingdom, the female is often the dominant leader; it's essentially a matriarchy. The episodes I watched featured Flower, a worn-down looking female who led the pack, deciding who was accepted and who was vetoed. Meet Emma Carol. She does the same thing. Though she is the smallest of the three, she's definitely the most vocal and the most aggressive. To wit, she likes to sleep on the red chair. The other day, Ernesto decided he wanted to lay in it. EC jumped up too, trying to take up as much space as possible to get him to jump down. He did not. So, she attacked him, first gently, but then, when he didn't take the hint, she got down to business unt...

I do like Bright Eyes, honestly, that one song from Garden State is a favorite of mine, but I can't listen to more than four of their songs in a row because the lead singers voice sounds like he's crying in every song. You just want him to cheer the hell up. So, spent all day and all night putting in tiny chandeliers with lights in my doll house and running water so that they can have an indoor fountain and a jacuzzi and then I stenciled fingernail sized bunnies across the baby room and added a couple of wall tapestries I made out of these carpet remnants I found and then I also framed a two dozen postage stamps in real wooden frames to hang on the walls. The place is really starting to come together. AS IF! Give me some credit, people! I would n ever frame postage stamps! Another dream come true moment at Circle Thrift with Liz yesterday when I realized that they had been given another truckload of Anthropologie clothes. I bought this really cute skirt that also looks like kit...

Is it possible to have an eight hour dream? Or is one of those weird dream consciousnes things where you think you have been dreamng for hours and hours and then wake to find out that fifteen minutes have passed during your epic story? I dreamed that I was out to dinner with my boss and Stephanie and my friend Jodie and the three of them wanted to go out afterwards but I wanted to go home. Unfortunately, we kept missing the transportation home and then learned that the subway had stopped running at 11 p.m. We tried to hitch a ride with a Fed Ex driver, but he left without us. While we were waiting around to decide what to do, one of my boss' old friends showed up. He was an actor and resembled Viggo Mortensen (sp?). He performed a few monologues for us. Jodie recalled that he had been the lead in one of her favorite movies from the 80s. I could see that a crush was developing. Unfortunately, he was also a drunk and when we finally decided to walk the rest of the way home, he had a...

In celebration of Celia's b-day (among others, Patrick, too, I think) we went to Draught Horse tonight; really the only viable bar on the entire Temple campus unless you count Maxi's, which is a pizza place that closes at like 6. No one wants to go to Maxi's because it is too close to the rest of the educational world of Temple and you can't comfortably drink beers there without thinking that you should instead be studying at the library. Mr. A. X. was there with his dark curly hair and dark eyes. Mr. A. X. is the most well-dressed man in my life and probably also the most polite. He calmly admonished me for hanging up on him earlier in the day. I begged him to do something out of character so that I could write about it in my blog, but he (again, politely) refused: "Aimee, I do not want to be in your blog. And if, perhaps, you do write about me in your blog, please, for the love of God, use a pseudonym ." Fine, Mr. A. X., until you do something more interesti...

It's not every day that I learn something completely new, such as the way to express a certain technique that, despite my years of graduate school, I have never heard of. If you ask me what it is, I will tell you, but I cannot write about it in my blog because it belongs in a R-rated teen movie from the 1980s ala Porky's, IIVIX. In other news, Stephanie and I went to yogilates today and it was like we were attending a rare lecture given by the Mata Hari--there were no fewer than 500 undergrads stuffed into a gym room filled with mirrors. The teacher was okay for the first half of the class where we did mostly Pilate's moves (including the dreaded roll-over) but then she kind of lost her focus in the second half of the exercise--the yoga portion. It all started to go wrong when she told people to turn to do the other leg. Half the class took this literally and turned completely away from the teacher to face the back wall. This kept happening and at one point, I realized tha...

My parents are due to arrive any minute. I just finished cleaning the bathtub and washing the bathroom floor, which really doesn't take that long as the entire bathroom is 4' x 2'. The phrase "anything worth doing once is worth doing well" kept running through my head and I was arguing with it. Sometimes, you have to do things and you don't necessarily want to throw your whole self into it. I confess that I often dust around objects, cleaning only what's visible. Don't you dare look under my bed; it has become a gathering spot for cat hair, but it doesn't impact my sleep, so why bother with it? I suppose I'll have to take action once it starts pressing my mattress up into the air, but until then, sweet dreams. Not sure what we'll do once they're here. Mom can't walk that far because she has a bad knee and it might be too hot to go very far anyway. I remember when they visited me in Chicago, I made the mistake of traveling on a bus ...

My parents are currently speeding toward me on an overnight train to Virginia. From there, they will rent a car and drive to Philadelphia. I hope my mother is not offended by the new baby pope statue I have placed in my window (only $7.77 from Circle Thrift). I couldn't help it; I'm just trying to fit into South Philly. Spent some time last night cleaning up the pounds of fluffy gray (why is it gray? None of my cats are gray) cat hair from my apartment, left with enough to furnish two dozens wigs for cats undergoing chemo. They're only staying for one night before continuing on to Danbury, CT to visit my stepbrother, John. I have bought wine and cheese and crackers and almonds. I might take them to the authentic Italian restaurant we visited last weekend. It's better than living in Fishtown where the closest place to get food is the corner grocery. I have several sewing projects lined up for my mother and have racked my brain for something that my stepdad could fix...Is...

I didn't get a chance to finish my post from yesterday about awkward people and their little sweaty ways. I began my argument by acknowledging my own geekiness and was about to go on to then dis the super awkward, but didn't get a chance to finish. I might have mentioned earlier that I recently saw the last part of Napolean Dynamite and still like it a lot. Now that guy is completely dorky and looks like he has milk breath and post nasal drip. In the prom scene, he has his arms just barely touching his partner's waist and it's painfully uncomfortable. And yet, he has an attractive confidence or maybe it's obliviousness that makes him ultimately cool in some ways rather than a loser. The reason I mention him is to clarify that I'm not talking about that kind of sweet nerdiness, but a different strain of unrestrained, almost aggressive dorkiness that borders on the icky. It needs a new name, something like "Oogliness." I'm harping on this b/c of som...

Look, we all feel self-conscious now and then and maybe some of us even feel self-conscious all the time. I know that I do to a certain level. Even when I'm alone, I sometimes disassociate and imagine how others might view me as I charmingly play computer Solitaire in a pair of ratty grey jogging pants and pitted-stained used-to-be-white tank top while chain-smoking and listening to Kid's Corner on WXPN. I think, Hmm...I guess I could still be cute if it was one of those life make-over movies and this is the before picture. Or when I'm walking to the subway and listening to my music, I'm really only thinking about me, me, me in a movie about a woman walking down the street to work. Sometimes, it's a horror movie where it's her last day on earth and she gets hit by a bus while lip-synching Madonna's "Cherish," and sometimes, it's a romantic comedy where after she steps in dog shit, a cute, dark-haired man stops on his bicycle to help her and the...

I don't have the foggiest idea why that book title is stuck in my head. I never read the book and have no clue what it's about, though I think there might be a hunchback in the story somewhere? Have successfully read Daisy Miller and liked it much better than I thought I would. Our next short book is The Awakening and then I guess we have 10 or so more after that. The author I choose to present on is Don DeLillo, but I'm not sure which book of his (certainly not White Nois e since this is a short novel class). I emailed my teacher last week to see if she would let me do a creative project for the final, but she never responded. In her own words, she is THEATRICAL!!! and so maybe therefore cannot write back directly as she's in the midst of rehearsing A Streetcar Named Desire. She seems to be one of those people who is prone to random soliloquies of little interest. But I am a harsh judge of people and should give her a chance. I will wait until the class is over to te...