But Call Me Betsy

Too much happened this week to detail here. Instead, please enjoy yet another response to the Dove ad campaign that I don't like. I like this parody better--it's all women who describe themselves as beautiful.

The newest Bachelorette started last night, and, you guessed it, the bachelorette is America's sweetheart, Desiree Holmes. I don't really know what her last name is, but she reminds me of Katie Holmes, post- Dawson's Creek, and pre-Tom Cruise brainwashing. When I say that she's America's sweetheart, I mean that she's the product chosen by NBC to be America's sweetheart; we don't really know her that well; she could be a total diva for all we know, but who cares, she lights up a room (when in candlelight) and she already has the script down ("here for the right reasons...Yes, I believe my husband is in this room...Will you accept this rose? Bounce is the quicker picker upper").  As usual, I only caught the last 45 minutes of the show, and so missed the hour of dudes getting out of the limos in evening gowns, trying to dazzle her, but that's okay. All of the guys look exactly alike and there are only 5 different names among them: Nick, D...

Ginger came in for a visit to work. She's Denise's shelter dog and she's a cross between something and a Pomeranian.  I usually prefer medium to large dogs, having developed a certain disdain for yappy little dogs, but Ginger proved not to be a barker and behaved well. She also has a foxy little face and is fluffy, so it's like Denise brought a stuffed animal to work and made it come to life. She let's you carry her around as an accessory as well. My cat has been dead for over six years now and I still miss her sometimes, like this mrning. I mean, I don't feel sad about it every day; I don't have a shrine to her. I don't keep her ashes next to my bed (though I do have them in this wooden box that's like a recipe box. The vet mailed it to me and I'm certain it contains many different lost cats, mixed together).  With cats, there are really only a handful of stories you can recall about things they did or things that happened to them---it...

NPR sponsors this writing contest every few weeks, Three-Minute Fiction , where they give you a themed writing prompt and you have a week to write 600 words on it. A famous author then picks the winner and the winner gets published in The Paris Review. I've tried this contest about three times now and have never had a story picked or even featured on their website where they post some of their favorite entries. But it's still a good daily exercise. What I've done the last few times around is to write a different one each day, and then pick the one I like best to work on to submit. I did four this time, and one was a definite dud; the other three were workable.  The prompt this time was this: Write a story in which a character finds an object that he or she has no intention of returning. I wrote one on finding a letter on the ground, another about finding a dog, and then this one below about finding a body. The one I submitted was okay--not 100% worked out though. Af...

I am having a hard time getting to this blog regularly to update it, though it's nagging at me in the back of my mind. My idea for now is to keep the posts simple, so this will be about 5 things of note that happened this week. Okay? No pressure! 1. I got my hair cut all the way off on Wednesday by the amazing Leslie at DiCarlo's hair salon on Sansom and 12th Street. I liked her a lot too; and we quickly discovered that we had some geographical things in common. Both lived in Chicago, then moved to Florida, and ended up in Philadelphia. She chopped off about six inches of dead hair (I knew I was in trouble when I started obsessively biting off split ends during Commencement like a crazy person). She straightened it after the cut, but promised me it would be cute too if I didn't straighten it, and she's right--I noticed today that the ends are flipping up in such a way that makes me feel like Daisy Buchanan. 2. Dan made a kitty perch for Ernesto on Sunday and the...