An Amazing Day

2010 Susan G. Komen South Florida Race for the Cure

January 30, 2010

5K

Thank you SO SO SO much to everyone who donated to help me reach my goal of $150 towards breast cancer research. It was only a 5K run but it was done in honor of the women who have fought and continue fight this devestating disease. Over 20,000 people came together yesterday to give their sweat, their time, their money and their voices in the search for a cure . It was an amazing experience and an event that I am SO PROUD to have been a part of.

Ahhh....

I'm so excited to go but still sad that I won't be home.

How lucky I am and how lovely it is to enjoy staying and going with equal measure.

Joe Lewis

About two months ago Wes and I adopted a kitty cat named Joe Lewis. More acurately we were skillfully hooked and reeled in by our oh so devious and conniving friends Katie and John who were ostensibly seeking a kitty sitter for "just a couple of weeks." Kitty sitter my ass. They totally knew that we would fall in love with His Royal Highness Captain Thunderpaws Cuddlekins. I mean seriously, who wouldn't fall in love with that face!

So Joe Lewis came to live with us and a rather delightful addition he has been. When he first moved in he had this utterly charming habit of meowing incessantly starting at 630 am every single morning. At first we tried closing him into the kitty suite (also referred to as the laundry room) but he proved to be wily and Houdini-like escaping every single time. Then we let him cuddle with us and the meowing stopped. He likes to cuddle pretty much non-stop - I see this as a good thing in a cat.

He is however, rather idiosyncratic and likes bathrooms. When someone goes to the bathroom, he follows and hangs out in the bathtub while they do their business. If you shut the door all the way (as is common when bathroom going) he mows and sticks his paws under the door to let you know that he is being left out. When he's running away from whatever invisible force that makes him go absolutely insane periodically, he holes up in the bathroom, cowering next to the sinks.

Thus far in life I have yet to have a normal pet. Roy had a faulty tail. Matilda is perhaps THE strangest dog of all time but INSANELY love-able at the same time:

How could you not love that face! Okay - just one more for good measure:

And now there's Joe. Bathroom fetish, bunny ear wearin' certified freak show. But oh how we do loves him!

And then the take-out menu was missing

I came home today on a mission. A mission of the utmost importance: fold the mountain of clean laundry that is threatening to avalanche over the counter in the laundry room thus burying Joe Lewis' litter box. This had to be done for two main reasons: 1. if it did in fact avalanche onto the litter box it would no longer be clean and require a second washing. This is bad for the environment and bad for my temper. 2. I'm leaving tomorrow after work to visit Club Fun in South Fun and Run a 5K to raise money for Breast Cancer Research and I need clean underpants. I'm making sure to mention the race when telling people I'm leaving town, it makes it sound more like I'm doing it for a reason and less that I'm just in Club Fun withdrawal. But I digress, the laundry, it must be finished.

While I am laundering the underpants Wes, being all wonderfully and boyfriendy like he is, got his car professionally cleaned and tuned up today so as to be in perfect working order for my road trip. Yes yes, I'm taking his car. Nothing is wrong with Dora but the Speedy Coche is well...speedier? possessing of satellite radio, sun roof and a super smooth ride? It also has a steel frame as opposed to the tinfoil and plastic frame that Dora has to offer. And it's bright yellow. For these reasons Wes insists that I take his car and he suffers acute misery of the mind driving my reliable, economic though not-so-speedy Honda Civic. Combine this with earlier this week when I walked in the door to the comforting homey scent of bleach cleanser. He was bleach cleaning the counters, AFTER emptying (and then reloading) the dishwasher and folding all the blankets and de-cluttering the living room. Is there any wonder why I love this man?! He used the bleach cleaner!

He's been on a roll lately but then tonight, well all I can say that I am sincerely disappointed. I got up to find the take-out Italian menu and as I wander around the kitchen checking the front of the fridge (where it usually is,) the towel drawer (where it could be,) and the junk drawer (where it shouldn't be but hey who knows) I keep asking "where's the Piesanos menu?" And "I swear it was here the other day." So now I'm hungry, super hungry, four mile run kind of hungry and I can't find the take-out menu. When I'm hungry I'm not only touchy and mean but my problem solving skills seriously fall apart. So five minutes of aimless wandering around the kitchen and the couch saying "I can't find the thingi" Wes looks up and says "Oh, it's ON TOP OF THE REFRIGERATOR."

On. Top. Of. The. Refrigerator.

Because I totally could have found it up there on my own. And I totally didn't mean the last 5 minutes of asking "where is the thingi!? I can't find the thingi!?" Only half of this household can see on top of the refrigerator and I AM NOT IN THAT HALF. On top of the refrigerator, because THAT is the most logical place for items used by the whole household. In that place that only half of the household can see. The place that is not where the take-out menus goes but is a solid 8 INCHES ABOVE MY HEAD. Why must you choose this moment, the moment of hunger induced terror and confusion to mess with my emotions!?

People with whom I have nothing in common:

a short, non-exhaustive list:
1. Women who wear their hair down when they work out. I'm not even going to stratify this group between those who just can't seem to be bothered by a pony-tail holder and those who spray, coif and curl. I find you all equally disturbing.

2. Rush Limbaugh

3. Parking lot lurkers
Seriously, I know who you are. You're the people eating Lean Cuisines and rice cakes and telling your doctors that you don't know why you can't loose weight. Take that 20 minutes you spent this morning lurking in the close parking garage (i.e. blocking traffic and being wholly annoying)waiting for a spot to open up , park in the "far" garage AND THEN WALK!

4. People at the grocery store who stop their shopping carts in the MIDDLE OF THE AISLE to organize their coupons.
If you do not realize that this is a pre-shopping activity that is best done in the car or at home, we can't be friends.

5. People who try to strike up conversations at the gym
I'm RUNNING here! This means that I am out of breath and if you're not, it means you're not doing it right! (I get a little cranky when I run :) ) This particular entry also includes dentists who ask detailed questions while elbow deep in my mouth, not cool.

The Importance of Hand Sanitizer

Anonymous Co-Worker: Do you have any hand sanitizer

Anna: Sure...

Anonymous Co-Worker: Thanks, I had to pick my nose.

Thinking...

All is right in the world when your frozen low-fat low-sodium lunch comes complete with WHOLE CLOVES OF SLOW ROASTED GARLIC.

There is a God!

Resolved

I have decided that if there is a God, he/she is not xenophobic, homophobic or misogynistic.

If nothing else, omnipotence has GOT to give you a little bit of perspective on all three fronts.

How can you whine about cold weather when there's soup to be eaten!

There's this really incredible thing about Florida, and it's called flip-flops in January. It's a truly beautiful thing. So far this winter there's been nary a flip-flop to be seen as we are in the midst of an atypically frigid and atypically enduring cold snap. Thankfully, in lieu of flip-flops this January there have been warm blankies, cozy sweaters, afternoon coffee, cuddling (my favorite!), fires and soup. Ahh...soup, last on my list but definitely not least in my heart.

I remember when I fell in love with soup. Soup always seemed, well, rather lame as a meal to me. In downtown Iowa City, about a five minute walk from the University of Iowa campus there is a soup restaurant. There may have been a small selection of sandwiches or salads but they took a significant backseat to the array of steaming, aromatic and flavorful soups. After my roomie and suitemates, this soup restaurant was the high point of that grey, cold and depression laden fall.

I found the soup restaurant (actual name unknown) through my my mom's friend Julie. I grew up with Julie's daughters and in true surrogate-mom fashion she took me there for lunch one day in an attempt to drag me from the doldrums I had fallen into. It didn't pull me all of the way out but it certainly helped, far more than I even recognized at the time. After finding it, I went to that soup restaurant almost every other day that fall and winter. In the worst and darkest days of an eating disorder, soup was pretty much the only food that that I didn't feel guilty for eating, I can only guess as to why. Without being dramatic or exaggerating I can honestly say that for over a month, this soup was the only food that truly ate. I'd go after my super femi-nazi English lit class and with a bowl of soup and the most humongous Diet Coke possible, sit at a small table by the windows. There, eating my soup and reading my way through Joyce, Kafka, Woolfe and Bronte, I was warm, fed and felt protected from loneliness, anxiety and doubt.

Even now, from a so much better place that it's unrecognizable as part of the same life, and with a distinctly more 'foodie' sensibility I get that same feeling from soup: warmth, comfort and insularity. This past week I've been reveling in the cold weather that has made soup a dinner option, and oh the options of soup! French Onion, spicy lentil, hearty vegetable and potato leak soups have all graced my dinner table the last few weeks. Last night it was a white bean and kale soup, sourdough bread with melted goat cheese and a glass of white wine. Curled up with a book on World War One, I again felt warm, fed and safe from loneliness and all doubts.

Vesuvius and his twin sister St. Helens

I currently have, residing on my face, the two largest zits in the history of man.

I've never really seen anything quite like this, and for those of you who remember me from High School that ought to impress something quite horrible upon you.

They've taken over my face. There's no way to hide them, no amount of shellacking or daubing of cover-up can distract from these suckers. Face masques or goos that make (false) promises of size and redness reduction have seriously met their fucking match.

I have newly minted fabulously cut and colored hair but no pictures shall grace this website or Facebook until Vesuvius and his evil twin St. Helens return to their correct geographical locations.

More logically sound eating practices

I generally assume that if I eat salad for lunch, then I can also eat a bag of those insanely delicious Terrace Cafe Cajun Chips.

Is this not logical?

Quote of the Day:

(i know what you're thinking..."ALREADY!?" Yep, already.)


"Clearly you don't watch enough soap operas. Having kids fixes things every time."

-- Kent Pittman

The Gospel of the Food Network

It’s all about the Food Network. 

I love the Food Network. I remember visiting my grandma when I was in middle school and rolling my eyes for hours on end at the Food Network. Because…like seriously…like, nobody like, cool likes Emeril Lagassee.

If my teenage self met me now, she’d slap me in disappointment, because I can’t get enough of the Food Network. I love it all.

 

It all started with a brief love affair with 30 Minute Meals with Rachel Ray. Finally! A cooking show for the non-skillful! From Rachel Ray I ventured out: Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Mario Batali’s Molto Mario and Bobby Flay’s, Boy Meets Grill. It’s a cross between torture and bliss. Iron Chef in all of it’s “a-la-CUISINE-ing and handspring-y goodness definitely makes my top ten. And then. There is. The Food Porn Lady: Giada De Laurentiis. Nobody cuts an apple, makes a salad or roasts meat with her vaguely inappropriate flair: chop….slice….*sigh*. The best part of the Food Network though is that I don’t have be consistent. I can watch sometimes, occasionally or sporadically and I don’t miss out on plot or character development.

 

My recent love however has been Chefographies. I will make my children watch Chefographies when they hit their early twenties because it, like nothing else, makes me feel like I just might make it. The Chefs on Food Network are undoubtedly successful, they have their own TV shows, write books, own restaurants and run charities and catering businesses. Chefography tracks them from their beginnings to where they are now, answering the question: how did you get here? After watching just about every single Chefography I’ve found the similarity amongst them: not a single one of them had any idea of where they were heading. At last, I feel less lame for not really knowing where I’m headed. Less lame and vaguely more optimistic about the chances of where I’m heading will be a good place,

 

The trick (apparently) is to just keep moving. If one thing doesn’t work, you try something else. When that second thing doesn’t pan out how you want it, you find a 3^rd thing. Repeat as necessary. None of the FN stars had any inkling that they’d end up with a cooking show, in large part because Food Network TV didn’t exist until about ten years ago. Ina Garten was a high ranking government security advisor in her 20s and 30s until one day she quit to open her own specialty food store, about a billion steps later she’s the Barefoot Contessa. Bobby Flay was a high school dropout who haphazardly worked his butt off and now owns half a dozen restaurants and is a whole brand in and of himself. (I’m hoping the “hard work” part of his story 

 and not the “dropping out” part get’s absorbed in this lesson.)

 

So Lesson #1: Just keep moving.

 

Lesson #2 you ask? Good food makes for happy people.

So while I may not have made any New Year’s Resolutions this year, at least none well formed enough to write about here, I do have New Year’s / life plan. Be brave. Make changes when changes are needed. Eat good food and drink good wine with good people.

Quote of the Day:

"It gives it that slightly charred respectability that a hot dog deserves."

- Ina Garten

Quote of the Day

"I have a permanent weggie. It doesn't matter what style of underwear I try, my ass is just the kind that eats underwear."

- Anonymous for the sake of the Internet
(you know who you are!!)

Be very very scared...

Below are two maps (courtesy of the New York Times) that when placed side by side SCARE THE POOP OUT OF ME.

Baglefuls

After the pancake and sausage on a stick kick (think "breakfast corndog") I thought nothing would surprise me. I was wrong.

WB: I found a new breakfast treat.

Me: What is said new breakfast treat


WB:

Me: why don't you just get a bagel?

WB: 'cause it comes pre-cream cheesed
Me: And cream cheesing your own bagel is out of the question?
WB: That would be unreasonable. It's all about simplicity.

Not the only reason but one REALLY good one why I'm happy when I wake up:

he tells me I'm beautiful when I have white face cream on my chin and my hair in a ball on the crown of my head.

StarWars

I know that some people consider Star Wars to be one of the greatest movies/trilogy/double-trilogy/epic films etc. of all time. I have to admit, while science fiction isn't generally my most favorite of genres, I do enjoy Star Wars. I enjoy Hayden Christensen too. Perhaps it is the part of my brain that resists full on allegiance to any television shows or schedules but like has just never turned to love. (If I may digress and brag momentarily however, after countless hours of diligent work progress has been made on emptying out my DVR box. I am caught up through November 11th. Oh yeah baby.) It may be my own personal lack of attention to movie plot detail but I think that this synopsis of the Star Wars movies to be the best EVER.

EVER.



Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.
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New Years!

All last week I was thoroughly eaten up with jealous that 2/3 of Club Fun not only had the entire week off but also got a new puppy. It's not unusual that this particular 2/3 of Club Fun were in cahoots -- I came to terms with the inevitability of this when they got married. :) But they got to cuddle and play with a puppy IN THEIR PAJAMAS all day every day all week long. I assume that they probably got dressed a few times, but I have it on good authority that pajamas were still in effect at 4 pm at least two out of the last four days. So in honor of the South Florida branch of Club Fun AND to maintain my good standing as a founding member of this esteemed club, I started writing this entry from bed and IN MY PJ'S at two o'clock on this fine New Years Day afternoon. It's is now quite a few days later and I am sadly dressed and at the tail end of a rather productive day at work. Nevertheless. I was IN MY PAJAMAS allllllllll day on Friday!

WB and I had a New Years Eve par-tay this weekend to ring out the old and ring in the new. Since we and all that associate with us are wild and insane party people - we had an evening full of Things, Champagne Punch (good call Rachel!) pasta and other various shenanigans. Despite a moment of severe disillusionment upon finding out that most of my friends are rat bastard commies who hate ricotta cheese in all of it's creamy delicious goodness - it was (obviously) wall to wall pants-dropping craziness.

I haven't really come up with any stunningly insightful New Years Resolutions as of yet. I've been resolving to learn how to do a back handspring (or was it walk-over?) every year since I was in graduate school. It has yet to even come marginally close to materializing, there's just something about bending over backwards and aiming for the floor with my head that seems like a questionable activity. Maybe this is my year?