Checking on the Space-Time Continuum

Last night my father called me to see how I was doing. This may not seem strange in the world of other normal people, but my father. Does. Not. Call. Ever.

In fact, every time I call home, he immediately hands the phone over to my mom. I didn't even know he had my phone number.

So last night, I'm standing in my kitchen asking him why he was calling, and he said, "I haven't heard from you in a while, and I was just wondering what you were up to."

This from a man whose policy with his children is: Don't Ask. Don't Tell.

This is a policy I am very comfortable with. I've never understood people who felt like they needed to be best friends with their kids. Your kids have friends. They need parents. I like to think that my father feels that he's instilled me with a way to navigate the world and to make my own decisions, and that's why he doesn't need to touch base too often. Or, it could be laziness.

When I used to travel abroad, he used to say, "Just call if something bad happens. If everything's okay, don't bother. So if I don't hear from you, I'll just figure you're having a good time."

This is very unlike Peter's mother, who calls almost every day we're on a vacation, just to make sure that, yes, oxygen is being breathed in and carbon dioxide is, in fact, being expelled out...as we speak.

Advice From Tim Gunn

Tonight on Project Runway, Tim Gunn gave this advice to Chris.

When you first enter into the monkey house at the zoo you think, "Oh my God this place stinks!" And after you're there for twenty minutes you think, "It's not so bad..." And after you're there for an hour, "It doesn't smell at all!"

But anybody else coming into the monkey house, freshly, thinks, "Oh my GOD this STINKS!"

You've been LIVING in the MONKEY HOUSE!

I asked Peter, "Do you think this advice would work with your clients?"

Goin' Cross Country...Maybe

Peter and I may be taking a road trip to Los Angeles to pick up an old guitar that is at his friend's house. The reason we're taking a road trip is that Peter doesn't want to check the guitar on the plane. Plus we hate to fly. But I've always wanted to drive cross-country.

I'm doing some research on what spots to hit along the way. Right now I'd like to stop in Chicago, Denver, Bryce Canyons, Las Vegas, and The Grand Canyon.

Any suggestions or tips would be really helpful.

A Little Fonduddy

After our experience at The Melting Pot, Peter and I decided to try to make fondue at home using the fondue pot we got at our engagement party...about three-and-a-half years ago. Yes, finally putting that to good use. Now if only someone fancy would visit us, we could break out the Wedgewood Crystal still in their boxes.

We tried this recipe from All Recipes and what we got was a clump o' mess in a vat of white wine. It was a clump of delicious mess, but did not get nice and creamy like a real fondue. I think it may be because we used Jarlsberg Lite Cheese instead of Swiss. Y'know, because we're watching our weight while eating a huge vat of melted cheese.

I might try this again with other cheeses or maybe use a different recipe, because no matter how much I was whippin' that cheese, it would not melt. It would kind of melt when you whipped it, but then once you stopped for one second because your arm felt like it was going to fall off, it turned back into its clumpy old self.

Peter called it Molten Terminator Cheese.

At one point, Peter got a bit of semi-melted cheese on his piece of bread and it was stringing everywhere, so I said, "Here, let me help you with that." I took my fondue skewer and grabbed at this tiny piece of stringy cheese. But because the cheese on the bread had already cooled off, when I pulled at the sting, it brought the whole thing back down and plopped back into the pot.

I cannot relate how funny this was, but even now whenever Peter says, "Here, let me help you with that," it CRACKS ME UP.

Famous Vegetarians

A lot of people happen to stumble onto my site looking to see if Heath Ledger was vegetarian or if Brad Pitt is vegetarian. So I will do my public duty and inform you that Brad Pitt is indeed a vegetarian. Which means that he has yet another thing in common with Peter (along with international fame).

Here are a list of famous vegetarians from happycow.net, which has saved us, on several occasions traveling throughout this vast country of ours, from eating at the local Taco Bell.

I had not known that Aristotle was a vegetarian, as is Elvira Mistress of the Dark (isn't she a vampire?), JD Salinger, Vincent Van Gogh, and of course, our good friend Jesus Christ.

But then why didn't he miraculously create a huge pot of vegetarian chili instead of all those fish?

Eric Bana - Movie Ruiner

I don't understand how Eric Bana keeps getting roles. My sister calls him the Movie-Ruiner, since not one movie he has been in has been worth seeing.

I am very excited to see the new Eric Bana movie, "The Other Boleyn Girl." But since he plays the king, it's probably going to be terrible.

Munich - Terrible
Troy - Bad
Hulk - Embarrassing

Has anyone ever seen a good Eric Bana movie?

Let's Call Fondue Fun-due!

We got this coupon in the mail for a new fondue place that opened up in White Plains called The Melting Pot, so we decided to check it out yesterday. Usually Peter tells me to throw these coupons out, but just say the word "Fondue!" and he's all, "Let's GO!"

When we were seated, I cracked open the menu and got completely confused. It's set up with three different priced meals and a whole bunch of options. So I asked the waitress about a zillion questions, such as, "If I get the Big Night Out Meal, I can substitute any of the fondues for the ones on the ala carte menu? And if that's the case, and my husband's a vegetarian, how would we share? Also, I'd like to order to four-course meal, but I have an issue with feta, so can I get a different salad?"

Every time we go to a restaurant and I ask the waitress a question other than,"May I have a Coca-Cola?" Peter starts to roll his eyes and make annoyed noises. He started to do this, so I asked him if he understood the menu. He said yes and told me to leave our poor waitress alone.

So after she left, I asked him my questions and he didn't know any of the answers. And then, he admitted, "Yeah, this menu is not very intuitive."

So why didn't you let me ask the lady my questions?

This happens every time. Peter always gets antsy when he thinks I'm bothering waitstaff, but I used to work at my dad's restaurant, and I never had a problem answering people's questions. Because you want to make sure that people understand what they're getting.

But Peter is a failed waiter (after getting fired the first day) and doesn't understand that the waitstaff is paid to know the menu backwards and forwards, and they are aware that when a person takes up their time, they will get compensated in the size of their tip.

We finally figured out what the heck the menu meant and hunkered down to one of the longest meals in the history of long meals. The whole thing took about three hours!!

Figuring out the menu took half-an-hour. The first course was this great cheese fondue, which was out-of-this-world. But between heating up the fondue pot and the waitress preparing the whole thing in front of us, it took about another hour to finish that course. Then we got a salad, which was incredibly yummy. And THEN, we had to wait for the broth fondue to heat up and cook our food ourselves, so that took ANOTHER hour. Finally, it was on to dessert, which was a chocolate fondue.

By the time the meal was done, we had been eating for three hours. Peter said:

"Wow, this meal was an INVESTMENT OF TIME."

Yeah, about the best investment of time I made all day!

Hateful and Spiteful Mother-in-Law

A few weeks ago, I spied a delicious box of chocolate-covered wafers in my mother's pantry and I asked if I could have them. I told her that I would give them to my mother-in-law because that was the only way to con her into giving them to me. It was a HUGE box, that probably had at least 100 cookies in it.

In the car, I told Peter that this was all a ploy to get the cookies. My sister agreed that my mother would only give me the chocolates if I wasn't going to eat them (because she thinks we need to lose a few pounds).

The next day, Peter went to his mother's house and when I reached into the pantry for the box of cookies...they were gone! Later, Peter said that he thought I was just joking in the car.

After the initial melt-down, I told Peter to ask his mother to save some of the cookies for me, because although I would love to eat the whole box, even I know that this is not a good idea. He called her and she agreed to save some.

I was so happy that I was planning on driving her to Long Island (by myself) to visit her daughter (the most hateful one in the family of hatefulness) and throwing her a big surprise Mother's Day party, as well as inviting her to our home again soon.

Then yesterday, when Peter spoke to her on the telephone, she told him that she "forgot" that she had agreed to save some for me and finished them all!

This could only mean a few things:

1.) Those cookies were so delicious that she ate them all in three days (ALL the cookies!!!! - I mean, doesn't she have ANY self-control?)

2.) She is getting dementia and forgot she promised to save some for me.

3.) She is HATEFUL and SPITEFUL.

After discussing this with Peter, I irrationally said, "She didn't save ANY of them for me? Wow. She really HATES me."

I expected Peter to say something like, "No, she doesn't hate you. She just loves cookies."

But instead, he looked me straight in the eye and said. "Yeah. I think she must hate you. She would have never eaten them all if anyone else asked her to save them some. She would probably never have even opened the box."

"But doesn't she realize that I'm so upset that I'm NEVER INVITING HER TO MY HOUSE EVER AGAIN?"

"Yeah," he said. "I don't think she cares. That's how much she must hate you."

And driving to Long Island? Never happening. AND I'm not throwing someone who hates me a Mother's Day party. AND I am NOT going to EASTER DINNER.

Question of the Day

What's my favorite flower?

Uh...hmmmm...

You don't remember do you?

Sure I do. It's uhhmm...parsni...persimm...it's got this really long and unusual name.

Long and unusual? Something like pink peonies?

That's it! Pink Peonies.

Yah, right.

The Same Old Valentine's Day

My sister called up and asked Peter what we were doing on Valentine's Day and he said, "Same thing we do every year."

When my sister asked him what that was, he said, "Nothing."

Then she told us a story about going to the mailbox with her boyfriend. When she opened the mailbox, a bunch of Fruit Roll-Ups came out of the mailbox, like when the Tic Tacs fell out of the mailbox in the movie Juno. She turned to her boyfriend and said, "Oh! That's so sweet!"

He said, "This wasn't me."

And then he looked really sad about it. We think that it was one of his friends playing a prank on him. But Jenny thinks that it may be someone else doing this to random girls on campus.

"But it can't be random," I told her. "This person has to know you love Fruit Roll-Ups."

"But everyone loves Fruit Roll-ups," she said.

"Uh. No. They're gross."

"Really? I thought EVERYBODY loved them."

If by everybody, she means everybody who loves to put partially hydrogenated oils and Red #4 into their balanced diet.

And You Do Not Want A Very Expensive Towed

The other day someone in this complex got his car towed. Each parking spot here is assigned except for the guest spots, and people around here are just chomping at the bit to have someone towed. This is great sport in the complex and everyone stands around outside watching the tow trucks come by with their yellow lights dancing and they don't go back inside until the car has been dispatched down the ramp.

A few years ago Peter and I visited Chicago and went to a fancy event for the Cambodian Association. Throughout the evening, a lady went up to the microphone and said:

If you are parked in an illegal parking spot, you will be towed. And you do not want to pay for a very expensive towed. (Of course, this sounds like "expensive toad")

So now, every time someone gets towed, Peter says, "Someone is going to pay for a very expensive towed."

Superbowl Pre-game Sillyness

Did anyone catch the weird pre-game Patriots skit which involved the Founding Fathers as they sat around talking about the Declaration of Independence? I was all like, when is Paul Bunyan coming out to represent the Giants? And then when they trotted out Thomas Jefferson, I thought, "Oh No You DIDN'T!" (Y'know, cuz he would totally be a Redskins fan).

I'm sure that when the founding fathers came up with the idea for this nation, it was all to pave the way for the creation of the NFL. And Thomas Jefferson totally wrote the Declaration of Independence to be recited before the Superbowl.

Totally.

Parking Spot Controversy = Solved!

After about three months with no response from the management company or our condo board about our parking spot situation, I emailed "Lazy Lady" who works for the management company. Of course, she completely ignored my emails, so after about half-a-dozen emails from me, Peter called her up.

Over the telephone, Lazy Lady let it slip that the board "was not doing anything" about the situation. Peter informed her that during the board meeting the condo president said that this was an "inequitable situation" and that something would definitely be done about it. Peter asked Lazy Lady for a copy of the board minutes.

I guess asking for the board minutes really got her going, and before we knew it, I received an email from the board president and he told me that he was INCENSED. Apparently, the board had decided the day of their meeting that something will be done to increase the size of our parking spot. He was upset that no one from the management company told us about this.

The funny thing is that Lazy Lady is also a bit Not-So-Smart. She forwarded my email, which stated that she IGNORED MY NUMEROUS PREVIOUS EMAILS. I mean, I would NEVER forward an email to my boss that exposed the fact that I IGNORED CUSTOMER EMAILS.

The solution I was offering was to re-paint the lines from the guest spots so that they would be a bit smaller and we could have a spot that is bigger. What they did was tear off part of the sidewalk and move our neighbor's spot over, cover the ripped out sidewalk with tar (but didn't pave the tar over so now it's all bumpy and ugly).

My neighbor has hated us since the day we moved in, when our moving truck hit her car. Plus, we have two dogs and I'm up at all hours of the night. And now her parking spot got messed with. I think she's going t'be MAD!

But now our spot is BIGGER! Yay! Now we can actually (gasp!) open our car doors!

Not Saving the Planet Today

In an effort to save the planet, Peter put a lightly-used Ziploc bag in the dishwasher because we learned that we can re-use Ziplocs if it is safely washed. This Ziploc bag was placed inside-out in the dishwasher, so when I fished it out, I flipped it back to its usable state.

A few hours later, I hear, "Oh NO!"

I rushed into the kitchen to see what happened.

Peter was in the process of spooning the leftover tomato paste into the washed Ziploc bag, but he had flipped it inside-out so it could not close.

He had remembered that he put it in the dishwasher inside-out, so when he saw it, he went ahead and flipped it back around.

Oh well. Operation Save the Planet from another Ziploc bag = FOILED!

Happy New Year!

Hello all. Happy New Year!

Hope it's a great rat year!

But You Can Have One of Your Own for Practically Free

I attended an adoption meeting a couple of weeks ago. We've been trying for a baby for about two years now and Peter suggested that we explore adoption. We kind of have a "if it happens, it happens" attitude about children. I have always wanted children and Peter feels that children will make us miserable...because all our friends with kids are now having marital problems that range from "We're going to a marriage counselor" and "We're kind of just roommates now" to "Yeah, he's moved out."

My home growing up was never happier than when we had an infant in the house. I don't know if I'm looking back on this with rose-colored glasses, or if things were very tough for my parents and I don't remember--although I'm pretty sure I would have noticed that at 14. Plus, if you're going to have another child, make sure that your eldest is 14 and can do most of the diaper-changing and formula-feeding.

The meeting was very eye-opening for me. Apparently there are mountains of paperwork and credit histories and background checks and home studies that must be performed to ensure that you will be able to take care of a baby who is sitting around in an orphanage with two other crib-mates with no one to care for her. But what was most incredulous to me were the fees. It will cost about thirty thousand dollars to adopt a baby from China.

When I told my friend Marisol, she said, "But you can have one of your own for practically FREE!"

The statistics are that there are about 100 international babies that need to be adopted for every home that can be provided - and yet, most people can't afford $30,000.

I can't help but feel that there are a lot of middlemen who are getting paid and agencies making a lot of cash off of people who are trying to adopt. Peter says that it kind of feels like you're buying a baby. Most people who have adopted take umbrage when people ask how much they spent, but the truth is, it does cost a lot of money.

Even though Peter is a bit worried about adding to our family, he also thinks that it would be nice to have a baby in the house. So here's to throwing those dice and taking a chance.

The Raccoon Made Me Do It!

Last night, right after the Superbowl, I took my dogs out, but when it came time to throw out their dog poop bag, a huge tan-colored animal with a large tail jumped out of the garbage dumpster.

I completely froze. I went back towards our place and hid the dog poop bag behind some bushes near our apartment (I didn't leave it in front of our door because we still had guests upstairs).

When I got upstairs, I told Peter what I did and asked him to take care of the poop in the morning.

Just now, when I took the dogs out, I discovered that someone from the complex had fished the poop bag from behind the bushes and put the bag in front of our door.

I know that it was wrong to hide the bag in the bushes, but my brain kind of froze when I saw that animal and I was too scared to go near the garbage can. Also, I figured Peter would take care of the problem in the morning and no one would be the wiser, but of course, he has no memory of the conversation I had with him last night. During the haze of the crazy Superbowl victory, the words coming out of my mouth just didn't register into Peter's brain.

What I don't like about this whole thing is the surreptitious and passive-aggressive nature of the poop bag incident. I would have more respect for this person if he/she rang my doorbell and confronted me face-to-face. Also, it kind of annoys me because I do take the time and energy to clean up after my dogs, which is more than I can say for some of the other people in the complex.

Plus, can't the surreptitious passive-aggressive complex people let a gal get away with a first offense before getting surreptitiously passive-aggressive about something?

Welcome to New Yawk!

I threw Peter a Superbowl Party/40th Birthday party last night and during the planning of it, we didn't expect a New York team to actually be at the Superbowl, much less going head-to-head with "The Team of HISTORY."

So when the day came nearer, I know that a lot of Peter's friends would rather hole up in their darkened bedrooms and watch the Superbowl under the covers. Fortunately, they manned up and came to the party.

Peter's one birthday wish was to see the look on Belichick's face at the press conference after they lost their perfect season to the Giants, and for some reason, I had a good feeling that it was going to happen. Just because it would be a great 40th birthday present and I hadn't gotten him a present yet because I was so busy at the AWP conference, and goshdarnit, Peter's so great he deserves anything he wants on his birthday. A Giants win and a vanilla/chocolate Ben & Jerry's ice cream cake.

And of course, that's exactly what happened. There was a lot of screaming and "This is HAPPENING!s" and Peter's nephew Tony almost got thrown off the porch for making jinxy comments.

After the game, one of the guys at that party said, "Of course this could only happen with a New York team. You think you're going to end with the perfect season? Fuck You! Welcome to New Yawk!"