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because every bad boy has his soft side
Eight confessions about the same thing
- Yesterday, I actually arrived at work in the best goddamned mood ever because Monday was the day that my new CD was to arrive, the first CD I have purchased in an avalanche of years.
- The number of sentences that have escaped my lips in the last day that did not include the words "Monster Ballads" and "OMG" were in a vast minority.
- My incessant serenading of my husband with the Joy of Monster Ballads has led him to determine that my Indian name would be Sings With Delight. (His would be Hobbit Foot.) (I'm kind of bummed, actually. I always wanted to be The Girl The Dough Talks To.)
- This all started, well, technically in the Central New Jersey of my junior high youth, in the days before over-affected irony but reemerged on Jocelyn's roof a couple weeks ago after most of a bottle of wine singing our acid washed jeans butts of, causing her hipster neighbors to quiver.
- My friend Steve says my face lights up whenever Bon Jovi comes on.
- I've decided for now on, I'm going to decide if we can be friends by your reaction to me telling you about my recent purchase of Monster Ballads, as you either a) Roll your eyes and say "Ew," b) Jump up and down and demand we listen to it right now, or c) Say, "What's a Monster Ballad?". C is forgivable but you're a little young for me, B will be my new BFF, and if you're an A, I'm going to storm out of the room wailing, "you don't know me at all!" just like I probably did in 7th grade.
- I cannot believe there's no Tesla, Ozzie/Lita Ford or GnR Patience on this. Or Sister Christian!
- Our kids are screwed.
moving one's cheese
The office where I work was reshuffled this weekend. Some people moved floors, others moved offices, and my mighty corner cube was moved a whole aisle over. (I know, please contain your excitement.) You wouldn't believe what a process this is; the packing of business cards, Shredded Wheat, $7 Ikea lamps and photos purchased on the streets of Dumbo into two boxes labeled with your name and routing number so IT guys and high-priced movers can work through the weekend to get everyone's stuff moved no more than 500 feet from where it started. Pizza was even served for lunch and an impressive selection of beer laid out at the end of the day on Friday to ease the transition.
Which pretty much brings us up to this morning, when I arrived in a post-champagne* daze to my new 50 foot piece of the great corporate pie completely horrified. The desk was dirty! Someone left binders all over the place! The drawers were filled with duck sauce and binder clippings and holes punched. All the wires were knotted and no, that is not where I like my phone and laptop dock. All tizzied and huffed up, I dug through a box for my Windex Wipes (like this surprises you that I'd have them) and went to work and then rewired until things were almost okay again.
And I think this is about as low as you can go in your relationship to that which allows you bring home the low-grade, budget-line bacon. (Yes, even lower than going down in flames for it.) To attach your psyche or happiness to interlocking pieces of plastic-coated wood board lined with half-windows under flickering fluorescent lights purchased by your employers with good intentions, but mostly because they got a good price on them. To feel bothered when you liked your old station better, to feel disjointed because you're not sure you'll adjust to your new view, to feel demoted because you didn't get your first choice of seats, and to spend time and energy making yourself at home at a place that should never, ever feel like home.
There's a cliché in here somewhere about nothing like showing up at the office helping you achieve a whole new depth in bottoming out, but I'll avoid it. Really, I will. Happy Monday!
* Re: the post-champagne daze. For a friend's wine-and-cheese-and-meet-my-new-boyfriend yesterday, I tried my hand at Gourgères, recipe over here, and highly recommend you make these at least once in your life. Also, could you invite my husband over when you do? They were all gobbled up quickly and he misses them. Thanks!
not a single thing you ever wanted to know
My husband and I have an ongoing joke that if you were to retrieve the content of my recent Google queries at any given time, you would feel rightfully freaked the hell out. There was the time last week when I became overwhelmed with curiosity as to what a "c-section scar" would look like, there's been frantic, late-night "why won't my bread rise?!" inquiries, an inexcusable "you the man now dawg website," a hazy "how often can I take DayQuil" and in the very pinnacle of searches that do not need to be shared in public but will, on my 30th birthday I asked Dr. Google "do ovaries ever rumble?"
Consider yourself warned. (No really, you probably don't want to know this. Here, look at this pretty rainbow instead!)
Because I've got to be doubled over with agony to go to the doctor (and even then, I had to be dragged), the last thing I needed to explain to my aging, forgetful gync was that "on the occasion of my thirtieth birthday, I felt a dull, rumbling sensation in my ovaries." I can't even get that out without laughing.
I do wish I could explain the sensation better; had I been able, the Googlebot might have advised me to do more than "try different keywords" and "make sure all words are spelled correctly," retorting with everything short of "girl, you are f*cked."
So, yes, they felt rattly, or, the location where I approximated them (yes, I Googled an image of this too, and yes, I long for the days when actual photographs of human innards didn't appear) did. Not uncomfortable, not crampy, I just felt some, "hi, we're right here" about ten times that day.
I flipped open my pill-pack, which is essentially my go-to explanation for moods, puffiness and overwhelming desires for chocolate. [Ah, the third week! I've mused in the past, that explains everything! Oh, just the first week and I'm bloated? I guess I did drink too much last night, and so on.] The dial-a-pak registered day fifteen and I thought, well could I be ovulating? I mean, can you feel that? And if it were especially, uh, loud, would that explain everything: the preoccupation with the rolls of baby fat on infant thighs, the scent of their little bobble heads, the justification to my unimpressed husband of the importance of a appallingly-priced Bugaboo stroller? Am I just ovulating more enthusiastically now that I am thirty?
Oh, god.
And this is pretty much where I've been since I turned thirty. The inside parts of me that have always lived quietly, you know, inside me now scare the crap out of me. They just upped and got minds of their own and I don't know what this is going to lead to, but it can't be good. I worry that we'll just wake up one day and the hormones will be barking orders at us. "MUST HAVE BABY NOW," they'll bellow. "YOU MUST OBEY" they'll holler to my quivering husband. "Can I… can I just have one more night to get plastered on tequila?" I'll beg, but to no avail. This isn't about you anymore, they'll sneer, and also, have fun eating rubbery pasteurized cheeses and overcooked meats for nine months while your back hurts and ankles swell. "Why are you so mean?" I'll ask them, tearfully and they'll say "Hey, look at that baby over there gnawing on it's feet!" and then we all dissolve into a puddle of incomprehensibly mushy goo-goos and ga-gas…
So, yeah. Being thirty is great so far; just really freaking great.
i carried a watermelon
I'm not sure if it's because I can only shake my thing — that thing being a leg, and that leg not being very balanced, graceful or willing — when I'm either intoxicated and self-deluding or home alone (and also self-deluding) but I love the movie Dirty Dancing. So, you can imagine the unparalleled joy it brought me when my sister bought me the DVD for my birthday, and the relief it brought Alex to be able to scoot out of town for another couple days before I could force him to watch Patrick Swayze in spandex again.
I remember the first time I saw it like it was yesterday (and not a frightful eighteen years ago). I went with my parents and there was this torturous moment when Baby is seducing Johnny and my father hisses furiously to my mother, "We are leaving! This is not appropriate for a teenager to see," and of course, I wanted to die because I didn't want to see that with them either. Fortunately, the scene changed quickly and we were able to awkwardly sit out the movie together.
I had the soundtrack, tapes 1 and 2 (ha, you didn't know there was a two, did you?) and listened to them on endless repeat, something I never knew would come in handy as much as it did shortly into my relationship with my now-husband when "Love is Strange" came on at a bar and I sang along to every single lyric. "How do you call your lover boy?... Come 'ere lover boy!" Alex paled with horror.
But back to the picture show: I've probably seen this movie, well, we don't need to talk about how many times I've seen this movie, and not-a-one of the times has the 28-year-old-Jennifer-Gray-playing-a-16-year-old not plodded through that "I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling for the rest of my whole life. The way I feel when I'm with you!" line in this dead-in-the-water, yodeling tone without leaving me in a visible cringe. [Also, despite being Swayze Crazy — I had the poster over my bed and everything — even he doesn't get forgiven for lyrics as appalling as "she's like the wind, though my tree; she rides the night, next to me."]
Which brings me back to the breakthrough I had watching the movie last week as to why I am drawn to this movie even though she can't act, he can't sing and the film is a hornet's nest of goofs. Beyond nostalgia for white denim capris, Keds and a longing for summer vacation in the mountains, it's that scene when Baby is supposed to do The Lift but bails at the last minute, and without anything left to fill the space, simultaneously overbites and thumb-dances. She goofs and it's awful; awful to know it happened and awful to be in the room when it does. This is Baby at her most awkward; this is Baby when she's exactly like us — and this is what happens to me every single time.
best bakes
I've been promising for some time to compile recipe requests into one post and today is the day I will procrastinate no longer! However, I could use a refresher — what are those recipes that you've misplaced or done got lost to archive demons? One-bowl brownies? Blondies? Challah? BBQ sauce? Pizza Dough? I'll only include recipes I can attest to their infallibility; otherwise I will give you my best educated point in the right direction.
If you need some ideas, click on the image to take a gander at the grub picture file.
* Update* I've now added One-Bowl Brownies, Pizza Dough, and Cupcake recipes in the comments, as well as pointers to chocolate dump-it, bundt and pineapple upside-down cakes; spinach quiche, wild mushroom and stilton galettes, and an imploring note to get my mother to dig up her lemon bar recipe. Also, I am now hungry despite my highly satisfying bug-free arugula salad for lunch.
* Update the second* I've now added Lattice Top Pie Tricks (with handy-dandy diagram), Pitas, Black and White Cookies, Oreos, and Graham Crackers; Blondies to come.
* Update le fin* Blondies and Berry Tart instructions added. I'll do this again in another while; until then, if you need a recipe, just drop me an email.
carnies
Almost as badly as I wanted to pillage and plunder some vareniki on my birthday, I wanted to return and take more pictures of Coney Island, this time at twilight. I obsessed over carnival lights and colored filaments, but came home with dozens of mostly blurry pictures because I am too lazy to pull out the tripod when using the telephoto lens. (This is probably why the Hasidic man groaned at me yesterday at B&H when I tried out a macro lens, only to take three of the worst pictures ever and convince myself maybe I'm not ready for one.)
The absolute brightest story from the day, however, is within the last picture. Midway between the Spanish-speaking voices on the Coney end of the boardwalk and Russian-tongued Brighton, Alex spied a ketchup-colored, well-lit dome over Far Rockaway.
"What do you think that is?" my bookworm, smarty-pants husband asked me.
"I dunno! Maybe if you look through the telephoto lens you can see more?" his well-at-least-she's-pretty wife responded.
By the time he had it out, though, the dome had become more of a slice, and less red. The slice became a half-circle, the half-circle a full round, and within minutes it had departed Queens and headed for the stars, casting its linear glow across the ocean and illuminating our stroll to the carb-carnival.
"You have such a head for knowing!" [Moonstruck]
small hands, smell like cabbage
Exactly a month ago, I happened on a restaurant write-up in the New York Times Dining section that haphazardly, circumstantially and unexpectedly became my muse. The review, "For the Love of a Russian Dumpling," pretty much had me at the hed, throwing about three of my obsessive themes like it owned them and just lets me borrow them once in a while.
But, it was the lede that filled me equally with smite of the pain/suffering and the swoon/awe variety — the former because someone else got to write it first and the latter because it is downright charming: "My list of dumpling loves is long."
I was certain he was writing to me and me alone, going on about "tiny Turkish manti, griddle-crisped Japanese gyoza, meaty Korean mandoo, anything Italian — from diminutive tortellini to hulking ravioli — and every kind of steamed, boiled or fried Chinese dumplings, swimming in soup or stuffed with it."
In the end, he adds Russian vareniki to his list of dumpling sweethearts, moon-shaped, less bulky than pierogi, and "served 25 to an order in a bath of drawn butter, generously sprinkled with long strands of onions cooked until tawny and sweet." He calls them "as light as carbs stuffed into carbs drenched in melted fat can be" and I called them my destiny.
I printed the review and stuck it in my shoulder bag, telling everyone about it and the Café Glechik it describes until they're eyes glazed over and demanded to know why I hadn't just been there already so I could shut up about it. But, I was saving it (I held out a whole four weeks, mind you); saving it for a day that would equal in momentousness my anticipation and personal significance. Indeed, I told my husband all I wanted for my 30th birthday dinner was a plate of $5 dumplings.
Of course, who would stop at one: we ordered the potato, cabbage variety and the "Siberia" (a mix of ground veal and pork) pelmeni, as well as a Greek-like salad and bottle of Georgian seltzer (they serve no beer or alcohol, both a disappointment and a gift after Saturday night's cirrhosis-inducing revelry at Russian Vodka Room). I doused them in both light vinegar and sour cream (blasphemy, by the way; you are supposed to choose only one), and consumed nearly ten before the weight of the long day, my hangover and those god-like carbohydrates descended on me.
The remaining two-thirds are in the refrigerator right now, and I you think I am above picking one out with my fingers and eating it cold, it's like you don't know me at all.
so far, 30 hurts a lot
Pre, almost and post-vodka last night. The rest of the evidence will be over here until I wisen up and take them down.
nonexistent learning curve, reaffirmed
Finding good lunch in my work neighborhood is hard, even though there are no shortages of "delis" around. (I am, by the way, using the exactly language a woman I once eavesdropped on use in reference to datable men, mostly for my own amusement.) I care not for piled-upon salads with canned ingredients, xanthan gum in my dressings, processed flattened "deli meats," or sandwiches; thus, among all the food in the world, I can't find anything to eat. This is the real downside of cooking your own meals well and often - everything pales.
So, I've been swooning with glee for two weeks that I found a place a whopping block away that sells a variety of simple, original salads and 3"x4" pieces of paper-thin pizza, the absolutely perfect balance of indulgence and fitness. I love it like a new boyfriend; everyone is friendly, they always have The Post or The Onion out to read while you wait, and aw shucks, mister, I've already lost two pounds on their divine salads. I've had the all-red one with radicchio, red grapefruit and red onion; the arugula with goat cheese, lemon zest, and citrus dressing; and today I was all up in the iceberg wedge with roasted garlic yogurt dressing's retro grill when a beige bug caught my eye as it climbed about the iceberg's flaky mountain, likely in search of the second half of it's right wing, half-a-salad away, aligned by a sharp knife with the edge of a piece of lettuce.
Of course, I had already eaten a quarter of the salad.
Steaming mad, I marched the icebug salad back to the restaurant in the rain, practicing my words in my head. Look, I reasoned with no one in particular, it wasn't a roach or a rat turd or some glaring signal of kitchen decay. It's the kind of bug that shows up in food that grows inches from the ground, like iceberg lettuce. A frequent purchaser of organic produce myself, I know that when you lower the ratio of pesticides in your food, you increase the ratio of… natural tendencies. I'm cool with this equation. What I'm not cool with is:
"We are so very very sorry. But, I want to assure you that everything is thoroughly and completely washed before it leaves the kitchen. Everything," babbled the used-to-be-cute guy behind the counter.
Dude, I'm holding a sealed salad container with a LIVE BUG and its HALF WING from your so-called impeccable kitchen. You are obviously lying to me and, really, you ought to know better than to lie to a scorned woman with a quarter of your buggy salad rising in the back of her throat.
I didn't say this, of course, I actually said, "uh sure, okay" and accepted the $15 gift certificate with the "not acceptable for deliveries" crossed out. I'm fingering it right now, kind of hungry. I mean, surely they've rewashed all of their lettuce since I complained, right? Especially the iceberg wedges, right? I should be retching in my wastebasket right and all I want to know is how many days I have to wait to go back so that I don't look desperate.
God, I hate dating.
this again
So, my husband is gone again, LA this time and although we should be happy that this is his fifth trip of six, and the sixth trip is but three days, we are not. We’re pouty and long-sighing and really quite over this, if you must know. But I’m trying, trying like a teen novel heroine to find the good in bad, and although the list is weak and my constitution faulty, these are the things that I must admit never happen when I’m not a one-week work widow:
- Edamame for dinner
- Hm… Uh…
Well, so much for that idea. I’ve been staring at it for two days and it hasn’t written its damned self, and seeing as I’ve been staring at my ode to tiny edible baby fingers even longer I suppose we could say I’m at an impasse with my output.
I know it’s all the rage these days, but time to pull out the weblog tricks again! (Wow, has it really been over a year?) You toss me some questions, I’ll clumsily pass you some answers, and we’ll all have a mighty fine time.
So you know, uh, bring it.