My new obsession

The first step is admitting you have a problem.

I, similar to GirlFriday (with her fondness for Ethan Allen interior decorating), have an unhealthy obsession with real estate and furniture. I don't know when it happened. Probably some time during all the craziness of wedding planning when I realized that after the "big day" was over, I'd have lots of free time to plan the "ever after." I'm sure HT could tell you when he first started noticing the longer period of time I would spend pouring over the Pottery Barn Catalogue. . . I'm surprised he hasn't started throwing them out before I get home like I do with his Griots' garage car-washing supply catalogues. . . but I digress.

Somewhere in the last two years, I have really, really started to want to buy a home. It has something to do with throwing upwards of a few thousand dollars away in rent each month, but it also has to do with just wanting walls I can paint and rooms to decorate, and a big red front door with an antique looking knocker.

HT and I spent the better part of Sunday afternoon wandering around a little haven outside of DC where we'd love to be able to buy a place. We clip-clopped along brick sidewalks and popped in and out of cafes and boutiques trying to avoid strollers and dogs, smiling families, and tourists. We sat for clam chowder looking out at the potomac, somewhat exhausted from our prior evening's activities and wished that we could just plop down right there, put down roots, and stop all the what-ifs that come with the ACTUAL headaches of homeownership.

The problem with the obsession is that it's fun right now. We haven't broached the topic with lenders, we haven't really, earnestly, tried to figure out what we can afford, and we haven't set foot across a threshhold yet. And I'm certain that once we make those steps, my tone might change. But right now, home to me is clapboard and blue shutters with a red door and crooked, colonial front step. And filled with pottery barn furniture. . .

Choose or Lose

If you could get four more seasons of Gilmore Girls (pre-Yale and the Birken bag), but that meant you had to watch every LA Clippers game on ESPN, would you?

If you could go back and keep Taylor Hicks from making it to Hollywood week on American Idol, but it meant Wesley and Princess Buttercup wouldn’t get together, would you do it?

This is a great link, check it out – I’d love to hear your thoughts. Are there any you would definitely choose?: http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/movies_without_pity/the_box_better_questions_they.php

Bad Sports

Saw this first thing this morning. What a bad sport! Someone find me a campaign where we can get her banned from soccer…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC-pF3OHY1c

Girl Fairway

GirlFairway is very sick, please pray for her.

Amen

Back in January, when we were discussing things we love to hate, I mentioned how much I hate when people complain about the way waiters are treated in the cases when they're actually really terrible waiters. This week the New York Times featured articles listing the things restuarant staffers should never do. Sometimes, I wish people in the service industry would realize that it's their responsibility to provide exemplerary service, and that's the point this veteran of the restaurant industry is making. The list can be found here and here. Enjoy!

Producers shouldn't act nor enable others to do so

Here's something that has been bothering me for quite a while. I love the show The Office. However, one character I do not care for at all is Ryan Howard, pictured below on the far right with the other major players of the show.

He is played by B.J. Novak, who is also a producer for the show. Though the character sucks (not in an enjoyable way) he has persisted for all of the seasons, given story lines, and is one of the "stars" identified in the opening credits. Even though he never really has story lines about him, and when they are there, they are forced. I have to believe the fact that he is a producer has something to do with it. If he wasn't, I'm sure he'd be written out. His character has dated the office ditz, Kelly (played by Mindy Kaling) who has some funny moments but overall isn't that great. But she's a producer too, so, she's still there. Please, NBC do something about it. (Girls, do you have any pull?) There are so many better actors/characters in that big ensemble!

In similar "my favorite TV shows" developments, Roxy Olin who now appears on MTV's fake reality show, "The City" has what looks to be a recurring role on one of my favorite favs, Brothers & Sisters.

I mean, she's okay. But whenever I see her on the show, I can't help but think about the fact that her parents are actors on the show, and I believe her dad produces and/or directs.

I don't know if it's just my knowledge of the situation that ruins it for me (probably) or she really does kind of suck and is extraneous. If you're on a reality show it seems pretty obvious that you are trying to act and be famous, and so here, it's kinda like, you could cut the nepotism with a knife.

It's fun and delicious when shows/films do a good job with casting, but it can really mess things up when  they let it slide.

Weddings and more

So 17 days to go before the big day! Getting really excited, stressed, nervous, anxious, anxiety, you name I feel like I have it :)

We started out dating over two years ago, for about a year of it we spent in airports waving goodbye or hugging hello. I lived in LA he lived in the big city. So finally a year and a half ago I decided to move here.  

I did love LA and most of my family there, or at least on the west coast, so for me this was a huge change, but for the best!

Now were just in the final stretch of organizing our wedding. I kind of feel like weddings are more for family and friends and less for you. We have had a lot of fun making our own favors, decorations, ect to bring out our personality's to the reception part.

I have made little soap owls for the bathroom, covered in tea tree and lavender oils. (I think my roommates who I live with now will be so excited when our apartment has less fragrance in it)

:)

Joe and I together now have made chocolate covered acorns and painted the tops of them silver and some gold, put them in little boxes and carving are names in the top of the box. (kind of going for the woodsy style)

Were having our reception up at Sundance Screening room. He filmed and edited a movie a little over a year ago and were going to be showing that along with one that I am currently working on.  Here is the one he made while I was living in Los Angles.

Dreamy TV Man Pick of the Week: The Mentalist

You thought I was going to say Simon Baker, didn't you?
Not this week!
This is the guy on The Mentalist who never smiles, almost always wears short-sleeved/button-down shirts with a tie, is surprisingly jacked-- Agent Kimball Cho, played by Tim Kang, is my pick for this week.

Girl Wednesday's Picture-Perfect Weekend

I'd been wanting to do a pumpkin weekend for a long time. I had so wanted to channel my junior-high love for Halloweens and homecoming bonfires and that time when everything is cozy and cool and echoey and spooky.



After a planned pumpkin-picking weekend with Girl Friday got rained-out, I had another opportunity with my boyfriend and some friends from work-- and seized it! Behold, my picture-perfect autumn weekend.....

Location: Long Island, NY

Corn Maze!!
(I'll admit, this was my most anticipated part of the trip, but I decided that while beautiful, the corn maze needed a little edge. Maybe nightfall could have been rapidly approaching and we couldn't find our way out, or a devil-possessed serial killer was chasing after us, or we consumed a bottle of vodka while trying to find our way out).







Pumpkins!





Pies!






(photos courtesy Si Hobbs)

Wednesday's Exciting Moments in TV Production: Safe Cavin!

This Wednesday I bring to you the aftermath of my funnest, wildest moment in TV production to date: cave exploration.

For a weather story on a cave flood from 1979, I went back to the original cave where the story took place. I met with the original rescuers (pictured with me, left) and crawled through scary-small places of the wet cave in northern Georgia.

Because Georgia had been hit with so much rain just days before my adventure, I was really nervous. But once inside, I didn't panic at all! In fact, I had a great time and would do it again in a heartbeat.

"Safe cavin," as they say. Or as that one guy says- the guy in the red jumpsuit. He signs his emails that way.

Like a chaperone at a high school dance. . .

My blackberry buzzed somewhere between Dupont Circle and Woodley Park on Thursday morning as I received an e-mail notifying me that my Mother had made a suggestion that I add my father as a "friend" on facebook. I'm sure I'm NOT the first to experience the full-family social networking, but it doesn't make me any more okay with it. Granted, I've already taken precautions with my profile-- I've turned off all broadcasts, I've turned off the wall, and I've limited the number of people who can search me. But there's something odd to me about having my Mom & Dad on facebook. I don't mind them seeing my game day rants about poor football performances, nor do I have any problem with them viewing my pictures or reading my cranky late-night-at-the-office status messages, but there is just something about it that I find odd.

My parents have ALWAYS been tech-savy. My dad was on the internet when all there was was compuserve and text-based message boards accessed using MS-DOS. He had a "portable" compaq computer roughly the size of a carry-on suitcase which my brother and I used to successfully conquer Math Blaster and the first version of Where in the World is Carmen San Diego. We had a cable modem as soon as they were available in the boonies, and they rigged wireless internet throughout the house faster than you can say linksys. They talk to my nephew across the country on a webcam, and they've got more cables wired into their new house than most office buildings.

Lucky for me during college, they never got in to InstantMessager or bothered with Friendster, MySpace, or even LinkdIn (though I'm probably wrong on that one). I called them once a week, e-mailed occasionally, but their virtual presence was relatively minimal. But now they have iPhones, macbooks, and facebook profiles. When I check status updates from my blackberry, I can see my mother's musings or learn my father's evening plans. My mom spent her entire visit to see my nephew taking and uploading pictures with her iPhone. My brother started chatting with me this afternoon on FB to try and determine how to launch a war against the adult infiltration of facebook.

Don't get me wrong, why shouldn't parents and other adults be able to reap the same reconnecting benefits we all enjoy about facebook. We all enjoy the random friend request from your childhood neighbor or the congratulatory message from the roommate you've lost touch with. I'm just weirded out knowing how much I stalk people on facebook and wonder if my mom and dad are now doing the same to me and my friends. And then there's the fact that the ever-growing facebook population that makes me wonder if we'll reach a point where parents and children communicate by Facebook message, notifying eachother of locations or curfew changes via status message. Who'll need chaperones if apple invents an iPhone app that tweens carry with them while their parents wait at home watching on the webcam?

After drafting this post last week, I ran across a CNN.com article yesterday discussing the trend among tweens lying about their age and bucking the membership agreements for social networking sites: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/02/kids.social.networks/index.html. Perhaps there's some real truth to my predictions. . . Frightening.

Beeeeuuutiful

I live in the most beautiful place on Earth. I love looking in almost any direction at almost any time and having a scenic, ever-changing view to cast my eyes upon. The leaves this fall have been particularly spectacular and the drive back last night from the airport was unbelievable. Fog rolling out across the mountain tops, making it look like whitecaps, glowing fall leaves brightening the mountainsides, an orange to pink to ice blue to navy sunset, and a full moon. Wowzers. If any of you out there have never been to the Southern Appalachians, they come highly recommended. But as the locals say, “please don’t move here.”

When You Miss a Flight

So I have never in all my years of flying missed a flight (for which it was my fault) – I’ve always been terrified that I would, either:

1. End up not making it to my destination
2. End up not making it home for days
3. HAVE TO PAY OUT THE ASS to prevent 1 or 2. Or in addition to 1 and 2.

But over the weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing what happens first hand. BoyfriendFriday was scheduled to go home Sunday afternoon. Or so we thought. But on our way to breakfast Sunday morning, a cursory check of the flight time lead to a discovery of a 6:40 AM flight. Not a 6:40 PM flight. Oooops. My bad.

Anyway, here’s what happens when you miss a flight. NOTHING! It’s grand. They just put you on the next one they have available (that you want) and you pay a $50 change fee (geck, but it could be worse). So he flew home at 6PM. No problems.

I can see how missing a flight at the holidays could cause a problem, or other airlines may be worse, but overall, I have been worried all those years for nothing. Not a really exciting story, but a good piece of information for those of you who get to the airport 2 hours early……..

But I do have some good stories about running to planes carrying my rolling luggage (it’s so much easier if you’re in a hurry to carry rather than try to roll, navigating kids, curves, and transitions to the moving walkway) to be greeted by a plane full of cheering people (they cheer when you get there because it means they can finally leave – it’s not like I’m a celebrity. Although I tell myself that).

One Year Ago Friday

We miss you Mr G.

On The Road Again

A cool shot I took out the passenger side window while me and my hubby were driving across the country last summer.

Crazy Town

Does anyone else get randomly emotional, to a pretty irrational extent? I hate to be the unfairly stereotyped hysterical woman, but it happens to me a lot. What's weird is that I am pretty even-keel most of the time. I make a concerted effort to be kind of strong and take life as it comes. But the absolute dumbest things, like sappy commercials and human interest stories on TV, just get me going.

Take for example previews for the upcoming film The Blind Side starring Sandra Bullock. I was vaguely aware of the Michael Lewis book about the true life story of pro-football player Michael Oher-- his difficult childhood and eventual adoption and nurturing by a well-to-do family, but when I see anything about this movie, I just starting bawling. Hysterically. And I know that's what the filmmakers want, and they add just the right touching moments into the trailer with the requisite sweeping music score quite purposefully. I don't think it's just that that sets me off though.

Whenever I see something about the movie, I can't help having deep, lengthy thoughts about Oher's situation. He never knew his father, his mom was addicted to crack cocaine. In the movie, Sandra Bullock's character sees him walking on a dark street, in freezing weather, with just a tee-shirt on. I just can't take the image. When she approaches him, he's so timid. He has nowhere to sleep. In my mind, I can't help thinking, Why? How? This innocent person, this child of God, without proper clothes or shelter. Several times I have weeped and weeped over this. As emotional as it makes me to think that someone could be in this situation, I am also completely moved by the kindness of the family that opened their hearts to him. But-- what if they hadn't? Who else is out there?

Obviously, crying about this widely-reaching problem is not going to help. I think what I can do is try to be the kind of person who appreciates her own blessings enough to realize that's it's my responsibility, as a human being, to take care of anyone going through a hardship, in any way I can. For now maybe it's just praying. Perhaps one day I'll be able to do more. In the mean time, I'm going to try to stay calm.

Damn it, just watched the preview again. I need to get some tissues.

Ethan Allen Style Quiz

Good morning friends!
I wanted to share with you one of my favorite wasting-time activities. I love home decor, and although I have never actually purchased anything from Ethan Allen, I really like their stuff. On their website, they have a Design Quiz, which helps you determine what your home decor point-of-view is. It's not perfectly scientific-- I take it over and over again and often get different results-- but I still think it's super fun. I hope you enjoy it! You can access it here.

Turn, Turn, Turn

Summer used to be my least favorite holiday. I'm not a huge fan of the heat, and nothing else about it appealed to me. By contrast, the rest of the seasons did. I loved the freshness of Spring, and comfy-ness of fall, and I loved winter largely because of Christmas. Summer just didn't do it for me.

But that's all changed. When I was growing up and it snowed in our neighborhood, the plows piled all the snow into a big hill on our cul-de-sac. It was awesome. We had so much fun sledding down it and making snowmen and having snowball fights. As an adult, I lived in Pittsburgh for a while, and that cured any affection I had for winter. Being an adult, you have to deal with a lot of things that you don't have to when you're young. No one expects a youngster to walk far distances in the snow. But when I was in college or working in New York, that's what you did when you had to get somewhere. When you're young, you don't have to shovel the snow, salt your icy steps so as to not get sued by a visitor, or deal with a weak car. I still love Christmas though.

And I still love Fall for many reasons. It contains my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving, plus another that has really grown on me lately, Halloween. I love sweaters and the way the leaves look and college football and a new TV schedule. The main reason I love Fall, though, is that I love the beginning of things. I don't think I will ever stop thinking of the Fall as the beginning of the New Year. Pre-Blackberry, I loved to get a new planner every September, and the feeling in the air still reminds of school supplies and getting organized.

Speaking of starting new, I also love that other temperate season, Spring. My favorite thing about Spring is the style you see around. Much like GirlTuesday, I'm a preppy girl. I love polos and pastels and feminine dresses. I love baby showers and weddings. I can't get enough of the sun shining bright during Easter Egg hunts and picnics and long dog walks.

As the grown-up that I am, I have really come to appreciate summer. In honor of GirlMonday, here are my top 5:

1. Unfortunately, I spend a lot of my day in front of the computer. I love that when I'm all done in the afternoon, it stays sunny for hours!

2. I love that people seem more willing to get out and do fun stuff- even a couch potato like me!

3. Blockbuster summer movies. Midnight showings in Manhattan- it's the best.

4. Wedding/BBQ/Vacation season!

5. Also-- I. LOVE. ICE CREAM. It is an unhealthy, destructive relationship that I hope to maintain forever.

Until the Day is Night and Night Becomes the Day

I never thought I'd look back on my college summers as the best summers of my life. At the time, I never would have thought that those brief interludes-- spent working to save money for textbooks and then circling the town, looking for parties after the waitressing shift ended-- would now signify freedom and youth and fun. As if it would all one day be nothing more than a thing of the past.

May and part of June was spent still at the New York City dorm, wrapping up exams and final projects- spending a lot of free time with my college friends. These are particularly blissful memories of walking to the reaches of the city in the sun, getting cold teas from the Japanese tea house, going movie screenings at the college center, hanging out after at Union Square with the skateboarders, talking and talking and talking (about what, I couldn't tell you), sitting on a stone bench at Washington Square Park with the bongo players and the street dancers, and watching the season's last episode of Felicity with my dorm-mates (and crying) before we all packed up to go home.

July and August was spent back home on Long Island, with my "home friends," waiting tables and driving to the beach on my days off.

After the night shift ended, around 12AM or 1, my friend Missy and I would change into the clothes we kept in her car and drive off to the Hamptons clubs where we'd dance until 7AM. Then we'd go home, sleep for a few hours, then wake up in time for our shift to start again in the afternoon.

It was pure insanity. Our parents called us "vampires."

There was one summer I worked the day shift in a coffee shop. I slept when I got home from work- around 6 in the evening, then woke up at around midnight to go out. There were too many nights where I never slept at all, and I watched the sun come up and got that sick, sinking feeling in my stomach at the sound of the first birds chirping and I knew it was time to head back to the foaming static of the cappuccino machine.

We had a group of summer friends-- all waiters and hostesses, all much older than us. It was one of the few times in my life where a group had no ill dynamics. Everyone was out to dance and have fun. They rented a big house together, that became the party house. After the clubs would kick us out, the guys would hang black garbage bags over the windows in the party house, hang Christmas lights and put out some lava lamps and we'd have our own dance party in the living room.

In the hours before our shifts would start, we'd haul our uniforms to the beach in garment bags on the back seats of our cars, and sleep in the sand until it was time to go to work.

They really were endless, those summers. I sort of assumed, though I'm sure I never really thought about it, that all summers would be as carefree and wonderful.

It now reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from the movie, The Hours:

"I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then."

I can vividly remember the last night we danced all night. It was 7AM in the biggest club in eastern Long Island, with a deep and wide dance floor- a giant pit of a former factory with a cloud of condensation from sweat above hundreds of bobbing heads, and people dancing on the balcony hanging over the pit. The DJ played his last song of the summer-- Stevie Wonder's As-- 7 minutes of one of the best songs ever written, that counted down the last moments of the last summer of pure nothingness. The club dropped white foam and bubbles from the ceiling and spun the lights joyously. We were singing and dancing like an end-of-summer ritual, sending the beach gods back to their autumn retreats. I remember seeing snapshots of ourselves flash before me, each time the strobe illuminated us. What would we become? It didn't matter. What happened at the end of the summer? It didn't matter. We just turned and turned and turned, with our arms outstretched, swallowing the moment whole.

***

The 5 (million) things I love about summer:

1. Summer nights in the city-- tables go outside, bars spill into the streets, people are dressed up in glittery gauzes and sun dresses and flip flops. The idea of going to see a movie seems a lot less depressing, because when you get out it's alive and the whole city is awake. You can walk home, leisurely and enjoy it. People are happy, subway cars are full of noise and happiness.

2. Letting my hair air dry. As if I were meant to be in such weather all year round. As if being able to walk outside with wet hair signifies some freedom-- I think it does.

3. The beach, the beach, the beach. Scarf around my hair, walking there, plopping down, getting up for some volleyball, a popsicle, knowing the lifeguards, the sounds of little kids playing in the sand, nap in the sun...

4. Running in the sun. Free of thermals, quilted vests, hats and gloves. Sweating as sweating was meant to be.

5. Senses alive. I suddenly want to write and climb rocks and bicycle and paint and sing and dance and do everything as if there's just not enough time. In the winter there seems to be so much time, too much time. I want to visit everyone I haven't seen in ages, I want to over-book myself, plan dinners and parties and make myself a better person. The sun pulls me out of bed and stays out long enough for me to get home safe and still feeling it's energy under my skin. There is nothing-- nothing!-- like a nap after a day spent outdoors. Everything feels different, I can feel everything.

. . . and the living is easy

It’s funny to me how summer can be so many different things throughout the years. When you’re young, summer means an escape from the classroom. It means early morning swim practice, followed by a full day by the pool. It means multi-hour car rides en route to summer vacation, trying desperately to survive the pokes, prods, kicks, and flatulence of your siblings in the back seat. Summer means sleep-away camp and reunions with once-a-year friends. It means post-cards, pool parties, and popsicles. It means catching fireflies, growing tadpoles, playing capture the flag, and trying desperately to heal constantly skinned knees.

By the time you reach high-school, summer means finding a summer job that you can fit in around morning and evening swim practices. It means focusing more on your tan than on your tree-fort, and it means a later curfew and fling romances. And it means the final days at home before starting a new phase.

In college, summer is the strange blend of old and new. It is the return home for the first time since being away, and trying to determine how much you and old friends still have in common. It is realizing the strength of friendships, but missing new friends. It means long-distance romances, and learning how to live with parents again after a year of freedom. Summer is the pursuit of the perfect internship, or the excitement of the return to campus.

After college, summer shifts entirely. Rather than nine intense months punctuated with three months of freedom, all of the sudden summer arrives and the only real change is the need to figure out how to stay cool in work clothes in ninety degree heat. Those of us who went to graduate school delayed that transition a few years, though we did find ourselves wearing the very same suits during out stints as interns and summer-associates. But regardless of whether reality strikes at twenty-two or twenty-six, the truth becomes painfully clear: somewhere after twenty, summer loses the same charm it once had.

Sure, there are outdoor happy hours and the occasional road trip or even a lengthy vacation, but the lazy days are left to weekend afternoons. There’s a chore for every fire-fly, and all of the sudden it’s your job to not only shuck but also cook and clean up after the corn-on-the cob. As you might be able to tell, Summer is when I feel the oldest, and when quitting my job to become a teacher seems the most appealing—three months free from the daily routine; three months to pursue hobbies, budding interests, or moonlight in a field of your true passion. It really is unfortunate that more industries can’t adopt such an approach. . . Guess it will just have to be a summer day dream for now.

The Dog Days of Summer

Summer is my most absolute favorite time of year, so I’m going to ask everyone this week to name your top 5 favorite things about summer (you can totally do it as a sidebar to your regular blog, don’t let me intrude on your blogging plans…)

Here’s my list.

1. Ice Cream
http://www.creolecreamery.com/

Any excuse to eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is fine by me, and the start of summer provides just enough motivation for me to get out of the office at 3 in the afternoon to walk over to Marble Slab, or throw on enough clothes at 11 on Tuesday night to drive out to the Tastee Freeze (mmmmm, and they’re open until midnight), or dust off the ice cream maker for the best peach ice cream ever made (email me if you want to the recipe – but don’t wait too long or you’ll need the one for blackberry ice cream instead!) I don’t discriminate much when it comes to ice cream. I can do anything from froyo, to the cheap stuff, to vanilla with mix-ins, to B&J. And I can do it in a freshly made waffle cone, or I can do it straight from the limp, disintegrating gallon container on my couch. Whatever the vehicle, whatever the flavor, I’m sure to be eating as much as I can in the summer.

2. Long Days and Great Sunsets



I used to live in Memphis, home of the most gorgeous sunsets you will ever see, so like with BBQ, I got a little spoiled in my time there. So when summer rolls around, I always look forward to enjoying the long, hot days, and the inevitable beautiful sunset that comes with them. Now, I’m the first to admit, it’s a little hard to get a good view when you’re at 2800 feet surrounded by 6000 foot high mountains, but lucky for me I’m on the road plenty during this time of year, so I’m guaranteed to get at least one or two good sunsets. The picture above is from near Carmel in CA. I would have included one from Memphis, but they all include a shot of me sweating profusely. Mmmm, Memphis.


3. Baseball Season



Anyone who knows me knows I LOVVVE me some baseball. Men in tight pants, hot dogs, beer, and sunshine. Oh, and ice cream. Nothing goes together better. If you’ve never had the experience of sitting in a stadium on a weekDAY afternoon, watching a game, drinking a beer, and not being at work, I recommend it for everyone. A good park to check out is Citizen’s in Philly. Or PNC – just ask GF.


4. The Lake



I have the great honor of being invited to spend a week (or weeks if I could spare the time) at Keuka Lake (NY) each summer. While it’s a scant 14+ hour drive, the 7-10 days spent sunning lakeside, skiing, tubing (okay, flying out of the tube at 30 miles an hour and spending the rest of the week watching the bruise on the backside go from blue to green….), boating, blueberry picking, reading, wine tasting, and sleeping late generally make up for the 28-30 hours getting there and back. I’m already itching to get driving.

5. Swimming Dogs



GirlFairway is a mix. People are all the time asking me what kind of dog she is (and my favorite response has become “custom breed”). The shelter told me she was part Akita and part Golden, but she’s definitely got some Chow in her as well (see the tail above as well as the black tongue you can’t see). Chows HATE water. Or so I hear. But Goldens love water. So there’s there ever raging battle in GirlFairway’s head that probably goes something like this: “Swim! Don’t Swim! Swim! Don’t Swim!” But it’s the Akita that breaks the tie in the summer. She gets so hot with all that fur (this year she is working on shedding herself a playmate) that she has to cool off. So the water wins and she swims. It’s so funny to watch because you can still see the battle going on in her head as she paddles around out there. “I’m going out further! I’m going back to shore! I’m getting cooler, yay! I’m wet, boo!”


So to all of you out there, enjoy the dog days of summer. Next week those days start to get shorter.

Good Times

I have plenty of embarassing moments in my past. I remember one particularly sleepy morning, waiting for the bus to high school, a girl waiting with me suddenly said, "are you wearing two different shoes?" And I was. And they weren't even the same color- one was black and one was brown. Luckily, I was able to slip up to the gym locker room before first period and slip on the Keds I had on in there.

Then there was the time my 1st grade teacher asked me if my family celebrated Halloween. Of course we did, but I remember thinking, "I'm not Catholic or Jewish like everyone else. Maybe there's a religious aspect to it I'm not realizing." Quite a precocious thought for a five year old, I must say. Anyway, I told my teacher "No, we don't." Later we had a Halloween parade, and I dressed up like a cheerleader, and my teacher was confused. I recently saw a picture from that day, and in addition to my pom-poms I am sporting some ridiculous Oh-Mickey-you're-so-fine make-up. So I guess I'm not through being embarassed about the incident, but not about being put on the spot by my teacher. I don't think of that as being funny as much as I think my teacher, like so many I've encountered, was an idiot.

When I was turning 13, my mom had a surprise party for me. But it wasn't typical. I was an active tennis player when I was younger, and one day I came up to the lobby from my lesson, and my mom was there, with my aunt and a birthday cake. Yes, I had a good friend in my lesson and there was another girl around my age there, but I was mortified that my mom decided to do this, without even figuring out when all of my tennis friends would be there. A few minutes after I blew out the candles, many more of my friends emerged from the TV rec room, and they were confused about what was going on and I felt like an idiot. In the end, though, everyone had cake and fun and I guess it wasn't such a tragedy. But I remember being SO embarrased when I first saw that cake. I also remember that the good friend that was in the lesson with me was more focused on the fact that the other girl from our lesson kept saying "You're a teeny-bopper now!" I guess she thought the girl was weird and it really annoyed her. It's funny when you're young and feeling like everyone is mocking you, the truth is, they are always thinking about something else. The same is true for adulthood, I think. Thank goodness.

Dilemma

When I told HT about this week's blog topic, he laughed heartily. "Embarrassing moments-- you've got PLENTY of those,"he proclaimed.

The sad thing is, he's completely correct. But the problem is, as hilarious as some of the stories are, and as much as I am able to laugh about most of them now, there's a difference between being able to laugh at yourself, and being willing to put it out for the whole blogosphere to read. Especially when MomTuesday is a frequent visitor. . .

Thus began this week's dilemma--entertain our faithful readers with tales of misplaced undergarments or drunken declarations, or rifle through the mental vault in search of a more PG incident. As fun as it would be to air my dirty laundry, I've opted for the later option. And what better way to discuss embarrassment than to talk about two of the most embarrassing moments of my early childhood.

The first occurred when I was in third grade. As an elementary school student, I perhaps more self-aware than the average child. So much so that the SLIGHTEST of embarrassment tended to make me blush a bright red. Imagine, if you will, then how red my face got the day that I walked a bit too close to my teacher as she uncrossed her legs in front of the class and accidentally caught my skirt in the sweeping motion. For a brief moment, my bright blue Hanes-Her-Way was visible to the row of nine year old boys sitting in the front of the classroom. Mortified, my eyes welled with tears as the teacher, feeling terrible about the mishap, reassured me that they couldn't possibly have seen anything in the split second. The boys, however, were quick to pipe up that they had, in fact seen my undergarments, and they were blue. "Tell them they were pink," my teacher whispered; but with a wail of honesty I proclaimed, "BUT THEY WERE BLUE!!!!!" And proceeded to storm out of the room.


The second occurred four years later in the seventh grade, when my mom was serving as a chapperone on our class fieldtrip to Philadelphia. Having grown up in a township with a lone traffic light, I wasn't a particularly astute city traveler. Never was this more clear than the moment I stepped down off the curb and straight into the path of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile. Yes, that's right, the big hot-dog-shapped motor-vehicle you've seen on those insipid commercials was barrelling towards me. My mom reached out her hand with the speed only a mother is capable of, grabbed me by the collar, and pulled me out of it's way. But the handful of guys who were in our small group were still bringing up the hilarity of that brief instant long after we'd graduated high school. To have met my death by driving weiner, they proclaimed, would have been a fantastic way to go. Luckily, I'm around today to tell the story. Thanks MomTuesday.

As to the 1,000 or so other embarrassing stories that have ellapsed between 12 and 28, they'll have to wait for another day. . . it's not that I can't laugh about them, it's just that I'm not ready for you to laugh, too :)