Halloween, a few days late...

Here are some festive holiday photos from Halloween. The dark ones are from a party that we went to on Saturday night at our former neighbors' house. The Raderstorfs throw this party every year and it's bitchin. At the start of the party, everyone carves a pumpkin, and then the men (who are rather tipsy by this point) and the kids (who had better NOT be tipsy at this point -- we get them drunk later) climb all over the top two stories of the house and situate the pumpkins on the ledges. After dark, they all go back up there (no, we haven't lost anyone yet!) and light the pumpkins, and then the whole block goes dark and it's just so cool. It's hard to get a picture, though. Click on the photos for a better view. It's worth mentioning that I wore my bar wench costume and was propositioned by a group (eek) of old people. Oy.




Now, here is Spencer carving his pumpkin...yes, it WAS warm enough for shorts...it was downright hot, actually, until nighttime.




And, the school party on Tuesday...check out "Global Warming" (I guessed it right away and he loved me for that) and also the Old Lady. Too funny.

Much more interesting than a recipe...

From the Bowling Green police blotter, Saturday night:

3:14 a.m.

Subject reported his vehicle was stolen from North Prospect Street. The caller was intoxicated and after 30 minutes, police found it parked in Lot 2 where he had left it. Once the vehicle was secured, the subject called 911 again. He was told not to call unless it was an emergency. Later, he called 911 again and stated his vehicle was "moving" as he could see it on "low jack." He was told his vehicle was not moving and was still parked in Lot 2. The dispatcher told him to go to sleep and check the vehicle in the morning.

My holiday wish list

I'm going to skip over peace on earth and goodwill toward men, and get straight to the good stuff. This post will change every so often because I don't want a big (BIG) string of post linkages. Most of my items have to do directly with cooking, because apparently some creepy little obscure lobe in my brain decided over the past year that I need to fatten up for the winter (and all the other seasons). As a result -- of the lobe and also having a boyfriend who is keen on eating dinner, something I didn't do in the past -- I have become more interested in cooking healthier foods, and with more flair. The fact that I don't have any place in my kitchen to store all this stuff is completely irrelevant.

1. Spatulas that don't melt and that cost more than a dollar for three of them.
2. A nice set of non-toxic cooking pans and a ceiling pot hanger-thingy.
3. Knives, knives, and more knives. Knives that cost more than a dollar for three, and aren't the type that "never need sharpening." I can't imagine anything more fulfilling than sitting around on a winter afternoon just scraping knives against a rock.
4. Oh, speaking of rocks, I almost forgot: a mortar and pestle.
5. An iPod. Maybe. I kind of like the anticipation of waiting until I get home to listen to my favorite CD (I have a cassette player in my car...can you believe that? And the car is only 5 years old! Ghetto.)
6. Potholders. I have one and it's one of those mitt kinds that suck.
7. To win the lottery or inherit millions from a long-lost relative (never hurts to ask).
8. A screwdriver set.
9. Total home organization -- which entails a week alone -- which I will never get -- but miracles happen.

Done for now. Updates to follow, as I mentioned...

Bad Dream

So, last night I had another one of my "bad mom" dreams in which I do something awful to Spencer and wake up in a panic. Last night, it went like this:

Spencer was being bratty and I was chasing him around the room, getting angrier and angrier. I reached out to grab him or smack him, I don't know which, and my hand was sort of cupped and it smashed onto his face when he jumped to run away again. He ran screaming upstairs and I went to bed and didn't think about it again. During the night, Will was muttering in his sleep about what a horrid bitch I was for hurting my child that way. When I woke up (this is still in my dream, FYI -- I often sleep in my dreams), I thought it had been a dream but then I saw Spencer and his nose appeared to be broken or bruised. Troy was there and he started crying, and Spencer was crying, and I wasn't. The whole time I didn't cry. It was decided that Spencer would go live with his dad. The worst part was when I tried to hug Spencer goodbye and he pulled away and said, "I don't love you any more," and I understood. I concocted a plan to buy us matching necklaces with the Chinese symbol for "respect," as if that would solve the problem.

There are more intricate details. of course, since I have very vivid dreams, but that was the jist of it. Once again, I was physically abusive and, once again, Spencer hated me. I think I'm having flashbacks from slapping him out of sheer frustration when he was about 2 -4 and we were living on our own. He was so stubborn, and I was so exhausted, that sometimes I couldn't help it. Well, I could have helped it but at the time I didn't have the energy to solve the problem ina rational manner, I suppose. When I think about it now it makes me want to die.

I love this

A bumper sticker I saw on a car with a "Vietnam Veteran" license plate: "IRAQ is Arabic for VIETNAM"
*****
Key Republicans Dissent

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, seemed to open the floodgates to GOP criticism this month when he warned after a trip to Iraq that the war was "drifting sideways" and a course correction might soon be warranted.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said she would not have supported the invasion had she known there were no weapons of mass destruction, and she has proposed splitting Iraq into three parts.

Sen. George Allen, R-Va., in a difficult re-election battle with Democratic challenger James Webb, dropped his stay-the-course mantra to assert, "We cannot continue doing the same things and expect different results. We have to adapt our operations, adapt our tactics."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in an interview with The Associated Press that both U.S. and Iraqi officials should be held accountable for the lack of progress: "We're on the verge of chaos and the current plan is not working."

Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., said in a debate last week with Democratic challenger Jon Tester that he agreed with Warner's call for a change in strategy, and believed Bush already had a plan to win the war but for now was keeping it quiet. That remark drew ridicule from Democrats who likened it to Richard Nixon's "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam.

Also challenging Bush's Iraq policy have been former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Republican Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and several House Republicans.

Desserts from eDiets

Mocha Almond Pie
And what’s dessert without chocolate? Mocha Almond Pie from Keebler Ready Crust is found on Wal-Mart Organics’ website. I’ve adapted it so it’s lower in fat and calories by changing whole milk to 1-percent milk, using nonfat whipped topping, and reducing the amount of nuts.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups cold low-fat, 1-percent milk
1 package (4-serving size) chocolate flavor instant pudding & pie filling
1 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 Tbsp. instant coffee crystals
2 cups thawed nonfat, nondairy whipped topping
1/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted*
1 Keebler Ready Crust Chocolate Pie Crust (6 oz)
Toast almonds in a 350-degree oven on ungreased baking sheet for just 5 to 10 minutes, stirring once or twice, until golden. Meanwhile, in large bowl beat milk, pudding mix, cocoa powder and coffee crystals with wire whisk for 1 minute. Refrigerate about 5 minutes or until thick. Whisk in whipped topping. Spread in crust.

Freeze at least three hours or until firm. Let stand at room temperature for 15 minutes before cutting. Sprinkle with reserved almonds. Store in freezer.

____________________________

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Ingredients:
2 8-ounce packages fat-free cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
1/3 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/3 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup thawed nonfat nondairy whipped topping
Whip cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until blended. Blend in eggs but don’t beat. Remove 1 cup of batter and stir in canned pumpkin and spice. Spray a 9-inch pie plate with cooking spray, and sprinkle in graham crumbs. Pour remaining batter into pan, top with pumpkin batter. Bake at 325 degrees for 40 minutes, or until center is set. Refrigerate for three hours or overnight.

Serve with a tablespoon of whipped topping, and a sprinkle of graham cracker crumbs.

Makes eight servings. Nutritional values per serving: 150 calories, 2.5g fat (1g sat.), 340mg sodium and 18g sugar.

TGIF

Today, aside from a freaky weird little storm thingy that turned the skies from blue and sunny to white-out and raining, was a lovely autumn 65-degree Colorado day. It is now midnight and snowing...go figure. Here's a cool picture that I took out the front door just now; the snow is coming down too hard for the camera to grasp anything other than what is right in front of it, I guess.

Funny dream

I had the funniest dream last night. I was at a fair of some sort and was handed a little flier to a party. The flier was very colorful and looked like a bookmark. On the front it said something about a party, and on the back it listed three fetishes, two of which I can't recall and the third was "butt sniffing." [I woke up from this dream laughing.] So, of COURSE I went to the party and it was all very stupid and there was some old lady who was organzing the whole thing and she was trying to sell me an really ugly sofa throw. I will skip the details (which are very NOT sexual) and get to the last sentence that I spoke in the dream, which is what made me wake up...I announced to everyone in the vicinity "If I take off all my clothes and let someone smell my butt, no one will ever talk to me again." How awesome is that?! Too funny. Oh, and I can't forget to mention that I used the word "squiddly-poof." Why, I don't remember, but it was somehow related to a blanket that had to be blown up.

Spooky Treats

I hate the word "treat." And "snack", too. Regardless, here is a fun link

And a photo to boot!!

Dedicated to Mister Fichter

Here is something that's pretty funny to me. This old man was my friend Laura's neighbor. His eyes were like Milhouse's behind those coke-bottle glasses, and he was very cute. i assume that he died a long time ago, but I found this picture in the Oxford Press and I want to share it.
_______________________________________

If I want to squeeze into a size 6 again, I can't ever eat this. I don't think I can even smell it. But it sounds really good. Actually, CLAY sounds good at this point, but I'm determined. I walked home from work the long way and then played catch with Spencer for a while (we had to do it yesterday and today, because tomorrow it's going to snow....yuck), and I even dove for the ball a couple of times!!


Walnut pastries in honey syrup

Servings: Makes 14 pastries

Note: From "Arabesque" by Claudia Roden. Use a supermarket brand of filo where the sheets are about 12 inches by 7 inches. Orange blossom water is available at Middle Eastern markets and gourmet shops.

3/4 cup clear honey

1 1/2 tablespoons orange blossom water

2 cups walnuts, coarsely ground

1/3 cup sugar

Zest of 1 orange

14 sheets of filo

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted

1. In a saucepan, make the syrup by bringing the honey, one-half cup water and the orange blossom water to a boil and simmer for 30 seconds. Then let it cool.

2. Mix the walnuts with the sugar and orange zest.

3. Heat the oven to 300 degrees. Open the package of filo only when you are ready to make the pastries. Keep them in a pile so that they do not dry out. Lightly brush the top one with melted butter. Put a line of about 2 to 2 1/2 tablespoons of the walnut mixture at one of the short ends of the rectangle, into a line about three-fourths inch from the short and long edges. Roll it up loosely into a fat cigar shape. Turn the ends in about one-third of the way along to trap the filling, then continue to roll. Continue with the remaining sheets of filo.

4. Place the pastries on a baking sheet, brush them with melted butter and bake them for 40 minutes, or until lightly golden and crisp. Turn each pastry, while still warm, very quickly in the syrup and arrange on a dish. Serve cold with the remaining syrup poured all over.

Each serving: 273 calories; 3 grams protein; 27 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams fiber; 18 grams fat; 5 grams saturated fat; 17 mg. cholesterol; 48 mg. sodium.

Funny Spencerisms...

1. La Isla Bonita - instead of "last night I dreamt of San Pedro", he honestly thought the words are "last night I dreamt of some bagels" and he asked me why on earth anyone would ever write a song about that.

2. At the King Soopers Deli -- "I thought it was bad enough that you eat tofu, but now this?? Feta cheese is DISGUSTING! You get grosser all the time!" What's even worse is that the deli was packed with customers, who all thought that this was a scream, and the counter guy agreed with Spencer that his mother does indeed eat awful foods.

3. Tossing a Football -- "Wow, you're really surprising me with how you throw! Given your age and the fact that you're a girl and all, I wouldn't have guessed that you can throw so far!"

Very funny

THIS is very very funny!!

WHEEEEE....

It's FRIDAY the THIRTEENTH, which I think means Leave Work Early And Go Drink On A Patio Day in ancient Chinese. I'm outta here. No recipe posting, no nuthin, because I don't feel like it and I just want to go have me some gol-darned fun. I found the car title and go tthat all taken care of today, so my weekend mission is to find that camera download cord so I can get back to being a festive picture-posting blog person. Or whatever.

Muff Diving (heehee)

This recipe thing is so much easier than trying to come up with something interesting to write about my life. i have a very uninteresting life. Except for the fact that Will threw me off of the couch last night and I landed on the floor with my skirt over my head and my underwear up my butt. It was VERY interesting. Bottoms up!!

Blueberry vodka & Blackberry IZZE, might have to try that some time soon.

Pumpkin Cornmeal Muffins

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup milk
4 eggs
1 15-ounce can solid pumpkin
1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Heat oven to 350° F. If not using silicone pans, lightly coat two 6-cup muffin tins with vegetable cooking spray.
In a large bowl, with an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Reduce speed to slow, add the remaining ingredients, and beat for 3 minutes or just until smooth.
Spoon the batter into the muffin pans. Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into a muffin comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.

Yield: 12 muffins

NUTRITION PER SERVING
CALORIES 255(0% from fat); FAT 10g (sat 6g); PROTEIN 6mg; CHOLESTEROL 92mg; CALCIUM 97mg; SODIUM 320mg; FIBER 4g; CARBOHYDRATE 37g; IRON 2mg

Amazingly Yummy Stuff!

BUTTERNUT SQUASH, SAGE, AND GOAT CHEESE RAVIOLI WITH HAZELNUT BROWN-BUTTER SAUCE

For filling
a 2-pound butternut squash, halved lengthwise and seeded
1 medium onion, chopped (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 1/2 teaspoons ground sage
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 garlic clove, minced
3 ounces aged goat cheese, grated (about 2/3)
60 won ton wrappers, thawed if frozen
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter
1/3 cup hazelnuts, toasted lightly and skinned and chopped coarse

Preheat oven to 425°F. and lightly grease a baking sheet.

Make filling:
Put squash halves, flesh sides down, an baking sheet and roast in middle of oven 30 minutes, or until flesh is very tender. When squash is cool enough to handle, scoop out flesh into a bowl and discard skin. Mash squash with a fork until smooth.

While squash is roasting, in a skillet cook onion and sage in butter with salt and pepper to taste over moderate heat, stirring, 5 minutes, or until onion is golden brown. Stir in garlic and cook, stirring, 1 minute.

Cool onion mixture slightly and add to squash. Add goat cheese and stir to combine well.

In a 6-quart kettle bring 5 quarts salted water to a gentle boil for ravioli.

Put 1 won ton wrapper on a lightly floured surface, keeping remaining wrappers in plastic wrap, and mound 1 tablespoon filling in center. Lightly brush edges of wrapper with water and put a second wrapper over first, pressing down around filling to force out air and seal edges well. If desired, trim excess dough with a round cutter or sharp knife. Transfer ravioli to a dry kitchen towel. Make more ravioli with remaining wrappers and filling in same manner, transferring as formed to towel and turning occasionally to dry slightly.

In skillet cook butter with hazelnuts over moderate heat until butter begins to brown, about 3 minutes, and immediately remove from heat (nuts will continue to cook). Season hazelnut butter with salt and pepper and keep warm, covered.

Cook ravioli in 3 batches in gently boiling eater 6 minutes, or until they rise to surface and are tender (do not let water boil vigorously once ravioli have been added). Carefully transfer ravioli as cooked with a slotted spoon to a large shallow baking pan and add enough cooking water to reach 1/2 inch up side of pan. Keep ravioli warm, covered.

Transfer ravioli with a slotted spoon ) letting excess cooking liquid drip off) to 6 plates and top with hazelnut brown-butter sauce.

Makes 30 ravioli, serving 6 generously.

My Food Blog

I have decided to post a recipe every day, as a long as I remember to do it. Once upon a time, I made good progress writing a cookbook called "See Cyndy Cook," which is most lovely and, unfortunately, is spread out over about 16 floppy disks. Since I can't access those disks anymore without digging around in a spooky computer graveyard, I'm going to start all over again. I'll quote sources unless I change the recipe significantly (something I am wont to do whether or not I actually attempt to cook the thing). Nothing is going to look fancy until I go back and re-study my HTML book. I might even get ambitious and start a whole new blog, in which I will include photos of myself cooking and Will choking on the food. Yum!

Here is my first recipe:

Croissants Stuffed With Scrambled Eggs, Apples And Brie

Serve these hearty sandwiches as a special treat for brunch or lunch this weekend. Garnish the plates with small bunches of juicy red grapes to add color and crunch and accompany with tall glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice.


8 stemmed spinach leaves
2 large croissants, halved horizontally

Filling

½ large apple, cored, peeled, and quartered
4 eggs
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon butter
1/3 cup brie cheese (about 2 ounces) in ½-inch chunks (see Tip)
2 tablespoons snipped fresh chives
Dash of freshly grated nutmeg to taste
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Arrange 4 spinach leaves on the bottom half of each croissant.

To make the filling: Cut each apple quarter crosswise into ¼-inch-thick slices. Beat the eggs lightly with a fork in a small bowl, then add the milk and beat lightly again; set aside.

Melt the butter in a medium nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the apple slices; cook, stirring occasionally, until the slices are nearly tender, about 3 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low; add the egg mixture. As it begins to set, use a spatula to move the cooked portion to the side, allowing the uncooked portions to spread over the bottom. (This will take about 1 minute.)

While the eggs are still very moist, reduce the heat to low; dot with the Brie and sprinkle with the chives, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Fold some of the cooked eggs over the brie so it will melt. Remove the pan from the heat before the eggs become either dry or browned on the edges. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Spoon half of the cooked egg mixture over the spinach on each croissant half. Top with the other half of the croissant. Serve hot, with forks.

I have a case of the Mondays

it was so bad that I left work early. I had every intention of coming home, putting on my Harley tee and yoga pants, and chilling out with my computer. My aim was to start a Flikr account so I can keep track of all my photos without using the ever-so-annoying Kodak Easy Share (hah!) Gallery site, which has managed to drop many many of my downloaded pictures.

Alas, I left the frick-frackin' camera cord in my desk. And it's sleeting AND I left a bottle of wine in the car, which Will drove to work. No wine, no phone cord, no happy. This has been my day in a nutshell.

Memorial service

Ben, Bailey and Sophie at the Emily Keyes memorial service on Saturday, Sept. 30. This picture was posted online internationally and in local papers.

Bailey in Bailey

I can't even talk about this yet. <"Platte Canyon High School">

The kids are okay (Bailey goes to the high school and Dono & Faith are at the middle school). It's just so sad. Secretly (not any more, I guess), I'm glad the lunatic died. The fact that the student died, too, is horrendous. Having something like this hit so close to home -- and so hard -- makes life just a little bit scarier. Thank god the Kids are okay.

When the situation at Columbine happened, I was horrified but didn't think that it affected me the way that I now know that it did. PTSD all the way! But it's selfish to think of myself... I for sure haven't been the foremost thought in my own mind. All I can think is: Imagine what the kids in Bailey were going through all day (an still)-- most of them remember April 20, too.

Self-Doubt -- esta NO BUENO!

Okay, I guess I was right. Again. Why on earth did I doubt myself??? I just might be the next Miss Cleo!! My gut intuition is stunning, if I may say so myself. LOL

Check it out: http://entertainment.msn.com/celebs/article.aspx?news=235655>1=7701

I'm so thrilled that I forget how to make a real link, so just shut up and cut & paste!!

Still COOL

************************************************************
Come on y'all let's take a ride
Don't ya say shit just get inside
It's time to take your ass on another kind of trip
Cuz you can't have the hop if you don't have the hip
Grab you gat with the extra clip
And close your eyes and hit the switch
We're going to a place where everybody kick it, kick it, kick it
Yea that's the ticket
Ain't no bloodin
ain't no crippin
ain't no punk ass niggaz set trippin'
Everybody got a stack and it ain't no crack
And it really don't matter if you're white or black
I wanna take you there like the Staple Singers
Put something in the tank, and I know that I can bring ya
If ya can't take the heat get ya ass out the kitchen
We on a mission

Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide, slide slippity slide
I'm hittin switches on the block in a 65
Come along and ride on fantastic voyage
Slide slide hoo ride, ain't no valley low enough or mountain high

I'm tryin to find a place where I can live my life and
Maybe eat some steak with my beans and rice
A place where my kids can play outside without livin in fear of a drive by
And even if I get away from them drive by killaz
I still gotta worry about those snitch ass niggaz
I keep on searchin and I keep on lookin
But niggaz are the same from Watts to Brooklyn
I try to keep my faith in my people
But sometimes my people be actin like they evil
You don't understand about runnin with a gang
Cause you don't gang bang
And you don't have to stand on the corner and slang
Cause you got your own thang
You can't help me if you can't help yourself
You better make a left

Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide, slide slippity slide
I do what I do just to survive
Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide slide hoo ride, that's why I pack my 45

Life is a bitch and then you die
Still trying to get a piece of that apple pie
Every game ain't the same cause the game still remain
Don't it seem kinda strange ain't a damn thing changed
If you don't work then you don't eat
And only down ass niggaz can ride with me
Hip hop hop your 45 quickly down the block
Stay sucker free and keep the busters of your jock
You gotta have heart son if you wanna go
Watch this sweet chariot swing low
Ain't nobody crying ain't nobody dyin
Ain't nobody worryin everybody's tryin
Nothing from nothin leaves nothin
If you wanna have somethin you better stop frontin
What you gonna do when the 5 rolls by
You better be ready so you can ride

Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide slide slippity slide if you're living in the city it's do or die
Come along and ride on a fantastic voyage
Slide slide hoo ride you better be ready for the 5 rolls by

Just roll along (that's what you do)
Just roll along (that's right)
Just roll along (that's what you do)
Just roll along (that's right)

Do you want to ride with me
(REPEAT 9 TIMES)

DD SENSOR

Let it be known, right here and right now...that I am currently seeking a patent on the Drunk Dialing Sensor for Cellular Phones. In essence, you must blow your breath into the phone to get it to operate...if you blow "hot", then the phone won't work. Of course there are some strategical issues, such as getting a not-so-hammered friend to start the phone for you, but I can only babysit to a certain extent!!

If some nerd out there actually goes and invents this thing, even as a gag, I GET HALF (Eddie) because I thought of it first. Sarah, we'll split it!

Dreams I'll Never See

nice how the most recent lucid dream involved my face on all the tabloids with the screaming headline "SHE ABANDONED HER CHILD IN HIS TIME OF NEED!!!" Ugly, over-the-shoulder picture with a mullet and black eyeliner. WTF??? I woke up and wrote it down but it's haunting me even now, so maybe I don't want to write it out in detail.

Estes Park, 9-24-06

We went up to Estes expecting to miss the bugling elk, since they supposedly only do their thing between dusk and dawn, but there they were in the middle of the day! We got MUCH closer than you can tell from the photos; my camera pooped out mid-way down the hill, so I didn't get any close-up shots. What a bummer!! Anyway, check out the sky and snow and colors...very nice!!

I have some more pictures but don't have time to download them until tomorrow morning...I suppose I really should figure out how those Flikr slideshows work...

Bone Chilling

It's supposed to snow tomorrow. Summer is over and it kills me. I am NOT a fan of the cold. Here is a picture of what it looks like out my office window when there is snow in the foothills:



I found out yesterday that I lost my garden plot due to "negligence" (i.e., heinous amounts of weeds and crappy plants). I'm hoping that I can beg and plead a little and get it back; what's funny is that Spencer and Will and I went over there a few days ago and did a lot of work because we were all feeling guilty about it. It looked SO good at the beginning of the summer! Even in the middle...but toward August, it became overwhelming and it was much more enjoyable to sit at home in the evenings and drink wine instead of root around in a mess of weeds and bugs. That's what I get for being a lazy ass. I have pictures of it but they are on my PC, which gave up the ghost last week and won't even turn on now. Anyhoo, when I got that letter from Growing Gardens, I felt like the shittiest person on earth! Oh well.

Here is a recent dream. I may have already posted it, I don't know:

Walking down the sidewalk, I came upon a sort of courtyard between two buildings. The walls were studded with Mexican tiles…I walked between the buildings and in about twenty feet, the ocean was lapping up…I was on the shore. I played around in the water for a while with Spencer and then went into a beach house. Mike Senterfit was there and he was a dentist. I told him I had a toothache and he checked and said that I needed a “cap.” He squirted this orange stuff, like Cheese Whiz, into the tooth and then covered it all with white dental clay. He told me to hang out for about an hour to let it dry, and so I just lay there and stared at the ceiling for a few minutes. Then, people started coming in (there were others there the whole time; it was like a clinic) and reggae music was blasting from the other room and black people were dancing all over. I was very concerned that the clay would dry in a big huge lump so I kept pushing it around with my tongue. I woke up thinking it was still on my tooth.

I have the weirdest dreams.

For the last time, CRIKEY!

This: Farewell was the saddest thing. I didn't always agree with Mister Irwin's hands-on, grabby, dramatic tactics, but he was entertaining indeed, and I did learn some things from him. That Bindi Sue sure is a self-contained little girl...to, at age 8, read a eulogy to her father in front of several thousand people without faltering...I could never do it!

I have a lovely picture of Steve and family, but for some reason I can't upload photos from my desktop...argh...

Naming Baby

I have a guess...Anna's Nicole's baby will have the name "Daniel" somewhere in it; as in "Daniela K. Stern"...

UPDATE: apparently, my premonition was wrong...it has been confirmed that Howard K. Stern is NOT the baby daddy. Though I'm sure that he wants to be, kind of in the same way that Mark Karr wanted to be the one who garrotted Jon-Benet. Icky.

Fashion Police

Okay, I admit it, sometimes I am a hideously awful bitch. I gossip and talk about other people behind their backs...but only when I don't know them! So last week I was sitting in the dentist's office waiting for Spencer, and I saw the most fascinating thing. I mean, I was MESMERIZED. Here is the rundown, starting from the feet:

*Black Reebok tennis shoes, circa 1984
*Ankle socks with little bow-tied teddy bears all over them
*Jeans (too short, of course), the kind with no pockets in front or back and an elastic waistband ("stretch")
*(this is the BEST) a concert t-shirt, red, with MEATLOAF 2002 in huge black letters
*(wait, maybe THIS is the best) a dog collar, not the punk kind but the nylon kind, with a bone-shaped real dog tag hanging from it (not a military dog tag, either)
*Metal barrettes holding back the ponytail hair escapees

I was trying really hard not to let her see me stare. I know -- I just KNOW -- that dog tag is from her beloved little Fluffy, who died tragically while choking on a pair of her underwear, no doubt.

When her man came out from the examining room, I was both pleasurably horrified and slightly queasy upon noting that he was sporting a most killer mullet and wore black stone-washed jeans.

Anna Nicole's Saga...

Okay, I am no fan of Anna Nicole Smith, though her stupid TV show was actually entertaining sometimes (if you like watching train wrecks). But GEEZ, to have a baby and three days later lose your older child, now that's just not okay no matter who you are. I don't care how her son died, really, whether it was suicide or drugs or natural causes...the fact is that a mother lost a son during an otherwise hugely happy (and hormonal) time in her life...I hope she can hold it together, for the sake of the baby. Too sad.

Oh, and I HOPE that the father of Anna's baby isn't a) Howard K Stern or b) related to her by any manner of weird hillbilly blood-lineage. Have you SEEN her relatives???? Yikes. There's that one cousin with no teeth and a tattoo of Anna Nicole on her arm...a TATTOO of her own COUSIN...too classy. LOL

5 years ago today...

...Spencer and I had returned home from New York on Setpember 10th. For whatever reason, I got up early on the 11th and turned on the TV...which is something that I NEVER do! And there it was, right before the first plane struck, when it was circling the building...and after it hit, and all the drama, I was screaming "the building is going to FALL!" and no one was listening. Katie Couric couldn't have paid less attention to me even though I was trying desperately to get her to tell everyone to get out of those buildings. When I was finally done watching, I got up like a robot and took Spencer to preschool because I had to. I couldn't keep him at home with me and have him watching. He thought it was a movie.
After I dropped him off at school, I was driving to work and all of the sudden, all the cars on the road just STOPPED and I started to cry, thinking that I had dropped off my baby with other people and now we were both going to die, apart from each other. And then I noticed that a herd of deer were crossing the road and that's why everyone stopped their cars.
I still have noticeable heart palpitations when I hear a plane flying low. I wonder what the survivors in New York and the Pentagon feel when they hear the rumble of a jet or see a lot of smoke. If I had been there, I would be in a stratijacket to this day.

May-December

I now see just how much older than Will I really look. Ugh. I'm going to the doctor today; perhaps I should ask for some Fountain of Youth Soda. The saddest part is that I just look so TIRED and Bette Midler-y. Will looks very handsome, I must say.

I am PSYCHIC

I'm starting to think that I should look into becoming a police investigator, or maybe the next Miss Cleo. See post from Sept. 1, then...

Check this out: BREAKING NEWS!!

Some Pictures of My Little Baby Boy

CRIKEY!! Bummer....

My beloved Steve Irwin, he of the mullet and squished balls in the khaki shorts, has perished. Steve Irwin Dies at 44

At least he died doing something he loved, as opposed to standing in line at the DMV.

Marine GOES AWOL!!

Read the story: Marine Lost in Eldorado Canyon

Tell me this guy didn't go AWOL. I thought something was fishy from the very beginning...I mean, c'mon, who goes free-climbing in a rugged canyon at 1:00 am??!?!

NEW BABY! (no, not mine...)

My friend Cyndi had a baby on Tuesday morning. He is REALLY cute and had his eyes open the whole time we were visiting, which is pretty cool given that he was only 13 hours old! His name is Julian Axel Baker, 22 inches long (!) and weighed 8 lbs 1 oz.

I am sickened, repulsed, revolted, angry and just plain stunned at what happened to that 3-yr-old boy, Marcus, in Cincinnati. In case you don't know, his foster parents locked him in a closet for a couple of days so they could go to a family reunion with their (yes, THEIR) girlfriend. Not that there's anything wrong with the two of them sharing a girlfriend...unless, of course, you are a threesome of sicko fucking murderers. Pardon my french...but I am really really appalled and SO SO SO SO SO SO very sad for that little boy (who was mentally disabled, BTW) and his experience being locked in a closet in the dark all alone and hungry. Forget that he died, that was his relief. What I am concerned about is what was going through his head. And worse, what was going through the heads of those assholes who did this. They locked him in the closet, came home three days later to find him dead, took his body to a field, and burned him. And prior to moving in with these monsters, he was tossed away by his loser mother. You don't even see sick shit like this in the movies!
I need to go paint and think happy thoughts. Like, "Hey, guess what? I was right about John Mark Karr!! Who knew??"

Warrant dropped

BOULDER, Colo. -- The district attorney has dropped the case against John Mark Karr, the suspect in the JonBenet case, Karr's public defender said Monday, in a stunning twist to what was already a bizarre story.
"The warrant has been dropped by the district attorney. They are not proceeding on this case," said Seth Temin, Kar''s attorney. He spoke at an impromptu news conference outside the Boulder County Jail. But prosecutors haven't yet confirmed that.
Karr was returned to the United States a week ago from Thailand, where he told reporters that he had been with JonBenet when she died, but that her death was an accident.
We're deeply distressed by the fact that they took this man and dragged him here from Bangkok, Thailand with no forensic evidence confirming the allegations against him and no independent factors leading to a presumption that he did anything wrong," said Temin.
Temin didn't refer specifically to the DNA evidence but 7NEWS has confirmed that DNA testing failed to make a match between Karr and the forensic evidence in the case.
7News confirmed that Boulder prosecutors had sent DNA evidence in the JonBenet Ramsey case to Denver for testing.
"The Boulder district attorney did send us an official request to process a DNA analysis, and we are doing that," Det. John White told the Boulder Daily Camera.
Karr's first appearance in Boulder County Court had been scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Monday, an advisement hearing that was expected to last only a few minutes. That hearing was canceled.
"There will be no hearing today," Temin said.
Temin and Jacobson were at the jail for about three hours Sunday afternoon but declined to answer questions as they left.
Authorities in Sonoma County, Calif., who arrested Karr for possession of child pornography in 2001, said he had made "uncertain allusions to placing himself in the killer's role" in talking about JonBenet and 12-year-old Polly Klaas, who was slain in 1993 in Petaluma, Calif.
Karr still faces pornography and failure-to-appear charges in the California case.
JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, were initial targets of a grand jury investigation that ended with no indictments. Patsy Ramsey died in June after learning authorities had turned their attention to Karr, who was living in Thailand when he was detained earlier this month.
In an earlier court filiing, prosecutors said they had evidence that has not been disclosed despite a decade of public scrutiny of the case. That evidence was never explained.
Investigators have said DNA was found in blood spots on JonBenet's underwear, but a Ramsey family attorney said two years ago it didn't match any of the 1.5 million samples in an FBI database at the time. Other physical evidence includes a ransom note, a boot print found outside the Ramsey house and some indications an intruder could have entered through a basement window.

>>Who could have guessed? It turns out that, after all, John Mark Karr's pee-pee didn't touch Jon-Benet's pee-pee, no matter how much he wishes it were true. Now watch -- he's going to turn around and sue Boulder for extraditing him without forensic evidence!!! AUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGH!!

Here is a question: have they ever tested the DNA of Jon-Benet's parents?!?!

My Opinion...

...is that John Mark Karr is lying. He is a delusional weirdo who WANTS to be the killer of Jon-Benet, but he's not the killer. From what I have seen, he idolized that little girl and, following the death of her mother (#1 prime suspect), he realized that no one can ask Patsy any more questions so he came forward and said he did it. He is seeking the spotlight and the f*cking media has certainly given it to him. When they find him innocent, he will be sent to a mental hospital for a short while and then turned out to molest and exploit more children through his beloved child porn. He is a sick nutball and I hope he burns in hell, but I still think his confession is a lie. So what if I'm wrong?? For the sake of Jon-Benet's mother, I sure do hope I'm wrong.

P.S. The helicopters started last night and were all over the place today. The media is EVERYWHERE in town. I sure am glad that I no longer live near either the Ramsey's former house or the courthouse!

Tsotsi Review (note: spoilers!)

Just for the hell of it:

Tsotsi
Thug life in Soweto
Release Date: 2006

Ebert Rating: ****

BY ROGER EBERT / Mar 10, 2006

How strange, a movie where a bad man becomes better, instead of the other way around. "Tsotsi," a film of deep emotional power, considers a young killer whose cold eyes show no emotion, who kills unthinkingly, and who is transformed by the helplessness of a baby. He didn't mean to kidnap the baby, but now that he has it, it looks at him with trust and need, and he is powerless before eyes more demanding than his own.

The movie, which just won the Oscar for best foreign film, is set in Soweto, the township outside Johannesburg where neat little houses built by the new government are overwhelmed by square miles of shacks. There is poverty and despair here, but also hope and opportunity; from Soweto have come generations of politicians, entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, as if it were the Lower East Side of South Africa. Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) is not destined to be one of those. We don't even learn his real name until later in the film; "tsotsi" means "thug," and that's what he is.

He leads a loose-knit gang that smashes and grabs, loots and shoots, sets out each morning to steal something. On a crowded train, they stab a man,- and he dies without anyone noticing; they hold his body up with their own, take his wallet, flee when the doors open. Another day's work. But when his friend Boston (Mothusi Magano) asks Tsotsi how he really feels, whether decency comes into it, he fights with him and walks off into the night, and we sense how alone he is. Later, in a flashback, we will understand the cruelty of the home and father he fled from.

He goes from here to there. He has a strange meeting with a man in a wheelchair, and asks him why he bothers to go on living. The man tells him. Tsotsi finds himself in an upscale suburb. Such areas in Joburg are usually gated communities, each house surrounded by a security wall, every gate promising "armed response." An African professional woman gets out of her Mercedes to ring the buzzer on the gate, so her husband can let her in. Tsotsi shoots her and steals her car. Some time passes before he realizes he has a passenger: a baby boy.

Tsotsi is a killer, but he cannot kill a baby. He takes it home with him, to a room built on top of somebody else's shack. It might be wise for him to leave the baby at a church or an orphanage, but that doesn't occur to him. He has the baby, so the baby is his. We can guess that he will not abandon the boy because he has been abandoned himself, and projects upon the infant all of his own self-pity.

We realize the violence in the film has slowed. Tsotsi himself is slow to realize he has a new agenda. He uses newspapers as diapers, feeds the baby condensed milk, carries it around with him in a shopping bag. Finally, in desperation, at gunpoint, he forces a nursing mother (Terry Pheto) to feed the child. She lives in a nearby shack, a clean and cheerful one. As he watches her do what he demands, something shifts inside of him, and all of his hurt and grief are awakened.

Tsotsi doesn't become a nice man. He simply stops being active as an evil one, and finds his time occupied with the child. Babies are single-minded. They want to be fed, they want to be changed, they want to be held, they want to be made much of, and they think it is their birthright. Who is Tsotsi to argue?

What a simple and yet profound story this is. It does not sentimentalize poverty or make Tsotsi more colorful or sympathetic than he should be; if he deserves praise, it is not for becoming a good man but for allowing himself to be distracted from the job of being a bad man. The nursing mother, named Miriam, is played by Terry Pheto as a quiet counterpoint to his rage. She lives in Soweto and has seen his kind before. She senses something in him, some pool of feeling he must ignore if he is to remain Tsotsi. She makes reasonable decisions. She acts not as a heroine but as a realist who wants to nudge Tsotsi in a direction that will protect her own family and this helpless baby, and then perhaps even Tsotsi himself. These two performances, by Chweneyagae and Pheto, are surrounded by temptations to overact or cave in to sentimentality; they step safely past them and play the characters as they might actually live their lives.

How the story develops is for you to discover. I was surprised to find that it leads toward hope instead of despair; why does fiction so often assume defeat is our destiny? The film avoids obligatory violence and actually deals with the characters as people. The story is based on a novel by the South African writer Athol Fugard, directed and written by Gavin Hood.

This is the second year in a row (after "Yesterday") that a South African film has been nominated for the foreign film Oscar. There are stories in the beloved country that have cried for a century to be told.

Ebert's coverage of "Yesterday" and other South African films at the Toronto Film Festival can be found here and elsewhere in the Toronto festival section of the site.

Cast & Credits

Tsotsi: Presley Chweneyagae
Miriam: Terry Pheto
Boston: Mothusi Magano
Tsotsi's father: Israel Makoe
Sgt. Zuma: Percy Matsemela
Young Tsotsi: Benny Moshe

Miramax presents a film directed and written by Gavin Hood. Based on the novel by Athol Fugard. Running time: 94 minutes. In Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans with English subtitles. Rated R (for language and some strong violent content.

Movies I liked

I saw two movies the other night and highly recommend both of them. The first one, "TSOTSI", is hard to watch in parts because it's so intense, and there are a couple of scenes that made me cry and will never leave my brain. The second one, "Turtles Can Fly" was just amazing. Where they found those damaged kids, with their limbs blown off from land mines, who could actually ACT, is beyond me. I guess the script wasn't too much of a stretch for them, really. Here is the review of the movie by Roger Ebert (wish him well, by the way, he is ill. I met him in Boulder once and he's a very nice man.)

Turtles Can Fly
Children teetering on the border
Release Date: 2005

Ebert Rating: ****

BY ROGER EBERT / Apr 14, 2005

I wish everyone who has an opinion on the war in Iraq could see "Turtles Can Fly." That would mean everyone in the White House and in Congress, and the newspaper writers, and the TV pundits, and the radio talkers, and you -- especially you, because you are reading this and they are not.

You assume the movie is a liberal attack on George W. Bush's policies. Not at all. The action takes place just before the American invasion begins, and the characters in it look forward to the invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein. Nor does the movie later betray an opinion one way or the other about the war. It is about the actual lives of refugees, who lack the luxury of opinions because they are preoccupied with staying alive in a world that has no place for them.

The movie takes place in a Kurdish refugee camp somewhere on the border between Turkey and Iraq. That means, in theory, it takes place in "Kurdistan," a homeland that exists in the minds of the Kurds, even though every other government in the area insists the Kurds are stateless. The characters in the movie are children and teenagers, all of them orphans; there are adults in the camp, but the kids run their own lives -- especially a bright wheeler-dealer named Satellite (Soran Ebrahim), who organizes work gangs of other children.

What is their work? They disarm land mines, so they can be re-sold to arms dealers in the nearby town. The land mines are called "American," but this is a reflection of their value and not a criticism of the United States; they were planted in the area by Saddam Hussein, in one of his skirmishes with Kurds and Turks. Early in the film, we see a character named Hyenkov (Hirsh Feyssal), known to everyone as The Boy With No Arms, who gently disarms a mine by removing the firing pin with his lips.

Satellite pays special attention to a girl named Agrin (Avaz Latif), who is Hyenkov's sister. They have a little brother named Risa, who is carried about with his arms wrapped around the neck of his armless brother. We think he is their brother, that is, until we discover he is Agrin's child, born after she was raped by Iraqi soldiers while still almost a child herself. The armless boy loves Risa; his sister hates him, because of her memories.

Is this world beginning to take shape in your mind? The refugees live in tents and huts. They raise money by scavenging. Satellite is the most resourceful person in the camp, making announcements, calling meetings, assigning work, and traveling ceremonially on a bicycle festooned with ribbons and glittering medallions. He is always talking, shouting, hectoring, at the top of his voice: He is too busy to reflect on the misery of his life.

The village is desperate for information about the coming American invasion. There is a scene of human comedy in which every household has a member up on a hill with a makeshift TV antenna; those below shout instructions: "To the left! A little to the right!" But no signal is received. Satellite announces that he will go to town and barter for a satellite dish. There is a sensation when he returns with one. The elders gather as he tries to bring in a signal. The sexy music video channels are prohibited, but the elders wait patiently as Satellite cycles through the sin until he finds CNN, and they can listen for English words they understand. They hate Saddam and eagerly await the Americans.

But what will the Americans do for them? The plight of the Kurdish people is that no one seems to want to do much for them. Even though a Kurd has recently been elected to high office in Iraq, we get the sense he was a compromise candidate -- chosen precisely because his people are powerless. For years the Kurds have struggled against Turkey, Iraq and other nations in the region, to define the borders of a homeland the other states refuse to acknowledge.

From time to time the aims of the Kurds come into step with the aims of others. When they were fighting Saddam, the first Bush administration supported them. When they were fighting our ally Turkey, we opposed them. The New York Times Magazine recently ran a cover story about Ibrahim Parlak, who for 10 years peacefully ran a Kurdish restaurant in Harbert, Mich., only to be arrested in 2004 by the federal government, which hopes to deport him for Kurdish nationalist activities that at one point we approved. Because I support Ibrahim's case, I can read headlines on right-wing sites such as, "Roger Ebert Gives Thumbs Up to Terrorism."

I hope Debbie Schlussel, who wrote that column, sees "Turtles Can Fly." The movie does not agree with her politics, or mine. It simply provides faces for people we think of as abstractions. It was written and directed by Bahman Ghobadi, whose "A Time for Drunken Horses" (2000), was also about Kurds struggling to survive between the lines. Satellite has no politics. Neither does The Boy With No Arms, or his sister, or her child born of rape; they have been trapped outside of history.

Last week I was on a panel at the University of Colorado where an audience member criticized movies for reducing the enormity of the Holocaust to smaller stories. But there is no way to tell a story big enough to contain all of the victims of the Holocaust, or all of the lives affected for good and ill in the Middle East. Our minds cannot process that many stories. What we can understand is The Boy With No Arms, making a living by disarming land mines like the one that blew away his arms. And Satellite, who tells the man in the city he will trade him 15 radios and some cash for a satellite dish. Where did Satellite get 15 radios? Why? You need some radios?

Cast & Credits

Satellite: Soran Ebrahim
Agrin: Avaz Latif
Hyenkov: Hirsh Feyssal
Pasheo: SaddamHossein Feysal
Hangao: HireshFeysal Rahman
Rega: Abdol Rahman Karim
Shirko: Ajil Zibari

IFC Films presents a film written and directed by Bahman Ghobadi. Running time: 95 minutes. No MPAA rating. In Kurdish, with English subtitles.

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY???...

[I'm sure that this blog post title will come up a few times....but that's just because my inquiring mind bleepin' wants to know]

...does that guy on the toilet bowl cleaner commercial scream SO F*CKING LOUD in those commercials????!?!??!?! (wait, am i screaming??)

AS IF this shit actually cleans the toilet, and AS IF I care to believe it...but what in the hell use is it to scream at me about toilet bowl cleaner? I hear enough screaming in my life. I want someone to tell me, very calmy, how this stuff (probably tested on animals, but that's another Oprah), can scrub my bowl without any work on my part. Now THAT I am interested in. Screaming doesn't help.

TGIF

I am a horrible blogger! Obviously, I made it home alive from Aspen. The only leg of the rip that I ended up driving was Boulder to Vail, which wasn't too bad and I didn't even cause any accidents by driving like an old lady (actually, the old ladies were buzzing past me, doing 90 in Vail Pass!) So Will came through and saved me a serious load of stress on my already-tired-out heart. Yay, Will!

I have pictures from the Soul Rebel Festival...they're from a disposable camera, though (I know, I know, those things are SHIT for the environment!), so I need to scan them. I think I'm going to start a Flickr account so I can keep all the pictures in one place. More to come on that...first I need to decide whether or not I am mentally capable of creating a slideshow account. Generally, I"m computer-challenged, which makes even funnier the fact that I will be managing our new data library at work. I have to create it, organize it, keep it maintained, etc. AND I have gotten requests for a SLIDESHOW to be INSERTED into the SEARCH ENGINE. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew. It's all over my proverbial head (which in this case could be either my actual head, or the toilet bowl. You decide.)

Here is something really funny: as of right now, I can't even figure out how to get into the data library server. I expect that I'll be looking for a new job soon.

Spearhead was in town on Wednesday night. I saw Michael playing hacky in the alley behind the Boulder Theater but I was too chicken to walk up and say hi. Will was amazed, as were a couple of girlfriends I saw outside the theater. When I said that Michael was in the alley, they ran back there like their asses were on fire and the only bucket of water in town was in that alley.

DRIVING -- {{{SHUDDER}}}

I have to drive to Vail today and Aspen tomorrow and home from Aspen on Friday (through Denver to pick up Spencer!)
I want to die.
I woke up this morning at 5 in a full-on sweating panic attack and couldn't get back to sleep and of course I can't stop thinking about it. And it's supposed to rain. And Will is no help because he just isn't...I believe that he actually has no intention of driving any of the way, which makes me want to kill him a little bit. I used to love to drive SO MUCH. This phobia is getting out of control and I need to get ahold of the reins before I completely incapacitate myself.

Wish me luck.

Soul Rebel Festival, 7/15/06

What I did last weekend. More photos to follow!!

Self-Esteem, what's THAT??!

I'm not particularly depressed or sad or grumpy or hormonal, just feeling out of sorts and chubby and generally icky. The festival set-up begins tomorrow...once I get moving with that stuff, my self-absorbtion should dissipate. But, right now, I'm trying to figure out what to wear on Saturday, when I will be outside in the blazing sun and 100-degree weather all day and night, and covered in bug spray. I went shopping yesterday and squandered a bunch of money, but luckily didn't like anything once I got it home...now the process of returning things begins.

My Self

My hair today looks like Sebastian Bach's from Skid Row:



Lovely.

And on a scale of 1 to 10, my skin is -387.

Fatness? Think Mama Cass with a flabbier stomach.

Thunder, Reprise

The thunderstorm last night was AWESOME. It was parked right over Boulder and there was lightning everywhere and I loved every second of the show. I'm so so glad that it didn't rain. Otherwise I would have been grumpy as a mofo, regardless of the beautiful light show. And NO ONE wants to see me grumpy!

Speaking of rain, it has brought out these icky biting flies and the mosquitos. I was dying at the garden last night, to the point that I drove home and smothered myself in DEET-29, which will undoubtedly cause massive birth defects in any future children. But it was worth it (sorry, unborn children!) because it worked.

Thunder, again

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE thunderstorms, but this is getting to be too much! Almost three weeks of a day without rain...today was sunny but humid (! yep, HUMID in Boulder...and nothing petty, either, my hair has been nutso), and now at 9:30 pm, the thunder is rumbling and rain is imminent. I went over and weeded at my garden plot for 1.5 hours this evening, filled a wheelbarrow, and it is still a mess. Great. So much for my restful Sunday. Saturday is the Soul Rebel Festival (http://www.interfold.com/ujama/SoulRebelFestival.html), which is a 15-hour volunteer day for me, and I love doing it, but MAN I NEED A BREAK. From shitty weather, from domestic turbulence, from crappy TV and from no sleep. Stupid construction going on across the street (they ripped down the house!) that started at 7 am for two weeks until the neighbor lost her MF MIND on them and now they don't begin jackhammering until at least 7:30. Respite, my ass! At least it's on my side of the house and not Spencer's...he hasn't even noticed yet that the house is gone, let alone been bothered by the noise.

Lazy ass..

Geezus H Christo...I just wrote a BOOK and then my computer failed. SHIT SHIT SHIT. It just figures that I got a creative streak after a month of not posting, and then my blasted old computer had heart failure trying to upload one stupid picture. Anyway, the gist of it all was that: a) I'm lazy when it comes to this blog, b) it has been raining like crazy in Boulder including a hideous, 20 minute golf-ball hailstorm two weeks ago that killed my garden, c) I went to Cali/Catalina in June and had a lovely time, and d) I had an allergic reaction when I was there. Here are the pictures. Shit. It really was a great essay I wrote. More later when I'm not so mad.

Pictures

These are all pretty random: Indra, age 2; Jacob, 18 months, and his mom, Sarah; flowers Will brought me last week...the one I like best is Jacob chatting up some guy he plopped down next to at a show at the Bandshell...

SOOOOOOOOOOULL PATROOOOOOOOL!!!!

YAYAYAYAYAYYYYYYY! Taylor won! He actually WON! How weird that I met his friends last winter and they were amazed that he even got on the show, not because of his talent but because he's a nutball...and here he is, the NEXT AMERICAN IDOL, up there with Gayken, who, by the way, was the gayest of all gays on the show tonight. Gayken's number one fan -- some freak who never made it past the first round -- was on the show because he won an award for being the biggest freak of all (that is not gay-ist, by the way), and he just MIGHT be slightly gayer than Gayken, but whatever. I would put a picture of Taylor here right now but all the websites are jammed up...

I discovered a weight loss program today. I'll call it FAT CYNDY'S FATTY FATNESS WEIGHT LOSS PLAN. Here it is (I should charge for this, but I'm trying to redeem myself for the ticket to hell I bought today for saying that Miss Cornelia could squish someone like a bug (see below)): 1) Get someone to take a picture of you, white-skinned, in winter, wearing a bathing suit, sitting by the pool, side-view, in Orlando. 2) Look at that picture. You will never eat anything again, I promise you. Shit.

Ummm...why did she bother with the can??

No one that big needs to use a can of Raid to clobber anyone or anything! She should have just jumped on them...but then she's be charged with capital murder instead of mere assault! (Yes, I'm going to hell on the express bus for saying that, but I don't care. It's funny.)

Police: Wife Attacks Husband, Mistress With Bug Spray Can

ATHENS, Ala. -- An Alabama woman is accused of turning a can of bug spray on her cheating husband and the other woman.
Cornelia Cottrell Smith, 26, faces a charge of domestic violence. Police Sgt. Trevor Harris said a "nosy neighbor" called Smith at work to say her husband was with another woman in the couple's apartment. The woman left work and went home where she found the two together.
Officers said Smith grabbed a can of Raid and clobbered the cheating pair. She's charged with hitting both her husband and the other woman in the head with the insecticide. Police said the woman needed stitches for a head wound, and the husband was also cut but didn't require medical treatment.
Smith has been released after posting $1,000 bond.

TayLOR TayLOR TayLOR

He's gonna win. Anyhoo...I have new photos but forgot my cable to download them. I guess I'll have to do it from home, on my own time...geesh. Isn't that what work is for, to do your private business and get paid for it?!? :-)

Reminder to self:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don't Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don't Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

Jesus Freaks!

My friend Andre's newest book...check it out!!

New Home...

Here's our new duplex. Upgrades to be made and it's too small, but whatever, we can't afford a palace in the Boulder housing market! (Note to all rich single men who are passably goodlooking and have at least a small number of brain cells dedicated to something other than ogling pretty women and snorting blow: LET'S TALK!) :-)