Voyeur Vigilante

What would you do if you saw a cell phone sticking out from under your dressing room or bathroom door taping you?

Heather Seamons saw a voyeur trying to tape her in a Forever 21 dressing room. She left her room half-dressed, banged on the door, confronted the man, and alerted the clerks. The clerks let the man go (probably because they were about 16) and questioned Heather instead. She wouldn't stop, however, insisted on calling security, the police, and the news. I'm so proud of her for going public and trying to find this jerk.

You can probably guess how I'd react. I hope you have an image of me absolutely LOSING IT in a public place. I don't know if "confront" is the right word as much as calling on all the powers in the universe to unleash a storm of fury that wouldn't stop until the man was cowering on the ground duck-and-cover style in absolute terror.

And then I'd press charges. And I'd make sure his computers were confiscated so that he could be charged on multiple counts. Then I'd Google-bomb his name and image. I'd see him prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.

I despise people who violate women and children. I would be their millstone. Why? Because I have the strength to do it, and so often, those victims do not. I have a problem not getting involved when my friends are being spitefully used. And if you try to spitefully use me? That would be a mistake.

What would you do?

Dispatches From the Bread Line

This is a hard post to write.

For the second time in a year I find myself without a regular work/job type thing. Sure, the “economy is bad” and “times are tough” but those are for other people, not me and mine, right? I shouldn’t be under that delusion anymore, but it’s still hard to accept. We’re trying to figure out ways to cover the bills and it’s getting tight. I know deep down that everything happens for a reason, and that things fall apart so others can fall together; it’s just a little heart-stopping in the mean time.

I think the last time this happened, back in March of this year, I was in a far worse place. Not only had I lost my job of three years, but my mother had been diagnosed with a virulent cancer (that happened on the same day, in the same hour, by the way.) I was a mess. I’m not a mess this time (at least not yet.) My mom is doing well. I’m grateful that I was able to find work relatively quickly and that I got to work for a great company for the past six months. I felt impressed when I considered taking the offer that I should take it, but that that job would be short term. Since most of my employment life has been measured in years, I was a little shocked when it turned into months, although I probably shouldn’t have been.

I’m definitely trying to fight the feeling of fear with the feeling of gratitude. I know we’ve been placed in our home for a reason, although it’s been a struggle to fit into our neighborhood. We have wonderful friends and family who buttress us. My husband does important work, work that really does change the world, I wish with all my heart it was enough to support us. I’ve heard that there are women out there that demand that their husbands change careers. I couldn’t do that. He loves what he does, and more importantly, he’s amazing at it: he has the highest student test scores in the district.

While we figure out what happens next, I could use a prayer, a candle, or a Budda-belly rub, whatever it is you do.

If you know of anyone who needs contract writing work, I can fill that need! I can create great SEO-friendly web content and results-driven marketing copy. In my last job I was responsible for creating copy for a dozen individual business concepts each with their own unique voice and vision. What’s more, I like doing that kind of work and it shows in my final product.

Rocked It

I listened to a lot of music in the past decade, some of it cool, some of it even hipper than you can imagine, so hip it hasn't even been composed yet . I started with a huge list and narrowed it down to the albums that I really loved. I listen to these albums, they make me happy, and isn't that what music should make you? There are far more artists I could have included if I wanted to include singles, but I like the idea of noting entire albums vs. just a song. I left out some big names, but once I analyzed my play count data (I'm a nerd, remember?) and looked at the albums that have stood the test of time, I found my songs.

And then to confuse you, I didn't rank them! Behold! Your moderately alphabetized list of music! To be enjoyed! Mandatory!

I love Alison Krauss' voice; it's perfection. My favorite track is the title track: haunting, beautiful, melancholy, and just love it.

It's the album that broke Regina to the world. I like Soviet Kitsch, the album that preceded Begin to Hope, but every single track on this album is brilliant. On the Radio, anyone?

I don't care if you just yelled out, "EWW! Jimmy Eat World?" Yes. Jimmy Eat World. Bleed American.

I love The Killers. This album. All their albums. I love Sam's Town and Day & Age, too. I can't get over their music, I heart it so. Their show was fantastic--I think Brandon Flowers might be the best frontman in the biz. Hot Fuss in particular reset the music world, leading to a revival of great, emotional, synth-pop.

Keane is underrated.

Oracular Spectaculor blew me away. Sound systems were invented for MGMT.

Great songs, great storytelling. Losing Lisa kills me.

Tori Amos' Scarlet's Walk is her post-911 letter to America. Ostensibly a concept album with the songs covering Scarlet's journey, this is a softer, more accessible Amos. Don't let that fool you, Scarlet's Walk is still a little edgy, but absolutely amazing.

The Strokes Is This It? brought back dirty garage band rock. Thanks, boys.

Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism blows me away. I don't know if there is a band that better encapsulates the aughts.

COLDPLAY. FTW.

I can listen to Who Is Jill Scott? all day. Soulful, hip, fun, groovy, laid-back, Jill Scott has a way with you. I could have picked Alicia Keys to represent neo-soul, but I think Jill is less well known, and that's criminal.

A little French band that is still trying to get a bigger break, Phoenix is *cough cough* rising. I really like their music, and since I'm picking just one album per group, my vote goes to Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.

A few honorable mentions: 50 Cent - Get Rich or Die Tryin', U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind, Weezer - Green album, and Postal Service's We Will Become Silhouettes EP.


What am I missing? I bet I missed something I really loved. Do you think it was a personal affront that I didn't pick Radiohead? What albums defined the decade for you?

It Has a Mirror Finish!

Several months ago I moved into a new house that I have yet to take pictures of and no one ceases to remind me of that deficit. Sorry. I should have taken pictures of the house before I started decorating it, when it was still a blank slate. I should have taken pictures of the house before my children started living here and tearing everything down, nicking it up, and using dry erase marker like Febreeze. Oversights have occurred on my watch.

Perhaps you've wondered to yourself, "Hey, what does Jet Set really do with the vast quantities of money she gets from ads?" And if you don't, you must have better manners than I do. I saved up those tens of dollars and combined them with some freelance work and bought the concussive device sparkly marble table you see above. Isn't it pretty?

If you are not a parent, remember all those times in the middle of the night you had an accident? Or threw up all over your pajamas? Or didn't make it to the bathroom in time? When your parent took off your clothes, changed your sheets, hugged you, scrubbed the carpet, and took your temperature? SPOILER ALERT: Once you have kids, you're the one changing the sheets and the clothes, hugging, and reading thermometers. Maybe you even guessed that you'd be sniffing stuffed animals for leftover bile, trying to identify what still stinks in the room, and hoping you don't run out of blankets and pajamas. I got 3 hours of sleep last night. Poor Proximo.

To make up for the night before, the universe delivered my new chrome table. Morgan, safely ensconced on my sofa, explained the glamor of life in entertainment production while I assembled the thing. Gang, it's so beautiful, it completely makes up for all of the sheets I've washed chunks out of and underwear I've tossed.

Can you guess how long before Proximo of the Chunk Blowing scratched the finish on the new table?

No, go ahead, I want you to guess. Go vote in the poll on the side.

Your Assistance Required

I have about a dozen posts I'd like to throw up right now. Not literally throw up, because that is not how I come up with blogs, believe me. (Anymore.)

While I'm trying to assemble my thoughts and straighten out the internets, please help me interpret this fortune I unwrapped:

"ACCEPT THE NEXT PROPOSITION YOU RECEIVE"

Why do I have a feeling of foreboding?

Help with a Shower?

I need to help throwing a baby shower; it seems I'm fresh out of great ideas lately.

The shower is at work, this Wednesday, and I can't spend too much money. Yes, it's in a conference room, so we need to make it not look so much like a conference room. Do you have ideas on cute decorations that wouldn't cost too much, but yet look classy and awesome? I do have rubber ducky cake pins pictured above from Darlybird.com, should I use or not use? Our showerette is having a girl, their first baby, and this might possibly be their ONLY shower, so I'd like to make it special.

Somedays I got the party mojo, and somedays I don't. Help me Internets!


Oh, and catch me and just one of my selfish obsessions over at Segullah today.

I'd Like to Thank...

source

Just so you know, if I ever won an Oscar, and to be perfectly honest I never will, I won't be one of those people who uses their Oscar as just another shiny door stop.

My Oscar wouldn't be kept in the cupboard behind the salt. My award wouldn't be in the oven with all of my off-season sweaters or upside down as an emergency tub plug. 

I'm pretty sure that if I ever won an Oscar, I would put it on its own shelf with a single spotlight on it. I'd probably refer to the Oscar in every day conversation, trying for casual or oblique mentions and failing at subtlety, "The other day as I was making dinner I noticed my Oscar on its Swarovski crystal ledge and noticed that I hadn't given that round head a polish in at least two hours!"

"This curry reminds me of the time I accepted an Academy Award."

"When you come in the house please remove your shoes and notice the Oscar."

"I sewed some curtains the other night, and also I have an Oscar in my formal living room."

"Does this Lemon Pledge work on Oscars?"





"I need to pick up a few things at the grocery store, oh, and I WON AN OSCAR."



Tell me, where would you keep your Oscar?

Giveaway Dilemma - What Do You Think?

For some odd reason I keep getting contacted by businesses and products that are interested in my views and having me talk about my experience on the blog.

Do I really have that type of blog? No, I probably don't, but that's probably all the more reason they're reaching out to me, and ultimately to you--those are some valuable eyeballs you posses.


I've felt extremely conflicted about using my blog to talk about businesses. I turn most of them down. The ones I don't turn down I usually spend a week trying to decide if I want to participate.

I want to be perfectly honest with my readers when it comes to giveaways, reviews, and other things where I'd be helping businesses market themselves. And I want you to be honest with me, so I'm going to do a couple things. First of all, I promise to tell you what I get out of reviews and giveaways. Second, I promise to tell you the truth about the service. Third, I need your honest opinion.

Do you hate the idea of any type of giveaways on The Jet Set? (It probably won't be very often since I'm already part of a local review group.) (But I DO have something in my hot little hand to giveaway tomorrow.) And contractually, with the advertising I'm running, I'm not allowed to really shill for other products on my site. I put up a poll, so if you can take the time, click through and give me a what-what.

What do you want out of me?
What will or won't you tolerate?
What if this is a needlessly silly preoccupation on my part and you say, "Take all the free swag you can get, honey!"

Go on, vote!

Point and Shoot

Guns freak me out.

I did not grow up with guns in the house. I asked my dad once why he didn’t go hunting (like so many of our neighbors did) and he said that when he was a boy he shot a squirrel and felt devastated at the loss of life that he’d perpetrated. He vowed that he'd never shoot another living thing. My mother, being raised in the aftermath of a bloody civil war, hated guns too. She wouldn’t even allow my brother to have a toy gun.

My husband didn’t grow up in a hunting and frontier/western culture. He was raised in Florida where guns were used for drive-bys, in drug deals, and to shoot teachers. So he isn’t so much of a fan either.

I’m even like my mom: I don’t want my kids playing with a toy gun. I know, I know, it’s just a toy, but they still give me the heebies. You can make all kinds of rules about ‘you never point the gun at a person, not even in fun, not even if he’s the bad guy’ but we all know what happens when you turn your back. I don’t want my kids thinking that guns are fun, or toys, in any way.

I don’t care if you own a gun.

Go ahead, get a gun. You have the right to own guns. I won’t even tease you on the well-regulated militia thing (much.) Go hunting, we don’t care. I’m under no illusions as to where meat comes from. You can say that your gun is for food storage, not just protection (although I don’t believe that your handgun is to shoot a deer.) I really don’t care about what you do with your guns, up to a point.

You see, my kid is now old enough that he goes over to other people’s houses to play. These people may or may not have guns in the house. I worry about this a lot, so does my husband.

We can have, and have had, conversations with our offspring about firearms. They are not toys. If you find one don’t touch it, leave the house if someone else trying to play with it, tell an adult immediately. You can have those conversations until you’re blue in the face. The mother whose 16 year old daughter, her only child, was killed by a shot to the face by another teenager, who had found the gun and was playing with it, had just had a conversation with her daughter about gun safety. This incident happened last Friday less a mile from where we live. Kids are stupid. They don’t think.

I want to know how to ask people about their guns. Do you ask people about their guns? Where they keep them? How accessible they are? Are they loaded?
I want to know how responsible people are with their firearms when my child is playing at their home.

Have you had those conversations? Would you think to have the conversation? Is it not even a concern to you?




Fig and I are on the same wavelength today: she posted on her own ambivalence about owning a gun and not liking it. So if you want to talk about the merits, or perils, of ownership, go over there.

And just to stave off the ‘c’mon and try it, you’ll like it’: yes, I have fired a gun, and a shot gun, I didn’t like it; they’re just not for me.

And just to stave off the ‘government is coming for our arms and this is how I feel about X piece of legislation’ this is not a discussion about gun control; this is a discussion about the responsibilities of gun owners and non-gun owners.

An Inordinate Sense of Panic

The screen of my phone was strangely black when it rang this afternoon at my desk, which meant I couldn’t tell who was on the line. It was my husband, who said, “I just came home. The door is unlocked and slightly open. I can’t talk long because I have to call the cops.”

That’s when my heart, which had started pounding at the word “unlocked,” did the sick fall of doom that leads straight into shock.

“Both kids are missing, along with the sitter.”

I started laughing, “Holy cow. I thought you were going to say that the gaming system and TV were gone, that we’d been robbed. No, my sister took the kids to the museum.”

I think I can blame the TV movie for my momentary panic. You’ve seen the titles: A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story, She Woke Up Pregnant, or Too Young to be a Dad. It’s not that I deliberately sit down to watch these small screen tales (usually) it’s more that you’re sucked into one from either the title or just plain curiosity. And then by the time you realize you’re watching a TV movie you can’t stop because you have to find out if Shannon Doherty’s roommate is really possessed and might try to kill her (the answer will always be ‘yes’ to those two statements.) The storytelling is so transparent that you know exactly what will happen the minute they show the bad girl trying to get the good girl to climb onto the roof to dance (someone, at some point, will fall off that roof.) By TV movie standards, my sister taking the kids to the museum would never turn out well, something horrific would always happen.


I’ll admit that sometimes a TV movie can be sweet, even a little good. I watched Loving Leah a couple of weeks ago on CBS and kind of enjoyed myself. What’s not to like about a modern levirate marriage story where the brother of the deceased marries his widow?


More often, however, the TV movie is a tale of wo, endless misery, and the crazy woman du jour. Take tonight, where I had the privilege of watching Hush, a movie starring Tori Spelling (you already know it will be good) and Tahmoh Penikett (Helo on Battlestar Galactica) (Yes, I watch Battlestar because it is awesome without irony, full stop.) Those two lovebirds move back to his hometown from the big city where they re-acquaint themselves with his ex-girlfriend—who steals their frozen embryos and tries to have their baby! How great is that? I mean, the minute they showed Tori snuggling with a cat you just knew that Tabby was going to meet a grisly end. Hush was one of the most satisfying entertainment experiences I’ve had in forever (I’m THISCLOSE to cutting you off, Heroes.)

So I want to hear your confession: what’s the most awesome TV movie you’ve ever seen?

Will you give us a short description?

And if your life was made into a TV movie, I want to hear about that too (but not you, Betty Broderick.)

My cat is dying to know.




I'm so lucky to also be over at my friend Marie's Makes and Takes today. Go check out my magic trick (no actual magic abilities required on your part.) And HI to any Makes and Takers who wander over here (isn't Marie great?)

The Most Interesting Things About Me Possible

Alright, so that was hyperbole (which I am given to) but here are some things about me that you absolutely must know:

1. I think I have writer’s block.

2. It feels like constipation.

3. I keep regular notes for when ideas come to me, as an insurance against The Block, and because I know that Janeane Garafalo, Jerry Seinfeld, and major literary authors also carry notes with them.

4. Perhaps milk of magnesia would work just as well.

5. I hate sleeping.

6. Sleep is boring and really unproductive. I want to figure out a way to never sleep and still function.

7. I like figuring out how things work.

8. This applies to not only simple mechanical objects, or systems, but all the sciences and the arts.

9. I’ve made a career in several fields by being able to facilitate communication between the social and the antisocial.

10. I love listening to people talk about what they do.

11. Comedian interviews are particular interesting; what makes something funny, what is the process, where are the edges?

12. I would be just as happy watching Conan O’Brien on the Actor’s Studio as reading about Schrödinger's Cat.

13. I often make allusions to obscure topics, not on purpose, but because I’m sure everyone else knows what I mean, too.

14. I’m continually surprised that they don’t.

15. Once, while teaching a lesson at my church, a woman asked me what the word 'pontificate' meant and I pretended like I didn’t hear her and kept going with the topic.

16. I belong to three book clubs and have been asked to join another one.

17. I’m afraid that my Other Half no longer thinks I’m ‘going to book club’ and believes it’s a cover for an affair—or worse.

18. Other Half does not read books, but this quiz is about me, so I will say that I’ve been accused by someone I live with as ‘always needing a plot’ when I read, which is ‘juvenile.’

19. I totally giggled when he said that.

20. People seriously do not understand our marriage, which is funny because it makes perfect sense to us.

21. One of my secret desires is to be a great matchmaker and I could not be further from that skill. I am terrible at setting people up, just awful.

22. I had absolutely no idea how much I would love being a mother, not a clue, and am amazed at how much I laugh.

23. I miss painting and drawing

24. Godiva chocolate is gross. No really, I don’t understand the big deal. I have been known to take a bite and throw the rest in the garbage. I am that picky about chocolate.

25. I would love to have people over every night of the week for late night talks over pie and warm drinks.

You’re invited.

Personal Stimulus Package (not as dirty as it sounds)

Upon reflection, it became apparent that my car had reached the end of its natural life when it overheated while idling for 10 minutes in a parking lot on the coldest morning of the year.

It’s not like there weren’t other clues: the quart of oil a month it seemed to drink, when the rear defroster gave out, the rusty gashes in the passenger side, the long-gone clear coat, the unraveling upholstery, the power nothing.

“Could I get a new car?” I asked Other Half.
“No,” he said cruelly and with what I'm pretty sure was a sneer (could have been just gas.) (Frozen chimis.)

I loved that car, my very first car; paid off for ten years—practically my dowry—but I’m over it.

This morning the doors were frozen shut. I had to use my considerable might to yank open the rear passenger side for E.G, which caused the black rubber seal to come off. The seal wouldn’t go back on. I couldn’t shut the door. I drove E.G. to school with the door half open, begging him to get his fingers out of the crack! I never thought I’d ever mean more than his underwear.

Oh yeah, and

THE HOLE IN THE FLOOR.

The hole in the floor where pieces of ice fly up and hit my legs, or my hand while I’m shifting, and sometimes my face, the hole that the floor mat will only cover when it feels like it (which is never.)

Look, I’m all for being frugal, but my car has crossed the line to unsafe. I don't want to drive the kids in it anymore. I don't like having the check engine light go on and wondering if I'm going to make it home tonight. When I took it in for the inspection a couple months ago I mentioned, knowing it was probably futile, that the check engine light comes on intermittently. They laughed in my face. This car is an ’89, ma’am, the check engine light is going to be on a lot. Well I know that, but can you tell my husband?

No airbags, no anti-lock brakes, no LATCH tethers for the car seats, no side impact protection, no impact protection whatsoever, really. The seat belts no longer retract, which means you do that awesome thing where you close your car door and slam the buckle, breaking it bit by bit. And why don’t you notice? Because you have to use your quads to close those doors.

At least it’s still got its sweet tape deck.


I’m done. I’m out. It’s time.


So tell me, Internets, what kind of car do I really need to buy?

Seasonal Outpost

.



My Christmas tree is listing starboard.

The children have started to jettison the ornaments.




I decided last week that there wasn't anything on that tree that couldn't be replaced, so I've learned to smile as they rearrange the tree. And sit on the presents which dents the boxes. And land their planes in the branches. I will limit myself to a once a week redistribution of ornaments to their proper sequential order.

I will righteously sample only a tiny corner of whatever treats the neighbors bring by and then toss or feed the vast remainder to the small lions. "A model of restraint," I'll tell myself.

There will be no general panic as I get ready for my baby sister's wedding (and wedding flowers, wedding cake, wedding outfit, and heaven help me, serenity now.)

I refuse to toss the TV across the room when Addison on Private Practice practices old fashioned OB skillz that raise my dander. Deep breathing. Fictional show. Fictional.




How are your holiday goals?

What's Wrong with This Picture?

Go ahead...tell me.

Bygones?

One of the worst parts about election season is finding out what all your friends and family believe politically.

Isn’t it terrible?

You thought they were decent and rational beings and then they are going to vote for who? Part of you wants to go back to when you didn’t know and all was right with the world.

I’ve even been guilty of it, snooping around on blogs and coming across arguments or links that made me think, “They are out of their skulls.” Of course, I immediately laughed at myself, sure that those friends were thinking the same of me.

The truth is that both of the candidates are good people. They are both intelligent people who more or less want the best for the country; they just disagree slightly on how to get there. There are so many lies and silliness flying around right now, from arguments about how many residences one might own, to false accusations of anti-Americanism. It’s ridiculous, and I hope that none of us are pandering, believing, or spreading the spin.

OK, fine, I will draw one line: stop spreading the lies that Obama is Muslim. He’s not. And even if he were (he’s not) I would expect that those of you who KNOW what it’s like to experience religious bigotry in the public realm, quite recently, and with a beloved candidate from our own midst, ought to know better.

I’ve been thinking about this curious pre-election tension, how do we get back to being chummy friends and neighbors when things get heated? Relationships, families, and our civil society feel like they’re being rent apart during elections. I’m not going to say it’s never been this bad before, because it’s been way, way worse (even in my memory,) and every election has an element of Us v. Them. It is, however, time for the fever pitch.

So how do you put it all behind you the day after?







Remind me to tell you about the lady at the grocery store who elicited gasps from the other shoppers because that was a spectacle to unite us all. Oh, and the Filthy Padawan has struck again. Stay tuned.

The Fallout

I bopped into my salon last Saturday and there was my favorite stylist looking at me with a flat expression. He waved me over to the mac next to his station (hey, when did that get put there?) and said, “Let’s take a look at this blog…”

Oh, right.

Uhm.

I tried to explain how really, really a blog entry is a display of affection and/or that no publicity is bad publicity. Something like that, right? He gave me the slanted eye look of doom and then gave me another phenomenal style. Say what you will, and we all did, email or no email, the kid can cut.


And speaking of letting the public weigh in, according to the poll I will not be reading the Twilight books. All of the Internets spoke and I must abide by their choice.


I’m not entirely sure what is up with Blogger: although I’ve been getting your comments by email, it’s only adding a couple of new comments a day to that post. Maybe it’s a giant vampiric conspiracy.
Yes, that’s what it has to be, the corridors of Mountain View are running rampant with the nerdy undead.

Go On, Break Another Little Piece of My Heart

As usual, my series cynicism has prevented me from reading the Stephanie Meyer books. Oh, I'm sure they're fantastic. Maybe.

The thing is that just like I did with Harry Potter, I refused to read a series that was not finished. Why? Because I know better. Let me tell you about Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. It started with Eye of the World, published in 1991 and read by me in 1993. Eleven books later it's 2008 and I'm waiting for the twelfth book to consume the wee hours of the morning and leave me, finally, satisfied.

Only something happened, something terrible, something that scourged my easily-attached reading heart, Robert Jordan died last year. Yup. He got an incurable disease and he DIED. It's taken almost a year for me to even talk about this without freaking the Hell out.

For a comparison, it's as if 24 just stopped at hour 21; Lost stopped after episode one of the third season; and in the perhaps worst twist imaginable, US Weekly stopped publishing any pictures in the "Celebrities: They're Just Like us!" section. All utter catastrophes. That's why I'm warning you: anytime you undertake the reading of a series, make sure it's done, or at the very least, request a bill of health from the author's primary care doctor.

So I'm putting up a poll (those of you reading through Reader will have to click through,) is it time to read those Meyer books? And, just in case you think I'm kidding, I will absolutely abide by the winning poll option.

"Warmly Enthusiastic and Imaginative"

We decided to take a personality test at work a few weeks ago. On a technology team where I am the only girl, I’m also the only extrovert, and that is the way I like it. I can be the center of attention, as it should be.

I talked Other Half into taking the test the other night. Normally he would be beyond such tomfoolery, but there is nothing on TV right now (even poker is in repeats.) I know this might shock you all, but we’re almost complete opposites. Other Half naturally thinks that his personality is the best. He can't help it, it's his personality. I don’t attach any value judgments on his, or on your personalities for that matter (that's so ENFP.)

I watched him take the test over his shoulder. On the question, Do you think you’re weird, he selected 'no.' I almost laughed out loud. Not only do people think he's weird, some people don't even think he exists!

Afterward, we compared notes. Sure enough under Other Half’s description it said, “You don’t think you are weird, but others find you so.” It also mentioned that he tends to think his way of approaching the world is right and that he is constantly looking to see how all the rest of us can improve. This is true. I am his project. I don’t really like that I’m his improvement project (considering that there’s a faucet that needs installed if he’s looking for a project) but I’ve learned that he thinks he needs a project. Whatever.

In my list were things like “spontaneous, outgoing, empathetic” and then followed by “easily distracted.”

HEY

“Wild and crazy, acts without thinking, likely to have or want a tattoo, unprepared, prone to fantasy...”

FINE, be that way.

(I don’t have a tattoo)

(I don’t even WANT a tattoo.)

"Look," Other Half crowed, “Disorganized!” His face beamed with vindication.

"I know. See, I can't help it, it's just my personality. However, just because you don’t value these facets doesn’t mean that they’re not legitimate personality traits that can serve a purpose."

"WHAT? It says irresponsible! No one wants to be irresponsible!"

"But..."

"No one proudly admits to being irrational!"

"Humph," I said.

So dear reader, do you need a project? Are you prone to fantasy?

What are you?

Tell me more!

When is a Gallon of Milk Not a Gallon of Milk?

If you were part of a certain generation, your parents were concerned with squeezing the most out of a dollar and the pantry. They read pamphlets, they exchanged bargain ideas, and they rinsed out zip loc bags. You’re saying to yourself, what could possibly be so different now? Sure these days we budget, save, and prepare, but trust me, we are not going to the same lengths.

Are you a part of that certain generation?

* Your mom would buy a gallon of milk from the store and that gallon never ran dry.
At first, your heart leapt to see the gallon come out of the paper bag from the store. Then, under the cover of nightfall, mom would gradually mix in reconstituted powdered milk into the store-bought gallon. YOU AREN’T FOOLING US, mom!
Never-ending gallons do not exist, not even in Zion.
Eventually, mom would break down and buy another gallon of milk (to start it all over again.)
I mean, I guess it was better than the way they usually tried to get you to drink powdered milk: slightly warm, because the powder dissolves easier in warm water. The sickeningly sweet smell with just a hint of sour wafted out of the beige pitcher as the milk sloshed against the sides. Know what’s better than powdered milk?
A glass of water and eating your cereal dry.

* Peanut butter that you had to stir.
The great grease slick at the top of the jar that would make a thunk sound as you plunged in the spoon. The jars of Skippy at your friends' houses seemed so...glamorous.

* Your dad would give you a couple of tablespoons of wheat to chew.
Not wheat flour, actual wheat grains poured into your hand. You were supposed to chew these because they made gum. And the wheat did make gum, but guess what? WRIGLEY’S IS ONLY A DIME. Why did we have 50 pound bags of wheat hanging out in our basement? So you could grind wheat and make your own bread, of course. All four of us used to beg and plead for ‘store-bought’ bread. Oh, store-bought bread! It was so soft! The thick, crusty loaves my dad pulled out of the oven? NO, THANKS! Why couldn’t we just have Wonder Bread like everyone else?

My parents went the extra mile: making their own yogurt in a bowl they’d set above the hot water heater, toasting their own granola, and the time dad tried to make his own malt. There even were homemade Tootsie Rolls (because why buy Tootsie Rolls? Do you know how much money you can save by making your own Tootsie Rolls?) Believe me, that recipe was a hot ticket around Edgemont.

So tell me, were your parents reading the same pamphlets as mine? Did you can peaches and put up tomatoes? Spend an afternoon at the Welfare (charity) farm picking cherries? Or were you one of the lucky ones: Wonder Bread for your sandwich and pudding cups in your lunch—oh, and real gum?

-I was reminded about all of this in an IM convo that I had with Sue. You need to read her take on this subject. Warning, you'll learn about something called 'chocolate treat', are you prepared?

Sleep Controversies

A little while ago I spent an evening with two friends. When I got home, very late, there was Other Half on the couch with El Guille.

“What’s going on here? It’s past one A.M.,” I said with a smile.

“You would NOT believe the night I had,” said Other Half, looking at me wanly with his blue-green bloodshot eyes. “The baby was up, then El Guille was up, and then the baby was up again, and the El Guille got up! It’s terrible! I have work in the morning!”

“Huh,” I said, suppressing a smile, and sent him off to bed.



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And speaking of bed, we're having a little bit of controversy at the Jet Set pied-à-terre:

At what age did your children, assuming you have children and not just animals* or house plants**, stop napping?

Did you fight to keep the nap?

Was it a more intermittent process?

Exactly how did you deal with the CRAZINESS that ensues in an un-napped child?




*Animals don't count, they nap any time they want, which is why I don't want to own an animal. Animals are so entitled; they just lord over you when you wait on them hand and foot--and then they have the nerve to nap in front of your face. I don't need that.

**Houseplants don't nap (look it up.)