Happy Halloween

From Felipe the Devil, SuperBert, and Doug the Bee.
For more Halloween weekend photos, click here.

Girl Band

If I had a band, I would fill it with impossibly skinny, white chicks and call it Vanilla Waifers. They would sing punk versions of Frank Sinatra songs, as well as write their own politically-minded diddies addressing environmental issues and the prevalence of media hype in our society.

Idiosyncrasies

A fellow blogger, Notta Wallflower, has tagged me to list out some of my idiosyncrasies. I think it's great that the word idiosyncrasy seems to be made up of both the words idiot and crazy. Say it like you mean it.

My list:

• I can't stand to have food between my teeth and carry floss around with me nearly all the time.
  
• I have to have my keys in my hand when closing the door to my house or car. Even if I just put them in my backpack, I'll dig them out again, just to make sure.
  
• I hate touching doorknobs because people are pigs and germs are gross.
  
• I can see a movie and totally forget most of it within several weeks... to the point where I won't know I've already seen it until halfway through the second time around.
  
• In the shower, I often find myself singing You Light Up My Life by Debbie Boone. I have no idea why it's always that song. I don't even like that song.
  
• Nearly everything I own is stripy.
  
• Although I can read a map just fine, without one handy, I am extremely geographically impaired, to the extent that I have gotten lost (repeatedly) in Golden Gate Park for hours, until I can find something familiar to lead me in the direction of home.
  
• I routinely paint my toenails, but still scoff at people who paint their fingernails.
  
• In Madison, WI, there are huge berries that fall off of the trees in the fall. I named them smuckberries because they make a smuck noise when you step on them. When I encountered a smuckberry tree, I would take my time and step on each fallen berry to feel it go smuck. I haven't found them in California, but I still step on other smucky things, whenever I get the chance.
  
• I hate ceiling lights with a vengeance and would rather sit in the dark if there's no lamp in the room.
  
• I pick out all of the folded potato chips and eat those first. Mmm... crunchy!
  
• I have trouble sleeping without earplugs, even if my surroundings are entirely silent.
  
• I buy both journals and rings with vigor, but rarely use either.
  
• If I ever hear any woman in public say, "Oh my god!", I am compelled to finish the sentence (out loud, mind you) by saying "Becky! Look at her butt!" from Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back song.
  

I tag Cianna, Aaron, Lisa, and Mamazilla to name some of their idiosyncrasies.

Puppets Afire

I have a houseguest right now, a friend of mine, who shall remain unnamed, due to the nature of this entry. I wouldn't want to embarrass her.

Last Saturday night, we were getting ready to go over to the grand re-opening of the deYoung Museum. She had thought it would be nice to go to dinner first, so we invited some friends to assemble at my house for some wine and cheese before we all went out for some Eritrean food.

As I shuffled around my room, getting dressed and drinking tea, my friend tried to make the place look inviting by turning on some lamps in the livingroom before going into the bathroom to get ready.

When I walked to the back of the house to ask her a question, I noticed black smoke pouring out of the livingroom door near the ceiling. Then, I smelled the horrible stench of burning plastic. My eyes widened in disbelief. "What's on fire?" I asked, alarmed. "What"? my friend replied, turning around to look behind her, as I stared over her shoulder with increasing horror as blackness filled the livingroom.

Suddenly, we both sprung into frantic motion. It was like a bad action movie. We ran to the livingroom and saw that the halogen lamp in the corner had caught fire. Earlier in the day, I had hung a fuzzy marionette bird puppet on the lamp by hooking its plastic handle over the saucer part at the top of the lamp. At the time, it struck me as slightly dangerous, but I figured if we planned to use the lamp, we would certainly remove the puppet beforehand.

D'oh!

The melted puppet lay at the base of the lamp, oozing black plastic into the new carpet that I had just coerced my landlord into installing, as flames shot from the top of the lamp, blackening the ceiling and spilling black, molten plastic all over the surrounding walls and furniture. (Do you have any idea how hard it is to remove molten plastic from surfaces? I need an informative infomercial, in a bad way.)

All the while, my friend and I ran around like barnyard chickens. She was blowing on the top of the lamp, which in turn, spewed copious amounts of ash into the air. Having been in the midst of changing clothes, I was unfortunately, still running around in my bra. I hurried to the window and wrenched it open. Much to my instant dismay, I quickly realized that the window was just below the rain of dripping liquid plastic and fiery ashes. As my friend continued to blow on the fire, I ran to the kitchen to get a wet towel to throw over the flame. All the while, we yelled back and forth about what to do, and neither of us agreed with the other. This wasn't a time to sit and compromise, so we each went about our distraught business separately.

She, eventually, yelled that the fire was out and began prying what was left of my puppet friend off of the carpet. I yelled that there was a fan and gave vague directions about where she might locate it, as I scurried around the house opening doors and windows.

Miraculously, she found the fan, plugged it in, and the smoke, along with the lung-clogging stink of burnt plastic, began to drift out of the house. We looked at ourselves, her in her new outfit she had bought that day and me in my underwear, both of us covered in ash and smoke. Awesome. Fifteen minutes until guests arrive. "I'll get the wine," I said.

Please Keep Your Seatbelt Fastened at All Times

I feel like the last few weeks, life has been racing by at breakneck speed. Work has picked up. My caseload of families is huge. Trying to fit everyone in to one week has proven challenging. Plus, I have a friend visiting from out of town, which takes up free time I would, otherwise, spend paying bills, balancing my checkbook, and cleaning my bathroom. I have to say, I'm happy for the distraction, no matter how irresponsibly it makes me act.

Life is pretty amazing. Human connection is magical. I enjoy watching every day go by, even as quickly as it's seemed, recently.

Oh, and I need so much more sleep.

Smell My Ovary... I Mean Finger

In the very recent past, several people have told me how good I smell. Every few weeks, this happens for a few days in a row and then goes away as quickly as it started. It always strikes me as a little odd, since I am generally not wearing any perfumes or smelly lotions when they comment on my pleasant odor.

I had a theory and decided to research it by watching my calendar closely. It appears as though I was correct in my assumption. The people who tell me I smell good during these concentrated snippets of time are always men. As it turns out, when I receive comments from these complimentary gentlemen about my pleasant frangrance, unbeknownst to them, I am ovulating. Without fail, I get comments from men who believe they are smelling my shampoo when they are actually smelling my fertility. Watch out, here comes an egg!

Also interesting is that we have a segment of our DNA called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). This complex codes our immune system information. Studies have proven that women can detect a man's MHC by smell. It is likely, however, yet unproven, that men can do the same with women's MHC. And it gets more interesting (perhaps only to my geeked-out psychology mind). Research has found that women are attracted to men with opposite MHC coding, meaning his immune system is very different from hers. According to my favorite scholar, Darwin, and his theory of evolution, this diversity in the MHC (immune system) part of human DNA makes for stronger babies.

I find these human body magic tricks fascinating, so I looked it up online. This article says more about the subject.

New Lunch Strategy

In case you haven't noticed, rich people get cool things handed to them. It seems strange, given that they could afford to buy the things people throw at them. However, the fact remains, it seems that the richer a person is, the more free stuff they can acquire.

The other day, I stopped by Whole Foods to buy a salad for lunch. I've found that if you're a small person who doesn't eat much, salad by the pound at Whole Foods can be a bargain for lunch. Normal-sized people, not so much. I've priced the merchandise, and I have to say, only rich people could spend $5 on a bottle of salad dressing at Whole Foods with a clear conscience. Or, perhaps, people who are having a salad emergency and happen to be trapped in a location where there is nowhere else to by endive.

So, there I was, searching for lunch... but I parked on the opposite end of the store than I usually do, necessitating a stroll through the produce section on my way to the salad bar. Imagine my glee when I saw that they had fruit, avocados, tomatoes in olive oil with basil... all cut up prettily, ready for tasting! Needless to say, much like the middle-class midwesterner that I am, I grazed my way to the back of the store. Then, in order to look official, I purchased some gum and walked out.

So, my new strategy is to go, incognito, to places that rich people frequent and eat up all of their yummy perks.

Being a Girl

Yes, I like being a girl. It's nice to remember that, sometimes. I think that, despite being repressed in our society and coaxed into believing silly things like 'being young and beautiful is the only way to get attention', we have much less stringent societal boundaries. For example, a woman can fix motorcycles, and that makes her intriguing and sexy. If a man steps out of his gender role to do manicures, it's gay and can get him beat up.

Mostly, I love that women are allowed to cry. Sometimes, this gets us labeled moody... even crazy. But there is nothing like a torrential release of emotions to shine up a dusty soul. Everyone gets to laugh. Men get to be angry (it makes women into bitches, so we don't get to express that one so much). But women... women get to cry. Sad crying. Happy crying. Just plain 'overwhelming emotional experience' crying. We are so lucky.

And we get to have insight about people that's taken seriously. Mostly by other women, but still... It's something incredible to understand humankind on a level like women are socialized to do. To read body language, to care for people, to see into other's hearts they way we're shown to do as children... it's a gift, really. Some men have it too, but they aren't groomed for it in our society the same way women are. It rocks being a woman, for the most part.

Oh, and the part about making people inside like a human bread machine? Very, very cool. I can be food and shelter. How cool is that?! I hope I get a chance to do that someday. It sounds neato.

Grown Up Stuff Sucks Sometimes

I'm at work, and I really want to be at home. I have a client at 7:00pm, so I have to be here until at least 8:00pm. To make it worse, I'm not even at my own office. I'm in a satellite office 30 miles south of my house. So, when I leave work tonight, I'll have a half hour drive ahead of me before I can collapse on to my couch and stare at the ceiling in peace.

There is something fundamentally lonely about being the last person leaving a huge, dark, empty building, and walking across the vacant parking lot to a solitary car, which is parked at the far end of a vast expanse of nothingness.

I can picture the scene now. I can hear my voice echoing as I yell, "Hello?" But, alas, this unrequited greeting will hang in the air, and I will sigh and slump into the driver's seat of my car in the post-dusk gloom of an empty office complex, start my engine, and drive off to where the people are, at last.