Brunched and dinnered and cooked and baked and packed and watched (disturbing: the guy in The Wackness is Josh from Drake and Josh! Truly upsetting cognitive dissonance) and read and napped and chatted and churched and book clubbed.
Tonight: flip-flop shopping, and The West Wing on dvd. Word.
001. UH, excuse me, did you know that this was a thing?
If you did, WHY have you not told me about it? Whatever, it doesn’t matter, I can’t even be bothered to muster up any anger, because I am too busy imagining myself on the day I get home from Mexico with half gallons of all three flavors (YES, they make Tagalong kind and Thin Mint kind also, I KNOW) and a tablespoon. Or a trowel.
002. It is FRIDAY, which could theoretically be on the list every week, but this week in particular it means Thai with Abbey and Mari, followed by brunch with Haney and dinner with Leslie and BOOK CLUB (I’m making a key lime pie with a coconut topping, because the theme of my book club this month is “margaritas”. See also: my book club is awesome) and trying to navigate some computer stuff and PACKING and maybe an art project because I am feeling itchy that way and maybe The Wackness, which I got from Netflix but am not terribly optimistic about. Anyway, the point is, today is the mother of all Fridays, and I am so glad to wave it a hello.
003. Tom picked me up at the T last night because it was pouring rain and I was soaking wet and bedraggled, even though it meant losing his Hollywood parking spot in front of the house, which like, if you know Tom, he takes his parking spots REALLY SERIOUSLY. And then he listened to me talk about how I am going to invent hand socks all the way home (HAND SOCKS: the wave of the future. One day I will tell you all about my plan for them. And also how I want to start a Boston-based cold weather accessory company called Witch’s T*t that sells both hand socks and winter hats with ponytail holes in the back. But that day is not TOday).
004. Bethany: Game Change is awesome and smarmy and SO SCANDALOUS. I love so much about the things it chooses to be. Also it says the nastiest things about Elizabeth Edwards, and I LOVE Elizabeth Edwards, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know what a crazy biotch she really is. And it totally confirms Michelle’s status as Our Number One Awesome No Bullshit Heroine Tied With Beyonce and Lady Gaga.
005. My sister is seeing John Mayer tonight. I told her to make sure and call me during the good parts, though I probably didn’t need to. We have been calling each other during the good parts for 22 years.
It’s safe to say that the checkout clerk at the library did not know exactly what to make of me. I just have really diverse tastes in media, OKAY?
Other Thursday randomness:
001. Kim, who is cool, gave me an award on her blog this week! Kim is a rock star for many reasons, not the least of which is that she’s the one who taught me about putting salsa on chicken in the crockpot, which I did last night (plus black beans and cheddar cheese over whole wheat pasta; an ugly dinner, to be sure, but an absolutely delicious one). Anyway, thanks Kim! You are a total peach.
002. I’m doing the gradual self-tanner stuff. It smells like tarter sauce, and I am still ghost white, but my hope is that by next Tuesday I will look as Italian as my last name suggests I am. Or, alternately, as Italian as my sister looks in her prom photos. ALSO, yesterday I got my hair cut and the hairdresser told me all about how he is going to a clothing-optional resort in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday. He also told me that I look like Anne Hathaway and that Tom is a lucky man. I was like, right on, dude. You GO to that clothing-optional resort.
003. Things I have recently signed up for: Big Brothers Big Sisters, and an American Express Blue card. I also bought two pairs of shorts off the Abercrombie Kids website. Don’t judge me.
004. Shutter Island: stupid. Nothing Like the Holidays: also stupid, but super enjoyable. Katie Goes to Mexico, my new iTunes playlist: decidedly not stupid.
Happy Thursday. I am roaring ahead like a cross-country train.
Apples, bananas, and oranges with some chocolate chips zapped in the micro. Instant fondue.
Have also dipped: pears, and Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies.
Oh MY, this was a good fruit salad. No small feat, considering we are in the miserable throes of a New England February: the farmer’s market is a distant memory, and Stop + Shop produce is all hideously expensive and anemic-looking. But I wanted to make something fresh and light for Tom’s birthday brunch, so I went to Deb for suggestions: while her winter fruit salad is a thing of great and terrible beauty, I futzed with it some (I am, by nature, a futzer).
You will need: 3 gala apples (chopped) + 2 green pears (also chopped) + 1 red pear (keep chopping) + a handful of golden raisins + a handful of dates (pitted and cut in half) + a handful of walnuts + 1 tablespoon of brown sugar + 1 teaspoon of good vanilla. Put everything in a giant bowl and mix it up with clean hands.
Share with friends. Or sit on the couch with the whole bowl in your lap, which is what I am planning to do when I make this again tomorrow morning.
Steak and scrambled eggs with broccoli, onions, and cheese; parmesan scones; Meg’s baked french toast; and the best fruit salad I have ever made (details tomorrow). And obviously: coffee. And also booze.
Plus there was shopping! And couch-cuddling! And Band of Brothers on HBO!
Happy birthday, Tom Colleran. I love you so effing much.
1. I wiped out HARD CORE on some ice outside my apartment this morning (I mean, of course I did), but my coffee emerged completely upright and unscathed. Amazing, right? My knee might be sporting a purple bump the size of a golf ball, but I am happily caffeinated, and clearly that is all that matters. Plus I think bruises make me look kind of badass. At least that’s what I tell myself when I fall down.
2. Nefarious sidewalk glaciers not withstanding, I got my first whiff of spring last night. It was still kind of light when I got home, and everything on the street smelled fresh and wet. It’s coming. I just know it. Am imagining flowers and herbs and garden parties in preparation. Which reminds me: does anybody out there have a recommendation for a good book about container gardening? Am determined that THIS will be the year I don’t kill everything I try to grow.
3. “Making shapes” is a Tom expression. It means getting a move on. “Ooh, it’s late. I gotta make shapes.” Or “I made real shapes on that project today.” In any case, I may or may not have made serious writing shapes yesterday, and even if nothing comes of it I am feeling pretty good. I love the smell of productivity in the morning, and all that.
4. Speaking of Tom, he is turning twenty-five on Sunday. You guys. My boyfriend is a quarter-century old. Yowza. To celebrate: steak and eggs brunch at our house tomorrow morning, followed by a fancy dinner one night next week. He’s a nerd so he’s working on his birthday. I might or might not bring him some cupcakes.
5. Two weeks from today I will be sitting on a beach in Mexico, drinking Coronas and sunning myself, possibly with one of those big reflective cardboard things girls used in the eighties. If that isn’t good news, then I just don’t know what is.
Happy weekend! Also, thanks for all your sweetness about my secret lives. I so loved reading about yours.
“Nothing wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
I love that quote.
Lent started yesterday. I actually really like Lent; I’m the product of thirteen years of Catholic school and to me these forty days mean get ready. For Easter, if that’s your jam. For spring. For sacrifices and fish on Fridays and a pair of droopy three dollar L’eggs pantyhose underneath a musty-smelling purple gown for the Passion play (in eighth grade I made my debut as Crying Woman #2 and we all went to the diner afterward, grilled cheese and french fries and a crazy run around the parking lot, the smell of the pavement wet under our feet). I am from school uniforms and novenas and devotional candles, and the ritual of this season appeals to me very much.
I don’t practice, really. I’ve spent a lot of my early twenties feeling weird about my religion, the nasty underbelly of it, the yuckiness inherent in being sixteen and a girl and spending forty hours a week with nuns who want nothing more than for you to shut up and write neatly and cross your ankles and obey. I objected. I thrashed. I moved in with my boyfriend and I stopped going to church and I read Catcher in the Rye which, I’d like you to know, was banned at my high school.
This is not to say I don’t miss it. I miss it like I miss my own family. Figure out the church thing has been on my list of resolutions for three years running, but for whatever reason I haven’t been able to get there–like that part of me was still smarting, or something. Like my new life was still too new. Still, I’ve been feeling lately like maybe I’m getting closer to ready. Like maybe this Lent might be a good time to experiment–to open a book or slide into a pew or hand over my worries, finally, to something that is bigger than me.
Am trying not to waste my body. Am trying not to waste my heart.
001. i get a book deal and live in a giant high rise in miami for the six months of the year boston is simply too frigid to stand. in the afternoons i swim in the pool.
002. i move to upstate new york to start the farm with the girls; we keep chickens and goats and robust farm boys. marissa brings our goods to market in a truck.
003. i go to nova scotia where i live in a garret apartment and cultivate a blueberry patch and wear men’s galoshes all the time.
004. i stay here and restore a crumbling victorian house with a pull chain toilet and a cupboard under the stairs.
005. i move to queens and work in a coffee shop. i let my accent hang out and call people hon as a reflex, without sounding condescending and affected.
006. i go home, help my mom sort the house out, solve mysteries.
007. i get up at three and bake bread in the dark. i take no milk in my coffee.
008. i move to the desert and haunt honkey-tonks in a dress and a beaten pair of cowboy boots, dancing to pasty cline.
009. i have four children.
010. i have a motorcycle.
011. i have perfect vision.
012. i find the town near bari where my grandfather’s parents came from, and i plop myself down in the square until someone teaches me italian.
013. i move to california to develop dramedies for the CW. i take up yoga and prove myself quite flexible. i keep a cactus at my door.
014. i work in a dog grooming parlor in converse and a hanes t-shirt, whispering to rottweilers and waiting for whatever might happen.
015. i move in with my sister in manhattan. i cook. she does the dishes. we argue, but not that much. i start a wildly successful blog about the landscape of television in the age of snookin’ for love, and it pays all my bills henceforth in perpetuity.
i could keep going. i always can. does anybody else do this? or is it just me?
