Easter Parade.
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Five Good Things: Niecy Nash Edition
Do you guys think Niecy Nash is a drag queen? A little bit I do.
ANYWAY.
1. Ask and you shall receive: my jury duty got cancelled today, which means I’ve got myself an unexpected Friday off, and it is seventy degrees outside. Am erranding, thrifting, planting, writing, baking, and generally bringing the funk. Happy, happy.
2. Tom, in conversation last night: “He didn’t believe me, because he doesn’t know what a maniac you are.” Also we went for a walk to Carson Beach and I told him all about how when I was in seventh grade we acted out the Stations of the Cross and all the robes smelled like the kids who had worn them before you and this girl in my class made up R-rated lyrics to “We You There When They Crucified my Lord,” and Tom went to Catholic school too and he knew exactly what I was talking about.
3. An Education: completely lovely and affecting even though it stars Creepy Peter Saarsgard as Creepy Peter Saarsgard. Plus it really made me want to get a spiffy dress and some Audrey Hepburn sunglasses and jet over to Paris for a little while and practice being fabulous.
4. I mentioned last week that I was jonesing for prints for the kitchen. Thanks to everybody for your suggestions–Kim, especially, was a total Soldier of Art. I was looking for something that elicited some kind of gut happiness, and I’m delighted to report that the 8×10 prints by NayArts had me throwing my head back and dying of glee. I bought five of them, and cannot wait until my kitchen walls are adorned with reminders like “I love banjo music” and “Let’s pretend we are secret agents.”
5.. My tax refund is enough for a plane ticket to London in the fall. I’M JUST SAYING.
Okay. I’m going outside now.
“I’m from New York. I will kill to get what I need.” (Thursday Random)
* This week, frankly, has been balls. And nothing bad even happened. In fact, stuff has actually been pretty positive writing-wise, and Tom grocery shopped and cleaned the bathroom while I was babysitting last night, neither of which I had even mentioned needed doing. Dear Tom, you are and continue to be amazing. But honestly, it’s just been a lot of after-work obligations and not getting home until eleven every night and schlepping all over creation with my giant work bag and waiting for the bus and JURY DUTY and trying to cram stuff I actually like to do into ten-minute increments here and there and feeling like I’m only giving half my attention to everything. It just starts to chafe after awhile and makes me feel kind of vulnerable and lost. However: there is a boyfriend and a giant cocktail waiting for me at the end of this day, and I will persevere. Also, Ash has a great post up about doing nothing which I really, really liked.
* Current musical obsessions: everything by The Script, One Republic’s Waking Up, Gaga. Also, you all should read this article because it is HI-larious.
* To be filed under: “Romantic Movies I Will Write One Day”: the one about the brothers who have to clean our their dead parents’ house and fall in love with the same girl, the one about the family restaurant, the one with the lead written specifically for Handsome Shane West.
* Joshilyn Jackson’s The Girl Who Stopped Swimming: fine, but ultimately obvious and disappointing (and a little offensive, actually, if I put my Lit Major goggles on…?). Dear Frankie: such a freaking delight, and if you still think Gerard Butler is a zero after watching this movie you can just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong. Dreams From My Father: burning a hole in my purse at this very moment. At home: The Brothers Bloom and An Education. Will let you know how it goes.
* I have a nifty new Sigg bottle with a nifty K. Barteski design on it. I probably should stop complaining.
What is UP?
I also broke the bagel embargo of 2010, and it was totally worth it.
A few weeks ago when I was having some vague organizational thoughts re: this blog, it occurred to me that I’d been tending to post food-y, recipe-ish stuff on Tuesdays. Brilliant! thought I. Tuesday will be Eat Here Feel Good Day on kitchendoor, and I will be well on my way to running the kind of immaculately designed, pristinely executed blog where all the days are themed and awesome and you don’t rattle on about the new Gaga song (ALEJANDRO, oh my God) in the middle of talking about the cobbler you made last night.
photo: the weblicist
Of course, today is Tuesday, and I have done absolutely no cooking in the last week save the grilled cheese I made for Jackie on Saturday afternoon (which she did pronounce excellent, probably because I used about half a brick of cheddar). So, no recipes today. I did, however, do some serious eating while I was in New York, including a most delicious tomato-mozzarella-pesto number from Cafe Lalo (yes! That Cafe Lalo, of You’ve Got Mail fame. I nearly died of glee) and a caramelized apple/brie/bacon omelette from Deluxe that was made even more delightful by the fact that I ate it while smashed into a corner booth with three most excellent brunch companions and a giant mug of coffee. Topics covered: where we are going to find a rich old lady to finance our farm, Gerard Butler: zero or hero?, the fact that I am going to have to break down and read something by (groan) David Foster Wallace. But mostly we stuffed our faces.
In other food news, I’d like to try and feed both my boyfriend and myself something more than tuna from a can at some point this week, which considering what my datebook is looking like is probably impossible, but what can I say, sometimes a guy just wants the impossible (You’ve Got Mail quote!! See what I did there?). Am thinking about grilling, Barefoot in Paris, experimenting with the bread book I got for Christmas, and something special for Lost tonight.
Tell me what you’re eating.
Fact.
Every morning on the bus I pass this sign that says, “Cash for your Warhol! Call this number!” and every morning I wonder who these people are that think the riders of the Number 9 bus out of Southie of all places have these Warhols just lying around that they’re dying to unload to some sketchy person that put up a sign.
Unless by “Warhol” they actually mean “crack”. Then I would understand it.
Weekend was smashing. Pictures to come.
Five Good Things: Mobile Edition
1. Am off to New York for the weekend to see a gaggle of my best soul sisters, biological and not. Am posting on the Bolt Bus via Ye Olde WordPress iPhone App. How nifty.
2. Tom is so on board with the Spring Cure, it’s hilarious. We spent an hour and a half at Ikea last night, coming away with a bunch of deck stuff and some storage solutions for the bathroom that will hopefully make it look less like it belongs to a bunch of frat boys (also he offered to buy me a hot dog, but I respectfully declined). Plus we keep yelling “SPRING CURE” everytime we throw something away, which made it sort of fun to clean out the fridge.
3. The first line of the story I’m working on: “Three weeks after Lee has emergency surgery at Mass General to amputate both his legs above the knee, Erin starts calling him and hanging up.” You’d want to publish that story if you were the editor of some snooty journal, right? Um. Right?
4. Having finally made the switch to google reader. What a thing of beauty that is.
5. I think there may be a record player in my immediate future. Must find a place to put it. SPRING CURE!
Thursday Random.
* Jennie turned me onto the Spring Cure over at apartmenttherapy, and while I can tell you we are not about to paint all our furniture white and fill the house with soothing river rocks, it’s awfully nice to think about chucking some of the garbage and cleaning up a bit. Feeling inspired, I cycloned through the rooms last night while I waited for Tom to get home and tossed no fewer than six different items, including a winter coat that had seen much better days, two cheapie scarves that looked more like cleaning rags, some sweet but seldom-used dessert plates that are off to a brand new home, and two giant tubs of protein powder that expired in 2008. I…don’t even want to talk about that last thing. I’m lucky they hadn’t gotten up and walked across the room.
* What I would love to know: why, when they spent all that money to redo the Copley T station, they made the doors too heavy for me to open without a) looking like a total spaz or b) help.
* Also! Am looking for some cool graphic posters for my kitchen: three of them, in fact, about 11×18 inches each. Have been trolling etsy and am so far am liking these, these, these, and these, but am not in desperate love with any of them and am open to suggestions. Thoughts? Anybody? Also…somebody tell me how you store your cookbooks.
*Because I know Erin, at least, is watching Lost along with me: Richard Alpert! On a horse! With flowing locks!
* Am back on paperbackswap with a vengeance. Listed 13 books last night. Am more than a little thrilled.
* Finished Mere Christianity, which was surprisingly lovely. Fell asleep during Angels and Demons, which was unsurprisingly dull.
* Tonight: chicken! Ikea! Netflix!
I have seen the future, and the future is bacon jam.
Ever since the delightful Miss Megan brought bacon jam to book club on Sunday, I have been literally unable to stop talking about it. I tell everyone I see. I am an evangelist. “Do you KNOW what I ate the other day?” I ask them, then pause dramatically before the big reveal. The pause is very important.
The problem with preaching the gospel of bacon jam is that the general public, thus far, has been less receptive than I had perhaps expected. Tom just kind of stared at me when I told him about it. My mom was all, “Bacon what?” And Sierra was ballsy enough to flat-out say it sounded revolting, and she is lucky we agree on every other topic under the sun (with the possible exception of Joseph Gordon Leavitt ) because frankly, that’s a dealbreaker, ladies.
Maybe the world at large just doesn’t share my particular enthusiasm for bacon, although I can’t imagine that is the case. Instead, I suspect the problem is that when you say “bacon jam,” (after the dramatic pause of course), people reflexively picture a jar of bright red Smuckers with some pork suspended in it.
THAT IS NOT WHAT BACON JAM IS.
There’s nothing gelatinous happening here. Honest. Instead, bacon jam is more like a tapenade–a spicy, salty, smoky, bacony delight that you spread on the vehicle of your choice along with (dramatic pause) guacamole, or peanut butter, or chocolate. Megan put it on a s’more. I tried it with some cheese dip. I am here to tell you, friends, that bacon jam just might be the dark-wash-skinny-jeans of the culinary world: it goes with everything.
World without end, amen.
(Recipe is here, at Homesick Texan. Go forth. Seriously.)
Once You Kill a Cow, You Gotta Make a Burger.
Things that were effing AMAZING about this weekend:
health care (you guys, I checked the Times website like fifty times on Sunday and I was walking down the street when I saw that it had passed and I literally fist pumped alone in the middle of the road [the second fist pump of the week, the first having occurred the moment Josh Holloway showed up shirtless on Lost last Tuesday]). Dear President Obama, I LIKE YOUR STYLE; the idea that at some point in time, Lady Gaga explained her idea for the “Telephone” video to Beyonce and Beyonce was like, “hell to the yeah, that’s flipping AWESOME, I would love to dress in a unitard made entirely of breakfast food and poison a diner full of awful men”; the fact that I ate BACON JAM with peanut butter and it was like a giant mouthful of heaven; that I saw a drunk man throw a chicken leg across a subway car; the conversations Tom and I have when he gets home from work early in the morning and I have fallen asleep in front of Roseanne and how they always include me accusing him of trying to bully me into taking my contact lenses out. also that he said the following sentence to me, and it was true: “Only you would show up at a bar with a purse full of pork butt”; being in the middle of writing three different stories; learning about animal husbandry at book group (I told you I would mention it); being halfway through Mere Christianity and thinking, I wish we had read this in Catholic school; it’s springtime. it’s monday. things are good.
Five Good Things: Dollar Short Edition
1. You GUYS, it is 72 degrees in Boston today. Last weekend I was wearing my winter coat, and this morning I went to brunch (Greek omelette with feta and olives, what what) in shorts and flip-flops. New England is so incredibly weird and awesome sometimes. It’s supposed to be forty and rainy on Monday, but that is A-okay.
2. Who has two thumbs and froze six quarts of chicken stock this week? THIS GUY. I put it in fancy jars and everything. Come over and we’ll cook some dinner.
3. Teaching myself to make marshmallow tomorrow for book club (at least, that is the hope. Otherwise, I will be teaching myself to buy a giant bag of Kraft Jet Puffed). Our theme is BBQ. I’m bringing the s’mores.
4. Tom telling me we should go ahead and sell the extra sofa on Craigslist and put the money toward this desk from Pottery Barn, which has literally been my dream writing desk since before I met him in 2002. You have to be pretty nerdy to have a dream writing desk. I am pretty nerdy.
5. I’m off to go sit on the deck and read for awhile until it’s time to go meet Abbey for cocktails. I reckon I might just wear a dress.
Happy weekend, loves.