That's Empress to You

My Day in the Kitchen

Made ramen for breakfast. Prepped ahead of time: cut open outer package and inner foil packet and arranged them neatly on counter while water was boiling. Put in egg (see swirling froth in center) to simulate actual nutrition.

 

Made chicken soup, but overcooked the egg noodles. Picked out chicken, carrots and celery, using a strainer, spoons, and several bowls. Finally resorted to using my fingers. Recooked egg noodles and put it all back together again.  

 

Cooked "beets" for 2 1/2 hours because they didn't seem to get done. Finally took them off stove. They taste like nail polish remover. I have no idea what this food is. The house smells so bad we may need to evacuate.

 

Determined by clever use of internet that Quince ($4.99/lb. at Bi-Rite) is inedible unless cooked. Too cheap to buy more to make poached Quince, or Quince jam or whatever. Also, still don't know how to pronounce Quince.

 

Created extremely effective fruit fly trap by placing tomato and plum scraps in container, sealing it with paper, poking small holes in the paper with a pencil and watching for hours as fruit flies crawl in and find themselves unable to escape, outsmarted, because they're fruit flies and I'm a human.

Lucky Me

For those who think I am negative and that I have unfairly gathered to my breast all the luck in the world, leaving none for anyone else, I present this offering.

Here are all the things I love and for which I feel so lucky:
•    I love my extremely beautiful, comfortable, well-designed house, which was totally free.
•    I love my son who was born toilet-trained, speaking 3 languages and holding doors open for women.
•    I love having an unusually high IQ.
•    I love my brilliant, handsome, hilarious, incredibly hot boyfriend who adores me and is also incredibly hot.  
•    I love my SFMTA parking card.
•    I love the way I look fabulous in all my tres cher haute couture clothing.
•    I love speaking French so fluently not even the French can understand my subtleties of expression.
•    I love my car, which looks fabulous too, despite not having been washed since 2001.
•    I love the fact that red lights simply turn to green as I approach, and stores decide to hold 70%-off sales when they hear I might go shopping.
•    I love the little salons thrown by fascinating and accomplished friends, the recurring theme of which seems to be how talented and beautiful I am.
•    I love my shrink, who says I am a perfect specimen of mental health.
•    I love how all the tiny hindrances and insignificant misfortunes I have occasionally encountered have miraculously aligned themselves in such a way as to make for me an intensely lovely, satisfying, happy life. And whatever insane doubts you might have about any of the above, this is true.

I have only one question for those who feel compelled to comment about how much they hate and despise me and everything I write.  Are you handicapped in some way that makes navigating away from my site impossible?  Okay, maybe you are being held in a detention facility in an unidentified Midwestern state where they force poor, disadvantaged children of the mentally deranged to read the blogs of impossibly privileged rich women who have been handed all the advantages in the world and don’t appreciate a thing they have.  If so, poke your captors in the gills… oh no, that’s sharks.   Poke them in the eyes with your keys… oh right, you don’t have any keys, you’re a prisoner. Okay, just RUN.

Or someone has stolen your mouse, and despite saving and saving all the tips you are making at Starbucks serving pumpkin lattes to spoiled bitches like me, you just can’t seem to save enough to buy a new one.  So here you are with this terrible page open on your desktop, wanting nothing more than to read cheerful, inspiring messages on motivational sites.  Instead you are enervated and demoralized by this terrible cyber-blight that is ruining what could have been a truly wonderful life.  I’m so sorry.  Please email me your address and I’ll send you a cross-stitch pillowcase I’ve been working on that features quotes from “Tuesdays With Morrie.”  Front and back.

Or you enjoy making yourself miserable.  Huh.  Well, you can always try poking the shark in the gills...

Good move in a recession but no one ever accused me of having any sense

I quit my job. After over a year of standing on the corner hoping to get hit by a bus, or better yet, mugged by one of the neighborhood crackheads (more sympathy and a better story to tell) just so I wouldn’t have to trudge up to my office and spend 8 or more hours doing a job I found increasingly depressing and at which I was dismally bad, I finally quit.  Everyone is relieved.

I am relieved because I no longer have to convince a funder that the test scores of disadvantaged youths will be improved by seeing a performance art piece featuring a parrot singing the Star Spangled Banner.  Which is not to say that disadvantaged youth, or anyone else will not benefit from the parrot/Star Spangled Banner show.  It may offer valuable insights into patriotism and art and learned behaviors.  However, children still need to be taught in a classroom with heat, by a teacher with actual knowledge of math concepts.  I am so relieved to be done with trying to bullshit everyone into thinking that a trained-animal theater group can accomplish everything this pathetic government cannot or will not even attempt to accomplish. 

Clients are relieved because they no longer have a fiction writer looking at their budgets and saying to herself, “Budgets, schmudgets.  Budgets are like boring passages describing a grape arbor, or a chapter devoted to a character’s Freudian dream. Let's get to the point: if we had any money we wouldn't be asking for any, so please give us some.  Now what's an asset again?" 

Funders are relieved because they no longer have to answer emails asking what is the maximum font size again.  Nor will I have terrible dreams about Tom Ridge conducting some children’s theater company’s NEA site visit, or Ben Bernancke auditing their project budget: 

My co-workers are relieved because I am not sitting next to them muttering swear words and threatening to put my fist through the Flintstone era computer that crashes every time I type the letter t. 

Instead I have decided to work part time in PR and use 2008 to finish my book. And maybe write a blog post now and again.   Aren't you just so relieved?

Stuff II

And why are there glue sticks neatly lined up in his bathroom cupboard?

To-do list for breaking up:

1. Notice yet again the one toothbrush in the toothbrush holder. Congratulate yourself on the money you will save on toothpaste.
2. Gather all the books he’s left around the house: horrifying battlefield accounts of this war or another, memoirs written by people who do things like get caught in avalanches, guides to thrilling heli-ski destinations – guy books you’d never read – but which break your heart to have to return. Feel grateful that you don't have to go to IKEA to buy another bookshelf after all.
3. Ignore the line on the income tax preparation form labeled Spouse, which you know will never bear his name. Think about how many new forms you will NOT have to fill out.
4. Smile about the last two gifts he gave you: pearl earrings and a gallon of windshield-wiper fluid. Recognize that… oh never mind.
5. Remind yourself again how much he’s hurt you.
6. Listen to lots of Fiona Apple because that woman is mad and minces no words about it.
7. Take a salsa class. Just don’t look at any of the pasty uncoordinated strangely-clad men. Think instead about what the instructor describes as every woman’s “mantiquilla.”
8. Dress nicely every day and remember that you are visible to the public. Do not, however, bother with mascara.
9. Stay far, far away from Gimme Shoes, even if they’re having a sale. Break-up shoes have no shelf-life. Except if they’re red.

Danger danger everywhere

Heather from Dooce posted a blog about worrying. Okay, so it was actually a post about losing her dog. But it was also about worrying. Of course she worries funnily but it got me thinking about what worries me and why.

What worries me most is not knowing what to worry about. I just know there’s some lurking danger I never thought about. I mean, I’m the one who forgot to teach Jackson to wash his neck until he was almost 5.

I did tell him to shout “No!” and run away if anyone tries to touch him inappropriately, but I forgot the part about poking them in the eyes and kneeing them in the balls. Fortunately one of his little friends gleefully supplied the information about the eye-pokes and testicle-strikes. And then at 18 months, he got lost at the California Academy of Sciences. I spent 15 agonizing minutes searching for him among the holiday crowds. It wasn’t until I found him crouching contentedly on a metal platform in the middle of a throng of people experiencing how an earthquake feels that I gave the If-You-Get-Lost talk: the one about finding a person in a uniform and knowing your parents’ names.

Recently Jackson and I were involved in a research study conducted through Kaiser about drug and alcohol use among teenagers. In my initial interview I was asked such questions as: Have you discussed your family’s rules about drug and alcohol use with your 11/12-year-old? I was shocked. Rules about drug and alcohol use? With 11 and 12-year-olds? With someone who wears blue braces and tops out at 85 lbs? We’ve talked about drugs – abstractly – but it never occurred to me that drug or alcohol use could even begin to be a problem for at least a few years.

I’ve managed to address dirty necks, purloined beer, stranger danger, and getting lost, but only by pure accident. The randomness of my worrying terrifies me. Someone needs to compile a list of things to worry about, divided into categories: age, gender, times of day, days of the week, geography, activity, height and musical taste. And weather conditions.

Top 10 Reasons I Hate San Francisco

I read in Leah Garchik's column in the Chronicle this morning that "...[Nancy] Pelosi's name, in a political number in 'Beach Blanket Babylon,' spurs a gasp of pleasure in the audience, says Jo Schuman Silver, and the politician will be a full-scale character - on a motorcycle as Leader of the Pack - by New Year's Eve." Which leads me to:

The Top 10 Reasons I Hate San Francisco:
1. Beach Blanket Babylon
2. Our constant gasping delight at our sheer wonderful-ness.
3. Our conviction that we are responsible for all good things but blameless for anything bad because after all we voted against it in a city-wide ballot proposition.
4. The way people don’t know how to negotiate a sidewalk or any other public space. (In cities like New York people use eye contact to determine right-of-way, and never stop dead in their tracks without looking behind them.)
5. San Francisco drivers who putter around in a coma until they see a red light, at which time they suddenly turn into Dale Earnhardt.
6. People who think pedestrianism is a political movement, and that car-ists are out to marginalize them.
7. Those 24-Hour-Fitness Fit Lite establishments that are popping up all over, with the perky employees that jump out and try to get you to join when you’re innocently walking down the block to pick up a dozen bagels and a pound of cream cheese.
8. MUNI, which is so unreliable a kid cannot take the train to school unless he wants to spend the entire year in detention for being late.
9. The neighborhood-specific superiority complex: Noe Valley because we’re environmentally conscious even though we’re rich, the Marina because our boob jobs are better than yours, the Mission because we wear funky clothes and think poor people are exotic even though we're rich, Pacific Heights because we’re rich, the Outer Sunset because… um. Never mind.
10. Public officials who try to do things like ban public sculptures because blind people can’t see them.

And don't get your knickers in a twist, the Top 10 Reasons to Love SF follow shortly. As soon I can think of the next 9.

9 Weirdo Traits

Margo, who writes Of Fish and Family tagged me to write this blog, which in my navel-gazing, procrastinating way I find really amusing. I’m challenged to list 9 weird things I do. Margo admits in writing the following: “I change my clothes so often before leaving the house that when I actually do end up wearing the first thing I've put on, I congratulate myself. Out loud - in the form of a question: Y, aren't you proud of me for wearing the first thing I put on?” Personally I don’t think that’s weird. What would be weird is if after all that changing she screamed in horror when she saw her reflection in a store window. Which I’m sure she’s never done. Being such a shining example of mental health. As we see each day on her blog.

But here, without interruption, are my 9 weirdo traits:

1. I like to cut bagels unevenly so I can experience different textures as I eat them, which I do every morning for breakfast unless I’m in a foreign country where they only have tortillas. The full range of bagel experience: hard, chewy, half-toasted, very crispy… mmm, mmm good.

2. I save more plastic containers and jars than we could possibly ever use because you never know when you might need to transport a urine sample, complete an art project, or freeze a gallon of chicken stock you will then throw away sometime in 2008.

3. I will eat popcorn anytime and devise any excuse to do so. I have been known to cancel dinner dates because I would rather eat popcorn.

4. I hate talking on the phone, resent it when it rings and will do anything rather than dial someone’s number.

5. I never throw away books even when I hate them. Except one time, when I flung an incredibly irritating Ellen Gilchrist novel against the wall repeatedly until it fell apart like an overcooked pot roast and then I stuffed it in the garbage.

6. I ski with my legs about 3 feet apart. That’s also how I appeared in each and every one of my wedding pictures. At least Jackson can spot his mom on the slopes.

7. When the waiter starts reciting the specials I lose consciousness and recover only in time to say, “I’ll have the Caesar Salad.”

8. I want to marry Anthony Lane. Yeah, yeah, I know he’s already married. I read her book, which I guess you could say was pretty funny.

9. I have no sense of direction. I invariably turn the wrong way when exiting an elevator which isn’t that bad because how lost can you get in an office building or hotel. However, when I realize that even though I’ve driven to this very place 7 times before and I still don’t know how to reverse the directions and find my way home I begin to sweat and weep. The good part is that Jackson thinks I'm joking and has furthermore gained incredible bladder control during those long stretches of travel in the wrong direction.

I tag Susan and Anali. Heather, we already know about you.

tech support

• Just got off phone.
• Trying to get my internet connection going again.
• Hyperventilating after 2 hours of tech support, first with SBC then D-Link.
• Psyche so fried can no longer find pronouns in vocabulary.
• Cannot access memory regarding use of paragraphs.
• Have been called 1) Liza 2) Alissa 3) Litha 4) Sir.

Spoke to someone with heavy Indian accent and the unlikely name of Paolo. Paolo gave me a case number which I found reassuring but not helpful because none of the subsequent tech support associates could understand the letters of the alphabet or the English pronunciation of numbers.

Person number two breathed so heavily into the phone I could understand only every other word. He said it was static. It was not static; it was Hannibal Lecter. I hung up before he could find me and stuff me into his Crock Pot.

The next guy assumed the exasperated tone used by an older brother trying to teach his 3-year-old sister to play a complicated game such as Axis and Allies because none of his friends is available to play: “No [stupid], you only need to roll two dice, OKAY? Get it [moron]?”

The last conversation went something like this:
“Okay, okay, you can go to your computer now Litha.”
“I’m at my computer.”
“Okay, so you’re sitting at your computer, Litha?”
“Um. Yes. I’m sitting at my computer.”
“Is it turned on, Litha?”
“Oh my God, you mean my computer has to be turned on?”

This is not an interesting blog, but I’m posting it just because I can. Sir.

thanks for sharing

There’s a letter to the editor in this week’s New York Times Sunday Style section. It addresses the very serious subject of… large handbags. “To the Editor:” this reader writes, “I take issue with ‘Big Bag, Bigger, Biggest,’ [Pulse, Sept.3]. The text that accompanies the photographs says that these purses are perfect for carrying as much as ‘three diet delivery meals and can double as a refuge when one needs to ‘hide from those hectoring paparazzi.’ I find this kind of subliminal endorsement of starvation as cutting-edge fashion to be the kind of justification that keeps women in a cycle of self-doubt and self-loathing.” Right. Because that’s what blurb writers really want to do: imprison women in a cycle of self-loathing. The reader might not like the prose style, and the subject of bags may not move her, but that’s another issue.

And when Heather from Dooce, blogs about her skin cancer, she is accused of trying to stir up drama. Come on. Her skin cancer may not be interesting to everyone, but I doubt Heather is going around trying to elicit pity from unsuspecting people worldwide by flaunting her naked terror. I mean really, if you don’t want your drama stirred, take it somewhere else.

There’s a certain kind of person who is born to be offended. These people also seem to possess a gene that: 1) prevents them from understanding the use of irony, which doesn’t by law require a reader to think the writer is funny or interesting or even successfully ironic 2) makes it impossible for them to understand the function of writing, which is expression – often self-expression – which similarly doesn’t mean everyone in the world has to understand or empathize with everything they read 3) destroys the ability to deposit a newspaper in the recycling bin or press the close button on their computers 4) makes them write letters to the editor or comment on blogs, screaming about the injustice of it all.

It’s all about unfairness. The Dooce commentators are outraged that she gets all this attention for all her so-called problems when they don’t get any attention at all for their much worse and more interesting ones.

The handbag lady is seething with the sense of injustice. Although she claims to be speaking for women everywhere I know very few women who feel victimized by off-the-cuff photo captions that appear in the fluffiest section of the newspaper.

Some people call this Borderline Personality Disorder, one symptom of which is chronic resentment. Others call it simply: unpleasant.