Hello giant David Wright! You are like a cuddly teddy bear! Even though you have not been playing very well (not that your teammates are any better), I want to hug you.
Yes, I know it must be hard to be a popular baseball player. Not only do attractive women throw themselves at you, but so do ones who look like 12 year old boys whose voices crack when they get excited.
Life must be very hard.
Husband bought a new car last week. He had been commuting an hour each way in a red PT Cruiser for the last four years. While there was nothing technically wrong with Fred the Red, and for a while his zippy style made up for what he lacked in comfort and pick up, Husband wanted a more comfortable ride to work. And also better traction for the winter.
The new car is a gray Audi A4. It is named Augustus Gloop. I suggested Augustus because I thought Augustus the Audi was funny, but more importantly, it is a reminder about greed. People who want too much might fall into a chocolate river and get stuck in a pipe. I’m not actually too worried about Husband suddenly becoming Gordon Gekko, as he admitted that he was sad that he was now driving the same boring albeit fancy car as every other person who works in finance.
We always wanted to put on a flame decal when we had Fred, but never got around to it. Maybe we can get some car magnets and detail Augustus. I want to make the Oompa Loompas proud.
Years ago, I decided that if I had pursued a different path in life and went to med school (my father always wanted a doctor) rather than dropping out of law school on the third day (my father always wanted a lawyer) and then attending grad school for public policy and then working for ten years and then attending grad school for creative writing, I would have become a gynecologist. Women’s health interests me and there is a need for doctors who are willing to do abortions. Probably my lack of early interest in science and math is a good thing, as I would have tried to open a practice and name it Cooter’s Garage. I could have made all sorts of jokes about checking under the hood and changing the oil and fine tuning the engine. However, Cooter’s Garage would not do custom detailing. We’d like our cars with floor mats.
After I visited my doctor today, who is an excellent health care provider and Mets fan, I took Tycho to the vet. Unlike me, he is having trouble maintaining himself and his fur is rather messy. The vet thinks that he has arthritis and can’t bend around to lick himself properly. (I don’t have arthritis, but I can’t do that either, nor would I want to.) She shaved his nether regions to help. He is not a happy rabbit right now. I definitely feel for him. I guess sometimes it makes a lot more sense to go furless.
And yes, I realize that the previous two paragraphs were not entirely related to one another, but sometimes I like a vague theme.
I came across this old post today while I was looking for something else and I cannot stop laughing. Unfortunately, the treasures depicted below were destroyed in a flood a few years ago. Tragedy.
Welcome back to Casa de Padres de Suzanne! For Part 2 of the tour of this fine piece of real estate, we shall visit the bathroom in the basement.
Beginning with what actually belongs in a bathroom, please direct your gaze to the right-hand side of the photo. Isn’t the toilet a lovely shade of peach? I know that the beige lid doesn’t match. Heck, it isn’t even the correct size. (It’s a smidge too large.) After the old one cracked, Sister’s Husband tried to buy a new seat at the flea, but the toilet seat dealer insisted that peach colored seats have not been available for years now. He did the best he could. At least the toilet usually flushes.
I’m not sure what the ginormous red bucket is for, but I suspect it is for when the ceiling leaks. Perhaps my parents would be kind enough to explain its function in the comments section, despite what I believe will be their extreme displeasure with this tour.
Moving the left, up against the wall is a snack table on wheels. I hope it is not down there so that people can enjoy a nice meal while they do their business. On the other hand, I hope it is not brought out of the bathroom to serve food to unsuspecting visitors in other rooms. Ever.
To the front of the snack tray and to the left are two partially broken lawn chairs. Obviously. Everyone stores their lawn furniture in their large second bathroom. I don’t even know why I am pointing it out.
The tool boxes are in front of the lawn chairs. If you are ever in the middle of a shit and need the peen of a hammer to pry it out, you are in luck! If you ever need a hammer while someone is in the bathroom taking a crap, you are literally up shit’s creek. Hopefully, the project can wait. (Perhaps this is why a nail was never driven into the living room wall so that Dennis Franz could be properly framed and hung?)
Another worthwhile object (Husband’s favorite) in the tool bucket is the hedge clipper. Now you know where to go to trim your bushes! (Ha ha ha ha!) Another one of Husband’s interests is the random outdoor lamp that is sitting just behind the enormous broom. And is that another snack table that the tool boxes are pinning to the wall all the way to the left? Why yes, I believe it is. Delicious!
Thanks for joining me on the tour of my parents’ downstairs bathroom. It has many things that a person might need to survive a disaster. Or at least bust out of the room after reclining on lawn chairs and dining off the snack trays. I’m sure that you cannot wait to visit someday!
The trolley that traveled through the streets of the Warsaw ghetto in May 1942 was red. I know this now because there are about two minutes in A Film Unfinished, a documentary about a propaganda film shot in the Warsaw ghetto in May 1942, that are in color. Not colorized, but actual color footage.
I couldn’t breathe for those few minutes of color. When I think about the Holocaust, it is in black and white. the images we have – photos and film – combined the bleakness of the situation make me forget that the world did, in fact, have color in it during those darkest times. To see it in color is to challenge everything.
The trolley rolls down the street, red. A girl wears a pink ribbon in her hair as she runs alongside a funeral process arranged by the Nazis for the purposes of their film. Another child has a red sweater. The procession passes by a brownish-reddish brick wall. The same brick wall that I touched in June. Even though I knew it was the same wall brick wall – that the color would not have been gray and black and white when it marked the boundary of the ghetto sixty-eight years before its rough exterior scratched my fingertips – it was like a parallel universe to see it as it was and as it is today.
Those short minutes in color, a side note in a film with many ideas, changed everything. Life was never black and white. I don’t know if there is more footage like that, but now that I’ve seen it, I am greedy for more.
There’s an excellent post over at BlogHer by Catherine Morgan about a new emergency contraceptive. Since it will do good things like help women not become pregnant if they don’t want to, ant-choice groups are protesting its approval. This is nothing new. What is news, though, was a comment left about how vitamin C can act as an abortifacient.
Can you believe that shit? Vitamin C is sold at pharmacies everywhere. Wal-Mart even has this dangerous baby killing weapon. Wal-Mart! They are baby killers, too! The FDA is in close cahoots with feminists, I tell you. Who knew that “alleviating the severity of a cold” was a euphemism for “yes, this will kill the innocent baby developing harmlessly inside your stomach, your cold heartless bitch.”
To put an end to this abomination, I am advocating to ban the sale of Vitamin C to women. Women are are essentially pre-pregnant at all times, and I would not want to do anything to let them control their destinies, like deciding whether or not they should reproduce and when.
Boycott the vitamin C industry and the fascist manhating women who run these businesses! Save the innocent unborn!
“I’m sorry you married a crazy person,” I said to Husband as I kissed him goodnight last night.
“That’s OK,” he replied. “I knew what I was getting myself into.”
“I didn’t mean crazy-fun. I meant having a life long struggle with depression. It’s not like I brought that up on the first date. That would be seriously stupid.”
“Actually, I think you might have.”
“Yeah…”
Fortunately, my dating incompetence worked out in this situation. Yeesh.
A raspberry bush grows in my parents’ backyard. It’s been there for at least twenty years, faithfully returning with its offerings of red gems every summer. As far as I remember, it just sprouted up one day and my mom thought it was a weed at first. Or my bubbe may have planted it. She did things like that in those days, just came over and planted herself in the grass and began seeding or transplanting.
When I was visiting my parents in July, my mom told me that the bush was bursting with fruit and I should pick some. One morning, I went outside with a plastic blue cereal bowl and filled it. Some of the raspberries were so ripe they crumbled as I pulled them off the stem. Others had little bugs on them or were partially eaten by whatever wildlife beat me to it.
I brought my brimming bowl inside. The raspberries were small, about half the size of those grown commercially. It had been a long time since I had fresh ones from the backyard. I popped a few in my mouth. The sweetness surprised me. The berries were small, but full of flavor. It made me sad that the ones at the store – even organic ones that sell for $5 or more a pint – were only half as delicious.
Maybe it is the pollution from the highway in front of my parents’ house that makes the raspberries so sweet.
The Mets have not even finished their season of implosion and stupidity and evil (i.e. – their closer, K-Rod, injured his thumb while punching his girlfriend’s father), it is hot and humid, and yet football is on TV. I suppose it is good that Husband can distract himself from the Mets with the Giants. As for me, I am disappointed that this is the second summer in a row that I have not gone to a baseball game.
At any rate, although there are two weeks of August left (fall for me starts on Sept. 1, calendar be damned), I am not entirely sorry it is over. I can’t complain about it too much. I traveled to Poland with my friend in June, I celebrated ten years of marriage with Husband in Montreal in July, and I relaxed with friends and family at a house in upstate New York in August. Plus there were the highs and lows of BlogHer 2010. I think that encapsulates this summer, though: really great times and some unpleasant lows in between.
The fall, which I hope like hell will not be an Indian summer, promises many exciting things. I will see my sister and nephew in early Sept., then later in the month jet off for a long weekend in Dublin to visit my cousin, who I have not seen in a year, which is wrong, wrong, wrong. I’m planning to visit my parents and grandmothers some time in Oct.
If all goes well, I’ll also get some stability in my “professional” life. I am still figuring out what I want to do when I grow up. It’s been a painful process. Not as painful as the punch K-Rod threw on his girlfriend’s father, but as painful as watching a Mets game these days.
Earlier this summer, a new study on Vitamin D deficiencies in Americans concluded that we should stop wearing so much sunscreen. After all the proselytizing about the dangers of skin cancer that had rained down on our ears for all these years, many people freaked out. I read the news, yawned, and moved on with my day. OK, maybe I gloated a little bit before I moved on.
I never wear sunscreen. I hate the way it feels on my skin, particularly my face. The lotions and sprays choke my pores and make my sweat greasy. I prefer to wear a ridiculous hat to protect my face and my neck when necessary. Usually I’m not out in a strong enough sun for long enough that the “when necessary” clause is applicable.
Many moons ago, as I discussed my family’s medical history with a doctor, she recommended that I take calcium pills in addition to eating calcium-rich foods. Since calcium is not absorbed without vitamin D, she told me to be sure to get some sunlight. “Just 15 minutes a day is more than enough,” she told me. I don’t always make that minimal amount, especially in winter, but as I walk about the city in my daily activities, it pleases me that my walks have a double bottom line.
Friends pleaded with me or scolded me about my lack of SPF. As a super whitey, I should worry about wrinkles and skin cancer. I agree that if I’m sitting out in the park for hours on end in the sun that I should slather myself up. Some bad burns have reminded me that, yeah, it is necessary to use sunscreen at times. But if I’m just running here and there, in and out of shelters and shade, it seems like overkill.
If I’m wrong, I’ll get skin cancer at worst (which is very bad) or at best be a shriveled, wrinkled prune by the time I’m 40 (at least I might fool people into thinking I’m wise or giving me senior citizen discounts). My bones will be strong, though, because I love my vitamin D and hate sunscreen.
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Name: Suzanne Reisman
Location: New York, NY
I'm a misanthropic humanist. While I'm a do-gooder by training and profession, I sort of also loathe people. Now I write, too.
COPYRIGHT: Please note that everything on this page is covered by my Creative Commons License, and should not be quoted without attribution, reproduced for profit, or altered in any way. Thanks.
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