Booo California

Shame on you.

That is all I can muster. Really. Shame on you.

LB

I’m Gifted

There are times, few and far between, when I feel like I am witnessing the dawning of a new word. It’s baby, wobbly steps from fringe to foreground. I don’t mean words like, “cool” or “rad”, I mean word, words. Is it just me? Have people always said that? Is it new?

Gifted…….

When did “gifted” take the place of give and given when describing a present? Why does it bug me so much? It’s the new “you know you’re a (blank) when…….

You know you’re a locavore when you start saying “gifted”.

You know you’re a water saver when you start saying “gifted”.

xo,

LB

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How to be “Jedidiah” (Name changed to protect me, not the innocent)

I have a friend named “Jedidiah”. We work together at a terribly posh wine shop. Today, “Jedidiah” expressed mild concern that perhaps not enough people were blogging about him. Because he is my friend, and because our friendship never involves name calling, violence, or soul withering insults, I am here to put things right. I want to increase his presence in the blogoshere. So I have prepared a brief tutorial on how to be more like my wonderful friend.

#1 Learn the definitions of cravat and ascot, and the appropriate occasion to wear each.

#2 Be more than a little embarrassed about your inherent liberalism and try to cover it up with an extremely conservative appearance and a fondness for rich people.

#3 If you do not already own a pair of driving mocs (WTF?!) run, do not walk, to get a pair.

#4 Be a writer. Be a good writer, but one without the good sense to listen to all my ideas and immediately turn them into articles for The New Yorker. I think this has something to do with not wanting to ride my coat tails but, whatever.

#5 Do not under ANY circumstances express anything that even sounds like spirituality. Ever. Never.

#6 Tell people around you how neurotic and crazy they are but follow these declarations closely with your own swirling, black and despairing moods.

#7 You should be able to enjoy a good cookie.

#8 Cultivate the ability to notice when the women around are having a good hair day and/or have on a cute jacket or pair of shoes.

#9 Have a jacket fetish.

#10 Be intelligent and well read but find it difficult to decide what to have for dinner.

I hope this helps you all on your path to being “Jedidiah”!

Love,

LB

Snow woes

I have to say the single most annoying thing about snow is all the people complaining about it. Same as Christmas eh?

In particular, why do people feel the need to mock the milk buying, so called horrible driving and so called hysteria.

I don’t usually notice a lot of hysteria. I know that your friends/relatives from Buffalo/North Dakota/Antarctica would laugh at what we think of as snow. I don’t care. I don’t think it is even worth mentioning. Do you, really?

Lots of this type of talk on the local gossip website. Think of the sledding and drinking and curling up those people could have been doing with that time!

Just sayin…

Random

Saturday:

So, as you may have noticed the KP isn’t doing any “blogging”. I am having to pick up her slack and post again so that you will have something to stare at while you wiggle the saliva in your mouth around with the tip of your tongue.

You’re welcome.

I have used almost every category we have so I can wander aimlessly as I “write”. It is the last day of my work week and a good time to reflect because I try hard not to work on this day.

First, can someone explain something to me? I am wondering what is the appeal of, during a transaction of money for product, arranging the precise amount of money and coins you give the cashier so that you receive an nice round number back? Some people go to extreme lengths to make it so they receive no coins back from me at the register. Even if it means giving me a huge excess of money for what they are buying. Now, I’m not gonna judge (yes I am) I just want to know, is it worth it? Anyone out engage in this behavior? Do you feel fulfilled?

Sunday:

I managed to get out of work early on Saturday so that I could go to the Vintage Apple Festival. Our good friend Stank Williams was gonna be playing music with his band and there was Virginia country fun to be had. It was driving me crazy that I was not going to get to go since my Sister was going with my nephew, my mother, Stank’s family, the KP with IC, our friend Starrhillgirl. and many other friends. A last minute miracle (over staffing) occurred and I was good to go! So I crammed in a tiny fuel efficient vehicle with my family, Tay at the helm, and we headed south of town.

I was so glad I could make it. The day was beautiful. All my friend’s funny little kids are beautiful. Starrhillgirl looked beautiful in her modified T-shirt. The music was great. It was good clean Virginia fun. I really like where I live. I’m with Starrhillgirl on how pretty and fabulous it is around here. Even though we are lousy with republicans. My family took a hay ride. They reported it was a little scary and a lot of fun. The old folks sang along to Stank’s music, while wearing their John Deere hats. There were animals to pet and kiddy games to play and things to buy. Pickles, cider, apples, honey, plants, baskets etc.

We are all still sick in this house. Currently the KP and I are on two different computers. One up, one down. We are “IM-ing” one another so as not to have to get up. The Insolent child went off to the the safari park with Wistar and Darren. It is a weird place that doesn’t seem like it should be legal. I’ll let Wistar tell you all about that. I am fixin to have some coffee with the family before they hit the road back to NOVA. I might wash my bathmat. That is Sunday for ya.

Internal Tourette’s

Things I thought but Didn’t say out loud today at work:

Oh God, not you.

You drink too much, I can tell by your nose.

I was hoping you would GET OUT OF MY WAY!

You’re sitting on it (and other things I learned while traveling)

Who among the vast swath of greasy humanity does NOT know that, on an airplane, your seat doubles as a flotation device??? In case your airplane crashdives smoothly into a body of water and mysteriously floats long enough for you to remove the seat and walk outside? Well, it appears I shared a plane with that one person whose ears never heard and brain never retained that crucial and useless detail. After an uneventful car trip from my hometown to the airport with KPdaddy and KPstepmommy, I plunk down in a tiny commuter plane for my trip to New York Shitty as LB so neutrally calls it. A middle-aged woman behind me calls out to the stewardess who’s standing at the opposite end of the plane: “Where’s my flotation device? Where’s my flotation device? I can’t remember!!” She’s so panicked that I’m afraid I’m going to have to pull my oxygen mask down and service myself before helping her. The stewar–sorry, flight attendant saunters down the isle. She’s hovering around 55 and has long dyed orange hair and is chewing nicotine gum (at least it’s nicotine gum in my fantasy). You just know she takes aerobic pole-dancing classes for fun with her girlfriends. Anyhooters, I digress. The flight attendant saunters up to the panicked passenger and says rather tersely with a New York accent: “You’re sitting on it, sweetie, but we ain’t gonna need it.” Well, that’s just cocky (and accurate) enough that I look around for some wood to knock but airplanes are no longer made of wood it seems, so I just knock my number 2 pencil against my inner thigh. Mostly because it feels good. But that’s another (albeit titillating) digression. After reading an entertaining, but outdated, but still accurate essay about how Britney Spears is the perfect symbol of Americanness in Chuck Klosterman’s Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade Of Curious People And Dangerous Ideas, I look up and I’m in NYShitty.

Because I’m a badass traveler I walk off the plane with my one tightly packed backpack which contains all my belongings and some key handy travel implements: a fork, a knife, a coffee mug, 8 pairs of sexy underwear, a water bottle, and some shiny trinkets to trade with the natives. In mere seconds, I’m out the front door of Laguardia and immediately a woman surrenders her taxi to me. I know it probably just looked like she was already getting out of the taxi to go into the airport, but I’m sure she was intentionally surrendering it because I’m rather physically imposing. They don’t call me the KP for nothing.

I get in and the cabdriver sounds and appears to be from somewhere in Africa, though I don’t manage to find out where because I’m never sure when he’s talking to me, to himself, another driver, the taxi HQ, or to his Bluetooth earpiece. I awkwardly start and then abort a half-dozen conversations when it becomes apparent he’s talking to one of the other parties. He’s never not talking. He mentions as soon as I get in that the taxidrivers are on strike. As he’s driving away. The fact that he’s driving and apparently on strike confuses my brain so much, which is already a little muddled from the high-altitude depressurization process, that I smile and nod. I ask him what the strike is about, and he says “I’ll see you later.” I realize he’s talking to someone on Bluetooth, but he hangs up and says, “The city of New York wants to require us to have GPS and credit card machines in our cars. That way, the city can calculate its taxes exactly. I have no problem with the GPS because I have nothing to hide. I do have a problem with the drivers having to pay the 5% transaction fees on the credit cards.” I do not understand why he’s driving today and not striking, despite my best efforts to clarify. His accent is very thick and all the windows are down. He’s agitated at the stalled traffic on the expressway because he has to be in “motherfucking Bronx at one thirty.”

Just then a car pulls alongside us and a man looks across at my cab driver, waves his fist and says “Shame on you! Shame on you!” My cab driver looks across at him, laughs, and says “What? What? No speak English– What?” The man who appears to be Middle-Eastern continues to shout “Shame on you” until my cabdriver shouts back to him with the nastiest delight, “If we’d had GPS in Boston your brother Mohammed Atta would never have gotten that bomb.”

Huh??? Here I am witnessing the sort of outrageously racist, nonsensical thinking that is no doubt responsible for the endgame state of our civilization. Then my cabdriver says to me, “Those Arabs just don’t want the GPS because they’re all cheating, sharing medallion numbers because they all look the same. If they don’t like the new way, why don’t they just do something else?” Wow. I had no idea there are African immigrants in the neo-conservative movement. Here I am, a white DAR, in the middle of the sort of open conflict I’d only read about. And what the fuck do I know about what either of these guys has to deal with on a daily basis being from Africa and the Middle East. I found myself definitely siding with the striking Middle Eastern cabdriver, but the African cabdriver held my life in his hands so I said nothing more. He even got lost trying to deliver me to my friends’ apartment in Williamsburg and seemed angry at me for not knowing where the neighborhood was more specifically. Even though I told him I’m not from here and I’ve never been there.

Hooper Street in Williamsburg is pretty gritty and working class and, thankfully, not hip or clean or fully gentrified. I’m sure it will be in about 3 months. Come enjoy those colorful ethnic Dominicans while you can!

Okay, I’ve now spent the better part of an afternoon of my vacation writing about my vacation. I’d better get off the computer and back out there vacating so I have something to write about later. Miss you, LB and IC and OneStarWatt and Caved and ….

Things People Do, I Do Not like Them.

LB, here. Everyday I go off to work,( everyday meaning four days a week) I go off to work so that I can put coffee in the KP’s cup and wine in the goblets, and pay my way like a good LB. I work in a retail enviornment. This is easier to handle than waiting tables. I had lost my patience with that and had become a menace. I have moved myself to the more easy going retail track where I barely manage to remain calm. It is a place where I am forced to share information with the general public. Mostly though, I talk to the other workers. To celebrate my job and the coffee and wine it affords me, I have put together a little list.

Things people do, I do not like them :

Standing on the other side of the counter while I ring up their purchase holding their credit card in anticipation. “I haven’t even rung up all your booze ya friggin lush, gimme a friggin minute will ya? The way you hold that card at me feels like abuse!”

Putting all their measly change on the counter instead of in my hand, so I have to pluck at it desperately with my fingernail-less hands,trying not to take so long the next person gets angry.

Walking up to me and blurting out a noun and nothing else. No other words. It is the most cold, bare-bones way of asking for help. In fact it isn’t asking at all, and I think they prefer not to think of it as help, either. Like this:

Jerk: Burgundy!

ME: I’m sorry?

Jerk: Burgundy!

Me: Burgundy?

Jerk: Burgundy!

Me: Oh! Are you looking for the Burgundy’s? (sickly sweet smile is crucial)

Jerk: Yes, can you tell me where the Burgundy’s are? (looking confused and ….guilty?!)

Trying to help me pack their purchase or, putting their hands on my part of the counter work space. I AM A HIGHLY TRAINED PROFESSIONAL!!! Please, just let me do my job.

Asking for my help, explaining that they know nothing, then disagreeing with everything I say.

That is enough for now…………

If we stare they will come

We just created our blog and LB is staring at the machine and tapping her fingers waiting for the traffic to start flooding Crazytown. She’s so naive. I love that.