All warm and fuzzy

God & the Universe may have given me a dumb blonde karma, but at least they’ve blessed me with a mother who truly hears me when I self-deprecate.

I’d just sent her an email about how an ad agency had expressed some interest in me and told me they’d call me back the next day.  And I felt pretty good until I found out that they’d also been asking around about my old art director, hoping that we could work together as a team.  So when this agency found out that she is already art directing somewhere else and I didn’t hear back from them the next day, I told my mom that they must’ve wanted her – and I was just included.  Like the plastic fork that comes with the salad.  The sticker on the banana.  The ketchup packet that comes with the burger.

Almost immediately, I got an email back from my mom.  It started with, “Dear Ketchup,” 


And that y'all, is the kind of thing is that confirms that this woman is my own flesh and blood.




P.S. It turns out that I am not a plastic fork after all.  And the good news for y'all is that I will soon  be Stupid New Girl somewhere else.  Get ready.

Once a salesperson, always a manipulative little bitch

Conversation this morning with the sales guy in the next cubicle:

ME: Hey, how are you?  How was your weekend?

congenial chitchat and exchanging of weekend stories

ME: That's great, sounds like a good weekend.  Oh and hey by the way, can you send me the updates for the Top 20 list?

HIM: Wait a minute.  Is that why you came over here to ask me about my weekend?

I guess it takes one to know one and all that.

Just ask Earl Hickey

Dear Person who stole my Beautiful iPod Nano,

I have just this to say:  My karma may be a dumb blonde, but she is real and so is yours.

Love,

bebe Me

P.S.  And even if I do end up finding the shiny pink light of my life under the seat in my car, well then I'm still not going to apologize for writing this note.  Mostly because you don't exist.

Why I don't remember the taste of chicken

All true champions know that unless it is occasionally peppered with the bitter bite of defeat, the sweetness of life just tastes like chicken.

-Alton Brown on The Iron Chef

We blondes eventually get it. It just takes a few seconds. Or years.

This morning, I woke up to the life of my dreams. My dreams from the year 2006.

You see, about three years ago, I was trying to find my brain.  It had gotten lost somewhere in the rubble of professional tedium and discontent that I'd let accumulate for too many years.  I was ready to make a dramatic change, and yet I had no idea of what I wanted to do.  What I did know was that I was going to have to start right back down at the gritty bottom.  So after a few months of asking people if they thought I'd be able to become a hip-hop violinist without having to actually play the violin or a professional personal shopper without having to shop for someone else, I finally buckled down to figure out some real, entry-level options.

And  three years later, I'm knee-deep in one of those entry-level options and the opportunities to wade right into the next level are unabashedly throwing themselves in front of me.  The problem being, of course, that I NO LONGER WANT THEM.

Bloody hell, y'all.  I uprooted my entire life, moved to Crunchy City, put my work up to be publicly crucified on a weekly basis and came out with a lovely portfolio that killed a few hundred thousand of my brain cells.  All so I could call up a temp agency and live out my dreams that expired right along with the second Bionic Woman.

God bless my karma.  I guess she's blonde too.

Snowflakes that fall on my nose and sunglasses

When I moved to Austin a couple years ago, I swore on my Dirk Nowitzki fathead that I would not change.  I would not become a hippie, an emo, a “cool band” elitist or anyone who throws on a pair of Birkenstocks and exposes her dirty, crusty toenails for all the world to see.  No, the city that keeps it weird WOULD NOT CHANGE a single fake-blonde hair on my head.

Well y’all, I've changed.  No, I haven't cultivated a full head of dreds.  Nor have I replaced all of my Britney Spears tunes with Ghostland ones.  I have changed in an entirely different way.  And I didn’t even know I'd changed until last week, during Dallas’s first “snowfall” of the season.   There I was, driving to work through a flurry of snowflakes and I'll be damned if I didn't SMILE.  Because of the snow.  And then another pig flew past my window.

You see, I am not one of those Texans who is fascinated and delighted with frozen water falling from the sky.  After all,  I was a kindergartener who trudged through a Denver blizzard and a pesky little sister on a sled, pulled by my reluctant brother through white Calgary winters. So up until I was 18, my attitude toward snow was something like an offhanded “meh.”  But then there were the four long years at the music conservatory in one Rochester, NY.  And that is when my attitude changed from “meh” to “Are you there God?  It’s me, the girl from Texas.  JUST KILL ME.”  Ok, it may have had something to do with the fact that Rochester’s skies are especially sunless.  And snow that accumulates into frozen heaps of greasy, gray slush looks way worse under gloomy skies than under the forgiving light of sunshine.  And ok, it probably had a LOT to do with the fact that I started to associate snow with walking through that slush in frumpy down coats and ass-freezing temperatures while my spirit slowly lost all of its breath because I was trying to force it to BE A VIOLINIST AND BE HAPPY ABOUT IT, DAMN IT.

Which is why, for several years, at the very sight of snow, I'd put my hands up in defense and yell, NO I WILL NOT SPEND AN HOUR BY MYSELF IN A TINY PRACTICE ROOM, PERFECTING MY 4-OCTAVE MINOR ARPEGGIOS! And then I'd turn on a sappy love song, curl up with my sunglasses and a pair of strappy sandals and spend the day pining for the sunshine, wondering if I'd feel its heavenly glory ever again.

And how did I get from that to smiles and flying pigs?  Austin, Texas.  The place where five minutes of walking outside in the summertime left me in an ugly, sticky sweat.  The same place where five minutes of walking outside in the dead of winter left me in an ugly, sticky sweat - in the dead of winter, wearing  a short-sleeved T-shirt no less.  The place that is regularly about 10 degrees hotter and 500% more humid than Dallas.  Now I know that 10 degrees sounds like nothing to people who don't live in Texas, Florida, the deep south or any other place that closes down at the drop of a snowflake, but thinks nothing of spending every waking triple-degree summer day frying in the heat. But, trust me, it is different.  So different that even a warm-weather lover like me can start craving cold.  I missed the two times a year I get to drive on ice.  I missed getting to wear my winter sweaters for more than one morning every six weeks.  And I wanted to be able to walk outside in December without wondering if people were staring at the sweaty ring around my neckline or if they were just very fascinated with my remarkably flat chest.

So of course I was happy to see the snow last week.  Because snow, it seems,  no longer means the sun has abandoned me forever, leaving me with only a violin and my Galamian technique book.  No, y'all - it means that I just might get to wear a sweater AND a coat for several days in a row and leave the ugly sweat at the gym where it belongs.

It also means that as I drove through the snow that day, I took a moment to reach out: "Are you there God?  It's me, the girl who kinda likes snow now.  So... can we possibly do something about the flat chest?"


 

For behold, I bring you tidings of great teen fiction

Just in time for the holidays, I'd like to share the link to this little site I've seen:

Grown-up thoughts on teen fiction

Master of what?

Many of you have heard the first part of this already since it was just too good of a story to keep to myself as soon as it happened. But for anyone reading this who has not heard this story, brace yourself. Because you’ve never heard such ditziness in your life.

So I’d been at work for about an hour and a half or so when I got up to go to the bathroom. While I was standing at the sink washing my hands, I looked in the mirror and noticed that I didn’t have an earring in my right ear. And just as I was wondering how the hell I’d already lost an earring by 10:30 a.m., I looked a little closer. And holy crap, y’all. You see these earrings in this photo?

I’d put TWO of them in my left ear.  In the ONE hole.

But you don’t actually think this is the first time something like this has happened to me, do you? There was the time I discovered that I was wearing my V-string sideways. Yes, sideways. Or the time I almost left the house with two contact lenses in the same eye. And all of us flat-chested women have left the house without a bra at least once or twice, but have you ever known anyone to leave the house with two bras on at the same time? Well, YOU DO NOW.

And The University of Texas let her out with a diploma. And a MASTER'S DEGREE.

So THIS is how they felt when they first saw sliced bread

The Onion makes greeting cards now.

And? You can buy them at Target.

My life is now complete.

But at least they'll say "please"

Mom: We’re going to California next month - I have to spend as much time with the grandkids as possible right now while they’ll still talk to me.

Me: You mean until they find out that after midnight, you turn into a hairy, purple, 7-headed toy-eating machine?

Mom: No, I mean pretty soon, they’ll just text. My own grandson will TEXT his brother to pass the corn, please. And then his sister will text a, May I please be excused?, to her mother

Me: Well, I don’t think-

Mom: HAVE YOU WATCHED THE NEWS RECENTLY? KIDS – THEY TEXT INSTEAD OF TALK.

Me: Yeah, but –

Mom (sadly): Oh it’s ok. I’m used to competing with electronics. I mean remember how YOU learned how to bake a crack-free cheesecake?

Me: I googled it?

Mom: Yes, the internet - your surrogate e-mama.

And yes, that is a direct quote. She actually said “surrogate e-mama.”

The only one missing here is Oprah

Well y’all, God and the Universe have spoken. And they have said:

Buy ye an iPod Nano.

At first, I resisted. Oh how I resisted. Because I had an 80 GB CLASSIC video iPod – a gift of thanks from the granite employers in return for my seven years of servitude as a client/showroom-girl babysitter. And by golly, an 80 GB classic video iPod was good enough for me. But God and the Universe (G&U) are very, very sneaky. Especially when they speak through other people. And other things:

G&U speak through my temp job (end of July)

My resistance: Even if I wanted a Nano, how would my unemployed self afford such a thing? And anyway, I already have my classic video iPod.

Their answer: My classic video iPod stopped working on the first day of my temp job, a.k.a source of income.

Through the lips of an Apple Store Genius Bar Genius

My resistance: I can get my classic iPod fixed. I mean, hello, geniuses.

Their answer: Apple Genius sticks my classic up to his ear, shakes his head slowly and says, “A new hard drive is going to cost you at least $300. You know what you should do? You should trade this in for a discount and get an iPod Nano.” He might as well have taken the stiletto heel off my foot and pierced it through my heart. I did NOT spend seven years calling emergency meetings to resolve cat fights over where to set the showroom thermostat for anything less than a device that costs at LEAST $400.

Through Google (yes, I know – isn’t Google God & the Universe?)

My resistance: I know how to Google. Genius, Shmenius, I’ll fix my classic iPod by myself.

Their answer: You know how they say you can water and love a plant so much that it dies? Same goes for 80 GB classic video iPods .

Through the color pink

My resistance. It’s all good. I still have my pink Sansa Clip that I use for my workouts. Sure its screen sucks, but it plays my tunes and my podcasts. And did I mention? It’s pink.

Their answer: THE IPOD NANO COMES IN PINK.

Through a new friend (beginning of September)

My resistance: How do I know the Nano’s going to be any better than the Sansa Clip? The Sansa is so tiny and light!.

Their answer: I met a new friend who'd just moved to Dallas and guess what he had hooked up in his car? Oh yes, that. He tossed it to me and told me to pick out a song. How could I ignore how small, light, and SLEEK it was. And oh, the iPod screen. How I’d missed the iPod screen.


Through the death of my lovely white earbuds, which came with my classic iPod (mid-September)

My resistance: I can’t give up on my classic iPod yet. I still have his earbuds. Part of him is still alive! Just REPLACE him with a Nano? So cavalier.

Their answer: Killed the earbuds.


Through Steve Jobs - see parentheses after Google. (end of September)

My resistance: Yes but the Sansa Clip? I can listen to the radio on it! And I’ve always hated that my iPod could never play the radio.

Their answer: An email announcing what else but the unveiling of the 5G iPod Nano. The one with the video camera, the pedometer, the genius mixing and iTunes tagging. Wait a minute, iTunes tagging? Doesn’t that mean it has a-??? HOLY CRAP, G&U TOLD STEVE JOBS TO INCLUDE AN FM TUNER JUST SO THAT I WOULD BUY THE DAMN IPOD NANO. (And yes, it has occurred to me that sometimes I’m somewhat narcissistic.)


Through one. last. death (very end of September)

My resistance: You can’t tell me what to do! I will use this Sansa Clip until the day it DIES.

Their answer: Can’t you guess?

Which is when I threw myself on the ground, thrust my hands up toward heaven and all that and said, “FINE. I WILL BUY A 5G iPOD NANO. IN PINK.”

So I did. And y’all, I’m not going to lie. I’m a little bit in love with it.

I mean, after all, it was God, the Universe, Google AND Steve Jobs. It’s a miracle that I just have a new iPod and that I’m not out proselytizing some sort of cosmologic religion in which you pray to your Apple computer’s Google search bar.

In search of a little self-respect

I’ve mentioned several times on this site that I am a teen fiction enthusiast. A bona fide fanatic, zealot, and devotee. Would it be going too far to call myself a groupie? And yet, I so rarely write about the books that I inhale. I mean, what sort of self-respecting book groupie doesn’t write about the books at which she throws herself in irrepressible lust?

The truth is that while I do, in some fashion, love and enjoy nearly every teen fiction book that I read, there are some that reach me in a way that makes me want to go door-to-door, sharing the good book with those who are lost and in need of something that will make their lives complete. In the last month or so, I’ve read three such books and since I’d rather leave the door-to-door proselytizing to those guys on bikes, I’m going to start sharing these books right here on this space. And if you are open to a life filled with meaning, then you can read these posts. And if you’re just too damn good for teenage angst, then you can slam your browser window shut and I’ll never even know.

P.S. Thank you, Chuck, for planting the seed of this idea. Like two years ago.

Teen Fiction: Tale of Two Summers

Click here if you are confused by this post.

BOOK: Tale of Two Summers
AUTHOR: Brian Sloan

SUMMED UP:
Two best friends spend the summer apart, but stay in touch through an online blog. One is gay (Hal), one is straight (Chuck).

MY 1.5 CENTS:
Love it. Crafted, authentic voices and a story that unfolds organically through the written ramblings between two friends. Not unlike the way catwoman and I share our lives in different cities through our emails.

COOL EXCERPTS:
The opening paragraph that instantly lured me in (Hal's voice):

So right off the bat, I have to say that this whole blog thing you've set up is totally gay. Now, I know that being gay and all I really shouldn't use "gay" in such a derogatory way, but what can I say? Writing blogs is so damn GAY I can't even discuss it. But this was your idea and you're supposedly straight, which makes the whole thing somewhat disturbing, actually: that straight-old-you could come up with such a gay-old-idea for keeping in touch over the course of the summer. But I guess there's no accounting for sexuality or something.

Another gem from Hal in the thick of one of their epistolary fights:

By all rights, I should go off on you. I should really start letting you have it via an endlessly agitated and somewhat enraged stream of electronic invective. But I'm not going to do that. I'm a changed person since you left. I've realized the value of being pithy - which is to say ... F.U., BRO!

And some of Chuck's voice:

One thing that might complicate our storyline is Ryan, our annoying director. He still hasn't told us his mysterious concept for the show, which Ghaliyah thinks means he's a friggin' genius. I think it means the dude has his head up his ass. Seriously. He acts like he knows everything, and he's barely out of school.

Teen Fiction: Born Confused

Click here if you are confused by this post.

BOOK: Born Confused
AUTHOR: Tanuja Desai Hidier

SUMMED UP:
Spot-on experiences that ring true for any second-generation teenager in America through the eyes and camera lens of Dimple, an ABCD ("American Born Confused Desi") with a blonde best friend and parents who provide her with love, samosas, love, a "suitable boy" and love.

MY 1.5 CENTS
At times, it felt a little long (413 pages) to me, but it is totally worth it. Lots of light shed on the Indian culture too.

COOL EXCERPTS:

So not quite Indian, and not quite American. Usually I felt more along the lines of Alien (however legal, as my Jersey birth certificate attests to). The only times I retreated to one or the other description were when my peers didn't understand me (then I figured it was because I was too Indian) or when my family didn't get it (clearly because I was too American). And in India. Sometimes I was too Indian in America, yes, but in India, I was definitely not Indian enough.

I LOVE the way Hidier sums up this film student's entire character in the following short dialogue:

-So, uh, how's film school?
-You couldn't imagine. To be immersed in your metier 24/7, to be liaisoning with people of nearly equal artistic aptitude - it takes rad to a whole new level.

He pronounced metier and liaisoning and, oddly, aptitude, as if he were speaking French. I didn't think he was French though, not even French-Canadian. What the frock was I saying? He was from Jersey.

I laughed a lot while reading this book, but when Dimple goes home after smoking a joint and first sees her parents? THIS had me rolling on the floor:

-High! my parents yelped in unison.

I was stoned. Frock.

Teen Fiction: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Click here if you are confused by this post.

BOOK: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
AUTHOR: E. Lockhart

SUMMED UP:
Smart, pretty girl (Frankie) rocks the boat at a private boarding school that is dominated by an exclusive, generations-old boys’ club.

MY 1.5 CENTS:
The cool part? Frankie doesn’t outsmart the good old boys in a deliberate fit of sassy girl power (although I do still love deliberate fits of sassy girl power) – she just does what feels right to her and she’s just that smart.

COOL EXCERPTS:

Frankie did not accept life as it was presently occurring. It was a fundamental element of her character. Life as it was presently occurring was not acceptable to her. Were she to mellow out - would she not become obedient? Would she not stay on the path that stretched ahead of her, nicely bricked ?

She did not get much out of therapy.

Frankie Landau-Banks is an off-roader.

The book ends perfectly with:

It is better to be alone, she figures, than to be with someone who can't see who you are. It is better to lead than to follow. It is better to speak up than stay silent. It is better to open doors than to shut them on people.

She will not be simple and sweet. She will not be what people tell her she should be. That Bunny Rabbit is dead.

She watches the boys as they peel off in different directions and disappear around corners and into the buildings of Alabaster.

She doesn't feel like crying anymore.

Reply to All: But you may call me Stupid New Girl, thank you.

One of the best parts of a new job is getting the new nickname. Stupid New Girl is by far my favorite, but I think I’ve found a second. It was christened upon me yesterday by a client at my new temp job. And how did he do it? In an email to his sales executive, which eventually ended up in my inbox. Isn’t that special? Yes, in the middle of the email and in a line all by itself, he writes:

bebe me = No Bueno

Now, who knew that a client who doesn’t know how to scroll down to the bottom of an email chain to understand the entire situation before jumping in to things and who also doesn’t seem to understand simple sentences had such a knack for damn good ironic humor? Kudos to the imbecile! It sure as hell made me laugh. It's a bloody shame that he was being serious.

I think we're in a rut

Phone conversation with my gay boyfriend last night:

Him: Hey, what are you doing?

Me: Watching football. What are you doing?

Him: Watching Dancing with the Stars.


When did we become SUCH a cliché?

A little Monday morning levity

And how do you not giggle just a LITTLE bit when you’re at work and have to leave a voice mail for someone named Mr. Doobie?

To Live By

From my lululemon bag:


DANCE, SING, FLOSS AND TRAVEL.

That place with the maple leaf on its flag

Visiting the Okanagan Valley is way better when you're old enough to swim in the lakes without bursting into tears. It's also way better when you can hike, swim and enjoy the view with six feet worth of sexy, smokin'- hot blond man.

Even with all the smoke from recent forest fires, it is astonishingly beautiful:







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