Levedy

Putting my foot down

We’re planning Chris’ baptism for Thanksgiving Saturday. The Greeks will descend on Vegas for Thanksgiving weekend. I will have cousins and aunts and friends-of cousins and cousins-of-friends sleeping on any available horizontal surface.

One invited guest, Pappadakis, wants to bring the souvla, and roast an entire lamb in my backyard.

Let me just allow the horror of that sink in to my non-hellenic readers. AN ENTIRE LAMB CARCASS. IN MY BACKYARD. AT MY HOUSE. WHERE I TRY TO SLEEP AT NIGHT.

I have been to backyard lamb roasts before, and part of the enjoyment factor is the realization that it’s NOT AT MY HOUSE, that I can leave at any time and go to a petting zoo and apologize to all of the little lambies for marrying into a culture that chases one other around with roasted lamb skulls and fights over the brains and the eyes. It’s much harder to roll my eyes and sigh from the sidelines when it’s on my property. I can’t pity the sad sack whose house it is, because it’s my house.

I have a nice catering company ready to cater the baptism reception. I have a sophisticated, yet crowd-friendly menu selected that will please all palates. People will be dressed nicely, since they will have just come from the church. It will be a lovely, sedate occasion. There will be no livestock turning over an open fire tended by a gigantically tall bald Greek man wearing a joke-barbeque apron that exposes a rubber dildo when he lifts it.

No. Not again.

Lay off, you tell me? The Greeks certainly won’t mind, and the non-Greeks will find it hysterically quaint, you say? Fine. But cleaning up after a lamb roast is like trying to turn a slaughterhouse into an operating room. Just can’t be done, people. I have a folding table that was only next to a lamb on a spit last Easter, and that puppy STILL smells like lamb fat. Lamb is eternal - You can kill it, cook it, eat it, and scrub up after it, but its oozey, noisome, oleaginous remains will be with you FOREVER.

And for all those people who would call something like this folksy and quaint, may I remind you:
Hacksaw (slightly gross)
I have eaten off this counter (really gross)
Not in my backyard (grosser than the first, not as gross as the second)
Pappadakis' Apron (NSFW)

Toxic Girlfriend

I have a girlfriend that over the past year or so has really gotten toxic, and it’s starting to annoy me. Every time I see her she has some nasty backhanded comment for me. I don’t get it. Why be so mean to the people who like you? It’s so…junior high.

We were having a conversation with a few other girlfriends about shoes, and how they (the other women) always have to have so many pairs, and oh, did you see that pair of fur-lined boots at Nordstroms? Meh. My contribution to the conversation was that since I had Bean, my shoe size changed and I had to get rid of all of my shoes. I get by on one pair of dress shoes, one pair of sneakers, and a few pairs of sandals, and that I actually enjoy not owning so many shoes. She says “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter anyway for you, since no one actually sees you.”

Another time, I told her that I was having a good day because we paid off my Honda, and I had gotten the title in the mail from the finance company. I said that it felt good not to have a car payment every month. She responded that it wasn’t that big of an accomplishment, since we (Dim and I) have saved so much money it’s not a big deal for us to have paid off a car like it would be for a normal person.

Huh? I don’t get it either.

Most recently, after someone got up in front of a group and told them how nice my new hair color is (it’s red now) she passed a note to me telling me that I made a mistake and that it looked bad.

Seriously. Passed a note. What are we, twelve?

I let her little barbs go tink! off my armor. I know that the problem isn’t me, it’s her. I may not be a shoe whore and I may not live beyond my means and rack up credit card debt, but THAT’S NOT A BAD THING. I try to be a good friend and check in on her to see if there’s anything in her life that’s going on that makes her want to jellyfish her friends, but jeesh.

Tsk tsk tsk.

Kids

Dave Barry

I just got around to reading Dave Barry's convention coverage. Here's one of my favorite passages, about the possibility of electing a woman to a high political office:

One ''hot-button'' issue is whether a woman with young children could be a good president and still handle her domestic obligations, or would she become conflicted, so that, say, if the Russians were getting ready to launch nuclear missiles at us, and the president was supposed to get on the Hot Line, she would instead be seized by an uncontrollable maternal instinct to make a pediatrician appointment.

I don't know about Palin. But I do know this: women in general are WAY better at work/home multi-tasking than -- to pick another gender at random -- men. I base this statement on my wife, who recently was in Beijing, reporting on the Olympics, while I was at home, theoretically getting our 8-year-old daughter ready for third grade. We had several phone calls like this:

MY WIFE (answering her phone while typing a story on an extremely tight deadline in a very loud sports arena): Hello?

ME: Hey, sorry to bother you, but I can't find the...

MY WIFE (typing): It's in the drawer under the kitchen phone.

ME: Ah! Thanks. Also, which...

MY WIFE (typing): Her pink sneakers.

ME: OK, I know you're busy, so I'll let you...

MY WIFE (typing): You have a booger poking out of your right nostril.

So I think it's time for the voters, Republicans and Democrats alike, to set this whole ''Mommy Wars'' issue aside and agree that what qualifies a person to be president of the United States is NOT that person's gender or domestic situation. What qualifies a person to be president of the United States is whether or not that person is my wife.

Source

Bean's Barf Bonanza: Evening Edition

It’s three in the morning, and Bean has toddled into bed with a fever, a fever that we thought was on the mend last night. I immediately leapt up and checked her pajamas and her bed linens for the pile of vomit that I was sure was going to be there: nothing. So we spread a towel on Dim’s side of the bed, chucked her on it, and Dim went to get some semblance of a full night’s rest in Bean’s room. (Since he has to deal with other adults today in a professional setting: I will be lucky if I manage a shower and clean underwear. He gets the sleep this time. Hopefully, he will remember this next time, but I doubt it.)

I had a bucket handy, and I spent the rest of the wee hours stroking her back and listening to her sniffle and hack. We both managed to fall asleep just as the sun came up (and by asleep, I mean that I managed to doze off while she had her hot little feet wedged in my back as I teetered on the edge of the bed since my two-year old takes up more room on the mattress than an EPILEPTIC MANATEE.)

I try to stifle a cough of my own, but it’s no use. It wakes her up. “Are you okay, Mama? Are you okay?”

Yes, sweetie. I’m fine. Go back to sleep.

Cute little thing. She’s burning up, snotty, and coughing, but she wants to know that I’m okay. What a sweetheart.

I guess I don’t mind hot feet jabbing me in the back so much.

Sick Bean

A little haiku:

My poor barfing Bean
Can I make you feel better?
I'll hug while you barf.

N

Stephen King has a brilliant marketing strategy for his short stories due to be released on 11/11. He's teamed with Borders to release a serialized graphic novel rendition of one of the stories in the book.

There are three episodes released so far, each about a minute and a half long. It's pretty cool, if you're a Stephen King fan (which I am). Here is the link (contains sound).

Pants on Fire

Palin's an okay public speaker, but her nose needs a lot of shortening:Factchecking Palin's Speech