All posts by Licketysplit

Why do birds suddenly appear?

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The man upstairs from me has a piano, and he’s been playing “April in Paris.” I can hear it through the ceiling, and sometimes a peel of a woman’s laughter. We smile and nod in the hallways, as we are both persons of leisure, doing leisurely things.

I don’t think I can ever work in an office again. Life is is going swimmingly, and it directly relates to not dragging myself in to be abused every day by people with no understanding of what my job actually entails. I’m still doing freelance, but on my own terms. Now I’m just waiting for summer time, when I’m told the living is easy.

-xxoo

The hours

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Tonight we celebrate a birthday!

So far I have managed to buy myself presents instead of buying them for the birthday boy. I just don’t think he would enjoy a polka dotted umbrella as much as Lambchop and I do. I did get an extra bottle of wodka for the making of many rounds of the Kitty Dukakis. Perhaps we should just fill the bathtub?

In other news, my sister is staying with me until some shadowy future point. Yesterday we went shopping, and today I made her go to the grocery store. I was seized with a craving for Chewy Chips Ahoy!, and this reminded us of all the horrible crap my mother used to let us eat for breakfast. We could have anything, as long as we “had it with milk.” I guess milk redeems even Little Debbie snacks or Entenmann’s cupcakes. This is a far cry from early childhood, where we suffered through home-grown vegetable stews and TVP (textured vegetable protein) and weren’t allowed store-bought cereals. A breakdown obviously took place by the time we started having fast food roast beef sandwiches every night. Five for one dollar! From Hardee’s.

In still more loosely connected news, I joined a gym. It has a pool, so the thought of being seen in a swimming costume will ensure that I either go all the time, or never go at all.

-xxoo

Fine dining

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This being a blog, I am obligated to report on topics of food consumed and parking spots occupied. Tonight I had a lovely mahi mahi with a fruit salsa and coconut risotto, and the highlight of the evening was the creepy waiter we always get at this establishment. We parked right outside the front door, in case you were wondering. This is a one-horse town, with ample parking day or night, like South Park.

Creepy Waiter knows us by name now, and he delights in rattling off the specials while making an uncomfortable amount of eye contact. He always looks like he’s about to crack up, and we try really hard not to do the same. On our last visit, he described salmon as a “pink-flavored fish,” and mahi mahi is pronounced “maui maui.”

He also let us know how swamped he was on Valentine’s Day, and I deftly inquired “Wow, they must work you all the time, do you ever get a day off?” So now we know to come on Mondays instead.

Still, this is not as bad as the time Mr. H’s mother picked the restaurant where the waitress rammed the bottle of wine between her thighs and pulled for dear life on the cork, right next to the table. I got kicked under the table when I said “Someone’s been kegeling!”

-xxoo

Love is in the air

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I hereby declare it officially spring. It doesn’t matter that it’s still freezing. From this day forward, I shall dress in the colors of the sherbert rainbow: lemon, lime, raspberry, and orange. Of course “raspberry” is controversial. In the sno-cone universe, it’s blue, but I am going to be a purist and interpret this as pink. Onward, it is time for ballet flats and hair ribbons! Moisturize as ye have never moisturized before!

We at Vomitola headquarters are fresh off a whirlwind St. Valentine’s Day. It is our new favorite holiday, and the table behind me is still strewn with pink petals and red tinsel hearts. Gentle Lambchop stirred up a fine new cocktail, the Kitty Dukakis. It tastes like a raspberry lemonade and smells of perfumed love letters and heaving bosoms. We have also come up with a plan of outreach, of tender ministry, so that all may enjoy a sip from the loving cup. I leave it to Lambchop to explain this proposition in a bit. Umbrellas aloft!

-xxoo

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood

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I am still in my jammies, drinking cold coffee. It’s the little things. Last night I made “asian-style pasta.” You know, because peanut sauce is such a staple of Chinese and Japanese cuisine. Does Martha Stewart really need a charge of racism at this point? It was wicked good though.

Here’s how to make the sauce: combine equal parts peanut butter, honey, lite soy sauce, and rice vinegar, about 3 tbsps each works well. Add a few cloves of minced garlic, and 2 tbsps minced ginger. Whisk! Aggressively! You may alter the proportions to taste. I personally went a little lighter on the vinegar and added a smidge more honey.

This goes well with soba noodles (Martha said to use pappardelle, ew), steamed veggies (to serve 4: 1 eggplant, 2 red peppers, 2 big handfuls of snow pea pods), and your choice of sauteed chicken strips or firm tofu cubes (my addition, Martha was feeling leaner).

Ah, Vomitola. You never know what you’re going to get. As a palate cleanser, I’ve just been told there is a midget insta-marriage show on Fox. Er, a little people reality marriage show.

-xxoo

I am the Amazing Fucking Kreskin

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Behold, thrill as I pull ZIP codes out of thin air. There is just nothing more satisfying than issuing invitations from a spottily assembled guest list. At first I’d call or email the postally neglected person, but now I’m just making stuff up. It’s for a baby shower, and it’s not like I’M going to get any presents out of it. Now we’re down to the question mark section of the list. I think I’m just going to write “Aunt Broomhilda, Massachusetts” on the envelope and see who shows up.

-xxoo

Domestic Blitz

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I am going to take a moment out of my busy Betty Lunchbucket schedule to tell you how much I hate TV birth shows. Not to mention average Amerikan expectations of birth in general. That should be enough to ensure that most of you stop reading right there. Meow meow meow meow….pushing the limits of Vomitola. First mormon slander, now afterbirth!

As I was busily folding laundry, I flipped to TLC hoping to find someone with bad hair to mock. Instead, a hapless woman was wincing and grunting flat on her back in a hospital bed, pumped up with labor-causing drugs. The doctor came in, inserted an entire arm, and tut-tutted because the woman’s failsafe valve hadn’t managed to open up any further since the last time she was checked, a whole hour before. They’d been at this entire process for about eight hours, since they started the labor induction that morning. So off she went for a c-section! I guess if your child doesn’t fly out of you like a hot buttered football in the first hour, you are just shit out of luck. There was no apparent distress for the baby; it seemed like the doctor just wanted to get the show on the road.

I find my latent hippy dippy side coming out like nobody’s business as I contemplate the terrifying abyss of future parenthood. I’m still not totally sure what I want to do, or when, but I am pretty sure I don’t want “it” as seen on TV. Until recently I always thought I’d want to be drugged out of my gourd if I had the misfortune to whelp anything. That philosophy (of staying drugged out of my gourd) has served me well up until now, so why mess with it? But I remember seeing my mother have my sister, so I know a natural childbirth is possible, with no screaming or flailing even. Of course I flip hurriedly past those photos in the ol’ family album. The first time Mr. H met the parents, we both stared at the first page, puzzled, until I realized what we were observing.

Basically I just don’t like being told what to do. Damn it.

-xxoo

Extrem-Relax

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I am taking my cue from a skilled eurotrash impersonator of my acquaintance and prefacing everything with “Extrem.” I also like to say “Super-Cool” (pronounced SoooPAIR) and “Giga-Cool.”

The new Air cd, Talkie Walkie, is indeed Super-Cool. Extrem-Sexy. I can’t stop listening to it. It works for making out, for drinking wine, for driving, for staring out the window, for ironing, you name it. It makes me turn up the collar of my jean jacket and muss Mr. H’s hair.

I also bought Hai! by The Creatures, and ees giving me Super-Mega-Goth flashback. I am this close to cutting really short bangs and buying tons of used clothing again. I find myself missing the days of velvet blazers and poppy red hair streaks, of tattered prom dresses and stripper heels. That and hearing “I Dig You” in that Monster.com ad. I must admit that my knowledge of the Cure’s catalog and side projects is shockingly extensive. I’m also going through old CDs and sighing, “Alien Sex Fiend, AWWWWW!”

Aw, screw it, I don’t have a job! I can have interesting hair yet again! Where’s the Manic Panic?

-xxoo

Internet, I’m soaking in it

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Well, we’re all moved in. Apparently my mother mistakenly spread the rumor that we purchased a condo, so relatives are emailing to congratulate us. When in Rome, right?

Effective immediately, I am changing my blog name to ClamShandy. I don’t know, it just sounds filthy. Also, I’ll be guest-blogging at my sister’s blog for the next *unspecified period of time*. She’s in some medical study on the heartbreak of colitis, or possibly hair don’ts. Then I’m trying to entice her to the great northerly east, where she will see that you can bilk people out of vast amounts of money per hour for making food dance on the internet.

-xxoo

Happy Groundhog Day Again!

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The big move is tomorrow. We are wildly unprepared, but that’s the beauty of having movers. If only they’d stay and clean up after us too. Part of me is tempted to just abandon the stuff in storage and live like wolves. We’ll burrow, we’ll chase things, we’ll roll in dead stuff. It’ll be great. Who needs furniture when you have wall-to-wall carpeting?

-xxoo