Bad blogger

Having never been good at keeping a paper journal, I don't know what made me think I'd be better at the online version. Ah, well. We were on vacation for a week in beautiful Kennebunk, ME, then we had family visiting, then the lying-around-on-the-couch-recovering-from-family-visiting period, etc. etc. Plus I was doing a freelance project that ate into my normal blogging time. I guess part of my problem is that whilst blogging I always have the feeling that I should be emptying the dishwasher, doing laundry, other good housewifey things. Or, to be honest, sometimes I am lying around reading and being lazy instead. Reading other people's words is so much less effort than creating one's own.

BTW, I apologize in advance for not hyperlinking anything in this post. Cf. lazy above.

ASH turned 2 on August 1. Hard to believe 2 years ago at this time I was suffering the agonies of sore nipples and sleep deprivation and the deep terror that comes with the realization that you are entirely responsible for this little creature's well-being, and you'd better not fuck up. ASH today is the sweetest, friendliest, most gorgeous child you could ever hope to meet. Lately we've had a preview of terrible-two-ness (sample: Me: "Do you want some edamame?" ASH: "No!" [ASH then takes edamame and eats it.]) but it's easier to handle (at least so far, check back with me later and perhaps I'll be selling him on Craigslist) when I know it's all part of his developmental phase, and when at other times he runs full tilt at my legs and then gives them a hug, saying, "Ohhhhhhh, pat pat pat" because that's what we say when we hug him and he hugs back and pats us the way we do him. It's all too insanely cute for words. I still marvel at my incredible good fortune in being given this amazing child.

I think I'm appreciating him more this week because we are poised to leave him with my dad and stepmother for the weekend while T and I go to New York to catch a Yankees game in the last season before they tear down Yankee Stadium. Sigh. (As good Red Sox fans, we of course plan to root for Kansas City. I am trying to decide whether to be a jerk and wear my Red Sox hat to the game. Heh.) I am simultaneously excited to have a couples weekend and heartbroken at the thought of leaving him behind. This will be the first time we have done so for more than one night since he was born. It'll only be 2 nights, but it feels like a big deal. (His only other overnight was a year ago when my best friend got married and ASH stayed with my dad, with T and me saying we might come back and pick him up that night. Umm, didn't happen.) I know he will be fine but I am still going to miss him like CRAZY.

But we will enjoy baby-free-in-New-York time. We plan to eat with my brother and his wife at Les Halles (home of Anthony Bourdain, although I doubt he's ever in the kitchen anymore, what with gallivanting about for the Travel Channel and being a Top Chef guest judge and all. Fame, so time-consuming. There are always a million things I want to do in NYC and we never do any of them. And now my bro is moving up here to Boston to go to grad school, so it's goodbye, exquisite coop in the West Village. Sigh. I feel like we will never visit New York again without them there, which is of course untrue, but it's just so nice to visit them and New York at the same time. And did I mention their apartment is exquisite? View of the Chrysler and Empire State buildings? Ohhhhh...
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In other news--the garden, she ails. My once-mighty zucchini plants were attacked by the dreaded cane borer, a hideous white segmented worm that eats the stems from the inside out. Then the whole plant dies. This has happened to 6 of my 12 plants. Supposedly you can slit the stem, dig out the borer, and then cover up the stem with dirt so it can heal and the plant recovers, but I dunno. Suffice it to say we have not been having the zucchini overload I had anticipated. I get one serving of zucchini about every couple of weeks. Alas.

Not helping matters is the ridiculous amount of rain we've had lately. When we came back from vacation I actually found a small FROG in the garden. No lie. I can't imagine where he came from. I thought at first it was one of those hideous Darth-Vader-like squash bugs, and I was squaring my shoulders at the thought of the murder I was going to have to commit, when I looked closer and saw what it really was. I wonder what's happened to him now that it's a little drier. When it's too wet I also have the problem that my insecticide and fertilizer are made to be dissolved in water and sprayed on, so I have to either water a garden that desperately doesn't need it so I can kill bugs or feed the plants, or...not.

The tomatoes are doing OK so far, although a number of the leaves have brown spots and I don't know if it's OK or some kind of death knell for my only happy plants. The orange cherry tomatoes are the best producers at this point. The red cherries are poky, as well as really too big for optimum pop-in-your-mouth eating. The Brandywine tomatoes are HUGE, and the one that's nearly ripe is already cracking, which I think is bad although I'm not sure. I hope it doesn't rot or fall off the vine while we're gone. Maybe I should bring it to my dad. That's an idea. And my eggplant! She is so pretty! Swelling like a woman in the 3rd trimester. And I haven't checked lately, but I think another eggplant is on the way. I hope there isn't some kind of eggplant borer no one's told me about. Sigh. This whole garden thing is really more trouble than I was led to believe, Mr. Square Foot Gardening. Better luck next year, I hope.

Roses doing great. I can see now that the sad little new ones that weren't doing well--all they needed was more water. Oops. They are so much happier now. At least somebody is!
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And finally--TV check-in. I was happy Joshua won So You Think You Can Dance, although I TOTALLY thought it would be Twitch. I mean, come on! Josh was great but not (for me) nearly as entertaining. Still, I was happy. We are completely behind on Project Runway and have yet to form opinions much, although I loved Suede's winning dress in the green challenge, even though Suede himself seems like a total tool. (I mean, "SUEDE"? WTF kind of name is that?) In Olympics thoughts, it is TOTALLY TOTALLY unfair that women's beach volleyball players have to wear these itsy little bikinis and the men wear the most hideously unflattering, body-hiding singlet-type things. Give me some bare chests! And shorter shorts! (When I was saying this yesterday, T pointed out, "Hey, this isn't Top Gun." Well, it SHOULD be.) Don't get my wrong, the bikinis are cute, and the women look great in them, and I guess the scantiness is fairly appropriate in this context. I would just like equal-opportunity scanty. Get on that for 2012, London, OK? At least for swimming and diving there is some good ogling potential.

That's all for now. Got to go pack for the weekend. For some reason I don't have much trouble packing for the whole family to go somewhere, but packing for ASH to go one place and me another is somehow defeating me. I'm terrified I will forget to pack something major. Like diapers. Luckily, I'm pretty sure my dad knows where to buy them. ;-)

Noooooooo!

Such was my response to Kherington getting voted off of SY last week. Sigh. I had a soft spot for her. Oh well, gives Comfort a little more time to shake her thing, although I don't think she's got a lot more time left. Am loving the mixing up of the couples, and how about that Joshua? That man be workin' it. I realized that with Gev gone all the guys left are my faves, so I am pretty happy from now on. Especially if they take off their shirts. Not to be too shameless. I have never been a big Courtney fan, so once she is gone the other girls are also ones I like. But maybe Courtney is growing on me. They should tell her to lay off the self-tanner when she's standing next to, say, pasty-white Gev. I guess the only white (ish) guy left is Mark so at least they won't have that problem anymore. I do think the wardrobe department has gone completely insane this season. Maybe they're taking advice from Mary Murphy. (shudder)

My garden is trucking along. I'm having trouble lately with how to keep it properly fertilized without overwatering. We've had plenty of rain, but the fertilizers are designed to be dissolved in water, so I don't know what to do. A bona fide little eggplant is hanging out at the base of a stem. It's so cute! The yellow cherry tomatoes are coming along and I've harvested a few. It really makes you realize what giant farms the people who sell at the farmer's market must have, to be able to sell quarts upon quarts of tomatoes or blueberries, because from my one plant I get about two ripe cherry tomatoes at a time, once or twice a week. The red cherry tomatoes are like in stasis or something, along with the big tomatoes and my many zucchini plants. I'm hoping August will bring more production. Blossom-end rot, chipmunks, and cucumber beetles are still my big nemeses.

Speaking of Latin plurals, is there a fitness instructor anywhere in the country who knows that the singular of "vertebrae" is "vertebra"? If I hear one more person tell me to "roll up one vertebrae at a time" I am going to lose it. I don't think that would go over too well in yoga class. And the teacher is otherwise super great, so. Perhaps best not to piss her off.

"Dance" Fever

So You Think You Can Dance is on tonight. Whoo! I am typing this from the World's Hottest Guest Room (where the computer is, and A/C isn't), so I can't get into a full discussion lest I melt, but briefly: Was pretty happy with the eliminations. I think Comfort had gotten about as far as she could given her lack of training, and Thayne--he was just never my favorite. Obviously a sweet boy, but. I still love Twitchington and enjoyed the chance to see their solos. But this was a reminder that eventually everybody, even my favorites, goes home. (Well, except the winner, duh.) I'd also like to say that the krump routine was an example of how this show kicks all other dance shows' asses. OK, I never watched more than one or two eps of Dancing with the Stars, season 1 no less, because it is an affront to all that is beautiful about dance. GOD, I hate ballroom dancing, this style anyway. All the spangles and over-the-top showmanship. Don't get me started. But anyway, does that show have KRUMPING? I doubt it. And if so, do they krump to songs like 2 Buck 4 TV? I doubt it even more. This fucking rocked. I may be a white girl from NH without, alas, a drop of soul, but I LOVE krumping, and the faster and harder and dirtier the better. Compare to Step It Up and Dance, which features such gems as "Umbrella" and that dippy Gwen Stefani song. And their hip-hop dancing was repetitive and dull.

I can't wait for Will's partner to go. Mia is right, she is dragging him down. Luckily we know the judges would slit their own throats before they let him go. But did they have to torment us with shots of the divine Miss Allen? I love her. Oh well. I guess it's worth it to keep him in the competition. I totally called it, by the way, that he was just as good as the Alvin Ailey dancers. I was watching them and commented to T that although the SY dancers are very good, the pros were orders of magnitude better and you could really see a difference. Then Will came out for his solo and I said, He must have been backstage watching the AA guys and thinking, Got to bring it! And he did. Love you, Will.

Still hate the quickstep. Stop the insanity! Speaking of which, Mary's outfit was as hideous as usual. And could she visit a cosmetic dentist, because her horsey teeth and gums are really getting on my nerves.

That's all that occurs to me at the moment. Still have a deep love for Chelsie and Mark. Can't wait to see what they do this week!

Away for the weekend

So my usual infrequent posting rate will be down to nil. And I haven't even gotten to finish watching So You Think You Can Dance yet! Argh! But very happy about each couple dancing twice. I had forgotten about that. Twice as much dancing, far less rehearsal blah blah blah. What's not to love? I only saw the very beginning, but am totally confirmed in my love for Chelsie and Matt, and Twitchington. And confirmed in my negative feelings for Kourtni and what's his name (they did the white-outfits hip-hop routine). They pretty much sucked. Not enough crispness, too vague, not in synch. They did not BRING IT. It was terrible. There's a reason they keep ending up in the bottom. Plenty of contemporary dancers can do some bad-ass hip-hop, and I don't think these two have a bad-ass bone in their body. More later.

Happy Fourth, everybody!

SYTYCFail

Last week I was all set for So You Think You Can Dance (aka SY). I was literally counting the days. Snickollet was coming over and I was excited to indoctrinate her into the One True Faith (although, to get ahead of myself, I'm not feeling so devoted to it this season). She is new to the show and I hope to get her good and hooked, like me. Then I spent most of Wednesday afternoon being, shall we say, indisposed with (I think) food poisoning. I left Snick a message saying maybe we should cancel. A few hours later, after the 4th and final vomiting episode, I felt miraculously restored to health. I left her another message saying I was still game if she was, though I couldn't have blamed her for not wanting to come over, in case it wasn't food poisoning. Then I saw her email message saying she had to cancel. OK, no big deal. I could still watch on my own, yeah! Cut to a few hours later, ASH is asleep, T on his way home from golf. He comes home and practically runs to change, and I'm thinking, Wow, I know he's into SO You Think You Can Dance, but I didn't think he'd RUN. I settle in with the remote and watch 2 minutes of SY before he comes down and commandeers the TV to watch his Tivo'd Germany Euro Cup game. Um, hi! I was here, ready to watch SY! I said, "You know, Snick was going to come over to watch SY tonight." And he said, "But you knew this game was today." Of course, I didn't know he HAD to watch it the very same day, but I should have, because he is German and soccer really matters. So it was lucky Snick couldn't make it after all, because I don't think any of my neighborhood bars would have been showing SY, more's the pity.

[Let's pause a moment to bow our heads for Germany's loss in the Euro Cup final.]

Then it took me another day or two to even get to watch SY and the results show, let alone blog. (Garden is doing great but it's true, it's time consuming.) I can't tell if it's the passage of time blurring my memory or what, but I continue to wait to be blown away by SY as I was almost every week last season. This week the only one that brought me back to those feelings was Matt and Chelsie's. I actually had chills watching it. One way you can tell when the dance is good is when it elevates a song you thought was just OK. I admit I turn up the radio and sing along when OneRepublic's "Apologize" comes on, because it was part of a great Danny dance last year. I'll now always associate that song and the one from Matt and Chelsie's routine with these amazing dances, and that makes them special to me.

I really like Matt, for his quirkiness and elegance and Valentino good looks. I finally figured out who he really reminds me of, though--he's like a younger, hotter, Japaneser Pee-Wee Herman. Sorry, Matt--you really are cute and not Pee-Wee-like, but I can't help it. I feel like Chelsie's just OK, but after this performance I like her a lot.

Twitchington: I love them. So cute, so funny, such good dancers. I felt like this wasn't the most PC routine in the world (is prison a dancing matter? I guess it can be, right, Elvis?), but I liked it a lot, particularly how the dance and music went together. That should go without saying, but I don't feel choreographers always work it this well. I loved the bit at the end where they go down the "elevator."

Courtney/Gev: (First--it is so annoying that there are two girls named Chelsea and two named Courtney, which would be bad enough, but then two of those 4 spell the names wrong. Don't get me started on Kherington either. Cor.) This routine was just OK for me. I think I was thrown off by the illusion that she was naked every time she turned that side to the audience. With a show this (generally) great, why can't they have a talk with the wardrobe people? Jesus, it's appalling. I thought it was a beautiful dress except for the nakedness aspect, and even that could have been appropriate on an older woman. Anyway, I'm just not loving this couple, and I didn't feel the chemistry between them. I felt like they were trying too hard.

Comfort/Chris: I like Comfort, but something about Chris doesn't do it for me. I loved this piece at the start, and then it just fell apart for me. ("I was interested, I was VERY interested--then, suddenly, I lost interest.") I totally agreed with the judges that they needed to bring more, be bigger. Generally Comfort does a much better job with this than Chris. I'm not surprised this was his last week. I am excited to see Comfort with a new partner. Why can't they get rid of Tyce Diorio and get more Shane Sparks? Broadway, jazz, whatever--if it's a Tyce routine, you better run, because you are getting voted out this week. (OK, every once in a while he has a good one, but rarely. And the Tyce=Going Home thing tends to hold true, just watch.)

Jessica/Will: Oh, Will, you make me forgive you for the absence of Debbie Allen. (Will is her protege, so she can't be a judge until he's gone, lest there be intimations of undue influence.) I love, LOVE Debbie Allen (doesn't everybody who watched Fame? "Right here is where you start paying. With SWEAT." I love her so much I even watched the Fame reality show she cohosted with Joey Fatone a few years ago that tanked because I was the only one watching.) so this is a big deal. He did not disappoint me, but I'm not into his partner. She's cute and all, but even back in Vegas week I was surprised she made it. My husband and I were sort of rooting for her to be voted out, along with Comfort's partner, and then Comfort and Will could be together, which I think would really work. Although it occurred to me I might only think that because they're both black. It's uncomfortable when you realize you are holding an idea that might be based on nothing more valid than prejudice. Ahem.

Where was I? Ah, Kourtni and Matt. Hey, what's Sinead O'Connor doing choreographing for this show? Choreography was quirky and cool, but I don't know how I felt about the routine overall. It reminded me of the wind-up-doll dance from last season. I'm just not into this couple. He, Thayne, and Chris are my least favorite guys, and Kourtni just doesn't do it for me. Is her resemblance to Courtney Love just an unfortunate coincidence?

Chelsea/Thayne: (Again, WTF with the names on this show? My God. Did all of today's 40-year-old parents get hold of some bad acid back in the day or what? Chromosomal damage is the only explanation.) Oh, the quickstep. Talk about a kiss of death, it is worse than getting Tyce Diorio. Why, WHY keep using a dance that everyone hates and hardly anyone can do? Just to torture people? ONE time, ONCE, it was good, and that was in the season I can't shut up about, last year. Just stop. There are plenty of lovely ballroom dances they could use instead. (More Argentine tango, please!) I noted, as did the judges, the painful rictus of a smile plastered on Thayne's face. I'm ready to see him go. He has just never impressed me. She's cute, but also not my favorite. Bye-bye, Chelsea.

Chelsie/Matt: Best routine of the night. Chills, etc, cf. above. I almost cried, actually. I love you, Matt! That's suit's hot on you!

Katee (please, Lord, make them spell properly!!!)/Joshua: He is another one of my favorites. Baby got BACK! Yowza! (I need to get my husband some pants like those. He too would fill them out nicely.) Great chemistry, great dancing, great bum! I think I was prejudiced by the film preceding where Katee said she was uncomfortable with sexy dancing, because I thought she didn't look so comfortable, and if I hadn't seen that film I probably wouldn't have noticed. Doesn't matter too much because I was busy watching Joshua. What a cutie! His dad, too.

I love seeing the parents and thinking about what ASH will do with himself someday. I am so excited for the possibilities. (Here my Irish superstition requires me to say God willing or knock on wood or something.) I was talking with Snick about this, actually, during an audition show. I am always surprised and disappointed at people's parents trying to stand in their way of following their dream. I used the analogy of, if ASH wanted to be a pro football player--I could hardly imagine something I would LESS like him to do. But if he were really talented, and loved it? How could I say no? I'd just have to do a lot of praying for him not to get injured. Or on drugs. Or--well, let's not imagine all the horrible possibilities. We'll just see how fate takes us. At the rate he's going, truck driver or firefighter is looking likely. That boy loves him some trucks.