zombie noodles

i had a dream...it was an odd dream. all i remember is putting many sleeping kindergardeners into my father-in-law's van, the van careening out of control, me racing frantically through the van to reach the front and regain control of the vehicle. next thing you know, russel crowe is sharing his cooking tips and then, bam! i'm awake.

i woke up in the middle of the night needing to pee and found my arms had fallen completely asleep. i got out of bed, discovered my plantar fasciitis particularly painful, and thus i lurched, tingling arms hanging limply in front of me, thinking about russel crowe's recipe for pasta, like some kind of nighttime polish pasta zombie.

the point? you wanted a point? sorry, wrong blog.

hot stuff

last night at our friendly neighbourhood vietnamese restaurant:

moi(rubbing eyes): oops! i think i touched some hot pepper and now i got it in my eyes!

mr. monkey: oh, monkey...

moi: no! it feels nice!

yo mama!

tomorrow is d-day - the day the mother-in-law arrives. when i mentioned this at work, the first question that fell was whether she'd white glove my house. i suppose there is a preset map that a relationship between a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law tends to follow: white gloving with disapproval the perpetually sloppy home of the woman who, surely, is making her darling boy's life a living hell, or at least a far-less-than-favourable version of the kind of love mama used to give.

well, either i am extremely lucky, or my big scary mouth takes care of me. i suspect it's a little bit of both. my mother-in-law, despite being very close to her son, relinquished him into my care with precious little spillage of blood. in fact, any war wounds would have been hers as i tend to be a mouthy, opinionated and sometimes mean person, while she is shy, quiet and insecure. the take-over was accomplished fairly peaceably and rather than lamenting the loss of her baby boy, she made sure to embrace me as one more daughter.

being a classic polish mama, she (like my own mother) is a great and prolific cook, and from day one she always made sure to accommodate whatever dietary limitations i imposed upon her (8 years of no meat, an eternity without raisins).

it sometimes makes me sad to realise that she fears me a little and even occasionally looks to me in culinary matters in a way that should be reversed - i am, after all, the younger, far less experienced cook. still, when i think of the classic rivalry between daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law, i am thankful that nobody's going to be white gloving my home...which doesn't mean i won't be dusting the baseboards*. just in case.

*and vacuuming up the fruit flies.

sundays, autumn, suburbia

i have always found sundays suffused with a certain melancholy, an emptiness, an almost imperceptible gap between the expected and the proffered. the same can be said of early autumn. both have the bittersweetness of an artificial sweetener - almost the real thing, but not quite: a hollow emptiness insufficiently masked. sunday, still almost the weekend but tinged with the burnt taste of upcoming school days; early fall, not quite summer anymore, the chill in the shadows belying the sunlit heat. almost, but not quite. a counterfeit that reveals the wrong brushstrokes to those in the know.

north american suburbs are similar in their superficial attempt to mimic the neighbourhoods of our past, all lanes and lawns and sipping lemonade on the porch swing. almost perfect, except wait, there's nobody there. no children playing, no neighbours leaning over the fence to exchange tips for dealing with an overabundance of apples or zucchini, no human voices at all, in fact. the empty almost-sweetness of nutrasweet, fooling nobody except those who wish to be fooled.

i will work on embracing the end-of-days aspect of sundays and autumn, because they, in the fullness of time, will become new days and seasons. i refuse to join the suburbs, there is no life in them. i may have a hard time dealing with the circular path of life, the need for death to bring forth new life, but i am working on it. nobody can convince me that in the fullness of time the suburbs will ever become anything other than a burial ground of consumerist illusions.

them's the brakes..breaks...whatever!

one of the commenters on my previous post (and i know who you are, dude) suggested i get an iphone to replace the motorola i so cruelly subjected to a prolonged and rather terminal* session of laundramatic water-boarding. ha! that's right, you heard me: i said HA! because, really, with my track record, i am pretty certain i would not be allowed to own an iphone. it is simply far too cool and far too complicated for my big fat fingers and short stubby brain.

instead, mr. monkey went sleuthing online and found me the sheer polar opposite of an iphone (or as close as you can get to a sheer polar opposite of an iphone without resorting to the kind of mobile communications device carried on the backs of soldiers circa the vietnam war.) no, it is not as bad as this, but it's pretty darn close. it was developed for the poor and the illiterate, it is virtually indestructible and it can do one thing: phoning people. its text messaging capabilities are there, but given its large-letter small-screen format (i.e. 6 characters visible at a time) they are as laughable as my texting skills, so that's ok.

oh, it also has an alarm clock feature, something i demand of my phone (seriously: i demand it! in an imperious voice! flinging my arms about!), and mr. monkey surprised me by setting it bright and early, nearly landing me in ER, for it sounds like an alien abduction and scared the living shit out of me, which, i suppose, is the whole point of an alarm clock. not that i need that. unlike mr. monkey, i generally require only the gentle tinkling of a pretty crystal bell to nudge me out of sleep, and this ain't it. no, when the noise hit, i woke up on all fours, on the floor, sobbing as i searched for the button to turn it off. mr. monkey thought it was humorous. anyone know a good divorce lawyer?

anyhoo, the phone is simple, small, and boasts no shitty camera. it also does not allow me to edit my phone book, so if i mess up (say, theoretically, by inputting every single one of my long distance phone numbers without adding the 1), i get to flex those texting muscles and do it all over again.

lest you feel compelled to make fun of me and my third world phone, let me tell you the kicker - the beast has not failed to pick up a single phone call, unlike the previous bastard, which dropped something in the neighbourhood of 73.5% of my calls,** a weakness i tended to blame on poor reception rather than poor technology.

to sum up - fuck you iphone! i gots me a motorola f3. it's a PHONE! for phoning people with! and an alien anal probe alarm clock to wake you up good and scared! wooooo!

*while i am fairly certain the rice method works fine for phones subjected to a light sprinkling of the morning dew, phones submerged for a full 25 minutes including two spin cycles do not respond well to ricesussitation.

**as ought to be evident by now, no scientists or statisticians were consulted during the writing of this post; i totally pulled that number out of my ass.

what do you mean? stencilled roses in dusty rose and powder blue are totally not circa 1983!

i have just taken a pair of pants from the washer and discovered my phone in them. thanks to a tip from a friend, it is now drying out in a bowl of organic whole grain arborio rice, and i certainly hope it grasps the depth of the culinary sacrifice. i also hope it starts to work in a hurry because (other than facebook, skype, email and google talk) it is the only method i have of communicating with the world, and god knows that a girl without a cell, is no modern girl.

today i also bled all over my hand from a small cut, cooked a very good dinner, picked rocks and branches from our increasingly clear* land, drove tither and yon, yelled at mr. monkey (the basis of many a day's activities), laundered things (phone included), broke a drawer, listened to music and woke up very early indeed, not necessarily in that order.

i have made my peace with the fact that i will not be writing about our kayaking trip because by now it is but a hazy misty mirage in the glimmering past. all i can say is that a 5 day kayaking trip into complete wilderness while experiencing any (or indeed ALL) of the following is not a particularly good idea but will not necessarily rob you of fun: painfully enlarged lymph nodes, a full blown 3-day migraine, the onset of the menstrual cycle, and a wonky hip.

*fret not, oh lovers of trees, in whose proud ranks i also stand: we are clearing perhaps a fifth of it, and not for a bowling green monstrosity, but a flowing flowery meadow filled with fruit trees and frolicking baby ferrets.

flowery metaphors and all that shit

while pulling into a seemingly empty parking spot on our way to inception* and being thwarted by a lurking shopping cart parked between two trucks:

mr. monkey: fucking smart cars!

*the film thinks it's a lot smarter than it actually is and as much as i adore joseph gordon-levitt, i felt he was sadly underutilised in this flick, as was ellen page. but y'all don't have to believe me: i found the girl with the dragon tattoo (the book) covertly misogynistic and disappointingly formulaic, despite all those sexy umlauts.

at subway (don't ask)

moi: what kind of sub did you get?

mr. monkey: beef.

moi: what kind of beef?

mr. monkey: bacon.

nope, still not about the kayaking trip

mr. monkey has a t-shirt. it is too big and too see-through and allows disturbing glimpses of his monkey nipples. it is a lovely pale aqua colour but its v-neck has been stretched out by too many passes of mr. monkey's gigantic monkey head. overall, it is wrong. it is the wrong colour. it is the wrong size. it is the wrong style. it makes mr. monkey look like a sloppy single fat man. i hate it.

despite my pleas, mr. monkey keeps wearing the t-shirt. last week i threatened to steal the t-shirt away and write "yay, i am a princess" on it with a sharpie. he said he'd still wear it camping.

today i did it. i don't think he'll wear it again.

p.s. i will add a picture if i can figure out the technology.

jesus, still not about the kayaking trip (i swear, i'm working on it)

yesterday i was inspired by a flock of pigeons sitting like notes on electrical wires, against the backdrop of a gloomy grey sky. being a (semi) product of the modern era* i immediately whipped out my cell phone and snapped a picture. it turned out blurry and cool, and i saved it as my wallpaper. as soon as i did it, i realised that it was such a blatantly hipster kind of picture (you know, the whole precious blurry retro kodak, lomo cam, polaroid thing you see all over the bloody place) that i shuddered in my socks.

what's next? i muttered darkly, and then the obvious presented itself: I KNOW! i will post pictures of myself with my asymmetrical bangs, wearing an ironic floral romper and hideous 80's glasses, with my legs all cutely pigeon-toed. 'cause that's how it's done these days,**no?

sigh...i know, i know, it's not ok to be so filled with so much irrational hatred. my karma is totally fucked.

*i accidentally typed "ear." how cool is that? to be a product of the modern ear!

** sweet jesus on a jesus tree, thank god i'm not the only one driven nuts by this!!! there are actual WEBLOGS dedicated to this travesty! sometimes i just looooove the interwebs!