Dressing your reality doesn't make it true

This weekend was one of those ones where I spent good portions of time out of the house, interacting with other people and pretending to be a contributing member of society and an adult and whatnot. I'm sleepy now.

On Saturday Houseboy was Workboy and I was Housegirl--I did laundry and dusted and cleaned things and even brushed the fat cat until he screamed and hissed at me and chased me around the house with his fangs out.

Sunday was the first day of youth formation and the start of a new curriculum called "Godly Play," so I got to sit in a circle on the floor with a bunch of highly-educated Hyde Park parents and pretend I know what I'm talking about while actually deferring to the kindergartner across from me who had had a similar program in her pre-K Sunday School class. "So, um... then we sort of do, like 'Wonderings'.... which is, like, where we think about the story. Right Tegan?" Tegan nods and then rolls her eyes at me.

After that, I braved the apocalyptic rainstorms to head to downtown with Houseboy, our friend the Hedgehog and her as-yet-to-be nicknamed soon-to-be-husband, where we got our first ever massages in our almost 30 years and then bought pants and v-necked sweaters at Old Navy and drank tea at Elephant and Castle.

I wore the pants (green) and sweater (yellow) and a collared shirt (also from Old Navy) this morning, thinking I'd extend my streak of being all growned-up-like, but as soon as I got into work I noticed that the white shirt was covered in Fat Cat's hair. Once I'd removed the hair, I started to make some tea, but as I was walking to the water cooler with my newly-filled tea ball in my cup, I looked down and noticed that the cup had a nice film of brown, moldy goo all over the bottom, which was now splishing prettily all over the fresh tea leaves. So, I washed out the tea cup and tea ball and got new leaves and new tea and got back to my desk and finally opened my e-mail and saw that I have two meetings this morning, both of which I'd forgotten all about.

Welcome back to the reality of who you are. I'll be taking a nap in the conference room.

I cleaned out my camera

My digital camera is now totally empty of photos. If you go to the part where you're supposed to look at the photos you took, it says "No Image." I thought about taking a picture of that with Houseboy's camera and then posting it here, but I thought that might be too postmodern, even for me. Because we all know I'm the postest of all post-moderns.

Anyway, now that I have all those photos on my computer, I thought I'd put some of them up here on the interwebs to share with the people who don't read my blog. Here is one of risotto with basil and roasted corn and cherry tomatoes that Houseboy made for me. He let me pick out the corn, because I'm from Minnesota, and that means that I'm born knowing good corn, even when it's being sold on 53rd street in Chicago.


Here's one of black beans with mangoes and red bell peppers that Houseboy also cooked for me. I didn't get to pick out any of this meal, but I got to help sprinkle the mangoes on top. It looked prettier before I started eating it, but I forgot to take a picture until I'd halfway destroyed it. I was hungry!


Here's one of the fat cat saying "I'd rather lick my fist!" That's his new favorite saying. I'm going to get one of those cute t-shirts with a picture of him on it that people have, and then I'm going to put that underneath.


And here's a picture of when I went to a conference on educational policy in New York City! Boobies!

Remember that one time I had a blog?

Ironic that my last blog was about the end of the world. Were you worried about me? Did you think that my world ended on October 24, 2007? That would be confusing for you, since your world didn't end, and all previous evidence has pointed to us living in the same world. Tell me more about your cosmology some other time, though. Suffice to say that neither of our worlds has ended as of my writing.


Update on happenings in my world in the last 10 months:

Houseboy has cooked eggplant parmigiana, ratatouille, vegetarian paella, tofu curry (I'm back off fish), and sundry other delicacies to soothe the savage beast, or breast as the case may be.

I have seen movies, 94.73% of which were good to excellent; and I have gone on camping trips, 73.6% of which were rated "worthwhile" by the participants.

I have finished work projects, which have stalled in the editing stages above me, and engaged in a war of attrition with all members of my department. I am The Highlander. There can be only one.

I had a dream about a verdant valley filled with tiny giraffes.

I have reclaimed the dream of a Central Division Title for the Twins, and only cried a little when I saw Torii Hunter in an Angels uniform.

I have read all the way to the K's in my library, with a time-out for books bought in airports (Catcher in the Rye, Rant) and books from the McSweeney's Book Club (Maps and Legends, All Known Metal Bands, Where to Invade Next, Underground America, Arkansas).

Houseboy and I have walked to Lincoln Park for brunch, jetted to York for a wedding and popped out to DC for the fireworks. The cats are not happy with us, and I have the urine-stained traveling bag to prove it. The Fat One has altogether forgotten how to speak English and only looks at me with blank eyes and licks his lips.


Things that have not changed in the last 10 months:

I have not grown any taller, any smarter or any better at the piano.

No one has offered to sponsor me for a year in Spain to work on my Spanish and my paella-eating.

With my back to the moon I can still spit 40 feet.

All signs point to the end of the world

This morning, the ad on the side of my bus spontaneously fell off on the highway.

My fingertips are tingling, and my right elbow is slightly colder than my left.

The women's restroom smells like Froot Loops.

And, most importantly, a drawing of mitochondria has mysteriously appeared on my work notepad.

Tiramisu for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Due to recent dreams of chewing rocks, I am on a strict diet of tiramisu and mashed potatoes. I'll be publishing my diet book soon.