Take that, knife-bearing riff-raff.
Tuesday, October 17
Monday, October 16
Mucho Lucho Turns One
Not only do babies come to my parties now,
but I show up at theirs.
It's a little bit of a mixed up world, isn't it?
but I show up at theirs.
It's a little bit of a mixed up world, isn't it?
Thursday, October 12
Never Saw This Coming
I used to:
1. Never wash fruit before I ate it
2. Write something every single day
3. Wish I had a boyfriend
4. Think 75 degrees was really getting just a little bit too hot
5. Eat baked potatoes with too much sour cream at least three times a week
6. Watch too much t.v.
7. Admire Johnny Depp on 21 Jump Street (see number 6)
8. Ride my bike around the neighborhood with my sister
9. Wear oversized everything
10. Wonder why no one liked me
Now I:
1. Never eat fruit, unless it's in berry form or in a salad - but still don't wash it, no doubt risking E. coli or other.
2. Pull out a notebook every few months, then sit back, agonized, as writer's cramp paralyzes my pen hand. Also write many boring technical reports about rock piles irritatingly left scattered all over the desert by prehistoric people who apparently had some kind of grudge, even way back then (see number 10).
3. Have a committed relationship that feels like a blanket on a winter night (although, see number 4). Do not want to be the Marrying Kind of People. Not just yet. If ever. Enjoy being the Living in Sin-Buying a House-Raising a Dog Together Kind of People. And the Grilling on Weekdays Kind of People (see number 5).
4. Hope it will drop below 75 degrees at least for the holidays. At least for one holiday. Complain bitterly of the cold when it gets down to 60 degrees.
5. Eat baked potatoes only when boyfriend/blanket (see number 3) is out of town. Consume a lot of homemade soup. Make a mean chocolate cherry torte with a magical layer of marzipan. Yeah. Grill red meat on the patio all the time, even on Tuesdays.
6. Watch faithfully A. The Simpsons and B. Seinfeld. (And C. House, when alone and often while eating baked potato with too much sour cream. See number 5.)
7. Admire Johnny Depp as a sexy-yet-possibly-gay pirate. Admire Johnny Depp with scissors for hands and as a cartoon character married to a dead woman. Admire Johnny Depp period.
8. Have a bike. Somewhere in the shed. Collecting dust. And black widows. Dream of riding bike out to bars but do nothing to make it happen.
9. Own three pairs of pants that are too tight. Enjoy wearing tight pants, esp. in public, but not as tight as all that.
10. Wonder how I got so many people to like me so regularly. (Tight pants, maybe?)
1. Never wash fruit before I ate it
2. Write something every single day
3. Wish I had a boyfriend
4. Think 75 degrees was really getting just a little bit too hot
5. Eat baked potatoes with too much sour cream at least three times a week
6. Watch too much t.v.
7. Admire Johnny Depp on 21 Jump Street (see number 6)
8. Ride my bike around the neighborhood with my sister
9. Wear oversized everything
10. Wonder why no one liked me
Now I:
1. Never eat fruit, unless it's in berry form or in a salad - but still don't wash it, no doubt risking E. coli or other.
2. Pull out a notebook every few months, then sit back, agonized, as writer's cramp paralyzes my pen hand. Also write many boring technical reports about rock piles irritatingly left scattered all over the desert by prehistoric people who apparently had some kind of grudge, even way back then (see number 10).
3. Have a committed relationship that feels like a blanket on a winter night (although, see number 4). Do not want to be the Marrying Kind of People. Not just yet. If ever. Enjoy being the Living in Sin-Buying a House-Raising a Dog Together Kind of People. And the Grilling on Weekdays Kind of People (see number 5).
4. Hope it will drop below 75 degrees at least for the holidays. At least for one holiday. Complain bitterly of the cold when it gets down to 60 degrees.
5. Eat baked potatoes only when boyfriend/blanket (see number 3) is out of town. Consume a lot of homemade soup. Make a mean chocolate cherry torte with a magical layer of marzipan. Yeah. Grill red meat on the patio all the time, even on Tuesdays.
6. Watch faithfully A. The Simpsons and B. Seinfeld. (And C. House, when alone and often while eating baked potato with too much sour cream. See number 5.)
7. Admire Johnny Depp as a sexy-yet-possibly-gay pirate. Admire Johnny Depp with scissors for hands and as a cartoon character married to a dead woman. Admire Johnny Depp period.
8. Have a bike. Somewhere in the shed. Collecting dust. And black widows. Dream of riding bike out to bars but do nothing to make it happen.
9. Own three pairs of pants that are too tight. Enjoy wearing tight pants, esp. in public, but not as tight as all that.
10. Wonder how I got so many people to like me so regularly. (Tight pants, maybe?)
Monday, October 9
Oh, and by the way...
And it works good. We draped it with Christmas lights and tried it out on Sunday for my birthday "party".
one hot birthday cake
ancho chiles
Originally uploaded by Jennyde.
I just made a chocolate-chile-fig-flourless cake for my special day. It sounds strange, but it was totally decadent. For more pictures, click on the chiles.
Wednesday, October 4
Death of a Spider
Halloween is nearly upon us and we have the tangled cobwebs and black cat to prove it. Unfortunately, with the cobwebs come the large scary spiders. And not the kind people like to drop into the punch bowl and children wear as rings.
Black widows.
Every time I mention that we have black widows living on our porch, I get the same reaction. You already know how it goes because you're doing it right now. Especially if you're my mother. Black widows, though, are such cool spiders. The most venomous spider in North America, yes, but also one of the dead sexiest. No pun intended.
I still don't want them waggling their seductive little abdomens under all the patio furniture, however. We are not running that kind of establishment.
I can't honestly say that the thought of black widows infesting the narrow spaces around our casita normally inspires a sense of thrill or even one of mildly positive excitement in me. But last night I found myself oddly bespelled by the strange, witchy charm of this grandmother of shiver-inducing spiders.
It went down like this:
Conducting a search for the correct tupperware lid in the noxious atmosphere permeating the cabinet under the kitchen sink has lately become excruciating. I find it a far more alarming prospect than that of meeting up with a black widow, actually. In the interest of finally mitigating this stench, Raphael pried up the bottom of the cabinet under the sink to reveal in all its leaky glory the sewer pipe lurking deep in the netherworld of the crawlspace.
As an exciting backdrop to the leaking pipe, the flashlight illuminated an urban sprawl of spiderwebs and the disturbing murky gleam of strangely shimmering sewer water. Right in the center of that gossamer cosmos hung a huge black widow, her spherical abdomen the darkly metallic gleam of hematite in the pale shifting light. She clung upside down to her web with outstretched, slender legs and didn't move at all as we examined her. Exhibiting a sort of spiderly dignity. Or maybe just freaked out as all hell in her own shy, spidery way.
This may sound misguided (if that's the word you're looking for), but this was actually a magnificent spider.
That's why I feel so terrible about the mission we subsequently embarked upon, the main goal of which was to brutally destroy every spider in that crawlspace so that we could make that awful smell go away. I don't know anything about how the poison killed her, but I'm pretty sure she suffered in some way. She finally moved when the poison coated her shining obsidian body. I'm sure spiderly dignity gave way to some instinctual sort of spiderly panic. I didn't see her leave her web, but when next we aimed the flashlight into the depths of darkness under the house, she was nothing more than a dull, shriveled ball of spider curled up on the packed dirt below her web.
I know she was only a spider, and a potentially deadly one at that, but my gut still hiccups a little when I think about how she was doomed for one reason from the moment she began to spin her web in that narrow cavern. We recognized how fascinating and desirable her gorgeous voluptuous spiderness was, and yet, when it came down to it, we judged her on nothing more than that -- her spiderness.
What's worse is that we'll probably freeze her likeness into spooky little eight-legged ice cubes this Halloween to entertain the party-goers and, once the sun comes up, make the same decision all over again when we find that one of her sisters has filled the niche under the sink with her own sticky labyrinth.
Rest in peace, spider.
Black widows.
Every time I mention that we have black widows living on our porch, I get the same reaction. You already know how it goes because you're doing it right now. Especially if you're my mother. Black widows, though, are such cool spiders. The most venomous spider in North America, yes, but also one of the dead sexiest. No pun intended.
I still don't want them waggling their seductive little abdomens under all the patio furniture, however. We are not running that kind of establishment.
I can't honestly say that the thought of black widows infesting the narrow spaces around our casita normally inspires a sense of thrill or even one of mildly positive excitement in me. But last night I found myself oddly bespelled by the strange, witchy charm of this grandmother of shiver-inducing spiders.
It went down like this:
Conducting a search for the correct tupperware lid in the noxious atmosphere permeating the cabinet under the kitchen sink has lately become excruciating. I find it a far more alarming prospect than that of meeting up with a black widow, actually. In the interest of finally mitigating this stench, Raphael pried up the bottom of the cabinet under the sink to reveal in all its leaky glory the sewer pipe lurking deep in the netherworld of the crawlspace.
As an exciting backdrop to the leaking pipe, the flashlight illuminated an urban sprawl of spiderwebs and the disturbing murky gleam of strangely shimmering sewer water. Right in the center of that gossamer cosmos hung a huge black widow, her spherical abdomen the darkly metallic gleam of hematite in the pale shifting light. She clung upside down to her web with outstretched, slender legs and didn't move at all as we examined her. Exhibiting a sort of spiderly dignity. Or maybe just freaked out as all hell in her own shy, spidery way.
This may sound misguided (if that's the word you're looking for), but this was actually a magnificent spider.
That's why I feel so terrible about the mission we subsequently embarked upon, the main goal of which was to brutally destroy every spider in that crawlspace so that we could make that awful smell go away. I don't know anything about how the poison killed her, but I'm pretty sure she suffered in some way. She finally moved when the poison coated her shining obsidian body. I'm sure spiderly dignity gave way to some instinctual sort of spiderly panic. I didn't see her leave her web, but when next we aimed the flashlight into the depths of darkness under the house, she was nothing more than a dull, shriveled ball of spider curled up on the packed dirt below her web.
I know she was only a spider, and a potentially deadly one at that, but my gut still hiccups a little when I think about how she was doomed for one reason from the moment she began to spin her web in that narrow cavern. We recognized how fascinating and desirable her gorgeous voluptuous spiderness was, and yet, when it came down to it, we judged her on nothing more than that -- her spiderness.
What's worse is that we'll probably freeze her likeness into spooky little eight-legged ice cubes this Halloween to entertain the party-goers and, once the sun comes up, make the same decision all over again when we find that one of her sisters has filled the niche under the sink with her own sticky labyrinth.
Rest in peace, spider.
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