11.30.2005
house of cosby
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you stumbled upon a hair belonging to Bill Cosby, then spent 10 long years building a cloning machine, finally managing to fill up your house with Cosby clones? Wonder no more. Try number one, then proceed at your own risk.
11.29.2005
June 21, 1936
My great-aunt Florence was no petit thing. (In fact, in 1924, as a high-school senior, she led her basketball team to a 70-2 victory over the no-doubt-humbled Geneva Eagles, scoring 52 of those points herself. This article recalls the 80th anniversary of that night, when she still held the county all-time single-game scoring record--probably still does.)
Over six-feet tall and full of spunk, she must have towered over all of Europe during her visit in 1936. I love to imagine what it was like for a couple of girls from Ohio to navigate their way through Europe in a convertible--with hairpin turns on roads not intended for cars and a king-sized language barrier everywhere they went.
A few days after crossing the Atlantic and disembarking in Plymouth, England, in June 1936, Florence wrote a letter home: "Well, here we are in Ireland, by gum, and it is swell."
Over six-feet tall and full of spunk, she must have towered over all of Europe during her visit in 1936. I love to imagine what it was like for a couple of girls from Ohio to navigate their way through Europe in a convertible--with hairpin turns on roads not intended for cars and a king-sized language barrier everywhere they went.
A few days after crossing the Atlantic and disembarking in Plymouth, England, in June 1936, Florence wrote a letter home: "Well, here we are in Ireland, by gum, and it is swell."
Killarney, Ireland
11:15 PM
Dear Arlene and Mel,
We stayed overnight in Cork last night and left there after breakfast, about 10:30, in a dreary rainstorm, on our way to Blarney Castle. About 12 miles from Cork we started our hike through the fields and by paths to the castle. Of course our goal was to kiss the blarney stone. You can imagine our surprise when we discovered the stone was on the very top of the edifice, 120-some feet high, and that the only way to kiss the stone was to have someone hold your ankles while you would lie on your back with your hands on a rail and gradually go over backward until your head fits through a hole in the wall. Then you kissed the stone (if you weren't dizzy, etc.). Not to be outdone, and sadly needing that eloquence promised to the kissers of the stone, we proceeded to break our necks and backs and all kissed the stone--we took pictures to prove it. Then, you know us, the outdoor girls, we came down a narrow circular stone passageway out and, as a result of our combination of big feet and long legs, came near coming down on our hinders instead.
From Blarney Castle, we drove back to Cork and thence westward to Glengariff, a resort town, where we had lunch. Every time we stop, a crowd of people gathers around the car to give it the once-over. To them it's a spectacular thing, I guess.
From Glengariff to Killarney the scenery is exquisite. Sometimes things are so beautiful you can't say a thing, and you're fortunate if you can swallow the lump in your throat. The road was little used; grass would be growing between the two-wheel tracks. All the people ride in two-wheeled wagons drawn by a burro because a horse wouldn't be sure-footed enough to take them up the rocky mountain roads. Hairpin turns suddenly bring you into a flock of mountain sheep, cows, and burros in the middle of the road, or a crowd of people doing some odd dance to the music of the accordion, in the center of a bridge.
Fields are covered with a blanket of dwarf daisies about the size of a dime, or buttercups of the same size. Then, for contrast, rhododendrons grow the size of our large trees and have waxy leaves. Then, as if that weren't enough, Canterbury bells and bright red fuchsias are everywhere. The fuchsia are also trimmed for hedges. We'd get out and pick every strange flower and have to ask people what they were. This section is also filled with peat or turf, as they call it. As far as you can see will be places where trenches have been dug and this peat taken out in brick-like slabs. Of course we had to crawl out and paw that. It is used for fuel and resembles nothing so much as bricks of cow manure.
Roadside crosses; lovely spired churches; field after field of "taters"; ruins; waterfalls; stands where Irish laces, linens, and woolen goods are being sold; men in groups, gossiping (not women); cyclists everywhere you turn, even up that mountain pass; horses and burros with their front leg tied to the back leg to keep them from wandering too far; rather small towns where it's a waste of time to look for a restaurant because there are none. All this and plenty more just in this one day's journey.
We're having better luck with our food now that we know better how to order. The inevitable tea is getting to taste better than coffee. In fact, anything would taste better than the kind they make. Toast has been an unheard-of luxury, but their pastries, especially in Wales, would be hard to beat. You have your choice of meat--either mutton for breakfast, mutton for lunch, or mutton for dinner. Sometimes they surprise you and offer lamb chops. Soup is gravy with a little water, and nothing is salted. Before we can use the butter, it has to be salted. Sugar is served in large salt shakers, and salt in a small dish like a bird dish. You almost have to beg for a glass of water. They never serve it with meals. We are strange creatures to them, and we find them staring at us as we eat, changing our fork to the right hand, etc.
Hundreds of other things, but I'm getting sleepy so I haven't good sense. Goodnight.
Love, Florence
made in the USA
Here's just the thing for the love-lettuce reader on your Christmas list. Plus, free shipping! Yay!
11.27.2005
stranger love
I squished a squirrel with my car. It was as unavoidable as it was gut-wrenching. For both me and the victim, I guess, though to varying degrees.
Determined to turn the day around and lift my spirits, I put a leash on my secret weapon and jammed a tennis ball in his mouth, because he likes to walk that way. We set out for a walk around Davis square, where nearly every college student, 30-something, tottering munchkin, teetering oldster, and cranky meter maid stuffed in a too-small uniform I passed produced at least a grin, if not also a greeting. "Hello!" "What a cutie you are!" "Look what YOU found!" "Aren't you adorable!" And even: "Hi! I LOVE you!" Amazing how it can change a person's mood. Even if they are talking to my dog.
Determined to turn the day around and lift my spirits, I put a leash on my secret weapon and jammed a tennis ball in his mouth, because he likes to walk that way. We set out for a walk around Davis square, where nearly every college student, 30-something, tottering munchkin, teetering oldster, and cranky meter maid stuffed in a too-small uniform I passed produced at least a grin, if not also a greeting. "Hello!" "What a cutie you are!" "Look what YOU found!" "Aren't you adorable!" And even: "Hi! I LOVE you!" Amazing how it can change a person's mood. Even if they are talking to my dog.
11.24.2005
giving thanks
On Tuesday, my dad and step-mom braved the torrential rains and drove up to Boston to spend the holiday with us. Before they arrived, I pulled on a jacket, leashed up on the dog, and in the 6:00 darkness walked the four blocks to the fresh-pasta store, crossing Broadway en route.
I spent a few minutes deciding what to get, then watched the guy behind the counter feed the wide, fresh noodles through the pasta machine. He sprinkled the spaghetti with flour, wrapped it in white paper, and sent me on my way. Within a block of my house, I reached Broadway. From the intersection, I could see the lights I'd left on in the living room, and I imagined the cat curled up on the couch, just where I'd left her. I imagined my parents, still driving in our direction, and my husband, hopefully heading home from work, and how we'd all wind up around hot plates of my step-mom's homemade gravy at the dinner table. The first of several good eats we'd share.
Broadway is long and wide and can feel more like a highway than a neighborhood road. Despite the crosswalks, it is always a dangerous crossing. So much so that Burton, a while back, sent an e-mail to our then-new mayor, complaining about the speeds and the dangers and asking him to do something. But other than a personal response, nothing happened.
At the crosswalk, I looked to the left. I looked to the right. No cars coming from either direction. In fact, two blocks to the right, three or four cars were stopped in the middle of the road, blocking anyone who might want to pass. In the headlights, I could see their doors were open. People were yelling. There was no traffic backup, no police officers, no flashing lights. It looked like a small accident or argument. I crossed and headed home to get ready for dinner.
The following night, Burton came home from work and told me that a 22-year-old Tufts student from Bulgaria had been hit by two cars as she attempted to cross Broadway a little after 6:00 the night before. She was declared dead an hour later.
The headlights and yelling. A young student. Her friends, or whomever she might have been going to visit when she didn't show up. Her family, far away. My family, in the next room. With our health and our lives and our hearts intact, none of it taken for granted.
I spent a few minutes deciding what to get, then watched the guy behind the counter feed the wide, fresh noodles through the pasta machine. He sprinkled the spaghetti with flour, wrapped it in white paper, and sent me on my way. Within a block of my house, I reached Broadway. From the intersection, I could see the lights I'd left on in the living room, and I imagined the cat curled up on the couch, just where I'd left her. I imagined my parents, still driving in our direction, and my husband, hopefully heading home from work, and how we'd all wind up around hot plates of my step-mom's homemade gravy at the dinner table. The first of several good eats we'd share.
Broadway is long and wide and can feel more like a highway than a neighborhood road. Despite the crosswalks, it is always a dangerous crossing. So much so that Burton, a while back, sent an e-mail to our then-new mayor, complaining about the speeds and the dangers and asking him to do something. But other than a personal response, nothing happened.
At the crosswalk, I looked to the left. I looked to the right. No cars coming from either direction. In fact, two blocks to the right, three or four cars were stopped in the middle of the road, blocking anyone who might want to pass. In the headlights, I could see their doors were open. People were yelling. There was no traffic backup, no police officers, no flashing lights. It looked like a small accident or argument. I crossed and headed home to get ready for dinner.
The following night, Burton came home from work and told me that a 22-year-old Tufts student from Bulgaria had been hit by two cars as she attempted to cross Broadway a little after 6:00 the night before. She was declared dead an hour later.
The headlights and yelling. A young student. Her friends, or whomever she might have been going to visit when she didn't show up. Her family, far away. My family, in the next room. With our health and our lives and our hearts intact, none of it taken for granted.
11.22.2005
11.21.2005
waste not, burn in hell not
I once attended a lecture by her highness Madeleine Albright, who told a crowd of 3,000 women: "There is a special place in hell for women who don't support each other." I am inclined to believe her.
But this morning, while putting our assorted recyclables out on the curb, I found myself hoping there's also a special place in hell for people who can't get the concept of separating paper bags from plastic, thereby rendering their recyclables garbage. Or those who can't be bothered to break down cardboard boxes, preferring to jam them into a garbage can? Please, let's not even mention the bottle-and-can-throw-awayers.
Forgive me, but I like to imagine them passing their eternal damnation in a small, windowless room with a forced-air heater set to "high," and with piles of fetid trash in leaky, plastic bags nearly reaching the low ceiling. Like Huis Clos, but with no one to blame for the trash but yourself.
Too harsh?
But this morning, while putting our assorted recyclables out on the curb, I found myself hoping there's also a special place in hell for people who can't get the concept of separating paper bags from plastic, thereby rendering their recyclables garbage. Or those who can't be bothered to break down cardboard boxes, preferring to jam them into a garbage can? Please, let's not even mention the bottle-and-can-throw-awayers.
Forgive me, but I like to imagine them passing their eternal damnation in a small, windowless room with a forced-air heater set to "high," and with piles of fetid trash in leaky, plastic bags nearly reaching the low ceiling. Like Huis Clos, but with no one to blame for the trash but yourself.
Too harsh?
11.19.2005
(sp)ahhh...
It started so well. My mom and I headed north from Boston, timing our departure to correspond with a lunchtime layover in Quechee, Vermont, home to Simon Pearce of the ceramics and overpriced hand-blown glass fame, a sort of personal Mecca. Within the walls of the old brick mill, overhanging a dam as scenic as any, they also have food. The really good kind. We were seated at a two-top, right over the waterfall, and immediately served tiny, doll-sized buttermilk biscuits. Their size made them all the better to cram in your cramhole. We gobbled salmon with various roasted autumn-colored accoutrements, and a dish of caramelized walnut ravioli, plopped in a lemongrass-ginger-cream sauce that I’m pretty sure you get to drink in mug-sized servings in heaven. Dessert? And how. Let me just say this: chocolate, fleur de sel, blood-orange coulis, and an amen for elastic waistbands.
Fat and happy, we got back on the road, promising ourselves that the healthful living started now. The whole object of the trip, anyway, was to provide rest, recuperation, and a beginning to a new and healthy us.
After checking in to our room and judging the quality of the place by the personal-care products provided in the bathroom (June Jacobs—very promising), we decided to check out the spa. To get there, we walked down the longest hallway ever built by man, seriously. Once there, we were overwhelmed by the Moby Dick-sized book of treatment choices. Naturally, we put off the decision of whether to pamper ourselves with salt scrubs, Swedish massage, or herbal wraps, and instead walked back to our room, back down the longest hallway ever built by man, to change into our exercise clothes. After an extended drama involving hotel robes (Do we change into the robes here? Do we use the spa robes? Do we change AND wear the robe? What if they’re out of robes at the spa? What will we do with the extra robes we come back in? And so on, like a pair of Dustin Hoffmans, had Rain Man had been set at a spa, until one of us shouted a definitive: NO ROBES), we returned to the spa, robeless, and traveled—for the third time—down the longest hallway ever created by man.
The cardio room was mostly empty and seemed approachable. (One nameless individual, wearing headphones to listen to the TV, shouted to her daughter, on the elliptical machine immediately adjacent, over the volume in her head, “HOW DO YOU WORK THIS THING? WHAT’S YOUR HEART RATE?” not realizing that all of Vermont and some parts of Canada could hear her. But who cares! We were getting fit!) After a healthy dose of cardio, the weight room was empty, and we felt emboldened to enter. We pressed and pumped and pulled and pretended we knew what we were doing. By then, all that was left was a soak in the whirlpool.
Feeling we had worked off at least one doll-sized biscuit each, we decided it was time to get a nibble for dinner. It was quarter past eight. We were in the showers when the fire alarm went off. After several minutes of our brains quivering from the shrillness of it, we decided it was best to evacuate, even if we hadn’t yet managed to try to June Jacobs conditioner. Donning spa robes (thank god for them!), we padded yet again down the longest hallway ever created by man to the entrance of the hotel, where all 12 guests had gathered. They were dressed for dinner. In clothes. We were wearing spa robes. Otherwise mostly naked.
As we waited for the fire department to arrive, the wait staff brought around trays of coffee, then hot cider and a bottle of spiced rum, then a platter of cookies that could satisfy most of the school children in the county. “Can I get anyone anything?” the bartender practically pleaded. “A pair of pants?” I offered. “A real fire,” someone else suggested. As the evening wore on, those of us in the vestibule became fast friends. We helped ourselves to the computer perched atop the check-in counter, seeing if news of the not-fire had made CNN yet. “Might as well check my e-mail,” the guy celebrating his first anniversary said. “Might as well change our room rates,” Peggy countered. Together, we slid into a state of crying, giggling hold-your-shit-togetherdom. But even over the chilly temperatures and the impossibly slow response by the fire department and the unceasing BWEEP BWEEP BWEEP BWEEP BWEEP BWEEP BWEEP of the fire alarm as it destroyed our chances of ever hearing another fire alarm ever again, it wasn’t so bad.
An hour after the ordeal started, the fire chief excused us from the vestibule. To celebrate our freedom, Peggy and I embarked on a fifth journey down the longest hallway ever attempted by man. But by the time we got there, the spa—with our clothes and room keys in it—was locked. This meant, impossibly, another trip down the longest hallway man ever had the gall to create. Before we completed the trek, we ran into the maintenance man, who walked us back and let us in to collect our belongings. And then, dear friends, it’s true: We walked down the freaking hallway one time more, as blistered and dehydrated as any marathon runner, to return to our room. At least we were getting our exercise.
11.15.2005
r & r
After all of that me-time yesterday, love lettuce is ready for a break from itself. Perhaps you're feeling likewise. We are driving north, to Vermont, for a few days of pampering. Until we meet again, be well and eat your leafy greens.
11.11.2005
the self-indulgent 100
Gentle reader,
As much as doing so made my skin crawl, I have put together a list of 100 things about me. For you. It's a tradition, albeit an ancient one in blog time, which I hope explains away the most vainglorious post my brain can imagine. Without further ado, a glimpse into my darkest corners. For all to read on the internet. Great.
1. Except for baby animals, there are few foods I won’t eat.
2. I last ate veal in 1995. I thought it was chicken. It was delicious.
3. I pretend that I’m an organized person, but in truth I always feel scattered. I think I fool some people on this count, while others will be not surprised in the least to hear this. Does everyone feel this way?
4. Amelie is one of a short list of movies of which I could never tire.
5. In general, I don’t like to watch movies (or read books) over and over again. I’d rather try something new.
6. If I don’t like a book, I won’t finish it. I labored through all but the last 40 pages of Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune, and I’m not even curious about the ending.
7. A warm dog curled in my lap is the best therapy.
8. I take my coffee with cream and sugar.
9. But I’d probably rather drink tea.
10. I don’t understand people who don’t love food.
11. I always wanted to take piano lessons but never got around to it.
12. Haven’t gotten around to it yet, I should say.
13. The most challenging course I took in college was Oceanography. My mind is not cut out for science, yet it was one of my most memorable courses.
14. The smell of garlic and ginger sautéing in butter is one of the finest I know.
15. Smell, in general, is the most sensitive of senses for me. Before I buy a new piece of clothing, for example, I sniff it. I want to know if it smells like a factory or someone’s hands or plastic wrapping or a musty basement.
16. When I was a baby, a sheepskin lined the bottom of my crib. I carted Meep around with me for the next few years, burying my nose in its fur. My parents took it away from me one night, but I quickly found a stuffed animal to take its place. By coincidence, the sole surviving scrap of Meep is sitting on the desk next to me at this very moment.
17. I hate talking on the phone. It is a challenge for me to stay in touch with people who don’t use e-mail.
18. Over the years, I’ve wrecked a few significant friendships due to personal flaws other than my phone-talking skills. I miss those friends and their presence in my life.
19. I’d rather live in an apartment that is sunny than spacious.
20. The first things I noticed when I met Burton was his big blue eyes.
21. I fell for him hard on our second date, when he cooked me dinner.
22. He still cooks for me. And I am still falling for him.
23. There are few foods I don’t like. But if I were to make a list, it would include tongue, headcheese, and the sorts of pates that taste like dirt.
24. In high school, I played soccer, softball, and ran track—and I was no better than mediocre at any of them.
25. Oysters on the half shell? Absolutely. Clams? No thanks.
26. I prefer to take the stairs over the escalator, and I’d always rather walk than drive.
27. When it rains and earthworms wash up on the sidewalks, it is impossible for me not to toss at least a few of the healthy looking ones back onto the soil. I remember a children’s book in which a character chucked one of many beached starfish back into the ocean. “You’re not making a difference,” another character chided, “look at how many are out here.” The starfish-tosser pointed to the one settling back into the water and responded, “But I did make a difference to that one.” Earthworms drowning on the sidewalk always bring that to my mind, though I wish I could remember what book it was.
28. My compassion for bugs does NOT extent to those many-legged creatures that find their way up my bathroom drain.
29. The national anthem makes me cry. Always.
30. So do marching bands.
31. I am a softie.
32. I heart cheese. Of all kinds.
33. New England, for me, is almost perfect: It has ocean and islands and chowder and autumn and smart people and old houses and a wicked pissah accent. But I’d give my left eyebrow to drop it 100 miles closer to my family.
34. I type fast and with accuracy. I learned in summer school, with Mr. Krieger.
35. I am not a list maker. When I do make lists, I forget to look back at them to check my progress. Instead, I make a new list. Which I never look at again.
36. When people ask me if I loved college, I always think of the death of my roommate a week before the start of our junior year. In truth, I spent much of college wallowing. But that’s not the answer people are looking for when they ask, so I usually say it was a great time.
37. I still think about her often.
38. The semester after she died, I helped organize a memorial service on campus. I found a florist about 20 miles away to supply us with flowers for the service. With the buckets of flowers crammed into every available space in the car and while driving on unfamiliar roads, I slammed on the brakes for a red light, which caused many, many gallons of water to be liberated from their containers and flushed through the car. If you’ve ever ridden the Log Flume, you know the kind of wave I’m describing. Alone in the car, soaked, I laughed until I almost peed myself.
39. I can be quite morose.
40. Six Feet Under and Arrested Development are (were) the best shows on television.
41. I have major crushes on Jason Bateman and Peter Krause.
42. American’s Funniest Home Videos always makes me laugh. I’m not proud of it, but cats falling off ledges and people crashing on sleds make for good watching.
43. When we were kids, my sister and I practiced movie-star-style kissing with our best buddies across the street. I thought it was slimy and did not like it. At all.
44. As cliché as it sounds, I’d rather do what I love than make money.
45. I doubt I will ever make a lot of money.
46. I felt more pride in the piles of vegetables I helped produce this summer than the lion’s share of the work I’ve produced in my career so far.
47. My sister and I fought day and night when we were growing up. I always felt less cool, clever, and cruel than her.
48. Now we’re very close, even though I know my habits still annoy her and hers me.
49. I never knew my mother’s mother, but I have ideas about what her voice sounded like.
50. I’ve almost forgotten the sound of my other grandmother’s voice, but I can clearly picture her hands and remember her smell.
51. When I was in the third grade, I pooped in my pants and hid my crappy underwear behind the garbage can in the bathroom. For the longest time, my sister tried to leverage this fact against me in front of other people, but now that I’ve shared it with you, Internet, her weapon is disarmed! Everyone knows!
52. I can’t help but stare at people while riding the subway.
53. “I want my two dollars!”
54. I have little sympathy for people who use their/there incorrectly.
55. As much as I’ve tried to remember the rule, I bungle the distinction between lay/lie, so I try to avoid using those words altogether.
56. Sleep always comes easily for me.
57. When I was in high school, I wore a retainer at night. One morning, I woke up and couldn’t find it anywhere. I later found the retainer tucked in the cassette player, on the opposite side of my room.
58. I wonder what else I do in my sleep.
59. I love artistic handwriting.
60. My own penmanship is crap.
61. Why anyone would read all of this is beyond me.
62. I saw American Werewolf in London when I was much too young, and I was never the same afterwards. More jittery, mostly, and terrified of open fields at night.
63. For many years, I watched how people walked up stairs because I thought that if I hit the same stair with the same foot, I would turn out like that person. Conversely, if I used the opposite foot, I would turn out differently. It was time consuming and somewhat depressing to always think about whether or not I wanted to be like the person ahead of me on the stairs.
64. When a bartender asks me what I’d like to drink, my mind goes blank, even though I’m expecting the question. I usually just ask for what someone else has ordered.
65. Things I love: The Triplets of Belleville, drivers who stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk, fondling yarns in a knitting store, scallops wrapped in bacon, and seeing people smile to themselves.
66. Things I cannot love: Cell phones, mean kids, aggressive drivers, and the Republican party.
67. Things I cannot understand: Adults who don’t know how to swim, opposition to gay marriage, and people who don’t try new foods (see #9).
68. My relationship with my dad has long been complicated and difficult, but with every visit it gets better and better.
69. I love finding treasures in other peoples’ trash.
70. I wish I were better at getting rid of my own trash.
71. Based on the way I speak, people often ask if I’m from the Midwest.
72. My face often reminds people of other people they know.
73. Slipping between clean sheets on a Sunday night is heavenly.
74. The best part of any meal is dessert.
75. If I had to choose whether my superpower would be flight or invisibility, I would by flying my ass to Fiji faster than you can utter the phrase, “wind burn.”
76. Anyone who claims they don’t like tater-tots is lying.
77. My nicknames over the years have included Monchichi, Stinker, Pookie, Poof, Jenny-honey, Big J, and, meant unkindly, McFartland.
78. I am often late. In fact, another of my nicknames was LM Jen, for “last-minute.”
79. For third grade, I attended an elementary school in Canada, where we had outdoor track and field competitions when we weren’t under multiple feet of snow. I did the standing long jump, an event that involves standing in place, swinging your arms three times to build momentum, and praying for a brisk wind at the moment of take-off. I remember watching a competitor from another school whose arms were about half the usual length and thinking, “At least I’ve got this guy beat.”
80. I wish I could forgive myself for unkind things I said to people long ago.
81. I can’t stand Julia Roberts.
82. Scorpios scare me.
83. I get indignant about SUVs.
84. Am not good at remembering details.
85. I look much younger than I am and don’t mind this fact in the slightest.
86. I like my nose.
87. My mom is a wicked-good cook.
88. I feel incredibly vain, making this list.
89. Once, after riding the Round Up at the Our Lady of Peace fair, I barfed. My downfall was going on that nausea-inducing swing ride beforehand.
90. I was once fired from a job and, as humiliating as it was, I think everyone should experience that particular shame.
91. I had never worked as hard as I did for that piece-of-crap job.
92. I still regret losing the down vest that my mother made for me as a tot and which I left in a public restroom somewhere. I wonder if it’s on the bottom of a landfill now, or whether it’s keeping some other kid’s core temperature up?
93. I love getting new haircuts and rearranging the furniture—both give me a new outlook on life.
94. Although I am fairly crafty, I am not nearly as handy as my husband, for whom I am grateful every day.
95. Sometimes I worry that my hearing is going bad.
96. I have one surviving grandparent, with whom I am not at all close. He is a cranky old bugger.
97. Why would anyone want to attend a bullfight? I don’t get it.
98. Ice cream: Much of it, and often.
99. I love wrapping presents.
100. The fact that you are reading this embarrasses me to no end.
Now it's your turn.
As much as doing so made my skin crawl, I have put together a list of 100 things about me. For you. It's a tradition, albeit an ancient one in blog time, which I hope explains away the most vainglorious post my brain can imagine. Without further ado, a glimpse into my darkest corners. For all to read on the internet. Great.
1. Except for baby animals, there are few foods I won’t eat.
2. I last ate veal in 1995. I thought it was chicken. It was delicious.
3. I pretend that I’m an organized person, but in truth I always feel scattered. I think I fool some people on this count, while others will be not surprised in the least to hear this. Does everyone feel this way?
4. Amelie is one of a short list of movies of which I could never tire.
5. In general, I don’t like to watch movies (or read books) over and over again. I’d rather try something new.
6. If I don’t like a book, I won’t finish it. I labored through all but the last 40 pages of Isabel Allende’s Daughter of Fortune, and I’m not even curious about the ending.
7. A warm dog curled in my lap is the best therapy.
8. I take my coffee with cream and sugar.
9. But I’d probably rather drink tea.
10. I don’t understand people who don’t love food.
11. I always wanted to take piano lessons but never got around to it.
12. Haven’t gotten around to it yet, I should say.
13. The most challenging course I took in college was Oceanography. My mind is not cut out for science, yet it was one of my most memorable courses.
14. The smell of garlic and ginger sautéing in butter is one of the finest I know.
15. Smell, in general, is the most sensitive of senses for me. Before I buy a new piece of clothing, for example, I sniff it. I want to know if it smells like a factory or someone’s hands or plastic wrapping or a musty basement.
16. When I was a baby, a sheepskin lined the bottom of my crib. I carted Meep around with me for the next few years, burying my nose in its fur. My parents took it away from me one night, but I quickly found a stuffed animal to take its place. By coincidence, the sole surviving scrap of Meep is sitting on the desk next to me at this very moment.
17. I hate talking on the phone. It is a challenge for me to stay in touch with people who don’t use e-mail.
18. Over the years, I’ve wrecked a few significant friendships due to personal flaws other than my phone-talking skills. I miss those friends and their presence in my life.
19. I’d rather live in an apartment that is sunny than spacious.
20. The first things I noticed when I met Burton was his big blue eyes.
21. I fell for him hard on our second date, when he cooked me dinner.
22. He still cooks for me. And I am still falling for him.
23. There are few foods I don’t like. But if I were to make a list, it would include tongue, headcheese, and the sorts of pates that taste like dirt.
24. In high school, I played soccer, softball, and ran track—and I was no better than mediocre at any of them.
25. Oysters on the half shell? Absolutely. Clams? No thanks.
26. I prefer to take the stairs over the escalator, and I’d always rather walk than drive.
27. When it rains and earthworms wash up on the sidewalks, it is impossible for me not to toss at least a few of the healthy looking ones back onto the soil. I remember a children’s book in which a character chucked one of many beached starfish back into the ocean. “You’re not making a difference,” another character chided, “look at how many are out here.” The starfish-tosser pointed to the one settling back into the water and responded, “But I did make a difference to that one.” Earthworms drowning on the sidewalk always bring that to my mind, though I wish I could remember what book it was.
28. My compassion for bugs does NOT extent to those many-legged creatures that find their way up my bathroom drain.
29. The national anthem makes me cry. Always.
30. So do marching bands.
31. I am a softie.
32. I heart cheese. Of all kinds.
33. New England, for me, is almost perfect: It has ocean and islands and chowder and autumn and smart people and old houses and a wicked pissah accent. But I’d give my left eyebrow to drop it 100 miles closer to my family.
34. I type fast and with accuracy. I learned in summer school, with Mr. Krieger.
35. I am not a list maker. When I do make lists, I forget to look back at them to check my progress. Instead, I make a new list. Which I never look at again.
36. When people ask me if I loved college, I always think of the death of my roommate a week before the start of our junior year. In truth, I spent much of college wallowing. But that’s not the answer people are looking for when they ask, so I usually say it was a great time.
37. I still think about her often.
38. The semester after she died, I helped organize a memorial service on campus. I found a florist about 20 miles away to supply us with flowers for the service. With the buckets of flowers crammed into every available space in the car and while driving on unfamiliar roads, I slammed on the brakes for a red light, which caused many, many gallons of water to be liberated from their containers and flushed through the car. If you’ve ever ridden the Log Flume, you know the kind of wave I’m describing. Alone in the car, soaked, I laughed until I almost peed myself.
39. I can be quite morose.
40. Six Feet Under and Arrested Development are (were) the best shows on television.
41. I have major crushes on Jason Bateman and Peter Krause.
42. American’s Funniest Home Videos always makes me laugh. I’m not proud of it, but cats falling off ledges and people crashing on sleds make for good watching.
43. When we were kids, my sister and I practiced movie-star-style kissing with our best buddies across the street. I thought it was slimy and did not like it. At all.
44. As cliché as it sounds, I’d rather do what I love than make money.
45. I doubt I will ever make a lot of money.
46. I felt more pride in the piles of vegetables I helped produce this summer than the lion’s share of the work I’ve produced in my career so far.
47. My sister and I fought day and night when we were growing up. I always felt less cool, clever, and cruel than her.
48. Now we’re very close, even though I know my habits still annoy her and hers me.
49. I never knew my mother’s mother, but I have ideas about what her voice sounded like.
50. I’ve almost forgotten the sound of my other grandmother’s voice, but I can clearly picture her hands and remember her smell.
51. When I was in the third grade, I pooped in my pants and hid my crappy underwear behind the garbage can in the bathroom. For the longest time, my sister tried to leverage this fact against me in front of other people, but now that I’ve shared it with you, Internet, her weapon is disarmed! Everyone knows!
52. I can’t help but stare at people while riding the subway.
53. “I want my two dollars!”
54. I have little sympathy for people who use their/there incorrectly.
55. As much as I’ve tried to remember the rule, I bungle the distinction between lay/lie, so I try to avoid using those words altogether.
56. Sleep always comes easily for me.
57. When I was in high school, I wore a retainer at night. One morning, I woke up and couldn’t find it anywhere. I later found the retainer tucked in the cassette player, on the opposite side of my room.
58. I wonder what else I do in my sleep.
59. I love artistic handwriting.
60. My own penmanship is crap.
61. Why anyone would read all of this is beyond me.
62. I saw American Werewolf in London when I was much too young, and I was never the same afterwards. More jittery, mostly, and terrified of open fields at night.
63. For many years, I watched how people walked up stairs because I thought that if I hit the same stair with the same foot, I would turn out like that person. Conversely, if I used the opposite foot, I would turn out differently. It was time consuming and somewhat depressing to always think about whether or not I wanted to be like the person ahead of me on the stairs.
64. When a bartender asks me what I’d like to drink, my mind goes blank, even though I’m expecting the question. I usually just ask for what someone else has ordered.
65. Things I love: The Triplets of Belleville, drivers who stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk, fondling yarns in a knitting store, scallops wrapped in bacon, and seeing people smile to themselves.
66. Things I cannot love: Cell phones, mean kids, aggressive drivers, and the Republican party.
67. Things I cannot understand: Adults who don’t know how to swim, opposition to gay marriage, and people who don’t try new foods (see #9).
68. My relationship with my dad has long been complicated and difficult, but with every visit it gets better and better.
69. I love finding treasures in other peoples’ trash.
70. I wish I were better at getting rid of my own trash.
71. Based on the way I speak, people often ask if I’m from the Midwest.
72. My face often reminds people of other people they know.
73. Slipping between clean sheets on a Sunday night is heavenly.
74. The best part of any meal is dessert.
75. If I had to choose whether my superpower would be flight or invisibility, I would by flying my ass to Fiji faster than you can utter the phrase, “wind burn.”
76. Anyone who claims they don’t like tater-tots is lying.
77. My nicknames over the years have included Monchichi, Stinker, Pookie, Poof, Jenny-honey, Big J, and, meant unkindly, McFartland.
78. I am often late. In fact, another of my nicknames was LM Jen, for “last-minute.”
79. For third grade, I attended an elementary school in Canada, where we had outdoor track and field competitions when we weren’t under multiple feet of snow. I did the standing long jump, an event that involves standing in place, swinging your arms three times to build momentum, and praying for a brisk wind at the moment of take-off. I remember watching a competitor from another school whose arms were about half the usual length and thinking, “At least I’ve got this guy beat.”
80. I wish I could forgive myself for unkind things I said to people long ago.
81. I can’t stand Julia Roberts.
82. Scorpios scare me.
83. I get indignant about SUVs.
84. Am not good at remembering details.
85. I look much younger than I am and don’t mind this fact in the slightest.
86. I like my nose.
87. My mom is a wicked-good cook.
88. I feel incredibly vain, making this list.
89. Once, after riding the Round Up at the Our Lady of Peace fair, I barfed. My downfall was going on that nausea-inducing swing ride beforehand.
90. I was once fired from a job and, as humiliating as it was, I think everyone should experience that particular shame.
91. I had never worked as hard as I did for that piece-of-crap job.
92. I still regret losing the down vest that my mother made for me as a tot and which I left in a public restroom somewhere. I wonder if it’s on the bottom of a landfill now, or whether it’s keeping some other kid’s core temperature up?
93. I love getting new haircuts and rearranging the furniture—both give me a new outlook on life.
94. Although I am fairly crafty, I am not nearly as handy as my husband, for whom I am grateful every day.
95. Sometimes I worry that my hearing is going bad.
96. I have one surviving grandparent, with whom I am not at all close. He is a cranky old bugger.
97. Why would anyone want to attend a bullfight? I don’t get it.
98. Ice cream: Much of it, and often.
99. I love wrapping presents.
100. The fact that you are reading this embarrasses me to no end.
Now it's your turn.
11.09.2005
a humungous fungus among us?
While weeding the blueberries last week, we discovered dozens of these cottony eggs and at least a few of the penile protruberances peeking up from the wood chips. I summonded all my reserves of courage before cutting one of the eggs in half, all the while praying--ok, begging--to anyone who would listen that I wouldn't be slicing a baby turtle, bird, or the Cadbury bunny in half. S/he listened, apparently, because all we found was a layer of goo surrounding another egg, which was filled with a spongy pink and green material.
We speculated about all the obvious explanations--a War-of-the-Worlds-type alien, the hanta virus, or a preppy fungus of sorts. But in the end, we still had no idea what we'd found. Love lettuce is currently accepting explanations. Please write your suggestions on the back of a 40-inch end-grain Boos butcher-block counter and mail it to our offices. Prizes will be awarded. Thank you.
We speculated about all the obvious explanations--a War-of-the-Worlds-type alien, the hanta virus, or a preppy fungus of sorts. But in the end, we still had no idea what we'd found. Love lettuce is currently accepting explanations. Please write your suggestions on the back of a 40-inch end-grain Boos butcher-block counter and mail it to our offices. Prizes will be awarded. Thank you.
11.08.2005
too much wallace and gromit?
I had a dream the other night that I was on the Wellesley campus with my dog and a Land Rover that was tricked out for a fishing trip (I could tell by the cooler of beer lashed to the hood). I needed to get to the other side of the campus, which can be quite a hike. I remember my dog jumping up to the driver's seat and asking if he could take the truck and meet me there--he'd take the route alongside the walking path, so I could flag him down at a moment's notice. It sounded reasonable enough to me, so I waved him off. He waved a paw back at me, then immediately took a wrong turn and sped off down another road, the wind blowing back his ears like you see in the cartoons. The lures clattered around in the wind, barely audible above the stereo, which the dog had turned up to 11. I remember thinking, "Great, there goes my dog and my truck and my fishing trip."
I don't even like fishing.
I don't even like fishing.
11.06.2005
forgive me
Stuck to a friend's refrigerator, which she shares with roommate and brother, is a computer printout with curling edges, cut to the size of the following three stanzas, written by William Carlos Williams:
This Is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
This Is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
11.05.2005
hot off the needles
Two of my favorite recent arrivals will be sporting jennymcflint originals this fall. As soon as they grow several inches, at least. Welcome, autumn babes!
11.04.2005
11.03.2005
probably not even for free, thanks
Part of the fun of this blog, for me, has been discovering who reads it: old friends, new friends, and people I don't know from Adam. How do they find me? Search me. Or just search google for "sniff my fanny for cash," as one recent English visitor did. (Though s/he searched without the quotation marks, which explains why love lettuce was the fifth hit on the list--between sniffing pickles, fanny packs, and my boy Johnny Cash, we cover the requisite ground here.)
But wouldn't you be thoroughly disappointed to land upon love lettuce if, in reality, you were looking to hire an English fanny sniffer? And do people really do that? For money? Am I the last person on the planet to discover this fact?
But wouldn't you be thoroughly disappointed to land upon love lettuce if, in reality, you were looking to hire an English fanny sniffer? And do people really do that? For money? Am I the last person on the planet to discover this fact?
11.02.2005
saturdays last
Some have questioned the veracity of my snow-related claims. Luckily, I anticipated this and snapped a photo from my living-room window. Kids built a snowman, for cripe's sake, although I didn't leave the house to get close enough to photograph it. Point is, white flakes, falling from sky.
And for those of you who have never seen the sun rise on a Saturday morn AFTER a night of sleep, I offer you this photo, taken two Saturdays ago, on the occasion of the last farm harvest. Even though my photography teacher said sunrises and sunsets are cheezy and trite.
11.01.2005
tough love
Under my roof, if you can't stop chewing on your ass, you have to wear the lamp shade. Sorry, them's the rules.
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