Misadventures of Middle Age

Mr. Razor: I could do that.
Me: Hmm? Okay. Sure.
Mr. Razor: Stands up. Stretches.
Me: Oh no. No no no no no.
Mr. Razor: What? It can't be that hard.
Me: Good luck! I'm not driving you to the ER.
Mr. Razor: Grabs toes. Gets head, shoulders, and collarbone off the floor. See? Totally easy.
Me: Oh, you have got to be kidding me.
Mr. Razor: Oof. Errr, I'm just gonna sit on the couch now. And possibly for the next three days.

Nerdography

Two things:

1. I was my elementary school's National Geographic National Geography Bee champion in 1992. (I got stomped at the state competition, where some of the kids had coaches. I was like, "Should I have gotten a coach?" My parents were like, "No, we'd rather you had a childhood.")

2. My favorite freelance gig is for a local tour company that leads trips all over the world. A few months ago I wrote short historical overviews of countries from Mongolia to Montenegro for their website.

So when I saw this little beauty at Boomerangs, I knew it was coming home with me:



The fact that it cost $3 was just a bonus.

My husband was initially like, "You bought...a globe?" but warmed up when I told him I bought it because it featured post-WWII USSR borders and the French Indochina, two things that were only on maps together for nine years years (1945-1954), making the little globe an antique instead of a piece of junk. (I didn't know that off the top of my head, by the way. I had just finished histories of the Baltic states and the countries of Southeast Asia.)

Mr. Razor, whose geekery surpasses even mine, then wondered if it would be possible to pinpoint the exact year of the globe's manufacture by looking at the countries listed on it. And we were off!

DISCLAIMER: This research was conducted via Wikipedia by two people whose areas of expertise are Medieval British literature and systems engineering, respectively. We also know fuck-all about mapmaking, so if we've screwed this all up, please let us know how, in as much geeky detail as possible. (Note: I am not being sarcastic.)



French Indochina, from the days when one nation could show up in another and take over just by saying, "Do you have a flag?"



So between the World Wars, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were independent states for the first time in a few centuries and were trying to set up governments when WWII rolled around and they got stomped by the Nazis going one way and then stomped by the Communists again going the other way. So the fact that the Baltic area is within the USSR's borders means post-WWII.

(Side note: I wonder if globes were even produced during WWII? Did map makers reprint everything whenever another border shifted? Or were they like, "Eff you Hitler, I'm leaving Poland on there"?)

But you'll notice that Germany remains one country. People born after 1989 are like, "Duh, Germany is one country," but us oldsters remember that there used to be a country called "East Germany" that was full of spies and Olympic athletes on steroids. East Germany, or the German Democratic Republic, came into existence in 1949. So our date range was down to 4 years (1945-1949).



OK, I'ma speed up my (probably horrifying to actual historians) event summaries. Pakistan split from India in 1947. So: 1947-1949. I thought that was as close as we were going to get, but Mr. Razor pushed on.



Oh, hey, Israel! Declared independence in May 1948



And, finally, Korea is one country. South Korea came into existence in August 1948.

So, in theory, our little thrift shop globe was produced in the summer of 1948. Again, I have no idea if maps actually get changed that quickly. Enlighten me in the comments if you know!

All right: what have we learned? 1) The 1940s were a turbulent time for international borders and probably a very stressful era for map makers. 2) I am nerdier than everyone.

I Hope Nobody I Know Owns This Sweater

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to be an Anthropologie copywriter. I mean, I love overpriced faux-bohemia as much (okay, probably more) than the next girl, but they sell some crazy shit. Case in point:



Me: What the Jesus is this?
Leigh: Are those...BOOB FANS?
Me: To keep them cool, maybe?

It's called the "escalope bolero," which is French for "scallop" and not "boob fan," sadly, and if your bosom really needs aerating, it'll set you back $228. Yeah, you read that right: two hundred twenty-eight shiny American dollars. I hope they use some of that ridiculous profit margin to pay their poor copywriters.

An MBTA Story

Subtitled: Why I Occasionally Love Public Transit

After a beautiful day doing Bostonish things, I got on a Green Line D train to meet up with my husband in Needham. A woman politely moved her bag so I could sit down, and I was then sandwiched between her and two young women who were showing each other pictures on their smartphones and chatting. I had my headphones on, so the only thing I could tell about their conversation was that it wasn't in English.

Across the aisle from us were four adolescent boys at the stage where they need to take up as much space and be as loud possible lest the world forget they exist for ten seconds. I could hear every word of their conversation over my music. Two of them were talking about the ladies next to me. One of them decided that the best way to get their attention would be to mumble "ni hao" (Chinese for "hello." Thanks, Ni Hao, Kai-Lan!) in their general direction. The women didn't respond.

Over the course of the next two stops, the boys said "ni hao" at the women with varying degrees of volume and mockery, never actually making eye-contact with them. The ladies continued talking to each other and pointedly ignoring the guys. When the group of guys got up to get off the train, two of them waved at the women and said, "ni hao!" one more time.

One of the women, in accented but perfect English said, "If you're talking to us, we don't speak Chinese. We're speaking Spanish."

Procrastination is Awesome

More celiac fun facts delayed until tonight. Nap time being spent productively: watching Florence + The Machine concert videos.

Celiac Disease 101

The problem with Seasonal Affective Disorder is that even though I have the "crippling depression" part of it treated, the waning sunlight gives me other wacky brain hiccups that SSRIs don't touch. For example, during longer days I can plan a post in my head and write it later, but once Fall hits I'll plot a bit and then my brain will reset like a shaken Etch-a-Sketch, leaving me sitting there going, "wait, what?"

The solution to this is obviously to make myself write for real when I have the time rather than trying to do it in my head, but then I'm tired after a morning of, "Do you want cheese? Yes? Why are you crying? Now you don't want cheese? It's okay!" (Seriously, a toddler is basically just the most rapid-cycling bipolar person you'll ever meet) and when nap time rolls around, I usually feel entirely justified spending all of it on The Hairpin.

I'm told you can make new habits through repetition, though, so here I am typing away as Baby Razor sleeps.

I thought I'd explain a little bit about how celiac disease works, since most people (myself included, prior to two months ago) only know that it means that those who have it can't eat wheat. Keep in mind: I am not a scientist, and everything I'm about to tell you, I got from the internet. This is absolutely the dinner-party explanation. If you'd like to learn about celiac disease from people who didn't major in Medieval literature, you should go here or here. My version will have more swearing though.

Okay, so people with celiac disease cannot eat wheat, barley or rye; or any products made with wheat, barley, or rye; or any products made with byproducts or derivatives of wheat, barley, or rye; or any products grown near or processed with or near wheat, barley, or rye. Does that sound confusing? IT IS. Do you know how many things are made with/from wheat or barley? (Rye: not so much.) The short list includes soy sauce, malt vinegar, some sweeteners, vitamins, and most pre-packaged meals and snacks, Plus pasta, baked goods, bread, and, oh, absolutely anything that goes through a plant that also produces products containing wheat.

I thought that last one was just precautionary until Baby Razor got sick from eating black beans that were processed in a place that also processes wheat. I was like, "There's nothing in black beans but black beans!" and didn't check the label. Which leads to my second point about celiac disease: It is amazing at making everyone around the sufferer feel like an asshole. Despite tons of research and (we thought) careful checking, Baby Razor's mom, dad, grandparents on both sides, and aunt have all accidentally fed her gluten at least once. The only solution is to become completely obsessive-compulsive about reading labels or to grow all of your own food. And since my backyard is about twenty feet square, I've done the former.

So, why can't celiac patients eat wheat/barley/rye? It's because they contain a protein called gluten. People with celiac do not have an allergy or "sensitivity" to this protein--they have an autoimmune disorder. Here's the difference: with an allergy, your immune system identifies a foreign body as dangerous and attacks it. With an autoimmune disorder, your immune system attacks your own body. When people with celiac disease have gluten, the immune response attacks their small intestine, damaging it and keeping it from absorbing nutrients into the body.

In plain English, if you have undiagnosed celiac disease, you're malnourished no matter how healthy you eat, because your small intestine is fucked. No one used to worry about this possibility, though, because doctors thought celiac disease was super-duper rare and people who had it all had really obvious symptoms. In fact, until the last decade or so, med students were told they'd probably only see one case of celiac in their entire careers, so you know they didn't pay much attention to that section of the book.

Yeah, it turns out that's entirely wrong. This fact sheet lays out the many, many ways in which it's entirely wrong. I'll just give you one of the pull quotes: "Celiac disease affects 1% of healthy, average Americans. That means at least 3 million people in our country are living with celiac disease—97% of them are undiagnosed." That's 2.9 million people walking around, thinking they're all good, when really they have an untreated autoimmune disorder that can lead to osteoporosis and higher rates of some kinds of cancer. That is fucking crazy! I still haven't gotten over how crazy that is.

Sweet Jesus, this got long. I think stop here and do a second part tomorrow. Coming up: Diagnosis! Treatment! How to deal with insensitive assholes! Poignant anecdotes about my baby! More swearing!

That fine line between genius and madness

I just read that today is Shel Silverstein's birthday, so I thought today was as good a day as any to tell my Shel Silverstein story.

Shel Silverstein had a house on Martha's Vineyard, and we used to see him around when I was in high school. We did not talk to him (although we would totally peek over his shoulder when he was doodling on napkins at the coffee shop), because even though he was a beloved author of our childhood, he looked like this:



and we were mildly terrified of him. He also sometimes talked to himself, walked everywhere, and never wore shoes.

So one day my dad and I were driving to Oak Bluffs, and we passed him walking along the bike path. I pointed him out and said, "That's Shel Silverstein. He's a famous children's author."

Dad looks over and says, "Famous? Huh. I thought he was a hobo."

Oh, hello!

(That's totally me, with gluten as the supervillain.)

Yesterday, a friend on Facebook recommended my blog to someone, and it was like she'd complimented my home decorating when I knew there was a bra on the couch, 67 toys on the floor, and a cobweb with a big, dead spider in the middle sitting up near the ceiling.

Not that my living room has ever looked like that, of course.

Except it was worse, because no one can see my sensible undergarments unless I let them in the house, but all y'all can see that I haven't updated here in three damn months.

Basically, Baby Razor got sick. And it was that kind of sick where she was probably okay? But we had to watch her. So I watched her fail to gain weight for three months, then start throwing up every other day for two terrifying weeks before our doctor's appointment, during which Baby Razor's doctor was like, "Okay, the mood is very Eeyore in here." And God bless her for having a sense of humor about it, because Mr. Razor and I have an unspoken agreement that one of us needs to be the strong one when the other one is freaking out, but that went right out the window the night I was like, "I'm really worried" and he was like, "Oh shit, I can see her hipbones."

The short version is that Baby Razor has celiac disease. The longer version is that Baby R's doctor is awesome (and I don't just say that because I've known her for 15 years), Children's Hospital Boston is efficient and caring but still scary as hell, and wheat is in FUCKING EVERYTHING. The really long version involves a lot of hyperventilating and stress-eating, so I'll skip that one.

Maybe surprisingly, I'm not sad or freaked out by the diagnosis; I'm grateful. Look: I'm pretty sure there is no human body on earth that runs perfectly. Mine likes to panic and randomly throw blood clots. My father-in-law's tries to kill him whenever he's within three feet of shrimp. So Baby Razor's thinks wheat and barley can suck it; that's totally okay. I'm just glad we know! For awhile there I was terrified that I was going to end up on Mystery Diagnosis, wearing a sensible cardigan and saying, "At that point, we thought she was going to weigh 20 pounds for the rest of her natural life."

We're still figuring out her diet (seriously, gluten sneaks into every. damn. thing.), but she's gaining weight, and she has enough energy to power my neighborhood. Which means I can let go of some of the mental energy I've been devoting to her digestive tract and go back to telling stories about things like trying to make mom-friends when I'm naturally anti-social, my latest crafting disaster, and random shit I find at the thrift shop. Watch this space!

American Picker

Hey, look what I found in the trash!


Well, sort of. It was sitting on the sidewalk across the street with the trash, but I choose to believe the fact that it wasn't in a trash bag was a sign that whoever put it out there wanted someone to adopt it and love it.



I thought it was a hat box and was going to use it to store some of Baby Razor's increasingly out of control toy collection, but no: it's a vintage American Tourister hard-shell suitcase, exactly like this one on sale at Etsy. It's a little dirty, and the inside smells like grandma, but I think I can clean it up and use it for something cool. Heck, I can even use it as god intended: as the world's most badass carry-on.


I almost didn't grab it. Partly because, while I am an experienced curb shopper, it feels weird to do it in suburbia where everyone can look out their window and see you taking someone else's trash. And partly because I now have a nagging voice in the back of my head going beeeeeeedbuuuuuuuugs. Stupid bedbugs.

But my armchair is next to the front window, and the suitcase was right in my line of vision this morning, calling to me. You know they crush garbage, right? it said. I'm just saying. That'll be on you. Yeah, for some reason vintage luggage sounds a lot like my mother.

Why was it out there? Well, there have been a lot of people stopping by the house across the street this week, poking around and cleaning, so I'm choosing to believe that the elderly woman who lived there went to an assisted living facility. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.


So, does anyone have tips on getting old-lady smell out of fabric? Or cleaning hard luggage (I'm guessing just scrub the crap out of it with soap & water. It looks built to withstand a nuclear bomb, after all.) And can anyone tell me what this mark, to the right of the American Tourister logo, is:

Monogram? Business name? Other?

Where Have You Gone, Man in the Yellow Hat?

Curious George & Friends opened in 1995 as Curious George Goes to Wordsworth. The name changed when Wordsworth went out of business in 2004. I started shopping there in 1996, when I was 18 and my niece was two. Now my niece is 17, my daughter is two, and Curious George is closing.


They were closed yesterday when I went to pay my respects (and do some discount shopping).


All the bare shelves used to be so packed with books that you'd have to wiggle them back in after you were done looking at them. That book you loved when you were a kid, whose name you forgot even though you could still describe the cover? They had it.


I never minded paying full price for books & toys there (instead of less at the big box stores) because I knew everything in Curious George was chosen with love and care. I will admit that I felt a little bad about being the aunt who gave two gifts instead of six, though.

But even at full price, I imagine they'd have to sell more books than anyone buys to continue to afford the $15,000 a month rent.

I'm heartbroken, and I felt a little silly about it because as my mom loves saying, it's not like somebody died. But as I was taking pictures through the windows yesterday, three separate people came up to the door, read the sign, and said, "Oh, no." At least I'm not alone.

[Totally Selfish Side Note: Does anyone know what happens to the store's decorations? Because I would shank my neighbors for a chance at George in the rocket ship.]

I Need A Nanny. For Myself.

I locked myself out today, which wouldn't be all that notable had I not also locked the baby in.

Background: Baby Razor has been getting up between 5:30 and 6 a.m. for a week (instead of her usual 7:30ish). In theory I should be adjusted to this by now, but I'm still a tired wreck. But after a weekend of doing nothing, I was determined to get my ass in gear today.

So as soon as Baby Razor went down for her nap, I dragged our new patio set out onto the porch and set about assembling it. I figured I'd take a shower after I finished, so I left my PJs on. It was hot and the sun was right on top of me, so after putting the table together I decided to take a break before putting the umbrella up.

That, of course, was when I realized the door was locked. Okay, I thought, I have the tool kit. It can't be that hard to break into a house when you've got a shit-ton of tools, can it? YES. IT CAN. I tried unscrewing the storm window. Turns out it's also screwed in on the inside and painted to the side of the house. I tried picking the lock. Yeah, the producers of Supernatural will be getting a stern letter from me, because that shit is WAY harder than they make it look. I tried to bite the bullet and break the glass on the back door with a hammer. No go--it's apparently shatterproof. Which is good from a homeowner standpoint, but bad from a crazy, locked-out mother standpoint.

I psyched myself up to go next door and ask to use the phone. In my pajamas. Barefoot. Braless. It's okay! I know my neighbors! They're a really nice older couple. They were not home. All right. The family across the street? Nope. My friends down the block? Nobody there.

By this time I'd been outside for nearly an hour. I was starting to panic, covered in sweat, still barefoot and braless, and knocking on strangers' doors. I finally got an answer four doors down from my house, from a woman I'd smiled at a few times but never talked to. She let me use her phone to call Mr. Razor, who pretty much lost his shit, not that I blame him. In fact, while trying to find his mother's work number, he accidentally disconnected me.

As I was redialing, my neighbor was like, "So, I have some things to do? Errands to run?" Yeah, she clearly wanted the sweaty, frantic, half-dressed stranger out of her kitchen as soon as possible. I told the mister to get ahold of his mother, who has a key and works five minutes from our house, and I'd be on the back porch.

Then I waited. It was only about fifteen minutes, but I kept imagining I could hear the baby crying for me, which was pretty much the worst feeling in the world. I have never been so happy to see my mother in law. She opened the door, observed that our plants looked good and the baby didn't seem to be crying, promised to buy us one of those fake rocks for our extra key, and left.

I don't even remember closing the door and going upstairs to the baby's room. Baby Razor was standing there with her arms hanging over the edge of the crib, dry-eyed and singing to herself. When I walked in she looked at me like, What the crap, Mama. I've got a poopy diaper here. I managed to get her to the changing table before bursting into tears and dripping all over her.

Then, of course, I told twitter what a dipshit I am. And thank god I did, because my friends were like, pssh, that's nothing. My mother forgot me at home/left me in the car/accidentally knocked me down the stairs and I turned out fine! They really did. None of them have meth labs in their basement or anything.

So I guess the moral of the story is that no matter how good or careful a mother you are, you will occasionally do something horrendously stupid.

That's not reassuring, is it? How about this one instead: Try to limit your major parental fuck-ups to the kid's toddlerhood, which she won't remember anyway. That's useful advice, anyway.

Apocalypse Now

(Photo via Sushiesque, who spotted this RV in Harvard Square this morning.)

All right, I have to talk about this whole Rapture thing. In case you've somehow managed to avoid the worldwide media blitz, there's a fringe Christian group that has spent bonkers money to make everyone aware that God will be playing favorites on Saturday and bodily yanking His Chosen up to Heaven. The unsaved, of course, will not be allowed to continue on their merry way, but will suffer and die horribly in a series of epic natural disasters until God gets bored and destroys the earth in October, sending all the Unsaved to eternal damnation in Hell.

That's Family Radio's version, anyway. I think it's based on the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelation, but they're not emphasizing all the four horsemen and anti-christ stuff, which sucks, because that stuff is amazing. PSA: If you've never read the Book of Revelation, you really should no matter what your belief or non-belief system. I read it in college, and the best way to describe its effect is that I had to pause every couple of pages to re-affirm that I had not accidentally ingested a massive amount of drugs.

I read it for a class about millennial apocalypse predictions. I learned that early Christians thought the Second Coming was imminent, which was good for them, since they were being horribly persecuted. End Times cults got popular again around 1,000 AD, maybe because it was a round number, maybe because it was The Dark Ages. So we've gone from I'd like to be raptured so I don't get fed to lions to I'd like to be raptured to leave my short, squalid life to I'd like to be raptured because ...what? "I don't like the gays"? "Those Mexicans frighten me"? Your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway. Everyone is having fun with the latest prediction. I've heard of Rapture parties, people planning to release blow up dolls filled with helium at the appointed hour (6 pm, your local time), leaving piles of clothes and shoes in random public places, and, of course, the ever-popular post-Rapture looting. Of course, maybe I shouldn't be laughing too hard. Remember Y2K? I didn't sell all my worldly possessions or anything, but I had a few extra cases of water on hand, just in case the computers did...whatever it is they were going to do. I was never really clear on that, honestly.

I actually have a Secret Apocalypse Plan, just in general. (Oh, don't look at me like that. You do too, even if you call it your "Emergency Plan" or whatever.) It's not a very good plan. Mostly it involves strapping Baby Razor to my back with a bed sheet, deciding what we have that can be bartered for food, and rounding up all of our garbage bag twistie-ties, because, seriously, those things can do anything. I think I'll have them handy on Saturday, just in case.

Someday She'll Say She Doesn't Have The Patience For Me Either

Yesterday morning, I heard myself saying, "I do not have the patience for this, Baby Razor!" as she shrieked at me for no apparent reason. I started laughing before I even got to the end of the sentence. I can't be sure, but it knowing myself and my mother, it definitely sounds like one of those things I heard a lot during my early childhood, along with "Come back here!" and "Don't touch anything!"

It made me laugh because, really, what kind of a ridiculous threat is "I don't have the patience for this?" What was I going to do? Leave? "All right kid, you're on your own. Have fun figuring out how to open the fridge!"

So I sang a "Grumpy" song to drown out her whining and got her some ham & cheese.

But it got me thinking about other phrases I heard from my parents as a kid. "Sugar!" was a favorite. I think I was in college before I realized that it was their swear-substitute. Thank goodness they had one, because it got used all the time.

"This is not a democracy!" was my father's favorite, sometimes followed by "It's a benevolent dictatorship," a point teenage me liked to argue with sarcasm, which always led to "Quit being facetious, you!" I still hear that one, usually when I'm visiting them and arguing with Fox News.

These days, I hear myself repeating the phrases Baby Razor will remember. "This is not a democracy" has morphed into, "Do you have a vote here? No." And I gave my girl a first and middle name combo that's seven syllables long partially in an attempt to avoid yelling her full name when I'm annoyed at her. But I totally use what came after the full-name treatment, the most spine-chilling phrase of my youth: "I'm only going to say this once."

Of course I realize now that my parents were, for the most part, totally blowing smoke. They were never actually going to lock me in the basement if I got caught underage drinking. But they'd spent enough years putting down whatever they were doing and taking us home, or turning off the tv and sending us to our rooms that we had no idea they were bluffing on the bigger stuff. Or, as my sister put it when her son was a toddler, "The key is to be really badass when they're little, before they figure out you have no idea what you're doing."

Mother's Day 2011, Featuring Morris Dancing!

All right, I admit it: I barely know what morris dancing is. But for some reason once I read that it was to be featured at the Arnold Arboretum's Lilac Sunday festivities today, I was all excited for it. Possibly because I love archaic British things (I was a Medieval Lit major, after all), and possibly because an anonymous commenter on my favorite cranky townie website, Universal Hub, claimed that "we fought a couple of wars to be rid of" it. Yes, that's right: the British burned down the White House in 1814 because Americans no longer wanted to dance around with hankies and sticks.

We ran into the morris dancers almost as soon as we entered the Arboretum. Baby Razor loved them, so we watched for awhile and I took pictures:

Morris musician!

Leaping!

Twirling!

These are the Ladies of the Rolling Pin

I liked their costumes

My geeky heart also enjoyed their Green Man.

I loved seeing all the families out enjoying themselves.

And I might be a little biased, but...

I'm pretty sure this was the cutest kid there.

Thrift Shop Buy of the Week

For Melanie at BBCAmericanGirl, pictures of the vintage Liberty of London silk scarf I got for $1 today at Boomerangs. I'd love to get an idea of how old it is, if any of you might know.

A Confession

(Why don't I own this book?)


I would love to tell you that I've been MIA because I won the lottery and am now writing to you from a private villa on Bora Bora, but the truth is that something in my wrist popped while I was doing yard work this weekend and I've been trying to rest it. Sadly, Baby Razor doesn't understand that I can't pick her up and clings to my leg until I manage to shake her off break down and pick her up while going, "OW" and hoping eventually she'll catch on.

This weekend, the hubby and I spent five hours in our postage-stamp-size back yard and managed to take it from "disgraceful" to "kind of sad." We want the kid to have somewhere to run around and we want to have people over without being embarrassed, but holy hell, we are not plant people. Actual conversation:

"These are weeds, right?"
"I don't know. How do you tell?"
"They look...weedy?"
"No, look, they're planted in a pattern."
"Oh. So I should stop raking over them?"

Thankfully, we had beer. And during our lunch break, we visited the Staff Meal food truck for a meatloaf & bacon sandwich (him), headcheese & pecorino sandwich (me) and arepa with watermelon slaw (split). My non-expert review is that they were delicious, filling, and cheap. I'm looking forward to going again, perhaps to try the foie gras baklavah.

Ah, guys, I wish I had something more entertaining to write about than my weekend, but the truth is that adulthood has been kicking my ass lately. We made a list of big projects for the spring and all of a sudden, oh shit, it's spring! We need to get grass and rakes and paint and sandpaper and figure out what to do with them. Meanwhile, I'm also trying to figure out how to work while simultaneously keeping Baby Razor from banging her head into things. I don't know how to do it all.

Do you know? CAN YOU TELL ME?

Well, until I figure it out I'll take solace in a friend's recent Facebook status: [Friend] is dreading the day when the kids are no longer excited about fruit salad and toast for dinner and turn to me and say "Really Mom? You didn't go food shopping AGAIN????" Yup. That about sums it up.

Amusing Word Choice of the Day

(So then I said, "You don't even control oil in the T-zone! Hard labor for you!")


(Originally titled "Typo of the Day," but a little research changed that.)

Skimming the Benefit website for more beautifully-packaged, expensive shit to put on my face, I decided to read the FAQ for their new skincare line. Yes, I'm the nerd who reads FAQs, even when I know that they are not really frequently asked questions. Anyway, I came across this (bolding mine):

What’s the ideal order or routine of the skincare collection? What do I start with?
You can mix & match the collection with your current regime but one example of using the products together is: remove it makeup remover, foamingly clean facial wash, refined finish facial polish, either total moisture facial cream or triple performing facial emulsion, it’s potent! eye cream, ultra radiance facial re-hydrating mist (although mist can be used any time throughout the day).

Regime! I love it! I am now picturing my soap & exfoliator as tiny dictators in aviator sunglasses and sailor caps, ruling the sink-top with an iron dispenser pump. The tubes tell me that "regime" is actually an accepted synonym of "regimen," but is that going to stop me from imagining that my Sephora samples are fomenting revolution in my make-up drawer right now? No, it is not.

Worst. Beauty Product Review. Ever.

***ATTN: More JEM adventures later this week! Less WTF, more Girl Power, karate, and PRINCESSES.***

When I decided to come back to blogging, I thought about focusing on one subject as a way of differentiating myself from the eight million other personal blogs out there. The following exchange pretty much defines why I couldn't do it:

Me: I am in a total froth over [a well-meaning but clueless essay to which I am not linking but which contained the sentence "Sometimes I pretend I am black."]

Jasmine: Understandable. SOMETIMES I PRETEND I AM BLACK.

Me: Yet I am also totally admiring the gorgeous packaging of the moisturizer I just bought. I am large. I contain multitudes.

That's right: I quoted Walt Whitman while talking about racism and beauty products. I am shallow, socially aware, AND snobby.

Anyway. Look at the pretty packaging:




It's nice stuff--smells good, makes my skin soft. Yes, it's hideously overpriced. I was going to try to justify spending that much money, but it boils down to: sometimes I just like putting expensive shit on my face, okay?

"It's Your Fault!" Friday

The first unofficial thing new mothers learn is that, no matter what happens, It's Your Fault. Can't nurse? Your fault. Colicky kid? Your fault. Dingo stole your baby? Your fault.

In what I would love to be a one-off, but will surely become a reoccurring feature, I present this week's societal F You's to moms everywhere. To get yourself in the proper frame of mind, go read these unsolicited comments to parents and know that every mother I know has heard a variation of at least two of them.

1) Hey, remember how your doctor told you to eat lots of fruit when you were pregnant? Well, I hope you had access to 100% organic, free-range, picked-by-virgins fruit, because otherwise your kid is doomed to be a moron. What's that? You're a migrant worker? Sorry, you're fucked.

2) Okay, you've cut out pesticide-treated fruit. You're all set, right? Nope! Put down those Cheetos or your kid will be fat and it will be All Your Fault. The headline of that article is actually "Your Mom Is Why You're Fat."

Okay, I realize these are scientific studies controlling for a very specific set of circumstances and testing one small part of the zillions of things that affect intelligence and weight, but the way they're reported and the way they filter into the culture is as DON'T EAT THAT APPLE OR YOUR KID WILL BE DUMB and DON'T EAT THOSE MCNUGGETS OR YOUR KID WON'T BE ABLE TO SEE HIS FEET.

Finally, 3) kind of breaks my heart. I adore Neko Case and, in fact, sang her songs to my infant to stay awake during late night feedings when I was so tired I was afraid I was going to pass out, keel over, and smother Baby Razor with my boobs. Then she went and tweeted this:

Parents of SF; your child walks AND talks, get it out of the fucking stroller!!! Ick!

It was a joke. I get that it was a joke. But as the parent of a walking, talking child who enjoys nothing more than darting out into busy intersections, it didn't make me laugh so much as it made me grind my teeth. And when I let her roam free? People ask me why she isn't in a stroller. So, Neko, I love you beyond all reason, but kindly STFU.

Self-Promotion

I'm working today in an actual office. On the one hand, there is no natural light; but on the other, nobody has pooped their pants. So far.

In lieu of my adventures in corporate America, here's some writing I did for the Boston Phoenix's Best Reader's Poll 2011:

Best Local Nonprofit
Best Barbecue
Best Burgers
Best Gluten-Free Menu
Best Pies Vs. Cupcakes
Best Restaurant, Romantic

This was very much not a case of writing for the paycheck. I honestly love and recommend all of these places. I'm just sad that I didn't get to do the Boomerangs write-up too. Although given how much of my home is decorated with pieces scavenged from there, it's entirely possible my write-up would have been, "It's terrible. Don't go there. MORE FOR ME, MWA HA HA HA."

Overpriced Accessories Meet Starfleet

One of the things about being a professional writer is that while it's awesome to get paid for something you love and do all the time anyway, there are often times when your paycheck hangs on something you could not possibly care less about. I've been extremely lucky in my career to have written about subjects ranging from heart surgery to crazy ceremonial clocks, but that doesn't mean there aren't still times when I'm twenty minutes from my deadline going, "What the hell am I supposed to say about this monstrosity?"

So I always feel a mixture of glee and kinship when I find copy that is clearly a product of exhaustion and deadline panic. I felt it this morning when the fabulous Leigh sent me a link to Anthropologie's Crystalline Entity Necklace.

If you're not a nerdball Trekkie like she and I (side note: Want.), the Crystalline Entity was an enemy of the "It wipes out planets and we don't know how to stop it!" variety, a little bit like the Borg, but with more CGI and less fetish gear.

I could have written it off as a coincidence until I read the rest of the copy:

This vitalizing creation gleams with internal sparks as each gargantuan cut takes on a life of its own.

Yeah, that was totally written by someone who wanted to get back to his or her TNG marathon and/or fan fiction.

Happy Monday, everyone. I hope you get through today without having to do your professional equivalent of describing an ugly plastic necklace like it's an alien life-form.

Jemology

(This is the worst Project Runway challenge ever!)

God bless the internet. According to this amazingly comprehensive collectors' site, there is an entire series of "Find Your Fate" Jem books. You know I will be ransacking my mother's basement for those suckers when I'm home for Easter.

I can just picture trying to explain why I want them. "Because...the internet?"

I also had a bunch of She-Ra books that I hope I can find. Ah, She-Ra: the woman solely responsible for my enduring love of tiaras, knee boots, and boobs.

In the meantime, have another passage from Jewels in the Dark:

With that, Pizzazz leaves. And you are Bruno's prisoner, in the empty loft. He growls at you again.

"If you try to run, I'll break your legs. If you try to scream, I'll choke you," he says. "If you try to use the phone, I'll break your legs."

"You already said you'd break my legs."

"I like breaking legs the best," Bruno says. "Now let's play some Scrabble."

Children's Merchandising Has Always Been Ridiculous

Let's continue our retro theme, shall we? My mother never throws anything out (But not in a Hoarders way; in an it's all on bookshelves or in decorative boxes way), and every once in awhile the house horks up something from my youth and Mom delivers it to me. This weekend she came to visit and told me that while looking for kids' books to bring to Baby Razor, she found this:


(Jem: Jewels in the Dark!)

Ah, yes: Jem and the Holograms, a cartoon where the main character spent most of her time trying to hide a secret that was revealed in her band's name. I LOVED that show. Like most '80s cartoons, it was created to sell toys, and boy did it work on me. I had all of the dolls and clearly remember all of my adventures with them. Strangely enough, I barely remember any of the actual cartoon. Even reading about it didn't jog my memory.

From what I can tell, the story is as follows: Mild-mannered Jerrica Benton just wants to run her record-company-slash-foster-home in peace, but her late father's evil business partner wants the company to himself! For...nefarious purposes? Maybe he wanted to auction off the foster kids? I don't remember. So Jerrica is forced to use Synergy, the well-nigh magical computer her (apparently extremely busy) father invented, to cast a hologram over herself, thus transforming into pink-haired rock star JEM. Why she couldn't have just bought a wig like Hanna Montana, I do not know.

Now let's talk about the book. It's a Choose Your Own Adventure, or, since "choose your own adventure" was trademarked, a Find Your Fate. It's definitely a time capsule. People load cameras with film, wait to hear something on the 11pm news, and get trapped in a locked room with no hope of escape because even though your genius father built a supercomputer that could create a lifelike hologram over your face and body from any location, he couldn't invent a damn cell phone.

There's also some really weird and obvious product placement for Nikon and Saab, two brands I can't imagine 10-year-olds really cared much about.

Here's the plot, from the book jacket:

YOU are JEM, the super-glamorous rock star! You're in New York City for a whirlwind of parties and concerts to promote a new line of costume jewelry based on the priceless Langley jewels.

But while you're modeling the real Langley jewels at a big photo shoot, the room suddenly gets dark. When the lights come back on, the jewels are gone!

Your rivals, the Misfits, and the ruthless Eric Raymond--who'll do anything to hurt your reputation--blame the crime on you! Now you and the Holograms must find the real thieves!

The future of the greatest female rock band of all time is at stake, JEM. Your enemies are very clever, so make the right moves as you...FIND YOUR FATE."

Spoiler alert: the Misfits don't have anything to do with the theft. They're only in the book for about three pages total, including one ending where Jem has to get up and sing with them and gets a dead mouse thrown at her. WTF? Who brings a dead mouse to a rock concert?

The whole thing is that level of absurd, but this was favorite scene:

Okay, so you're going to solve the mystery of the jewels in the dark yourself. But first you've got to cool out. And you do that best in a hot bath.

"Jerrica, we're sisters and you know I love you, but..." Kimber says, looking in the bathroom mirror, "how can you stand to eat pizza in a bubble bath?"

"It helps me think," you say, letting your shoulders slip under the suds and sinking your teeth into your second slice.

"That's not a tub. That qualifies as a pool," Shana says, stealing a sip of your diet soda.

By the time you and the Holograms have finished the pizza, you're ready to map out a plan of attack.

Yes, that makes perfect sense. I know that whenever I'm accused of a jewel heist, the first thing I do is climb in the tub and invite all my friends over for dinner in my bathroom. So the band does all of their brainstorming while Jem lounges naked in a bubble bath and Kimber writes suspects' names in lipstick on the mirror. The whole thing left me feeling like I'd just learned way more about the author's fantasy life than I ever wanted to know.

The plotline that leads Jem to the thief involves her visiting the Statue of Liberty, applying for a job as a maid, going on a talk show (where she and her bandmates wear the same dress and different colored stockings, an idea I love. Can we get a real girl group to do this?), engaging in a car chase, running through security at JFK, storming onto a plane, and literally snatching the thief's wig. That summary makes it sound a lot more entertaining than it was.

I will leave you with this paragraph, which has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the book or even the rest of the page on which it appears, yet perfectly sums up the ridiculousness of Jem: Jewels in the Dark:

Without the holographic images supplied by Synergy, you and Kimber look like ordinary girls, not rock stars. But just to make sure Amanda doesn't recognize you, you're wearing a 1950s disguise. It consists of heart-shaped sunglasses, a yellow trenchcoat, and a bright flowered scarf tying back your hair

Oh, Jerrica. Don't quit your day job. Or Jem's day job.

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote

(Title has nothing to do with the post, but I gotta use that $100,000 degree in Medieval Lit somewhere. Plus, the Canterbury Tales are also old.)

It’s April, which means Spring, which means the annual Daisy Gets Her Shit Together Project. I’m starting today with my lists: decorating, decluttering, DIY, home improvement, and freelancing. Since I’m feeling list-y and nostalgic, today’s post is about...

Things I used all the time that will someday completely baffle my daughter:

Rotary dial phones
Phones with cords
Busy signals
Answering machines
Pay phones (probably)

Records & record players
Boom boxes
Cassette tapes
Walkmen
Portable CD players
CDs
Liner notes (as a music geek, this one may break my heart the most)

Non-flat TVs
TV antennae
VCRs
Movie rental stores

Film
Negatives
Polaroid pictures (“Shake it like a what?”)

Card catalogs (well, functional card catalogs. I have one in the living room that we use for storage.)
Encyclopedia sets
Paper college applications
Acceptance letters (Probably a good thing. I broke a whole bunch of traffic laws getting home the day I found out I’d gotten mine.)
Handwritten school papers
Telephone books

Watches as anything but decorative
Incandescent lightbulbs

Modems
Floppy discs

She won’t remember a world without:
Caller ID
Cable TV and 24 hour programming
ATMs
Text messages
Computers
Email
The internet


Did I miss anything?

Odds & Ends

Big-ass china cabinet at West Roxbury Boomerangs, just $100! It needs to be painted, but it's in great shape. The velvet couch must've found a home, because it's been gone for a couple of weeks.


The chair whose cushion led to the destruction of my lamp. I got up the courage to go back to the project, but I think my father-in-law's staple gun is from 1974 and the kickback was so bad I was afraid I'd destroy something else, so it's on hold again.


Finished cork boards from remedial home ec. It was easy to pull the fabric off of the upside down one and reglue it. The glue gun has also come in handy in fixing Baby Razor's environmentally-friendly, made-with-love wooden toys, which are falling apart. I guess love is a crap adhesive.

In case you're keeping track: glue gun=success. Staples/staple gun=mayhem.

A song I love from my Baby Razor's favorite kids' show:



And finally, Baby Razor is all set for Red Sox Opening Day:

I Am a Cranky Old Townie

I'm going to start a blog* called The Cranky Old Townie's Restaurant Guide, where I review restaurants by comparing them against the last restaurant in that spot, even if the cuisine has gone from Italian to Lebanese or shwarma to sushi. Each post will be titled "That New Place Where [X] Used To Be," and sometimes I will spend so long talking about the old place that I won't even get around to reviewing the new restaurant. This is what fifteen years in the same city has done to me.

When I got directions to my first post-college apartment, the landlord kept mentioning "the old Sears building." I was like, "Can you tell me what it's called now?" He paused and said, "I think it's called the old Sears building." Now, this was BG (Before Google), so I couldn't search "old sears building Boston" and find the Landmark Center. I had to go around asking people who'd lived in Boston for more than four years until I found someone who didn't think I'd lost my marbles.

That was eleven years ago. Now my husband and I have entire conversations about places that would make every college student in Boston stare at us blankly. Bob Slate is the latest unfortunate addition to our ghost stores. I never thought I'd be saddened by a stationary store's demise, but I was heartbroken. I bought my college scrapbooks and diaries there. I pick them up now and remember sitting in Bob Slate, going through the shelves notebook by notebook, carefully searching for the perfect one. It's funny that my search for an object to hold my favorite memories became one of those memories. (There's probably a German word for that phenomenon, something like thinkenstuffestraminer.)

I feel like I have a million stories like that, and I'm only 33. Heck, there's a Morphine song playing on a truck commercial right now and I'm resisting the urge to tell you all about the time I saw them and the day I found out Mark Sandman had died. (I am going to allow myself a cranky townie moment and tell you that if you don't know Morphine, you should go and listen to them now.) I can only imagine how much more cranky and townie-ish I'll be in another fifteen or thirty years. I'll have a whole ghost city to tell my daughter about by then, the same way my father has taught me to remember things about my hometown that happened decades before I was born. I like that thought. It makes me feel less senile for calling the Thai restaurant where we got dinner on Friday "that place where the schwarma place used to be."

*no I'm not

Don't Stand So Close To Me (Really, You Could Get Hurt)

(Because there was no Little Miss Clumsy)

I am clumsy. Butterfingered. A total spazz. I injure myself and destroy things in ways that defy physics and logic. Plates jump to their death from my hands. I hit my head on picture frames I could swear I'm nowhere near. I once gave myself a hematoma while dismounting a stationary bike. (When I tried to explain the gigantic bruise to my doctor at my physical, she paused then asked me how safe I felt with my husband. Yup.)

I've always been a nexus of stupid accidents, but I hoped I would outgrow it. My family thought I was just spacey, and I believed that theory enough to think that as a functioning adult and mother, I'd be less disaster-prone. But I have finally acknowledged that ridiculous things are always going to happen to me. Now I just need to figure out the best way to minimize the damage.

I'm bringing all this up thanks to my most recent disaster. Keep in mind that this story is going to sound completely improbable to you, a non-clumsy person. To me? It's pretty typical of a Saturday afternoon.

Recently, I bought a couple of chairs for $12 apiece that were in perfect condition except for a stain on each seat cushion. So I decided I'd take another turn as DIY-girl and re-cover the cushions. The internet assured me that this would be a piece of cake. All I needed was a screwdriver, new fabric, and a staple gun.

Having procured a replaceable-head screwdriver from our tool kit, I began yanking approximately eight hundred staples out of the bottom of the existing cushion. On the second-to-last staple, the pin holding the screwdriver head in place went ping and bounced off into the ether. Of course, instead of making it to the floor, it ended up in the depths of my armchair.

After taking the cushion off, I realized that the tiny ball-bearing had, in fact, rolled all the way down into the netting below the chair. I sighed and thought about putting everything away and waiting until Mr. Razor got home to help me. But he was out with the baby and I didn't want to greet him with, "Please pick up this large, heavy object. Oh, also, I broke the screwdriver." Plus, there were only two staples left, and I get psychotic about finishing projects once I've started them. If I didn't find the pin, there was a good chance I'd end up picking those staples out with my teeth.

So I poked around and realized that there was a hole in the netting near the front of the chair. Perfect. I'd just tip the chair forward and the ball would roll out, where I could recover it, fix the screwdriver, and finish my project without anyone ever knowing about my latest mishap.

Except when I tipped the chair, it hit the floor lamp next to it, which then crashed to the floor before I could drop the armchair to catch it, shattering its glass shade and eco-friendly lightbulb. Sigh. I spent the next hour carefully removing shards of glass from the corner of the living room. I never got back to the screwdriver or the last two staples.

To sum up: In my attempt to save some money on decorating, I destroyed a screwdriver and a large lamp, whose replacement cost completely cancelled out my bargain. From now on, I will be limiting my craft projects to ones involving finger paint and pipe cleaners.

PANIC

Pertinent facts:

1) My older sister is a hardcore rock climber.
2) My mother is terrible at disseminating vital health information. She was once in the hospital for three days with a heart arrhythmia and didn't call because she "didn't want me to worry." My other three siblings knew, but apparently I was considered too delicate for the information.

Twenty minutes ago I got this email, written by my sister's boyfriend and forwarded from my mother with no comment:

Dear Mr and Mrs Razor,

Just to let you know, [Sis Razor] is back from her head reconstruction surgery and is doing okay. She is resting quietly on the couch right now, not up to talking very much. I will be hanging out with her throughout the evening in case she needs anything.

Given the facts above, I think it was perfectly reasonable for me to assume that my sister had split her skull open and the rest of my family just didn't tell me about it. I emailed back, "WHAT HAPPENED TO HER HEAD?" and didn't get a reply, so I called my mother.

"Oh," she said. "I guess I type too slowly for you. I was just replying. Didn't I tell you that she decided to get surgery on her deviated septum?"

NO. NO, YOU DID NOT.

"Hmm. I must've told everyone else and thought I told you too. That's it though."

Oh, well. Then can we talk about the fact that my sister is dating a guy who refers to an elective procedure as "head reconstruction surgery?" Because that's ridiculous.

Wonder Woman WTF Round-Up

As you can probably tell from my icon here and on twitter, I am rather fond of Wonder Woman. When I was five years old, my mother had to explain to me that my Wonder Woman underoos were not appropriate outside clothes no matter what Lynda Carter did. In theory I should be thrilled that they're making a new Wonder Woman series so Baby Razor can run around in WW underoos too. Yeah, not so much. The costume is the least of the project's problems, but it's the most recent. So here it is, along with a collection of reactions to the hideousness:



Tom & Lorenzo give a fashion perspective.

E!'s fashion police say 'ick.'

Comic Book Movie fixes the color story, including the awful lipstick, bless.

Movieline wonders if you can guess the difference between the professional costume and one from the party store.

Best Week Ever offers other options. (#3 is Project Runway vet Chris March!)

Comics Alliance actually likes it, but Pajiba is the same combo of sad/horrified that I am.

Vulture wonders what the costume designers were thinking.

ETA: Wonderella offers another possible explanation.

Fox News is annoyed that it's not patriotic enough. Yes, that's clearly the main issue.

Finally, io9's headline nicely captures the internet's general consensus: First Wonder Woman Costume Photo Will Make Your Eyes Bleed.

All right, I think that may be everything there is to say about the costume itself, so I will lament the horrible photoshopping. This is what Adrianne Palicki usually looks like:





See how she has a beauty mark between her eyebrows? And a chin? And normal, human-sized lips? Where did all those things go in the promo pic? And if they were going to photoshop the bejesus out of her face, why couldn't they put a little shine onto that nasty cheap wig? Sigh. That is a lot of questions for a Saturday morning.