The Female MacGyver Strikes Again

Tonight we were down at our local bar, listening to Grant Sabin (who is a fantastic blues musician). Only a few minutes had passed since we sat down at the bar, and I was chatting with some friends when I suddenly felt an ominous give in the right strap of my tank top.

Sure enough, the stupid strap had detached¹ from the back of my shirt². Unfortunately, I had my summer purse, which is an extremely pared-down version of my normal purse and thus contained no safety pins. And while I have safety pins on both my old red hoodie and my grey hoodie, I was wearing my new red hoodie: no pins. There were three women sitting on the couch behind me, who saw it happen, and in a superb demonstration of The Sisterhood all checked their purses for safety pins; nada. My friend who was tending bar likewise checked at the cash register; all she had was a large paper clip.

When I saw said paper clip, my eyes (which had so recently widened in horror at feeling my cami strap give way) lit up with joy. I shooed off my husband, who was attempting to tie the broken strap to the other strap, and hightailed it to the bathroom.

Naturally, since I had entered the bathroom with the intent of performing emergency surgery on my clothing, I almost immediately heard two girls queue up outside the door.

I stuck the straight end of the paper clip through the cami strap, then through my shirt, and turned the paper clip so the hooking mechanism was on the opposite curve. That way it couldn't easily come undone. A quick check in the mirror showed that yes, it pretty much looked like my damn shirt was being held together by a paper clip, but yes, that bitch was sturdy and I didn't have to worry about accidentally flashing anyone tonight.

When I returned to my seat, my husband, who felt that his idea would have worked just fine (though looked even worse than the paper clip fix) asked, "Did it work?"

"Hell yeah it did," I replied, sliding onto my barstool, "'cause I'm the motherfuckin' female MacGyver." '

My friend the bartender came over a moment later and made me turn around so she could see. "You are totally the female MacGyver," she said.

"Damn straight," I grinned, and took a celebratory swig of a delightfully tasty IPA.

¹ I would prefer to think that this happened because the shirt was poorly made to begin with and had been washed too many times, rather than because I am a fatass. However, the cause of the sudden detachment is irrelevant to our story, which focuses instead on its effects. Let's not lose focus, here, people, come on.
² Thank god it detached from the back of the shirt, and not the front, because while I could've handled inadvertently flashing total strangers in a crowded bar, my 20-year-old brother-in-law is visiting, and was there with us. Had he seen my boob, I probably would have died of sheer mortification right there on the spot.

Adventures in Purse-Diving: Behold the Female MacGyver!

I'm one of those people that practically lives out of my purse, which is huge whether huge purses are in fashion or not. It allows me to carry all sorts of useful things about; as a writer, I always have a journal, at least one pen, at least one copy of the magazine 'Poetry' and at least one book. Then you have all the assorted crap that I manage to attract like some sort of bizarre magnet.

For example, last night I was at a networking event, having a smoke outside with a friend. A smallish, fluffy, black and white dog comes trotting over from the parking lot, totally unattended. He says hi to us and starts to walk up the road, towards one of the busiest streets downtown. I work for a humane society, but I'd like to think anyone would've done what I did: call the dog back and get hold of its collar. Then I started digging in my bag.

"What are you looking for?" my friend asked.

"A leash, I always have one in here," I muttered, trying to dig through all the random shit in there one-handed.

"You have a leash in your purse?"

"Well, yeah, I work for the Humane Society, you never know when you'll need one. Dammit!" I get frustrated with looking for the leash, grab a nylon rope I also happen to have in my bag, and start tying it to the dog's collar.

"What's that?" asked my friend.

"Just some nylon rope, from camping last weekend," I answered.

"You have nylon rope in your purse?"

I looked up at her. "I hope you realize, I AM the female MacGyver." (Side note: this could be why my husband married me. He has every single MacGyver episode memorized, and can tell you which one it is within three seconds or less of watching it. But let's not explore that now.) "In fact, if MacGyver had had a purse, he would've been ten times more badass," I proclaimed.

It reminded me vividly of the time I was trying to find something in my purse and eventually shut the door to my office so I could dump the entire contents out on my desk. I sent my best friend an email listing everything, just because it was so remarkably eclectic. She wrote back that she was crying with laughter.

And so, gentle reader, it is time for another adventure in purse-diving. I'm just going to list things as I pull them out, no particular order. ("Order" is not a word one could apply easily to my purse.) Enjoy the window into my weird & random life. :)

- Set of keys #1 (cars & hubby's office, with bottle opener)
- today's paystub
- 2 pens (a Sharpie & a Pilot - cannot live without Pilot pens!)
- empty pouch of rolling tobacco
- reimbursement check from 3 weeks ago that I still haven't deposited - d'oh!
- 5' length of nylon rope
- deck of cards
- Set of keys #2 (house, with small squishy monkey)
- teriyaki-flavored seaweed snacks
- another (inferior) pen (for desperate times only)
- smallish jar of comfrey salve
- empty pack of rolling papers, related to aforementioned empty tobacco pouch
- Burt's Bees lip shimmer
- box o' matches
- eyeglasses repair kit, despite the fact that my glasses have been broken beyond my repair for months & I've been wearing contacts
- more seaweed snacks? really? huh.
- unshelled, roasted & salted peanut. just one.
- tiny hair clip I will never use
- wooden golf tee
- ponytail holder
- the other tiny hair clip, which I will also never use
- half-full pack of American Spirit blues
- the damn leash I couldn't find last night
- lots more nylon rope, one end of which has somehow gotten wrapped around the wrist of one of my winter gloves (MacGyver would already have a plan for how to use this. I felt like I'd caught a fish when I pulled it out of my purse.)
- the other glove
- note to self: "Get Howl-oween shit together!" (Howl-oween's an event we're planning for October, for the animal rescue for which I volunteer, http://www.safeplacepets.org/.)
- random crumpled artwork made by my friend's pre-school Montessori students
- another empty pouch of rolling tobacco. I've gotta quit smoking. Again.
- ooh, batteries! score! pack of 4 AAs.
- crumpled ball of tinfoil. no idea why. could be used to reflect the sun and temporarily blind one's enemy, allowing one to sneak inside the compound and rescue whoever needed rescuing, though.
- liability waiver from our visit to the wolf sanctuary
- another ponytail holder
- phone memory card adapter
- champagne cork
- medicine bag with wolf fur & a few fetishes
- pack of rolling papers that actually hasn't run out. sweet.
- excerpt of a poem by Seamus Heaney
- program from the volunteer appreciation brunch we had a few weeks ago
- May 2009 issue of 'Poetry'
- Portishead CD (Dummy)
- paystub from two weeks ago
- 25' measuring tape
- journal #1
- coaster with a couple friends' birthdates & places, for casting astrology charts at some undetermined point in the future
- spare tampon
- hey, there are my other keys! set #3: house, with another bottle opener
- tiny jar of largely innocuous plantlife
- more keys (for one of the work vehicles)
- another wooden golf tee? weird.
- wallet
- checkbook
- tons of receipts
- unidentifiable CD scratched all to hell
- journal #2
- The Celtic Fiddle Festival CD
- address book
- Buddy Guy CD (Sweet Tea)
- ticket stub from Slumdog Millionaire <3
- tracking sheet from a game of Simpsons Clue that I am fairly sure took place in late January.
- notepad & pen
- camera
- business cards
- envelope with a lock of my daughter's hair
- button for The Tank, my friend's awesome experimental art & music space in Manhattan (check it out, New Yorkers!)

P.S. Yes, we located the dog's owner. No, they didn't seem even remotely concerned that their dog had been wandering around downtown at rush hour.
P.P.S. I'm tempted to go back and find the list I made a few months ago, just for comparison's sake, but this post is already really long.

Return of the Shoulder Pads: Scariest Trend Ever.

I will just start this post off with a HUGE Sideshow Bob-style shudder.

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{so wrong}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

I'm talking, of course, about shoulder pads. In a word, BLEAH. The last time shoulder pads were in style, I was a young tyke, but even then my shoulders were well and broadly formed. One never realizes how much one can be insecure about one's body until one is forced by evil-minded peers into succumbing to a trend that looks truly horrible on one. ...Or words to that effect.

I could be overreacting, of course; I just saw a tweet that shoulder pads are coming back into style this year and was instantly transported back to looking like a fifth-grade female football player. Trauma! Thank goodness I now have the self-confidence to say, "Fuck you, hideous trend! Begone with you! Keep your absurd fashion laws off my body!"

Of course, I did that when capris first came out, and that didn't work at all. But I'm now convinced that shoulder pads pretty much look goofy on everyone, so hopefully the trend will be short-lived. We can but hope.

Okay, seriously now, who loved 'Designing Women'? Because I used to love 'Designing Women'. It's true.

Mayhem! Insanity! Writing!

Okay, it's not quite as dramatic as all that, really. I'm working on another writing project; my goal is to spend May revising the novel that I wrote in November.

Well, actually, my goal WAS to finish revising the novel in this month. But considering that it's now May 7th and I've just finished chapter two, plus won't be able to do much writing this weekend, that goal's starting to look just a leetle more difficult.

Still, it's not out of reach. It should work out fine, or at least I am going to keep believing that until proved otherwise.

If you want to check it out, the revised version of Mississippi starts here, and the original starts here. Feedback is appreciated...

Random Obsessions, #6: FOOD.

I know, I was a little surprised that food was all the way down at #6, too. There's a lot of competition for those top spots among my obsessions*. Don't get me wrong; despite not making the top five, I am a total, complete and utter freak for good food, not just your average foodie-with-way-better-tastes-than-she-can-really-afford**.

When someone tells me they went to a restaurant, my first question is, "So what'd you have?" And people, let me tell you something: I am not just being polite. I have this unquenchable need to know exactly what your meal was, in as much detail as you can recollect. And then I want to know how you liked it. I am fascinated by such things. You may be shocked to learn, at this point, that I am also very easily entertained.

Pity the poor tourist that stops me on the street for a restaurant recommendation. They end up with WAY more information than they needed (or, perhaps, ever dreamed it was possible to have). The other night, my foodie friend Pam and I actually went so far as to recommend specific items from different restaurants' menus, so that the poor sap would know what to get regardless of where he went. (But seriously, the Keg's berry salad IS fabulous, and so are their crab legs even if I can't handle dismembering the legs. I hope he went there.)

Sometimes when I'm having a bad day, I go online to read the menu for one of my favorite restaurants. I think reading it actually releases some sort of endorphins in my brain. I also love to read cookbooks; in fact, my collection is starting to outgrow the three-shelf bookshelf I've dedicated to it.

The downside to being obsessed with food - and I am so curious if this happens to other foodies a lot - is that I all too frequently get that refrain, "FOOD, glorious FOOD!" stuck in my head. Oh, and I hate to work out, so instead of a six-pack I have, well, a 40. Um... maybe a pony keg. It ain't pretty. But oh, it is so worth it.

The irony of this obsession is that I have a somewhat limited diet. For more than half my life, the only meat I've eaten is seafood. Plus, I hate cheese of any type, which tends to freak out my fellow foodies to no end. Take away meat & cheese, and a hell of a lot of people have no idea what to feed themselves. Believe me, I make do. In fact, I make out like a bandit... Picky foodies, unite!!

*Including, but not limited to, craft beer, Carolina basketball, and Winston Churchill.

**One time I actually tried calculating the amount of my debt that came from dining out on Uncle Visa, but it got so depressing that I quit and went out for some comfort food. Yes, on the card. Shut up.

Pssst... If you're a fellow foodie, check out my cooking & baking blog, http://annlovesfood.blogspot.com.

Heartbreak hotel.

Ugh.

I promise not to bitch about the whole baby-dying thing too often, but honestly, it is amazing how fast people forget. It's been just over nine months since Abigail died, and my coworker (the one with the incredibly annoying Krusty the Clown laugh) just appeared in my doorway with his girlfriend's week-old baby in his arms, saying, "Hi Ann, just here to show off the baby."

"Oh, that's nice," I said with a patently forced smile, keeping my eyes glued to my computer screen so it would look like I was doing something important instead of dicking around on Twitter. "Congratulations." A few seconds of silence & he drifted away again.

Seriously. It's not like I expect my coworkers to keep track of my life's details, but your child dying is, you know, kind of a big deal. I mean, it was to us. Maybe I'm just crazy. One could hope for a teeny bit more sensitivity from people, though. Or a smattering of memory. I would like to think that if I knew an acquaintance of mine's kid died, it might be one of the few things I would remember about them.

I mean, go ahead and bring the tot to work, but do you really have to bring her into my office? Could we maybe just take two seconds to think about this? Is it just me??

On the plus side, it didn't reduce me to a weeping mess and cause me to flee the entire workplace, as an incident a couple months ago did. Let's hear it for healing! Or whatever you would call this.

For the record, she was tiny. And adorable. My coworker's kid, I mean. But so was my Abigail. Okay, now I'm reducing myself to a weeping mess. I'll stop.

NAMED. Finally.

At last! Ever since I posted about wanting to name my new phone, two weeks ago or some similarly astronomically long time ago, the answer - or lack thereof - has just bugged the hell out of me. Nothing seemed to fit. But last night, a name drifted into my mind... a name I've always liked, since it belonged to a character in a book I read as a kid... and when I googled it (and subsequently read the first two sentences of the relevant Wikipedia article), it seemed to all fit perfectly.

Okay, I'll end the suspense. Really. I promise. Right now. You wanna know? All right, I'll tell you.

...

Malachi.

Isn't that a great name? Okay, don't tell me what you really think. No, do, but realize that I don't care if you disagree. ;) Or at least that whether or not I do care, it's too late now. He's named.

Honestly, I think I just like the sound of it. Malachi. Sounds tough and yet intelligent. Like some local wise man you'd find in an Irish pub. Yeah, that's it. Preferably one that's buying you drinks.

Anyway, apparently Malachi means 'my messenger' or 'my angel' in ancient Hebrew. Or maybe just Hebrew. Is there an ancient version of Hebrew? There must be. Regardless, although I'm loth to ascribe angelic attributes to my cell phone, it still seems to fit quite well indeed.

Not that I expect him to be any less of a pain in the ass now that he has a name. In fact, he might start getting even more uppity. In which case I shall have to revoke name-related privileges and revert back to "you fucking bitch, work with me!".

More chocolate-covered pretzels, stat!

I am sincerely trying to not be cynical about Earth Day.

Don't get me wrong. I love Earth Day and the principles it's trying to promote. But in some ways it seems kind of useless. The people who understand how important it is to conserve and recycle do it every day, and the vast majority of the people who don't - or won't - get it seem rather resistant to changing their ways.

Yes yes, I realize we have to fight the good fight, and all that. Promoting awareness is a very good thing. And it's a great opportunity to educate kids on the blah blah of blah blah blah. But again, shouldn't we be talking to kids about green living on a regular basis? I'm just saying. It's sort of like Black History Month: "Here, we'll make up for hundreds of years of enslavement, abuse and wrongdoing with an annual shoutout. Cool? Cool." No, not so cool, actually. Kind of offensive, IMO.

(All right, in all honesty, part of the problem may be that it's about 9:30 in the morning, I'm nearly out of caffeine, I finished off all my chocolate-covered pretzels yesterday, and for the last 45 minutes I've had to listen to a self-righteous coworker going around wishing everyone a happy Earth Day at the top of her lungs. One person responded, "Every day is Earth Day!" and she screamed, "EXACTLY!" Okay, thank you, I agree too; just not quite so loudly.)

So anyway, aside from recycling and fanatic light-switching-off and unused-gadget-unplugging, my habitual green efforts are concentrated on organic food. This is mainly because I am a total foodie, and organic food definitely tastes better. Plus, there's the peace of mind of not dumping carcinogens into your body and not polluting the earth with poison. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, "Less poison for everybody!"

And that includes your mom and mine, Nature. Thanks Ma! Sorry about that whole Industrial Revolution thing. You know we still love you, right?

It's Not Easy Being Green**

Everybody have a nice day yesterday? I took the day off & enjoyed it immensely.

Culturally prescribed slacking (and then, of course, snacking) aside, I actually got a fair amount done yesterday as well. The one thing I did not do that I (sort of, conceptually) wanted to do was get out in the yard & plant some of the seeds I recently bought.

The problem is that I am just not a gardener. 'Oh, look at the charming little seed packets! They have artist's renderings of what my plants will supposedly look like!' Seed packets are strangely irresistible to me, despite the fact that I should just start apologizing to them right there and then for having selected them, because there's no doubt those seeds are in for a long and difficult road. It's much harder to grow things when you only pay attention to them once every three weeks or so. No, really! You'd be surprised.

But, you know, there's always the chance that they could avoid it altogether, if I never manage to get them in the ground to begin with. There are a few that are early-season plants, like spinach and snap peas and such, which should be planted now. The ones we have to plant after the frost date need to be started indoors now.

In these circumstances, my train of thought tends to go something like this: 'I should really plant those seeds. Mmm, yummy vegetables. And it's such a nice day out! Oh, this will be fun. Oh, except first I have to go to the store and get all the supplies for planting them indoors and out, like the soil and those little cup-thingys and all that shit. Then I have to clear out all the weeds that have already started growing where I want to plant the veggies. Come to think of it, the yard looks pretty much trashed - the vines are out of control, I need to cut those back... there's dogshit in need of picking up... sweet flippin jeebus... You know, I should really wash these dishes right now. And then, uh, maybe pay some bills. Oh, and I have that freelance article I've got to finish. Yes. Lots to do! No time to spend ten hours gardening!' *deep sigh of relief*

It's not that I dislike gardening. It's just that, well, it's sort of a pain in the ass. And it takes a lot of time. I think the propensity for success is in a direct ratio to how much one enjoys it, though - I have friends whose gardens are veritable works of art, and make it sound nearly effortless. It mystifies me, I'll be honest.

The other problem is that here in our little community, everybody and their dog has a vegetable garden (yes, I suspect even the dogs out-garden me), and they're all going around with fervently gleaming eyes and talking about their seedlings. At which point in the conversation I secretly hope they'll plant too much and have a lot to give away to incompetents like me.

Still, I used to feel similarly about baking, and I've managed to become halfway decent at that, largely because I love to eat baked goods. Similarly, I always glory in the both-yummy-and-victorious taste of the eleven or so cherry tomatoes and one jalepeno pepper* I manage to coax from our garden's unwilling victims; if I actually grew all the different stuff we have seeds for, I'd eat so well this summer. Maybe I can overcome my gardening issues this year. I make no promises, though. I may have mail to shred, or something even more fun to do.

* Does not include zucchini, which I can grow in abundance. This is because in order to kill off a zucchini plant, you actually have to drop an anvil on it, Looney Tunes-style, and then set it on fire. I'm just not that aggro.

** As you may have noticed by now, this blog has almost nothing whatsoever to do with Kermit, or recycling. Although locally grown produce is 'more green'. Anyway, my title probably should have been something more like, 'It's Not Easy Having Whatever the Antithesis of a Green Thumb Is', but that just doesn't really flow. Anyway, to make up for the lack of Kermit-related focus in the post, I offer you this link.

A Drunkship of Cobblers

Last night I was going through some old files, wondering why the hell I keep all this crap anyway, when I came across an old photocopy from my mom that proves exactly why I keep all this crap. Packrats of the world, unite!

It's a page from 'Schott's Original Miscellany' with a section called 'Nouns of Assemblage', and some of them are so cool - either because they're poetic or they sound like they have a good story behind them.

A few faves:

- a malapertness of peddlers
- a gang of elk
- a murmuration of starlings
- a wildnerness of monkeys
- a chattering of choughs (WTF is a chough? Ah - a type of bird. I love you, interwebs.)
- a cete of badgers
- a bench of bishops
- a murder of crows
- a pontification of priests
- a rag of colts
- an exaltation of larks (beautiful!)
- a drift of swine
- a stud of mares
- a parliament of rooks & owls
- a glozing of taverners
- a business of ferrets
- a drunkship of cobblers