Current Obsession:

When I was a freshman in high school and excelling in my low-level biology class, I briefly believed that one day I would become a hot lady veterinarian and move to the countryside where I would spend my days delivering cow-babies and setting broken legs of sheepdogs while wearing floppy straw hats and backless peasant tops from the Delia's catalog. Woo! Luckily, my interest in studying medicine fizzled after I spent a day in a medical research laboratory, bored to tears. Also luckily, my interest in backless peasant tops from the Delia's catalog (and, in fact, backless garments of all varieties) fizzled after I had to Nair my back before I could wear my only slighlty revealing senior prom dress (For that, I will blame my mother's ancestors, who hail from a land where women are known for growing hair in unconventional places, and my father's ancestors, who were part Troll).



Anywho, the one element of that freshman fantasy that did stay with me was the whole floppy straw hat thing. This winter, I was watching "The Jewel of the Nile" on the Man Hater Channel, and in the opening scene, Kathleen Turner - playing a dimwitted journalist doing a story on a shady Emir in an ambiguous Middle Eastern location - is sitting on a boat wearing some brootiful, romantic straw accoutrement. It was then that I decided that this would be the summer where I put aside my irrational fear of looking like a Kentucky Derby yuppy or pre-amnesia "Overboard" Goldie Hawn and jump on the big summer hat bandwagon. After unsuccessfully hunting for one that actually fit my big head, I was getting slightly discouraged. However, last Saturday at the mall during a Shoe Shopping Death March, I was drawn by unseen forces into Gap. I don't know how this happened because I hate all Gap Inc stores and their crappy products, but as I was unenthusiastically poking through their accessories section I saw that, GOD BLESS THEM, THEIR HATS COME IN SIZE LARGE! So I got this:

Yaaaaaay!

But guess what, Gap? I still hate you.

Why I'm Going To Start Riding My Bicycle To Work

This morning, after I got on the bus, I waited with the other passengers for about five minutes while the woman behind me dug slowly through her giant purse, looking for her bus card. She finally found it and fed it into the ticket taker. Instead of going to find a seat, she continued to stand there, staring at the driver.

"Can you open the door?" she said.
"What?"
"I need to get off," she mumbled. "...I'm not wearing any shoes."

We all looked down, dumbfounded, at her gnarly bare feet and watched as she tripped off the bus and back down the street where she came from.

Happy May Day!

The theme for 2009 seems to be "Nostalgia". First it was blanket fort parties (I'm going to another on Cinqo de Mayo, hee!). Then the other day when I was brushing my teeth I had a flashback to the May Firsts of yesteryear. Did you ever go around and leave baskets -or styrofoam cups- of candy at your friends' doors before you rang the bell and ran away? And remember, if you got caught, you had to give your friend a kiss (but no one ever really did that because kissing was groooooooss).

This year, I am bringing May Day back. I made cones out of construction paper and filled them with banana bread and brownies and little candy bars and colored feathers. On my lunch break and after work I'm going to flit around town, ding-dong-ditching. Yay!