Well, it’s time to finish up my magazine column for the month so you know what that means: I’m procrastinating! It’s true. Whenever I have work to do I always find a million reasons to put things off. In fact, whenever my writing piles up, Grey says our house is clean as a whistle and we eat extremely well due to the fact that cooking and cleaning are at the top of my tasks-to-do-while-procrastinating list.
So, since I’m on deadline for the magazine, I figured it may be a good day to try my hand at canning my own homemade tomato sauce. Yep, I never canned even a simple jam before, but I figured what better time than the present to learn!? Somehow, I turned a laundry basket full of tomatoes, about 100 garlic cloves, red wine, red peppers, and a whole bunch of basil and oregano into sauce that is actually edible. I haven’t yet attempted to put it into cans to preserve — that’s tomorrow’s time-wasting activity.
I’d feel remiss if I didn’t give credit to the man who started me on this whole cooking-as-procrastinating kick — Bob Blumer. You may have seen him on the Food Network, he has a show, “Glutton for Punishment,” but I fell for him back in college when all he had out were a few cookbooks. It was finals week and, true to my nature, I was trying my best to avoid studying. On a “study break” to Barnes and Noble I discovered Blumer’s “The Surreal Gourmet” cookbook and decided then and there that I must go home and immediately make salmon in my dishwasher as one recipe described. After grossing out my roommates with a fish dinner that tasted like Cascade (I guess I forgot to seal the fish properly), I had not only found a way to put off doing work, but also a new passion: cooking. Yay for Bob!
The man who started it all! Here is he making his famous beer can chicken...yum! (And the chicken looks good too)
No time like deadline to whip up a gigantic vat of tomato sauce!
I don’t even know where it came from. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t something I bought. But for some reason I own bondage tape. Now here’s the thing, I tend to use this bondage tape for craft projects. Did you hear me Martha Stewart? Bondage tape and craft projects are a marriage made in heaven! It works so well for stringing things up around the house because it’s super strong and while it sticks to itself, it doesn’t stick to anything else.
I imagine this non-stick factor is great for bondage, but it is also wonderful for stringing up wreaths at Christmas time. Extremely heavy juniper wreath got you down? Just look around for some bondage tape and your holiday is saved!
My particular role happens to be industrial sized. Not sure what this says about me, but it is. So I have learned to use the stuff like fishing wire, bonding together fragile items without gunking them up forever. It’s only a matter of time that you can buy the stuff at your local K-mart. They just might have to change the packaging.
I have had the same guitar for 16 years, which implies that I am good at playing the guitar. I am not. I kind of suck. While I have owned a guitar for a decade and a half, I haven’t played it that much, even though I toted it around the globe with me. It was there when I lived in Tokyo, there when I worked in Belgium, and now stands proudly in my living room in DC.
I remember sitting in my parents’ backyard with other choir dorks belting out “Uncle John’s Band,” while I strummed away on the guitar in high school. If I had just kept up that act, I bet I would be pretty good and have mastered doing a B chord without grimacing from pain. But I didn’t. In fact, the number one thing that has kept me from being good at the guitar has been vanity. I just hate chopping off all my nails so I can strum away. Isn’t that sad? It’s like a girl not wanting to be a ballerina so she can have beautiful feet. Or not reading because you don’t want to strain your eyes. Basically, I am a narcissistic gal who plays bad guitar.
But that’s all going to change. I’m turning 30 in 19 days and I think it’s time I can embrace short nails and strum my days away. Or at least a few minutes a week. Maybe I can increase my repertoire from three Indigo Girls songs and a Joni Mitchell tune I sang at camp, to well, a whole Indigo Girls album. I’ll finally become the folk guitarist I should have blossomed into in 1995. It’s never too late!
Here I am looking rather horrific with my prize guitar. I stink at playing it but man do I love it!
Why did I spend many hours last night jamming on my couch to “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss?” Like many hours. Then I followed it up with PM Dawn’s “Die Without You,” and then a lot of Boyz II Men ballads. Then I had to practice my junior high slow dance, the kind where you sway back and forth with your arms extended and randomly mash your pelvises together at strange moments.
It turns out that two of the bands I slow danced with passion to from 11 to 13, aren’t half bad. I mean the guys from PM Dawn and Boyz II Men actually have good voices. If they went on Saturday Night Live they could croon it out with no thoughts of pulling an Ashlee Simpson. Plus, they wore matching hats.
I did so much slow dancing to “End of the Road,” in Junior High, I’m surprised I can’t recite every single word on demand. And “Set a Drift on Memory Bliss,” still resonates with coolness. I’m pretty sure my brother introduced me to that gem. Some of the music I listened to from 1991 to 1993 is just darn embarrassing. Like I owned a cassette with “Baby got Back,” on one side and “Baby got Back, the remix,” on the other. I also had a thing for Stone Temple Pilots and ironed on an STP patch to my backpack. Vomit. Vomit. But! after YouTubing the crap out of PM Dawn, I wear that 12-year-old memory with pride. Ummmm dah dah! Set a drift on memory bliss…
Man do I miss the ridiculous clothes of the early 90s. PM Dawn sure could dress the part!
Today, I celebrated my 30th birthday with my parents. While I don’t actually turn 30 until August 9th which is soooooo long from now, I’ll be in Nepal for the big day so we decided to ring in my third decade a little early. There are many things I absolutely adore about my parents, but the fact that they are great birthday present givers is right up there. They have always made me feel like a queen for a day and today was no exception. My mom even gave me a sparkly purple headband with a burst of feathers coming out of the top to wear as a princess crown. 30 is the new 6 after all.
Along with some much needed financial support for my upcoming trip, my parents wrapped up new copies of my two favorite books from childhood – Eloise and Eloise in Paris. If you are female or have female children or have been to the Plaza, you probably know who Eloise is. She’s that ever so entertaining little rascal created by Kay Thompson, a woman I absolutely idolize (Think Pink!). But what would a story like Eloise be without illustrations? That’s where Hilary Knight comes in. A scion of illustrators, Knight is now 84, lives in New York, and is still illustrating. My dad had the pleasure of meeting him at a book festival and nabbed his autograph in one of my Eloise books for me. It’s kind of on par with having Elvis’ autograph for me.
Another thing that my parents unearthed for my birthday was a very early Karin Tanabe attempt at writing and illustration, a captivating story I wrote when I was about seven called Sally Tall. Sally looks like a transvestite with no nose and I repeatedly spell the word “once,” with a U in it, but it was a wonderful gift to receive at a time when childhood seems like a zillion years ago. And then I read Eloise and am guaranteed by my parents that I’ll always be their baby, and it’s all okay. 30 might not be the end of the world after all.
Clearly I was not an art protege, for Sally Tall has no mouth or arms, but I guarantee it's a very compelling story.
Mr. Hilary Knight surrounded by his masterpieces, including my favorite, the wonderful Eloise.
So today at work, I spent an unusual amount of time tracking the Levi Johnston/Bristol Palin engagement. Really? Them? Engaged? But didn’t he spill to Vanity Fair about how much her mother sucks? Should she really be marrying this boy/man/baby daddy? Is it for the good of the child? Or because it’s hard to get laid in Alaska? From what I hear there are men everywhere in that state. I asked the only Alaskan I know if the place is wall to wall fishing hunks and she replied, “the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”
And that pretty much sums up Levi Johnston, but something about me just finds him soooo entertaining. He was incredibly convincing on the campaign trail as some sort of bad boy zamboni driver, but what really won me over was his Playgirl pictorial. And here I thought the mag was going out of business, but then Levi hits the pages and the glossy is the talk of the town. I’m all for more women’s nuddie rags (empowerment you know) so if Levi is helping keep my feminist dream alive, I’m all for his Alaskan bod gracing the pages.
Everyone is saying now that Levi’s wifying Bristol is so he can cash in on Palin inc. Is this true? Probably. All I know is that the making (or unmaking) of Levi Johnston inspires really entertaining smut for me to read in line at the supermarket. Screw Spencer Pratt, I’ll take Levi and his love of taking it off and talking too much. Can’t wait to see what he does next!
Don't really think this image needs a caption...those gloves say it all. Thank you for being fabulously ridiculous, Levi!
This seems to be my weekend for rekindling my love affair with the television. While we haven’t had much quality time together in the past two years, we really hit it hard and heavy together the last couple days. Tonight, after a thrilling viewing of the “Bodyguard” (Whitney Houston, you were so pretty before the crack), I topped it off with some “Say yes to the dress,” and then took in a rerun of “Saturday Night Live,” with musical guest Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam.
I actually saw Eddie V at the Kennedy Center Honors this year and didn’t recognize him. My friend Cynthia had to point him out and remind me of his hotness before I made some comment about an overgrown skateboarder crashing the Honors.
While all the gals from my junior high in Bethesda were drooling down their shortalls for Eddie, he never really got my 13-year-old blood boiling. No, no, I was into a less cute, less famous guy. I was hot for Evan Dando.
Who is Evan Dando you ask? Well he is (was?) the frontman of the Lemonheads, which happened to be my first concert sans parents. Clad in my flannel shirt and some nice markered up converse all-stars, I rocked my tiny ass off to the musical stylings of songs like “Big Gay Heart,” and “The Jello Fund.” Now, the fact that I was in love with a man who sang a song called “Big Gay Heart,” probably was God’s way of telling me I would have lots of homosexual friends in my future, but I didn’t think a thing of it at the time. I just embraced my love for Evan and flannel and rocked it out in suburban Maryland. The memories my TV brings out! I will have to court it more often.
I really loved a long-haired emo rocker back then. Especially in a corduroy jacket. Rrrrrr.
The other day when I was perusing one of my favorite sites, This is Glamorous, I came across some photos from a Home & Garden editorial the New York Times did in June. It was the smallest pile of glamorous bricks I had ever seen.
Sandra Foster is a fiscal administrator at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, but she’s a gardner by trade. And by the likes of what she did to a rinky-dink hunting cabin, she’s also one heck of an interior designer.
What I love most about this tiny cabin is the size, the fact that Sandra remodeled it completely on her own and that all the renovating and furnishing cost only $3000. Sandra lives in a trailer with her husband and escapes for privacy to the little cabin.
On a day when I received a legal notice in the mail from the DC government saying I had to clean up the tree debris in my parking space or I would be fined, Sandra’s house was an inspiration. The DC government said too much brush piled up like I had “was a breeding ground for rodents.” Hmm, that was enough to get me sawing. And while I sawed, I noticed that my garage is just a bit bigger than Sandra’s haven and shouldn’t I start decorating too? Yes it is. But first I will concentrate on keeping a rodent free backyard. Baby steps…
The hunting cabin turned Victorian hideaway.
That bed! I absolutely love it and would never ever get up in the morning if I lived in that nook of calm.
Those books! The white everything. I want to hide here and eat no colored food or drinks.
God Bless the 80s and the amazing TV and films that punky decade produced. I think back to all the TV I’d watch over at my grandparents house — Dynasty, The A-Team, MASH, Fantasy Island — do they even make shows like that anymore? Whereas now our youth’s role models are characters like Foofa and Dora the Explorer, children of the 80s looked up to folks like Mr. T and Alexis Carrington (or at least I did). In fact, as a kid my favorite question to ask people was, “Would you rather drink a glass of Mr. T’s sweat or his pee?” (I always opted for his pee; though I don’t know why on earth guzzling urine seemed 100 times less gross than his nasty sweat.)
ANYWAY. One movie in particular has really come back to haunt me — the 1985 classic — Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. I think I have now watched this film around 20 times. Not because I’m suddenly developing a fetish for puny men in tight suits and red lipstick, but rather, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is the only TV Ollie will watch. And by TV, I mean iPad, he refuses to look at anything on a big screen (which is strange, but probably good).
I don’t know exactly how this obsession got started. I think one day I just happened to sit Ollie in front of Netflix on the iPad while I threw a load of laundry in and next thing I knew, I heard Ollie trying to imitate Pee-wee’s nasally “Hehehehh” laugh. The rest is history. Now Ollie cries if I try to put Elmo on to occupy him while I take a quick shower and screams in fury if I try Sesame Street on YouTube. All he wants is “Pee-pee” — no other fictional character will do. Is this good? I doubt it, but sometime’s a girl’s gotta shave her legs or make dinner!
While I don’t watch a lot of TV because I sadly don’t have enough time (ggrrr journalism), one show that can really entertain me for hours is The Bachelorette. Since I also have a love for anything on Lifetime or chick flicks overflowing with estrogen, this doesn’t come as a huge surprise.
There is something that my feminist side really likes about the Bachelorette. I mean she has her own man harem. Isn’t that a lovely turn of events? The whole thing seems very girl power to me. What is more liberating and empowering than a dozen boys with nice pecks getting drunk and fighting over you?
This week Ali, this season’s bachelorette, and the gang were in Turkey and she found out that one of the contestants, Justin “Rated R” Rego, had not one but two girlfriends in his homeland of Canada. Gasp! Oh well, Ali has a zillion other guys to choose from. But even more fun than watching the show was talking about it at work today. Here are some of the choice tidbits of our conversation:
Washington Life Ali (not to be confused with the bachelorette of course): “You know people are calling her the ‘fat-chelorette.’ She’s gained a little weight being on the show. Course no surprise there, all they do is drink.”
Kevin: “Do they all have to get tested before going on the show?”
Ali: “On the new one they do. They don’t want any Hep B in the house.”
Kevin: “Ahhh, I suppose a hepatitis outbreak would be bad for the network. I hear 40 percent of Americans have that H disease.”
Ali: “Whatever, my favorite is Roberto.”
Me: “No! Chris L! The sensitive gardner who lost his mother.
Kevin: “What’s the name of that annoying one? You know, the weather midget.”
And all this joyful banter while we are on deadline. Only the Bachelorette could inspire us so!
Tis a tough life being the Bachelorette, always having to put your clothes back on and all.
Here is Ali with my favorite contestant, Chris L, a sensitive landscaper from Cape Cod.
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