Clinched!

Well done, fellas.

I Have to Keep Them, They Crack Me Up

Because they are so very helpful, the DemiGoddesses have been keeping a running list of items for me to pick up the next time I’m at the grocery store:



It reads:

Jelly
Bread (?)
Ramen
Yogurt
Head On Apply Directly to the Forehead!*
Spaghetti! (Smiley Face)
Mild Cheddar Cheese
Parmesan Cheese
Tuna**
Malt Vinegar**

*Clearly there was a little too much TV watching this summer.
**Items added by me before I noticed #5, which, somehow, made it even funnier.


And, In Other News from My Refrigerator Door…

One of Demi the Elder’s drawings from art class made the 2007 School District calendar!



(Hers is the third from the left.)

Déjà Vu All Over Again

Remember this?


Well, the Twins returned to Fenway Park last night. Circumstances were a tiny bit different—as in, a game out of first place, five games up in the wild card race, and simultaneous possible MVP, batting title and Cy Young awards—this time around. My Ho had just secured our post season tickets that very morning, and I had begun to allow myself to believe that maybe, MAYBE, we might actually get to use them.

But even so, when Torii Hunter took the field in Boston last night, I had a funny feeling of dread.

The rain poured down, and I thought, that grass looks awfully slippery… I hope Torii is being careful…

And then, in the seventh inning, this happened:


And I very nearly lost my sh*t. Again.

But this time there was no cart--Torii managed to walk, er, limp, off the field unassisted. And then the Twins won, and Detroit lost, which means that now my darling beloveds are half a game out of first in the AL Central (while still 4.5 games up in the wild card race), and when that happens, it's very hard to succumb completely to post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Although, for some reason, every time I think of possibly facing the Yankees in the playoffs, my hands start to shake and I have trouble breathing. I wonder what that could be about...

Anyway, even you non-baseball-fans will get a kick out of the Twins rookie hazing recap that young relief pitcher Pat Neshek (who, at my house, is known fondly as “Spazzy McDancypants") wrote up on his blog. I especially love the bit about the security at Jacobs Field not wanting to let them into the stadium until they saw Johan Santana. Check it out here: http://eteamz.active.com/patneshek/index.cfm
You have to scroll down a bit, but trust me, you’ll know which post I'm talking about.

A Friend in Mom's Clothing

-----Original Message-----
From: CombatGirl
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 9:23 AM
To: EverydaySuperGoddess
Subject: Thought for the Day

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow. - Alice Walker (1944 - )


-----Original Message-----
From: EverydaySuperGoddess
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 9:26 AM
To: CombatGirl
Subject: RE: Thought for the Day

Mmmmmm... not even if that person is your mother? And she has a headache? And you have been talking non-stop for the past 45 minutes?


-----Original Message-----
From: CombatGirl
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 9:33 AM
To: EverydaySuperGoddess
Subject: RE: RE: Thought for the Day

It's more of a figurative silence... But no, when Johnny Rotten has "just one more thing" to tell me and it's 10:15 at night, demanding silence is the friendliest thing I can do for/to her.

"Serenity"

Photo by my fabulous cousin Catherine and her spiffy new Canon EOS 30D.

9/11

This morning over breakfast, DemiGoddess the Younger announced that I must take her to Target tonight, to purchase some special pencils that she is required to bring to 8th grade art class tomorrow.

But tonight I have a class of my own that I have to attend, and my mind had already been whirring with plans for coming home over my lunch hour to put something in the crock pot for the Demis to have for dinner. An hour out of bed, I was already feeling pinched for time.

I told her there would be no Target trip tonight, and I reminded her that I had told her last night about my class. She said I knew she needed the pencils. I said that if I had known she needed them by tomorrow, I would have bought them over the weekend. She pouted. I got defensive. Things deteriorated from there.

As she left for the bus, I told her I’d go to an art supply store over my lunch hour today to buy her pencils. But my tone made it clear that I resented having to rearrange my day on her behalf. And the kiss goodbye that I gave her as she went out the door was an insincere peck on the cheek.

Later, in the car on the way to work, NPR reminded me what day today is.

I wish I had given her a real hug.

Biggles! Put her in the Comfy Chair!

A new Pilates studio just opened up the street from my house. It’s right next door to the bakery, and don’t think for a moment that I don’t appreciate the irony of that. The DemiGoddesses suggested that we go up there, buy some doughnuts, and then stand outside the Pilates studio and eat them while we watch people work out through the window. Clearly, I have raised them well.

When my neighbor, Leah, invited me to attend a Pilates class at the new studio with her, I thought, I find Pilates utterly humiliating at home in my living room, when I’m completely alone. With an audience? Oh, ho, ho… I think NOT.

But she reassured me that it’s no problem! They have equipment there that makes the exercises seem so easy! It’s amazing! It doesn’t seem like a workout at ALL! And then she promised to e-mail me the link to the studio’s website, so I could see for myself.

So this morning, I checked out the link, where I found this:

And this:

And this:

And THIS:

And as you can see, she’s totally right. It doesn’t seem like a workout because it's not a workout... It's the Spanish freaking Inquisition.

Johan Santana Bear

Already on his way to Africa, he is almost as cuddly as the real thing.

Three Gray Hairs

New ones. Right there on my right temple this morning. The tweezer is never far from my bathroom mirror these days.

I’ve promised the woman who cuts my hair that soon, very soon, I will visit her and ask her to do The Coloring. I have never done The Coloring before, ever. There are precious few aspects of my physical appearance that I genuinely kind of like, but the color of my hair is near the top of the list. I’d like it to stay the way it is.

My neighbor Leah has a lot of friends who live in lakeside homes in the more affluent Minneapolis suburbs, friends who sail competitively on the weekends, wear designer fashions, and have dazzlingly white teeth and perfect manicures. They’re all married and have small children, and are not (SO not) my usual crowd.

So last weekend at Leah's birthday party, I spent most of the night outside on the deck with the smokers and Tammy, who is also from our neighborhood. Tammy sails on the weekends, too, and she drives a BMW, but she, like me, is a single mom with older children, and after hearing about her Home Depot adventures, I knew she was one person at that party I could hang with.

Well into the evening, out on the deck, the topic of conversation turned to botox. One party guest confessed to getting regular injections around her eyes (“I get them every three months. They only cost about $300 each!). Another said she gets them in her chest (!). My favorite, though, was the woman who said she was going to have collagen put in her heels because her feet are ugly. Tammy and I exchanged a look before she said out loud what I had been thinking. “You pay someone $300 every three months to inject poison into your face? I really don’t get that.”

At first, didn’t get it, either. But then I remembered an evening a couple of weeks before, when Tammy had mentioned some kind of magic lotion that she’d picked up on a recent trip to New York. “It’s like botox in a lotion!” She had exclaimed, applying it to the skin around the corners of her eyes. “See? My face doesn’t even MOVE!” And then I remembered my own tweezers. I’m pretty sure that botox isn’t for me, not even in lotion form, but really, isn’t paying a colorist to hide my gray more or less the same thing? Aren’t we all, in our own way, dreading something, whether it’s the wrinkles or the ugly feet or the gray hairs? In the end, the unfortunate truth is that I’m no less superficial than any of those botox babes.

I haven’t decided yet how many gray hairs I will tolerate before I make the appointment for The Coloring. I guess it will be when I can no longer keep them at bay with the tweezers. Until this morning there were only four gray strands I was keeping a regular eye on. Every time one of them grew long enough to be visible, I’d yank it out again. But today there were three more, all at once. They, like the others, have been temporarily banished. And I know exactly where these new three came from:

#1—Parent orientation night. And probably the post-orientation heavy drinking.

#2—Two days’ worth of family drama involving my sisters, my sister-cousins, a couple of second cousins (one of whom is a convicted felon, and the other of whom is an overbearing ass) and the cabin that we all jointly own.

#3—Yesterday’s visit from the contractor and the insurance adjustor, who decided that the outside wall of my sunroom, the one with the water damage, will need to be completely knocked out and rebuilt. Look! Carpenter ants! Oh, and, by the way? Insurance isn’t going to pay for most of this. Sorry!

So at work this morning, fully tweezed but still teetering on the brink of completely losing my sh*t, I couldn’t help but be impressed by my own super-human powers of self control when the Marketing Deity plopped his generously-kissed seat down into the chair in my cubicle and tried to entice me into a wager on this weekend’s Twins/Yankees series.

I said to him, “Did you come here just to torment me? Because the Yankees are already in first place, Silva is pitching tonight, and I am in NO MOOD.”

He took me at my word.