American Girl

She waits another week to fall apart...

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. ~ Thomas Paine

 Tomorrow is my blog anniversary.  Can you believe it?  One whole year of blogging.  Ok, so it took me three blogs to actually get where I am, and I actually liked the first one the best out of all three...but still.  Such a momentous day deserves mention, doesn't it?

This blog is the prettiest by far.  It's just the content that's lacking.

In celebration of blogging, here's my very first ever blog entry:

March 1st, 2004

One year later, and I've come...not very far at all.  I still miss Brian as much today as I did a year ago, and the year before that, and the year before that.  Except now I miss him in a much healther and not all-consuming kind of way.  So I guess that's something.  I don't know what, but it's something.

I think I shall spend my blog anniversary away from my computer.  I shall play in the snow and drink cocoa with marshmallows and celebrate life.   Hopefully, schools will be closed, or I shall be playing alone.  Bah, either way.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 23:25 | link | comments (8) |

My boss left me a message this morning that stating that he signed me up for a golf tournament.  A golf tournament!  What's that about?  I don't play golf!  And what's worse, I can't protest, because he's out of the office for the day.  I spoke to the office manager, who suggested that I learn.  Quickly.  How the heck am I supposed to learn to play golf when the ground is covered in snow, with more on the way?  Do I have to buy golf clubs?  That seems kind of senseless.  Can they be rented?  Can I put them on my expense account?  Do I need a silly hat with a pom pom on top?  My job is suddenly stressful again.

In other news, on Saturday we celebrated my niece's sixteenth birthday with a huge party in a mildly fancy restaurant.  Talk about stress.  Her immediate family is in a constant state of apprehension associated with divorce and brand new custody battles and other assorted free-floating anxiety producing issues.  They managed to put that all aside, for a few hours, and give her a really nice party.  But it was there, floating around.  You could see it in the tense smiles and the way that her parents forced casual conversation and avoided all of the things they really wanted to say.  It was impossible to make it go away entirely.  In a moment of awkwardness, my soon to be ex sister in law told me that she was glad that I came to the party.  It brings up all kinds of feelings of possession.  Of course I was there, she was my niece, my brother's child.  That makes her part mine.  Nothing her mother ever does is going to change that.

I am an advocate of divorce, as I think that in certain situations (like this one, for sure) it can be a blessing.  But it's still sad and difficult and depressing and full of controversy, in a "pulling the plug" kind of way.  There's not a lot of situations that find me actually wanting to keep my mouth shut, but this one does.  So I did.

The gifts came in three categories.  From the family members she got what she really wanted, money.  From her friends she got the other two categories - CD's, or way too sexy for a sixteen year old lingerie.  I guess it's a new trend, an attempt to either embarrass the birthday girl, or give her poor father a heart attack.  Or both. 

I looked at pictures of myself at sixteen and I was so innocent.  But, that was literally half a lifetime ago.  The world has changed.  I had a mother who was quite emotionally stable, and my niece does not.  I had three older brothers who kept me in line, and the excellent example of my parent's healthy  marriage, and she doesn't have either of those.  It's not like she's doomed, I don't mean to make it sound that way.  She's just choosing such a difficult path.  I worry about her.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 16:49 | link | comments (9) |

Yesterday my nephew's pre-school celebrated "Heritage Day".  They have to do something fun, because all of the public schools are closed for Winter Recess, and the poor three and four year olds are stuck going to school.  On Heritage Day, you're supposed to dress up in an "American" theme, and march in a parade.  Poor planning lands this event in the middle of winter, so it's an indoor parade through the church at school.  (Because there actually aren't enough parades in church)  Then they assembled in the front and sang songs.  Totally, totally cute.

There was a boy, not my nephew, dressed as a cowboy, and playing a drum.  The drum had a strap the went around his neck so that the drum could hang, hands free, in front of his belly.  As he walked he pounded on his drum and led his entire class, proud as can be.  Little did he know, his too-big pants had fallen down and were around his ankles.  Or, perhaps he just didn't care.  I don't think modesty kicks in until around age six, so none of his classmates cared either.  In fact, they didn't even seem to notice.  But his horrified mom lept from her seat in the back of the church and kind of zig-zagged her way through the parade of cowboys and indians and red white and blue dressed children to reach her son and attempt to pull up his pants.  I think he thought she was trying to take away his drum, so he put up quite a fuss, and there was a struggle.  The paraders parted like the Red Sea and moved to either side of the spectacle, kind of rubbernecking the scene in a disinterested kind of way.   Finally dressed, the drummer made it to his place just in time to sing "It's a Grand Old Flag".  It was excellent.

My mom mentioned that when he was a teenager he would probably be tormented with that story.  Actually, forget the teen years, if something like that happened to one of my brothers, we'd still bring it up every chance we get, and they're in their forties.  We started talking about other people's embarrassing moments, like the time my brother broke his foot kicking what he thought was a rubber ball, but turned out to be a bright pink bowling ball.  And then there was that time my sister in law was holding her new baby at his christening, posing for pictures, when my niece, then a toddler, tugged on her mom's skirt a little too hard and pulled it right down.

I think we both thought of it at the same time.  I didn't dare bring it up, the time my brother and I were on the beach in shallow water, overcoming my fear of crabs, while my mom swam in deeper water with the two older boys.  There was this huge, unexpected wave that knocked down the three of them.  They gathered themselves, and my mom stood up to check on us, and her bathing suit had totally shifted over to one side, and she had no idea.  She was laughing at how this wave had knocked them down, and everyone else was laughing at her topless self.  So at the top of my lungs, I screamed "MOM!  Your BOOB!" (Just in case there was anyone left on the beach who hadn't noticed) and she quickly ducked down and adjusted herself.  Oh man, did we laugh a lot about that.  More us girls than the boys, who just can't appreciate a good boob joke as much.

The infamous boob is gone now, a casualty of cancer.  But we looked at each other, both remembering the same day at the beach and neither one daring to say it out loud, and we broke down into fits of laughter right there, leaving everyone else wondering what the heck was wrong with us.

I think that we haven't laughed about boobs nearly enough lately.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 16:17 | link | comments (3) |

Just keep watching:

 

posted by: AmericanGirl at 15:24 | link | comments (2) |

If one more person calls me out of the clear blue sky to ask if my brother's remains were identified, I'm going to knock them down, roll them off a cliff, jump on them fifty thousand times, cram them into a blender, set it on puree, suck them through a straw, and spit them out on the ground.

No, NO, NO!  And really, I'm perfectly ok with that.  We faced that reality three years ago.  The only issue now is people who keep calling me to feed their case of "I-know-someone-itis"  Here's a tip - If you know me well enough that you can call me and ask me such a question, you'd probably already know the answer.

Would it be horrible to change my answering machine message reflecting this?

posted by: AmericanGirl at 16:03 | link | comments (4) |

Drinking Wine
by Wislawa Szymborska

He looked at me, bestowing beauty,
and I took it for my own.
Happy, I swallowed a star.

I let him invent me
in the image of the reflection
in his eyes. I dance, I dance
in an abundance of sudden wings.

A table is a table, wine is wine
in a wineglass, which is a wineglass
and it stands standing on a table
but I am a phantasm,
a phantasm beyond belief,
a phantasm to the core.

I tell him what he wants to hear—

about ants dying of love
under a dandelion's constellation.
I swear that sprinkled with wine
a white rose will sing.

I laugh, and tilt my head
carefully, as if I were testing
an invention. I dance, I dance
in astounded skin, in the embrace
that creates me.

Eve from a rib, Venus from sea foam,
Minerva from the head of Jove
were much more real.

When he's not looking at me,
I search for my reflection
on the wall. All I see
is a nail on which a painting hung.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 14:31 | link | comments (1) |

 On a lighter note, it's Peep Season!  There actually is no "season" anymore, because now they seem to make peeps for every holiday.  But still, they just seem to taste best when they're sold beside the chocolate bunnies.

I only like them when they're stale.  I've had a pack of peeps sitting on my counter, unwrapped, for a week, and they're still soft.  So on a whim, I put them in the freezer.  It's like an Easter miracle, they come out hard as rocks, and really chewy - but oddly enough, they're not cold.   Why?  Sugar doesn't transfer cold?  It's weird.  You should try it.

And speaking of Peeps and weirdness, here's some very fun, very related links:

Peep Haiku (Should have saved this for Thursday poetry)

Tolkien in Marshmallows  (Lord of the Peeps)

Video Games of the eighties in Peeps  (Peep Invaders, anyone?)

And finally:

What to do with all of your extra Peeps when you are really, really bored

posted by: AmericanGirl at 01:20 | link | comments (2) |

 Doesn't my blog look pretty?  I'm sprucing it up so that, someday, I can add a badge.  I can't do it just yet, because I still might be a little bit Moonbat. 

You might notice that today I'm feeling irritated.  UnkyMoods does not lie.  With that in mind, I just deleted the big long rant that I typed out, because I read it after I typed it and it made me feel/appear ugly and ungrateful and cantankerous.  (Good word) So, I'm going to leave this post at that.  My quest for a badge.  Maybe I need a different kind of badge.  Mood police.  Queen Grouch. (Maybe that would make a nice tiara instead.)

posted by: AmericanGirl at 21:52 | link | comments (5) |

 Mark your calendar or Palm V. You can expect to die on:

Wednesday, April 13th 2044
At the tender age of 71 years old.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 18:32 | link | comments (2) |

 My husband has decided to go onto the snow plowing business with his brother, which means they work nights and very early mornings when it snows.  This is nothing new for him, but this morning when he got home I told him to go upstairs and get some sleep, because I'm on babysitting duty this morning.  He insisted he was fine.  Fast forward an hour, and he's on the couch, completely passed out, with three giggling kids on the floor beside him.  I look more closely, and he's covered in stickers.  Covered!  He also has a tiara on his head.  The saddest part?  My camera software isn't working, so I can't get the pictures from my camera.

On the advice of a cat, I actually got him to wear a shirt without the letters F,D,N, or Y on it.  We went to the Bronx Zoo a couple of weeks ago.  The shirt he wore was actually a gift from our teenaged niece, so it required wearing anyway.  It was a blue football type shirt, but not a real football shirt.  Just a blue shirt with white numbers and white stripes on the shoulders.   As we entered the zoo, the man who sold us tickets asked R if his shirt was an old Rams shirt.  Instead of just telling the truth, that it was actually from Old Navy, he said that yes, indeed it was an old Rams shirt.  The ticket man seemed very impressed.  Then, as we were walking away, he called out "Who was #68?"  So fo course, Ryan is stumped, because he has no idea, as again, it's not a Rams shirt.  So he makes up a line about how a lot of different people shared #68, and we got out of there before the interrogation could continue.

Later on, as we sat down to eat lunch, another man came over and asked him if he was a football player.  At this point, R shoots me this look - a look that says "I wear fire department shirts every day for ten years, and no one comments once on my clothing once..."  But does he learn his lesson from the first situation?  Of course not.  He makes up this whole story about how he used to play football, but doesn't anymore, (which is a total lie) and this launches a whole conversation about how much you sacrifice if you play professional football, and that it had better be worth it because knees are so valuable.  It went on and on until the guy finally went back to his family and finally left the eating area.

I told R that I hoped he learned his lesson.  The lesson being that you should not make up stories when strangers ask you a simple question.  He said that yes, he learned his lesson, and he wasn't going to stray from his fire department shirts ever again.  Wrong lesson.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 15:34 | link | comments (4) |

We went to see The Gates in Central Park on Saturday.  Interesting.  It kind of insulated the park and seemed to absorb noise.   Or maybe everyone was just quiet as they walked through, trying to figure it out.   I'll admit that I don't "get" a lot of art, and this is no exception.  But still, it's interesting.  It would be fun if they changed the colors according to the terror alert level.  But then, they don't really do that anymore, do they?

On days that I should be working I find that I have a lot of things to blog about.  Today my office is closed, so I can blog freely and without guilt, but I really have nothing to say.  Weird.  Maybe it's just that I don't have to be chained to my computer today, so my subconscious is telling me to get out of here.  But it's nasty out.  Ick.  

My niece has a Sweet Sixteen party this weekend.  This is the hugest deal in the world, if you're fifteen.  I remember mine, and this morning I pulled out the pictures.  I was planning on showing them to her, but yikes - why did I have to live my teen in the eighties?  My hair was HUGE!  My earings were huge too.  I also wore about 20 bracelets on each wrist.  I swear I was totally fashionable.   All of my friends looked exactly the same.   I wonder if "big" will ever come into style again?  Even our food is little.  For example, cookies and crackers come in little itty bitty sizes, for snacking.  As if you can't snack on a normal sized cookie?  It's a trend I don't understand.  Remember Oreo Big Stuff?  Those were the best cookies in the world.  Better than Double Stuff, because they were the size of your head.  They were so big that they had to be individually wrapped.  Those were the days.  Who wants to eat puny cookies?

See, I told you I had nothing to say.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 16:51 | link | comments (3) |

I'm supposed to get married this weekend.   Thing is, due to circumstances beyong our control, we moved the wedding up. (No, I'm NOT pregant!)  So, while I'm supposed to get married this weekend, I'm already very happily married.

This makes me kind of sad.  Not exactly sad, maybe wistful is the right word.  Kind of like if you decided to celebrate Christmas in early December.  I would be great fun, with an added oomph of excitement for doing things differently.  But then when December 25th rolled around, you realize that if you had only waited, you could be having Christmas fun right now.  The wedding was absolutely perfect and I wouldn't change a single thing about it, but still.

This morning I ran out to get the newspaper from it's usual spot under my car (how does the paperboy DO that??) and it was frozen to the ground.  I couldn't help but think that I should be on my way to a tropical island right now.  Boo!

And if that's not bad enough, I could come up with some elaborate non-anniversary plan for this Sunday, but my husband will be spending the entire day with his second love - the fire department.  Double Boo.

Anyway, did anyone watch Survivor last night?  How can they not realize that voting off the strongest players when you need them around to build a shelter for your lazy butt and win you some challenges is a bad move?  And besides, why not keep the cute guys around?  You don't see the men voting the prettiest girls off first, do you?  And a pretty girl always makes it to the final four.  They're silly.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 14:54 | link | comments (7) |

The Arrow and the Song
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow in it's flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 22:43 | link | comments (16) |

 I was thinking I might start one of those blogs that start off each entry with the following questions answered:

Listening to:
Eating:
Wearing:

I read those sometimes, and it's quite fun to picture the girl in the pink Juicy sweats eating grapes and typing as she listens to John Mayer's "Heavier Things".  (Just a random example, not based on an actual person.  I swear)

So I can tell you that I'm listening to "Give a Little Bit" which should be Supertramp, but instead it's the GooGoo Dolls.  See that?  You can almost see me, right?

The thing is, I'm a nervous eater.  Meaning, I eat when I'm nervous.  And while I'm not nervous right now, yesterday I was downright jittery.  The reason why is not important.  Point is, if I were blogging yesterday, I wouldn't have wanted to say that I was eating an entire bag of jelly beans.  Or that I felt so sick after eating them that I had some toast.  But then that didn't feel healthy enough to reverse the effects of too much sugar, and by then it was lunchtime anyway, so I had a ham sandwich on a kaiser roll with spicey brown mustard and a little bit of lettuce.  And a pickle.  It was good.  But the pickle, and maybe the ham, set off a little bit of a salt craving, and you know how strong those can be.

Well, in case you don't, I'll share a little story.  When I was a teen, I had a hamster.  They sell a lot of gadgets for hamsters, including something called a "salt lick".  I'm not sure why hamsters need salt, but I know that they do, because there was a picture of a hamster on the package.  Anyway, a salt lick looks like a beautiful piece of smooth, solid salt.  I think I might invent salt cubes for humans©, so that you could rub one on your corn on the cob.  Anyway, this block of salt was so appealing to me that I tried it.  I licked the salt lick.  For the record, it was fresh from the package and hadn't been anywhere near a hamster or a hamster cage.  I'm not totally disgusting.

So yeah, the salt craving is not to be ignored.  So I ate about five olives.  The big ones, not the little ones.  It didn't help.  So I ate my weight in Pringles.  That helped.  A little while later, I had the nerve to eat dinner.  And then I shared a bag of "Movie Theater Butter" popcorn while watching "Alias".

Now I don't mind telling you that I'm wearing jeans and a green shirt that says "BayRidge Football" in white letters, and socks.  I'm not that prideful. 

But the eating thing...I don't know.  There are some things about me that you just don't need to know.

posted by: AmericanGirl at 15:47 | link | comments (8) |

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