Remember your first kiss?

Well, how can I forget? That's what Jens Lekman was singing on the car cd player while I was taking Bighead to the airport, and she asked me if I remember my first kiss. Of course I do, since it was accompanied by a marriage proposal.

I was seven years old and the love object of nine year old Raymond Elovitz, our next door neighbor. He used to ring the doorbell and ask "Can Bawheesha come play?". He looked like Alfalfa from the Little Rascals. When he kissed me right under the kitchen window and asked me to marry him, I said yes. It might interfere with my plan to become a nun (how many of you are laughing at that one), but he was so sweet and sincere.

Sadly, he was also ill and fragile and died on an operating table at Mt. Sinai Hospital while doctors were trying to correct a heart defect. Thus ended my potential life as the suburban New Jersey wife of a dry cleaning business heir, sigh.

Maybe Raymond and I would have grown apart; maybe the whole catholic/jewish thing would've become a problem. Who knows? What about you? Do you remember your first kiss? Where would you be if your first kiss had, for lack of a better word, stuck?

In other news, it's a cold turkey weekend for me. I'm not getting another Lost disc until Monday and all the Fudgees are gone. Good, I have a lot of writing to do.

If you're in hurricane country, take care.

Nasty Habits

I don't toss the word addiction around glibly, but just this week I've acquired two new nasty habits. It could be that the stress of tenure year has reduced my ability to just say no to things that I know aren't good for me. It could be sheer escapism, who know? I blame one of my new nasty habits on Ginger (aka Moopy), who told me that the tv show Lost had all these literary allusions. So, I thought I'd check it out and loaded my Netflix queue with season one episodes. By the end of disc one I knew I had a problem.

Let me say that there are some real problems with new habit number one. The acting is wretched for the most part, the flashback segue way noise annoying, and the sheer amount of calamity ridiculous. It's like watching gymnastics as a blood sport. But I knew I was in trouble when disc 3 came before disc 2 and I watched it anyway. And those negatives didn't stop me from watching four episodes last night. Watching while indulging in nasty habit number two . . .

Whoever invented the new Oreo Fudgees cookies was an evil genius. The bag describes "chocolate fudge filled sandwich cookies," but they are so much more than that. They are perfectly crisp, the fudge is in perfect proportion to the cookie part, and they have that slightly salty tang that store-bought cookies have. I ought to know; I ate seven of them last night while watching Lost. They do have an unfortunate name that sounds like something Stewie Griffin would use to describe, well you know. I blame Wal Mart for putting those cookies on a two for $5.00 sale the one time in months that I went there. I blame Daryl for taking me to Wal Mart. Blame, blame, blame.

I'm not trying to imply that I'm above it all when it comes to slightly obsessive habits. After all, I'm the one who watched all six seasons of Six Feet Under from start to finish one spring. And Tim Jim and I used to sit like fools glued to Queer as Folk episodes while I was preparing for my doctoral exams. Then there was the Big Love phase. But those were good shows, really good shows; this is different.

And these Fudgees probably aren't that good either, but I don't have time to bake my own cookies. It's a good thing I walk a lot, or I'd have Fudgee pudginess (lame one, yeah).

I bet both habits are a reaction to the part of my life I have to ignore on school nights: the part where I finish that book chapter by October 1st. I can't write after I've been teaching my two bouncy freshman classes and all the other stuff I do at work. But today's Friday, and after two meetings I'll settle in to write. I really think I can get past this; since I'm out of Fudgees this will be a good time to start over. Daryl does have the other box of Fudgees, though.

I was gonna put up some pictures of Lost and some Fudgee pics, but I'm not gonna do that, too iconic. I feel better having written this. Have any of you ever developed sudden or simultaneous bad habits? I'd like to know I'm not alone.

Update: my ear still hurts from Lu blow drying my hair with a shop vac, and get this Nick, he didn't cut my bangs either, says they're too Mamie Eisenhower. Joshie, yes tomorrow night, but call to confirm please.

No reading

Tonight's reading is cancelled, so those of you who were planning on coming and being supportive, thanks, but you can stay home and watch tv instead.

The Right Man for the Job

He's soooooooooooooooooooo dreamy! Sleek and efficient, and he knows exactly what to do to make a girl happy. Yes, I'm talking about the Breadman. Last night we made up, when at 10:00 he finished baking a perfect loaf of whole wheat bread. It's light and crusty and oh so delicious. I couldn't be happier. We're truly reunited and it feels so good. Breadman, we're on again.

Tonight is our reading at the Tramontane Cafe in Utica at 7:30. I have six new poems, some of which sound a little hysterical to me. I guess that's what tenure year does to one.

Yesterday my friend Lu gave me a haircut at his antique shop. It's a great haircut (a little short on top), but it's what he did after the haircut that's pretty funny. First he tried to blow dry my hair with a "blowdryer" from the 1950's that weighed about seven pounds. That didn't work so he used a very large shop vac to finish my hair. Switched the hose so that it blew air and went to town. Like I said, the haircut's great, but my left ear feels funny from having so much air blown into it. Imagine a bald, fat guy using a shop vac on a small white woman. Now that's kinky Mikey.

Better than the time I went to the beauty school in Pocatello, Idaho, where the hairdresser in training said "I've always wanted to do a haircut like this. Do you remember Farrah Fawcett? Well, I did, and while I did have that feather-banged look in the 1970's, having it in 1999 was a little awkward. That's probably why I started wearing a bob. How about you? Do you have any funny haircut stories? Any haircut disasters (great band name, huh?)?

A Republican and a Democrat Walk Into a Bar . . .

I have to say I'm sick of the whole election thing. As I write this I'm pretty sure there are thousands of people writing the same thing on their blogs. My admiration goes out to anyone who can sustain interest in an American presidential campaign. They're just too long and too absurd, but absurd in a humorless way.

But what if we could elect a cartoon president? Of the many cartoon characters out there, who do you think might be a good leader? There's Papa Smurf, but NPR has pointed out that he's misogynist and therefore ruined his credibility.

The problem with some cartoon characters is that they're not very bright. We're used to that in a president, yes, but it really is time for some change. We need a strategic thinker, maybe Wile E. Coyote. I know, too much of a penchant for explosives. Maybe Madeline, but the French hate us. And nobody would take Pat the Bunny seriously.

So who do you think should be the first, or at least the first openly, cartoon character?

Betrayal

Yesterday I posted about how I was going to make it work with the Breadman. I'm sad to say it didn't work out. B only kneaded the dough part way so there was a floury mess that I had to knead by hand, then proof, punch down and bake. Not very convenient. I discovered though that all the recipes in the Bman book call for less flour than I was using so maybe I was overwhelming the poor Breadman. I can be overwhelming sometimes. So I'm giving him another try. We'll see. In the meantime I have some pretty good cottage cheese pepperoni bread to eat.

Today it's back to teaching, and I'll be surprised if anybody (including me) remembers anything I said last week in class. All colleges should start after Labor Day. Maybe I'll put that into the letter to Barack Obama I'm working on.

In other news, I'm in love with Jens Lekman. I don't care if he's 27 and I'm, well, older than that. His music is funny and charming. He makes me laugh while I'm writing about service-learning and other exciting things.

This weekend I also finished two poems for Thursday's reading. Yes, I will be shamelessly plugging Thursday's reading at the Tramontane Cafe at 7:30 until the reading is over. If you come, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. You can see my new red hair. Will the narcissism ever end?

Well, that's it. Mikey will say this is the most boring post ever, and he'll be right. I guess staying in the house to write on a holiday weekend can take the juice out of one's life. I'm glad the holiday's over; I'm sick of smelling other people's barbecues.

I am picking a more upbeat theme song for the week so that I can regain my positive outlook. I hate to be predictable, but it's another B&S song, Dirty Dream Number Two. It's at least a little more upbeat than last week's song. How about you? Are you going to pick a happy song to keep in your head all week?

Things

I'm not much of a materialist, but there are some things around this house that I have and don't use. Why do I keep them? Who knows? On the other hand, I miss some things that I left behind over the years, through various moves or just because I threw them away. Here's what I wish I still had:
1) my platform shoes. Yes, of course I'm old enough to have had platform shoes the first time they hit the fashion scene. Then I could walk in them. In them I was 5'4" tall, almost
2) the old roll top desk that used to be in my parents' basement. It was really cool to play with/in and I wish my father hadn't thrown it away in one of his purges
3) the first composition text I ever taught out of (it was the Riverside for those of you who're comp fiends). It was a terrible text, but it would be a hoot to see what I wrote in the margins when I was a noob
As I said, there are some things I have but shouldn't have. They either don't really belong to me (or in my life) or are underutilized and not appreciated. They are:
1) my wedding ring
2) a signed first edition of Stephen Dunn's Loosestrife that I bought for Mark Brown almost ten years ago and never gave to him
3) the Breadman -- I don't deserve the wonderful bread machine with the Isaac Hayes voice that says "Come on over here baby; let's make some bread," but today I'll remedy that and make Daryl glad he gave it to me. It's going to be either cottage cheese dill bread or cottage cheese peperoni bread. You can decide which. Either way, I'm going to prove myself worthy of the Breadman. If he cooperates and bakes up something that doesn't resemble a doorstop, I may start baking bread regularly. My luck has not been good with the Breadman, so Clark, when I say you can use regular yeast, take my advice with a grain of salt (funny, huh?)

Do you have such things in your life or miss things that are no longer around? Lemme know what they are, will ya?