December 2008

The Reason for The Season.

December 30, 2008

Guess who Simone found in her stocking on Christmas morning? Do you recognize him? No? Here he is with his customary companion: Yes! It’s Schmutzli! See the cane, for child-thwacking? I think St. Nicolas has a rather resigned look on his face in this picture—resigned for a finger puppet, I mean. I sense that he [...]

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Christmas With Tolstoy.

December 22, 2008

During Level One of my beloved Shred, Jillian says: “For those of you at home who are looking for a modified version of a jumping jack, look elsewhere… I’ve got 400 lb people who can do jumping jacks. So can you.” OR CAN I? Feast your eyes upon my new, bionic knee. I spent this [...]

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Sybil.

December 16, 2008

I didn’t mean to be gone so long. The thing is, I’m feeling funky, and not in a good, James Brown kind of way. My mood seems to lurch from one place to another, and as a result I keep starting to write about, say, how annoyed I am, or how sad, or how wistful, [...]

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Pointless, Adj., Not Having a Point.

December 11, 2008

A person with my particular dimensions should never attempt to buy a brassiere anywhere other than Nordstrom, a specialty lingerie shop, or the Internet. But, as it is quarantine season, it had taken me a week to get around to my much-needed Target trip for groceries. I knew chances of coordinating a separate bra-shopping outing [...]

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This One’s For Jenni.

December 7, 2008

My dear friend just finished writing a WHOLE BOOK, so I felt some sort of congratulatory gift was in order. She is a vegan rollergirl with a Gilmore Girls fixation, and I admit I was stumped. I have been pausing occasionally in my work for the past two weeks to consider and discard various options: [...]

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Mash, Mish.

December 5, 2008

I have a bunch of little updates and, once again, no conceivable way to string them together, so I am resorting to my old friend the bullet-point: • We are pretty sure that Simone is allergic to rice. Once we discontinued the rice cereal, her eczema improved rapidly and dramatically. It’s still there, but in [...]

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Thoroughly! Trivial! Tuesday!

December 2, 2008

This week, allow me to present Aka-Beko: “Aka-beko” is Japanese for…”Red Cow?” “Red Ox?” For some red ungulate, anyway. Long ago—in 807—a temple was being constructed in Fukushima, when a large red ox appeared and made itself useful ferrying construction materials from place to place. The story of the ox became popular among the people [...]

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