Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

Sometimes all you need to get your shit together is a self-imposed Suck-It-Up Smackdown, and that’s precisely what I delivered myself last week, and I’m feeling much better, thank you. Apparently, I’m still behaving rather curmudgeonly, so I can’t promise that all of my reviews will be glowing, and yes, I still want to punch Ayelet Waldman in the face, but I’m no longer filled with pissy despair, hooray!

(I hate when people get all pissalicious and don’t tell me what’s going on, PS. Hate. It’s just that … some of it is tangentially work-related in that if I talk about it, it will find a way to be work-related, and well, we all know about that. But there will be a day when this will be all non-work-related and then we can have a royal free-for-all.)

Also helpful: chocolate chip cookies, which I made from scratch tonight and consumed in large quantity after I skipped dinner for this express purpose. And they’re delicious, oh so delicious, but when I came home, Adam was horrified that I had to make them from scratch, and didn’t just buy the dough in the tube, because that’s where cookies come from. I had to defend my from-scratch decision, and that seems terribly, terribly wrong on some sort of broad societal level, doesn’t it? And it makes me sad, so very sad for my husband, who thinks cookies come from a tube.

The gods also punished me for smoking by giving me a ripper of a chest cold, and I’m currently breathing oh-so-sexily through my mouth and alternating hacking seal barks with wheezing coughing spells that end … well, the only way to end the gasping is with a giant burp, which is usually executed as loudly as possible and also sounds like I’m about to throw up. This also reminds me: except for these spells, I never burp. Ever, unless I cough myself to it. I can’t make myself burp, I don’t know how to relieve chest pressure by burping and I’ve certainly never experienced the pleasure of releasing the alphabet through my vocal chords. It’s absolutely possible that I’m making up for it on the other end, but … is it only me?

Odd, non-gaseous segue!

Occasionally I’ll find myself going through phases where I fantasize about living in another era (see: strange desire to be Donna Reed in crinoline, gleefully vacuuming my life away), because in the glow of history, don’t some things seem so simple? I mean while yes, it would suck because I like my career — or at least I appreciate the flexibility to have one — there’s got to be a certain amount of stress lifted when the option no longer exists. I know, I know, it wasn’t like that, I’m just saying I harbor the fantasy, and there are moments when it strangely comforts me. I mean I don’t want that, I’m just saying … oh forget it, you know what I’m saying.

And then there are moments that I am just so happy, so very happy, that I live in an era where it’s more likely than not that if I were dumped in a makeshift crematorium in H. H. Holmes basement, someone might look for me, oh my God. This is the longest way ever of saying that The Devil in the White City is so good! So good! And scary and amazing and creepy! So creepy! But worth picking up, and way worthing sifting through the first 100 pages or so, which is actually how long it took me to get way into it.

The rest of our weekend involved Superbad, which was … well, it wasn’t as super-awesome as I was expecting, but in fairness, I was comparing it to Knocked Up and there was no way it could win out over that, there just wasn’t. Oh, and we bought light fixtures and a Dyson Root, and are you riveted now, or what?

(The Dyson Root rocks, but six minutes of battery life? Seriously?)

*Rufus Wainwright. And I’ve used it before, I think …

19 comments December 9th, 2007