5 Things You Need To Know Right Now About Your Week. . .HURRY!

I don't really have any good list, I'm just always a sucker for a breakdown of important facts that promise to be succinct and small in number and hoped that you were, too.

I haven't been able to blog too much lately because I started a new job writing and editing for New Haven Magazine and it keeps me busy, like, too busy for the internet. Feel free to subscribe to read any additional opinions I may not have time to duplicate here. Hurry!

Also, my horoscope got me all paranoid and looking over my shoulder with a series of creepy daily prophesies that made me want to hide out. Who wouldn't be suspicious after a horoscope like this?

WHO COULD IT BE? WHO WANTS TO CUT MY SKIN OFF AND WEAR IT LIKE AN OVERCOAT?

I started looking for clues when it became very clear that I had enemies. Check this out:

The poo is crusted clear around the entire flap, if you can't tell. This is the product of aiming, for sure.

Then, my husband and I celebrated his birthday last week amid a growing rift in our marriage. 

Our toothbrushes have to sleep in separate beds. I gave him the ultimatum to either take care of that sticky blob of paste and spit, or move out. Occasionally, it jostled in the cup and would lean or tip into either the toothpaste or my toothbrush and leave a sticky spot behind. He chose to move his toothbrush out. We don't love each other any less, but every relationship has its ups and downs and I swear to god if that mush touches my junk one more. . . well, we've made it through the latest crisis and everything is fine, except he is sad about feeling old. I'm older so I don't have any sympathy at all, or anything comforting to say. Well, the comforting things I say are to comfort me, not him, like that he has more eye wrinkles than me and more gray hair. On the plus side, we have better health insurance and lower co-pays so we can seek medical advice for all of our old people back aches and suspicious "beauty" marks. 

Friday begins the annual Jewish celebration of freedom. My husband and I are hosting our second ever Passover seder this weekend so we've been doing lots of (a tiny bit, we're really behind) prepping and shopping and cleaning (I will have to remember to clean because I have an uncle with a cat allergy). The first time we hosted a Passover seder together, he proposed after. How will he top that?  

I've done more reading about Passover recently than in any prior years and a certain theme is sticking with me: what enslaves you and what frees you? When you think of the things that you feel a slave to, that bind you, constrict your life or temper your joy - a job you hate, a bad relationship, debt, obligations, a repressive government (shut up, tea party), addiction, or negative emotions like fear, anger, resentment, regret - can you envision being free of them and what that would look like? I floated the idea to my husband about doing a guided family meditation during our seder about this notion of being enslaved and envisioning our freedom and he implied it was a bad idea, and he implied it by laughing in my face. FREEEEDOOOOMMMMMM!!!  

Birthday Reflections

1) I'm old. I thought I'd have been gunned down in a hail of bullets by now.

2) Not only do I dislike more people and things as I've gotten older, but I also like more people and things than I used to. Still hate mayonnaise, though.

3) Giving myself special presents for my birthday is just as important as gifts received from others. Seriously, gifts are important so if you haven't gotten me anything yet, get to the store toute suite. I bought myself a month of unlimited yoga, so don't get me that.

4) Life pretty much goes on as usual, as it should, I'm just in a good mood. And I'll be eating more. Maybe I'll speed in front of a cop so he can pull me over, look at my license, say Happy Birthday and let me off with a warning and a smile because who gets a ticket on their birthday? I mean, I'm an organ donor for crying out loud.

5) I'm more likely to over-eat than to over-drink nowadays because the recovery period is shorter and I'd rather have a short bout of embarrassing gas than commit a felony. Funny how priorities change like that.

6) I think I might want kids, but I need to figure out a back-up plan in case I really hate being a mom. How does adoption really work? Is it like when a pet isn't fitting in with the household and I just drop the baby/toddler/teen off at a special home that will feature the child's positive qualities on a web-site for quick adoption to new parents? That way, if I turn out to be a crappy parent, the kid still has a chance to get some decent parents, right? Isn't that part of Obamacare?

My Husband Gave Me Crabs

Don't they look delicious:

He bought them live, off the back of a truck. He didn't realize that Phil's Live Crabs was just a pick-up truck in the middle of a busy intersection and when we got there and I pointed and said hey, I found it, it's that dirty pick-up truck over there in front of that biker bar, he said no, no, that can't be it, they have a phone number and positive reviews on Yelp. They were great and the kindly woman selling them gave us detailed instructions on how best to cook them: beer, old bay seasoning and water about 3 inches high boiling in a pot. She warned us not to let them warm up too much while still alive because then they'd get agitated and start moving around. On the way home, my husband kept freaking himself out that the crabs had gotten loose and were going to take over the maxi pad we're still driving. When we got out of the car for beer, he talked about that very hypothetical and said if it happened, we just let them have the rental and we walk home. I put one on the floor because I wanted to see what Truffles would do:

He got pissed and picked up the crab and dumped it in the pot right away. He wouldn't let Truffles play with Pinchy. At one point, as he was wrangling the "agitated" crabs, I heard him say "let's dance, motherfucker." It was all amazing, we made a giant mess and barely had room for dessert, which was a few extravagant bars full of chunks from my favorite Philly bakery (Flying Monkeys). I don't know what happened to that half of Guinness Whoopie Pie. . .

Getting old isn't an exciting thing to celebrate anymore. I'm at the point where I wake up with a little pimple and it makes me feel young again and I love when dumb kids in their 20s are like "aren't you 28?." Ugh.

Facebook has helped to make birthdays awesome, though. If even for only twenty seconds, people you don't hear from very often will take time out of their day to wish you a happy birthday. The happy birthday Facebook wall is a beautiful thing that people would be stupid not to love. I love it. It's my favorite thing about Facebook.

It wasn't my best day - I got a tough rejection letter today. Not that it was mean, it was actually very kind and the person sending it said she liked my writing and enjoyed the book and got other people in her office to read it, but it just didn't fit with the agency list. It happened to be someone I really wanted to work with and it bummed me out. I get a lot A LOT of rejection - and I did date for like more than a decade, so there was all of that you're not pretty/thin/rich/interesting/hairy/bald enough type of rejection, but these days most of my "career" is rejection. It's a lot of sending letters to people and explaining the work I did and asking them to read it and then in response, it's mostly no. Sometimes it's more, like today (and very kind) and sometimes it's like "don't feel badly, it's just that we're really exclusive" - which is like, sorry, it's not your fault we don't read the shit you write, but maybe Weird Al Yankovic needs writers? I'm hoping that like dating, it's a numbers game and just eventually someone says yes or feels sorry for me and makes me crabs and gives me health insurance. I did eventually win the dating game (and my husband is awesome), so I'm trying to stay positive about it all.