Meet Eddie

If it doesn't look like one, is it still a minivan?

The Mazda 5. Or, as I call him, Eddie. Why? Well, follow the bouncing brain of Bedhead and you shall see.

Because it really doesn't look like a minivan. And the car websites call it a microvan. Which makes me think of these:

Which then make me think of these:

And those always make me think of him:

And that's always a good thing.

Bullets Over Bedhead

Stuff I need to write posts about, in no particular order:

• Bruce Springsteen and the bookends.
• Emma Thompson and how much I love her. Because I do. Love her. Especially after this comment.
• The play I went to the other day and what constitutes private and where to draw the line.
• The women I saw the play with and the hysterical round-about of conversation we had over falafel and diet sodas. At a brew pub. And the raspberry fleece jackets.
• The Trinity Rep theatre and how fucking gorgeous it is and how come I didn't discover it until I moved almost 2 hours away.
• A conversation with a friend, who discussed her boyfriend and his body image issues and how every word she used to describe him I could use to describe myself. And how weird that made me feel.
• The fact that I have *gulp* bought a mini-van. And how any little smidgen of a modicum of a soupcon of cool that I ever had is now blown all to hell.
  

A Wreck On The Highway

Driving home on the highway from Providence tonight, after spending the day with three very cool, very funny women. I was smiling, remembering our laughter-laced conversation over dinner when I saw, on the crest of the hill, a police car, lights flashing. Great, I thought, he's got someone pulled over.

Then I realized the police car was in the median. And traffic was slowing down. Way down.

Last night I was out driving
Coming home at the end of the working day
I was riding alone through the drizzling rain
On a deserted stretch of a county two-lane
When I came upon a wreck on the highway

I saw snow on the highway, like it had been tossed there by kids having a snowball fight. A crumpled guardrail. An ambulance, lights whirling red-white, red-white.

A small red car, crumpled. A slightly larger blue car, in the median. Sideways. More police cars.

There was blood and glass all over
And there was nobody there but me
As the rain tumbled down hard and cold
I seen a young man lying by the side of the road
He cried Mister, won't you help me please

People and cars, huddled together, against the guardrail. A paramedic, hunched over the passenger side of the blue car.

A gurney. In the road. On it, a white sheet, covering a body.

In an instant, someone was gone.

An ambulance finally came and took him to Riverside
I watched as they drove him away
And I thought of a girlfriend or a young wife
And a state trooper knocking in the middle of the night
To say your baby died in a wreck on the highway

Maybe someone's wife or mother.

Maybe someone's father or husband.

A brother, a sister, a cousin. A friend.

Gone.

Just

like

that.

Sometimes I sit up in the darkness
And I watch my baby as she sleeps
Then I climb in bed and I hold her tight
I just lay there awake in the middle of the night
Thinking 'bout the wreck on the highway

In Which I Beg For Advice

About 16 months ago, my hair looked like this:

Cute, kind of flippy, but a pain in the ass to do, even to get that little bit of out flip on it. I'm taking 45 minutes with a round brush. I do not have that kind of time, even if I did have the inclination. Which I don't.

And I haven't had a hair cut since then. And now it sort of looks like this:

(Only longer. And minus the beard.)

And I think I'd like it to look sort of like this:

What do you think? I'm worried that the bangs might get in the way of the glasses (which are an almost-black tortoise type now - very librarian). And I'm worried that I don't have the cheekbones to pull it off.

I hate hair. I obsess over my hair almost as much as I obsess over my body.

And can I just add, I have such a girl crush on Dawn French. I luuuuuuuuurve her and it pisses me off to no end that the stupid PBS station out here Westa Wistah doesn't show The Vicar of Dibley.

And while I'm begging for help, I need some serious hand cream help. I have tried just about everything. Aveeno, Eucerin, Aquaphor, Vaseline (straight and in lotion form), Shea Butter, and some expensive shit by Shikai called Borage. Nothing worked. My hands are so dry that they peel and bleed. I'm allergic to lanolin which leaves out a lot of lotions (like Udderly Smooth, which my mother swears by) and I don't want anything too scented because those can affect my skin too. I put lotion on my hands constantly. I need to get gloves, I suppose, for when I wash the dishes, because I'm sure that doesn't help. But I need a good, heavy duty lotion. Any ideas?

And it other news, this is, quite possibly, the coolest staircase ever and I want one.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

Do you read Kevin Charnas? If not, why not? He has a great blog. It veers from the sublime to the just plain silly. This? Would be the latter. Do not drink beverages while watching this video. You have been warned.




I saw this on another blog and had to swipe it. It's fantastic. The group is called Improv Everywhere and they do guerilla improv. It's great stuff. Get thee to YouTube and have a look.




And this ad from the Superbowl kinda creeped me out.

dLife

I have a new post up over at dLife on a topic I have pretty strong feelings about. Go check it out. If you're not outraged, you're not breathing.

Does Keith Olbermann...

...read my blog?


Ok, so I'm not so vain to think that he does, but it was surreal to watch his special comment last night and hear him say practically the same thing I wrote last week.




That whole comment by Bush, threatening to stay home rather than go on a planned trip to Africa sounded so much like "If you don't behave, I'll turn this car around right now!" How many times can he pull that terror threat?

Now This Is A Giveaway

ModMom is having a huuuuuuuuuge giveaway. Take a look.

enter my fabulous valentine's giveaways worth $3500+
whole foods :: $100 gift card +3 heart gift baskets $250
tots-on-the-go :: 1 inline stroller with doubles kit $700+
kideko :: 1 mod luxury bedding set $260
blurb :: 10 publish-your-own professional books $300
global exchange :: 11 organic fair trade chocolates $250
itzbeen :: 6 digital baby care data trackers $150+
divvies :: 10 dozen vegan cupcakes $240
green works :: 12 green cleaners gift baskets $300
barefoot books :: 12 eco books/cd + 1 grand prize $240
roxio :: 10 mac digital burning software suites $1,000


You can go sign up, too.

A Question For The Experts

I have a post up over at New England Mamas, in which I piss and moan about the commercialism that is Valentine's Day.


In other news:

That Canadian Boy I Married (TCBIM) has been working for the same small company for two years now. There are about 8 employees, including the boss. The boss belongs to an uber-Christian church - I don't know what denomination, if any - and several of the employees also belong. Others, like TCBIM, are quite happy in their godless heathenism.

Ever since he started working there, he's felt a slight favouritism towards the employees who are church members. Mostly he was able to brush it off and it didn't impact his job that much. The last few months, though, he's felt a distinct coldness directed at him by the boss. He tried speaking to his boss about it, but that man is one who avoids communication and confrontation at all costs. So TCBIM decided the time was right to start looking for a new job. No rush, he didn't feel as though he was going to get fired or anything, he just felt like things were a little off kilter and wanted to work for a company that had better management/employee communications.

He interviewed at a company based about 40 minutes from here. Because he's in sales, he can work from home a lot, so this was OK. Plus the company is offering $10K more a year in base salary and another percentage point in commission. They also said they'd provide him with a vehicle and a gas card. Yippee! He was still waffling about taking the job when he got a phone call at work the other day.

The phone call was from a financial institution that manages IRAs. They had questions about the IRA accounts for three employees plus the boss. Questions about the money the company was contributing to these IRAs. The little alarm bells started going off in TCBIM's head.

At no time was he given any information about any kind of retirement plan - in fact, he asked about it and was told that the company didn't do anything like that. To suddenly find out that yes, they do do that, but only, apparently, for fellow church members, was the nail in the coffin. He's taking the new job.

Is this legal? I thought if a benefit was offered, it had to be offered to all employees. Does anyone know the deal on that? Not that he's going to do anything about it since he's taking another job, but I do think he's going to mention it in his exit interview.

Sometimes...

...these stupid internet quizzes are scarily accurate.



Maybe it's just because I'm so fucking tired all the time and the thought of being able to sleep late (ha! Ha ha ha ha ha!) is like a siren call to me. Maybe because I've developed a serious caffeine addiction due to this whole lack of sleep bullshit. Maybe because the idea of snuggling back into the covers is just. so. appealing. right now. Maybe because I've started to dream about huge expanses of bed, covered in white sheets, white duvets, white, downy pillows and billowing white bed curtains (it's like a cross between the Pottery Barn catalog and Remains Of The Day) and a soft-footed maid to bring me tea and the Sunday New York Times. That last fantasy has replaced Johnny Depp AND George Clooney as my lust du jour. That's how tired I am, people.

*P-tooey* Rock Me Gently

Jamie posted this on her blog and it was so funny that I had to steal it (because the brain? She is still mush). Sorry about the ear-worminess of it.

Questions That Bother Me So

• Why do my Q-Tips have an expiration date? What happens when they expire? Do they go moldy? Fail to remove the gunk from your ears?
  

• Why won't my kids sleep? The Bug was up at 9:40, 11:18, 12 a.m., 3:29 a.m., 5:13 a.m. and 6:20 a.m.. I gave up at 6:20. Boo? Won't nap. Why don't children appreciate the inherent goodness that is a nap? Is there anything better than laying your head on a pillow, drawing a blanket up snug around you and drifting off to sleep, all while it's still the middle of the afternoon? I think not and I do believe that my children are wretched, rotten creatures for not thinking the same.

• Did I really have the phone surgically attached to my ear when I was 13, the way my 13 year-old does? She is on the phone and instant messaging at the same time. And that cell phone I thought I was so brilliant in getting for her? She blew threw $25 in two days. In text messages. Guess how happy I was about that one?

• Can anyone explain the delegate situation to me, without me having to have passed advanced trigonometry first? It's confusing and it makes my head hurt. I love politics and I'm finding this incredibly difficult.
  

• Who are we going to get to replace Curt "Oh-My-Achin'-Shoulder" Schilling?
  

• When am I going to be able to write a real blog post again? When will my brain stop being a big pile of mush?
  

• And finally.
  

Super Tuesday: Go Vote!

I tried to teach Boo how to say Barack Obama today. She came up with Go Rock Omama.

I'm going at 4-ish to vote, so that I can take my girls with me. I try to take my kids every time I vote - I think it's a good thing to teach them and while I know the little ones are too young to even get it, O will understand. She might roll her eyes at me now but one day she's going to be able to vote and I want it to seem like a normal thing, something you just do, something to make into a big deal.

Because it is a big deal. I really fear for this country and the path we've traveled over the last 7 years. We have willingly, for the most part, given up huge chunks of our civil rights. The phone companies and George Bush have been able to listen in on every phone call made in this country for the last couple of years. And if this stupid FISA bill goes thru, the phone companies won't bear any responsibility for their illegal activities. It's mind boggling that this doesn't upset more people.

Bush claims that we need this law in order to catch terrorist activities. However, he's threatened to veto the bill if it doesn't include this immunity for the telecom industry. I'm confuuuused. If he vetoes the bill, he's vetoing it protect the telecoms. What about the America people? Do we deserve less protection than the phone companies? Isn't it the president's job to protect the citizens of this country? By threatening to veto this bill, Bush is showing exactly what he thinks of us and our safety. Nothing. We are less important than the phone companies.

The Democratic Congress needs to step up and block this bill. They need to get off their asses and do what they were elected to do - put a stop to this sort of thing. It enrages me when I hear how mealy-mouthed and pitiful the Democratic majority sounds when they can't accomplish these things. Get up there and DO something, for fuck's sake, before you just hand the entire country over to a fascist regime.

Gah!

Go vote, people! It's more important than ever.

Sussy!

My Sussy gift came yesterday. I'm not quite sure what sussy means, but random gifts in the mail are always nice. My poor sussy is waiting and waiting, but it's coming, I swear.

Kerri drew my name and this is what she sent me:

The card cracked me up.

I can't wait to read this one.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves made me chortle with glee.
I have high chortle expectations for this book, too.

Always useful.

She also sent me a little tin of Godiva Dark Chocolate Pearls, but, um...I ate 'em.

They look like this, if you're curious. And they're very, very good.

Thank you, Kerri! Thanks to Beth and Amylia for setting this up. It was a lot of fun.


And, just because it's Friday and because it's my blog and because this cracked me up on a really dreary Friday afternoon, I leave you with this little bastardization of Gilbert & Sullivan.