(I pointed out that some women have large breasts, but that Barbie's overall proportions were not ever found in real people.)
Okay, instead of chiseling down her boobs, I'll put some sugru on her waist and paint it to match.
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| a paeonia festiva maxima from my mother's house, one that she got from ruth bogen across the street. |
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| lady's mantel, a/k/a alchemilla mollis, in bloom. the leaves are nice too, but the camera wanted to look at the flowers. |
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| one of the happy peonies that came with my house. |
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| astilbe from mary kane's garden, down the street from ruth bogen's. |
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| this peony? i have no idea where it came from. i might have bought it at a garden club sale. |
For $24 at the library book sale, I got 33 books. Not quite an island, but:
10 books for me
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (Barbara Tuchman)12 for the girl (some that she picked out, others that I added to the stack),
Let the Great World Spin (Colum McCann)
The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
Little Bee (Chris Cleave)\
Diamond Ruby (Joseph Wallace)
The Girl Who Played With Fire (Stieg Larsson)
Middle C (William H. Gass)
State of Wonder (Ann Patchett)
The Tiger's Wife (Téa Obreht)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer)
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| The astute reader will notice a fan bio of Leonardo DiCaprio as well as Catch Me If You Can. You guessed it, the 9 year old no longer swoons over Johnny Depp. |
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| Why yes, this book is called "Orbiting the Giant Hairball". I had to buy it for the title alone. |
I confessed to the mother of the birthday girl that the gift was four used books and that I was hovering between proud (thrifty kid!) and mortified (cheap gift!) - though I knew she'd be more on the side of thrifty proud. What do you think? Are used books an acceptable gift? And if you say no, how do you feel about re-gifting?
Where've you been?
On an adventure.
Huh? We live in a little house and we're indoor cats.
Well, I went out.
Out??
Yeah. You know how they've been doing all that noisy dusty work on the house? Well. They took some windows out, and put new ones in, but the guys who did it left the windows open when they were done. They probably thought the people would like some fresh air.
And you went out?
Yeah, out on the roof. It's really cool out there, all these hills and valleys, and it smells really good, much better than just sitting inside with your nose to the screen. But at some point, the humans put the screens in and then it got dark and I wanted to come in but I couldn't.
Oh my god. Were you scared?
Nah, I just meowed loudly outside the little one's window. She finally woke up, saw me out there, burst into tears, and went and got the big woman. The big woman opened up the screen so I could come in. I thumped her in the eye with my tail, but I'm not really mad at them, they didn't know I was outside.
Well, you sure smell interesting. Hey, wanna go run around the house?
I was thumbing through my beloved copy of the venerable James Beard Cook Book and stopped to read this juicy paragraph on burgers.
The traditional hamburger is a 4-ounce cake broiled or pan-broiled to the required state of doneness and served on a heated, toasted, buttered bun. There is nothing as unappetizing as a cold hamburger bun with a hot hamburger.
Got that? Toast your damned buns.
Later on, he suggests serving with chili sauce, "if you wish, but heat your chili sauce before serving, because cold sauce is not inviting with hot food".
I love the imperiousness of those commands, not to mention the idea that in 1959 a cookbook author had to explain a hamburger sandwich. Really? Were they that novel, in 1959?
Incidentally, his iteration of a cheeseburger has the cheese sandwiched - pre-cooking - between two "very thin, 2-ounce cakes".
So, dear readers, do you toast your buns?
In the department of "a lady only has her name in the paper three times in her life: birth, marriage and death", I have spectacularly failed, in as much as I am on the front page of today's New York Times discussing the price of my two back-to-back colonoscopies. In my copy of the paper, my name is below the fold, but other people have seen it on or above the fold.
My participation notwithstanding, it's a good article - pointing out the high costs of medical procedures in the US, using colonoscopy as an example.
Whether directly from their wallets or through insurance policies, Americans pay more for almost every interaction with the medical system. They are typically prescribed more expensive procedures and tests than people in other countries, no matter if those nations operate a private or national health system. A list of drug, scan and procedure prices compiled by the International Federation of Health Plans, a global network of health insurers, found that the United States came out the most costly in all 21 categories — and often by a huge margin.
Health insurance reform is one thing, but unless and until we the people understand how much things cost underneath the protective veneer of our insurance, health care costs are going to continue to skyrocket.
Scene
New York City sidewalk
Dramatis personæ
Two nannies
Two children, in strollers
The two nannies are pushing the two strollers, side by side, chatting. The two children are conversing (in a manner of speaking, they are at least looking at one another). One child is wearing Crocs; however, she has one pink shoe off and in her mouth. The nannies are oblivious (see above, chatting).
I note the child with shoe in mouth and think:
Should I say something? The nanny will just be annoyed that her conversation was interrupted. But, wouldn't the parent like to know that a stranger extracted a shoe from the child's mouth? On the other hand, dirt's good, it builds the immune system. But, ohmygod: dog shit, rat poison, piss, vomit, garbage!
To act or not to act, that is the conundrum.
What, dear readers, would you have done?
