running away with the circus

last night i went to see cirque du soleil's "kooza" which was, as i expected, completely amazing, but this particular show was sort of a throw back to the roots of cirque, with more focus on traditional death defying circus acts, and on clowning as well. that sort of made me roll my eyes when i got the tickets, because i, like every other normal human on the planet, am afraid of clowns. they are CREEPY. these clowns, though...they were FUNNY and not at all creepy, and had me laughing so hard my stomach still hurts today. there were three female contortionists (which i actually aspired to be when i was younger, but upon seeing that act, i'm actually glad that there are things that i cannot do with my body, because, oh yeah, it's not NORMAL for your limbs to bend that way!!) and i swear their act was the most insane thing i've ever seen, i don't understand that level of flexibility. i mean, i do yoga. i'm bendy. but this is a completely different game. i can't even describe what this girl was doing with her legs over her head and flipping herself around, but i will say this: i just can't imagine that contorting yourself that way can be good for your internal organs. at one point i was watching and thinking, where on earth is her stomach right now? - cause she was completely bent in half, with her rear end on her head and her feet on the floor in front of her. and i was also thinking...how on earth do you discover that you have that talent? i mean, i used to watch tv standing on my head, but i can't imagine what these girls were doing and how their parents must have reacted every time they heard "hey mom! look what i can do!" the music was also incredible, which i remember from another cirque show that we saw, but what i find most amazing is the engineering and the "backstage" work that goes into traveling productions like this. they set up this whole little village with these incredible tents and then bam, 2 weeks later, they fold the whole thing up and put it in a couple of trucks and off they go. i just finished reading "water for elephants" which was a great read, by the way, and i'm so interested in that whole lifestyle, and how so much of it is illusion. i also must say, as much as i hate to see any of the performers screw up, the last show we saw, not even a pinkie toe was out of place, but this show seemed more human - we saw a tightrope walker fall off the rope (um, after he leap frogged over another walker in front of him, so we forgave him his shortcoming!!), and after being catapulted through the air, another performer fell short of landing on top of a man standing on another man's shoulder and the whole thing came toppling down. it's nice to know that even these performers aren't perfect, and that what they are doing is actually hard to do, becuase when there is no flaw at all...it just seems like i could walk up there and do the same thing. there was also this realy amazing act that i don't know how to describe other than saying 2 guys who clearly have no fear of falling to their deaths did an amazing and highly entertaining performance on this giant metal circling ring of death thingy. i'm sorry but that's the best i can do. all in all, it was a great night, i'm so glad we got a chance to go and i hope we get to see cirque every time it's in town. in light of all this financial and political doom and gloom - especially here in washington - it was the perfect way to spend an evening thinking that there is nothing i would like to do more than run away with the circus.

how to bake a fennel

so, the cousin had me over for dinner last night and wouldn't you know it, he doesn't just cook you spaghetti like a normal boy would. no, no, we had baked halibut with fennel and asparagus, and in the process of helping him cook it, i learned the difference between peeling and "supreming" an orange (ok, really there is no difference, except for one you just peel it, and for the other, you use a big fancy knife to do the same thing that is accomplished by peeling and you call it some fancy word like "supreme"), and that you can actually put parchment paper in the oven. who knew? i thought you wrote illuminated manuscripts on parchment, so i'm happy to learn that you can also bake fish with it. we also made real live mashed potatoes, not the kind you get from a box that you mix with milk, and it makes all the difference in the world. but the fennel was a completely different story. what is a fennel, anyway? it looks sort of like an onion, but has this big scary celery looking arms coming out of the top of them, and the recipe is just all like, slice the fennel, but uh, i sorta need detailed directions on how to do that...so we just did our best. needless to say, i sliced that damn fennel and we made a bed of it in parchment paper to put that halibut to sleep on. then we covered it up with a blanket of asparagus and supremely supremed oranges and some salt, pepper and butter. it definitely came out much better than i'd imagined (i tend to cause disasters in the kitchen), but most of the fun was in the actual putting together of the meal. so, thank you, cousin, for making me make an out of the ordinary dinner. it was much better than the mac and cheese i would have eaten had i stayed home. i am still scared of fennel, though...

a word on that which is supposed to be a convenience...

there must be some technical, offical medical word for this thing that i have. i suffer from the fear of losing my money to a vending machine - vendaloseaphobia, perhaps. every single time i put my money into one of those wretched, conniving machines, i momentarily forget about everything else and hyperfocus on whether or not i'm going to end up with the diet coke or the baked doritos that i have selected. well, i lost this battle this morning, much to my dismay, since i had only enough change for a soda - which meant i couldn't even take my remaining change and go try another machine. oh no. this thieving automated vendor straight up took the 35 cents that i had fearfully fed it's greedy coin slot and refused to return it, or even acknowledge that i'd given it money to begin with. so now what will i do with my remaining change?? it's not enough for a soda at another machine. it's not enough for some candy to ease my suffering. this means i will have to make the trip outside of my office, i will have to venture out in to the cold, in to the wind, in search of my caffeinated, carbonated diet coke fix. this fear of mine, it also manifests itself in the form of an anxious knot in my stomach once the machine does accept and acknowlege my money in its bowels - as i watch, on pins and needles, as the spinning arms circle around my selection and i pray, oh how i pray, that my white cheddar popcorn will not get stuck in it's steely arms. how many times, how many, have i lost out on some tasty mid afternoon treat because the stupid vending machine only pretends to give me what i want, and then laughs in my face when it refuses to yield my prize, dangling it instead, taunting me with its cruelty, and no amount of shaking or kicking will free my twix bar. damn you, vending machines. damn you all. and so it is, me against them...when i actually do hear my chips hit the bottom of that merciless machine, it's like winning the lottery. and on those rare, rare occasions when you get your selection, plus that of the poor fool who'd stood up to that monster before you and lost, it almost makes you forget about days like today, when your money is stolen and you're sent, sulking and empty handed, back to your desk. almost.

i heart you, savion!

last night, the husband and i were treated to a double date with his parents. maybe not everyone would be thrilled about dinner and the theatre with the in-laws, but even if my mother in law was the wicked witch of the west (which she is far, far from, by the way), i would have still been estatic about our night out. after dinner (veggie burger and sweet potato fries at the elephant and castle, YUM!) we walked over to the warner theatre to see savion glover, tap dancer and visionary to the stars. :) erik and i have seen him once before, at the same venue actually, but little ol me bought the tickets and we ended up waaaay in the back, where you lose out on so much of the fancy footwork going on. but this time, we were 6th row and could see their shoelaces we were so close! i was blown away before, but this time, since we could really see what was going on, i was just absolutely in awe of this man's gift. the performance was called bare soundz, and included two other incredibly, incredibly talented men, and they each tapped on a small raised wooden platform that was mic-ed underneath so every little tap of their feet sounded like a drum. i had expected there to be music accompaniment, since he had tapped to classical music the first time we saw him, but the really cool thing about the show was that the tapping was the music. their feet were the instruments. they even sell cd's of the sounds the tapping makes, because if you close your eyes, you'd swear it was drumming, or a bass or something. just unreal. i'm so happy we were able to go again. i know erik will be tap dancing around our apartment for weeks to come, and i've been looking up tap videos on you tube all morning. i found an astonishing one of gene kelly tapping in roller skates!!!! seriously, my mom couldn't have pushed me a little bit harder to find some sort of useful talent? this guy could tap dance in roller skates...and i can crush an aluminum can behind my back. really? i guess you're just born with it, and i'm telling you, savion glover was born with enough talent for a hundred people. amazing. also makes me wanna curl up on the couch and watch happy feet (which, in case you did not know, savion did the choreography for!)...and perhaps i will. it is friday, after all...

returning to earth

three day weekends are always hard to recover from. not because i was out partying or i saw so many of my girlfriends or i did some yard work or something...mostly just because i got used to laying around and doing nothing and thinking, "hey! i don't have to go to work today!!" so i spend all of tuesday slugging around the office like i'm hungover but really my mind is just not ready to be at work yet, since it spent the day before singing "nanny nanny boo boo" all day long. i guess i did do a little bit of non-couch-sitting stuff over the long weekend...in fact, i did a lot of stuff. i went to my husband's ten year high school reunion, which was interesting to say the least. i was blown away by how many people in the room he didn't know, and when i asked him why, he said he went to high school with a thousand people, and graduated with over 300. yikes. since my graduating class was a whopping 81 people, i sort of assumed that everyone knew every last person that they graduated with. no so, people. not so. but it was a fun night, and it was especially nice that i didn't have to spend the evening answering questions about what i've been doing for the last ten years, because no one knew me so no one cared. i also took my dog to the park about 97 times because the weather was so lovely and knowing this part of the country the way that i do, i know it won't last long and i wanted to take full advantage. lincoln and i also volunteer as pet therapists for a local animal shelter and once a month we go to a boys' group home and the dogs and the boys run around for an hour and play, so we had fun doing that and he had fun getting fat off of all the treats he got, spoiled little turd. i spent most of sunday reading "a million little pieces," which is now all that i think about (funny how a book about addiction can get you so addicted to it), and marveling at the fact that erik actually wanted to sit through tbs's midafternoon screening of "encino man." i made him get off the couch and come with me to the dog park just so that we could say that the day wasn't a total waste. monday was a busy day, actually. i shopped, i got hairs cut, i dyed hair, i lunched with the sibling, i visited the parents, and i took lincoln to the park no less than three times. i read until midnight and i'm STILL not finished and all i want to do is read, read, read. but i have to work, work, work. so, i'm treating today as if it were monday, and justifying my lack of productivity by telling myself that my body and mind just haven't adjusted from the long weekend. the upside to this is that by the time i am all "adjusted" and ready to get to work, it'll be thursday afternoon, and by that time i'll be slipping into weekend mode and will be utterly useless to do anything other than think about what i'll be doing this weeekend.
i'm hoping that during the debate tomorrow night, one of the candidates will say that they will propose 3 day weekends, every single weekend of every single month, to cut down on energy costs and on car emissions. cause i would vote for that man, oh yes i would, in a heartbeat.

my favorite time of year

if you know me at all, you know that i love summer. in fact, i live for it. those 97 degree days with 98 percent humidity, when you are stuck to yourself and you can barely breath? I LIVE FOR THAT. all the other seasons are nice and all (except for you, WINTER. i bite my thumb at you!!), but the thought of a beautiful, hot summer day keeps me going all year long. i have but one exception to this rule, and that is HALLOWEEN. ok, you say, halloween is not a season, and duh, i know that, but see, october is associated with fall, and after fall comes the dreaded winter, so see how i don't want my happiness over halloween to be associated with that which preceedes the dreaded winter. anyway, i don't really even care all that much about halloween, whoopie, get dressed up and knock on strange people's doors and ask for candy (really, would you do this on any other day of the year??? no. because it would be considered creepy and strange. so why does doing it on october 31st, dressed up like a goon, make it ok???), or have strange people come and knock on your door. that's really not the point. the point is that halloween means CANDY CORN. and candy corn is the reason (other than sweating my own skin off in the summer) that i was put on this earth. every year, the only consolation i have for kissing my sweet love summer goodbye is knowing that one lover will soon be replaced with the next...and that lover is candy corn. if sugar was considered an addictive drug, i swear, i would be in rehab ten times by now for my sick, sick addiction to candy corn. you love it or you hate it, but there's no inbetween. and when you love it like i do, you see a bag and all you can think is, i want the entire contents of that bag in my stomach. NOW. sick, right?? there must be some sort of 12 step program for people like me, because even after making myself absolutely ill with sugar and getting pretty damn close to my body shutting down, the very second that i realize i'm not going to throw up, don't you know, i want more candy corn. MORE. this is the only reason that halloween has any excuse for even existing...because it means i get more candy corn than my system can handle. i have NO CONTROL over the amount of orange and yellow triangular goodness i consume. none. i even find myself a little thrilled with thanksgiving (though, given its proximity to the dreaded winter, it's hard to maintain focus on the candy corn) now, because they throw a brown tip on the candy corn and they say, "ta-daaa!!! autumn candy corn!!" and i say I AM TOTALLY OK WITH THAT. and let's please PLEASE not forget the beauty that is the candy corn pumpkins...you know what these things are, yes?? it's like 3 pieces of candy corn melded into the shape of a pumpkin and it is like HEAVEN IN MY MOUTH. candy corn sort of gets pushed to the side with christmas and all the chocolate and peppermint and fruitcake crap that floods the isles of CVS, but along comes valentine's day and what do you know...PINK AND RED CANDY CORN!! easter?? PURPLE, GREEN, AND YELLOW PASTEL CANDY CORN!!! i hardly have to live without it anymore. this is a blessing...this is a curse. one of these days, you will turn on your tv, and you will see me on A&E, on that intervention show, and my teeth will all have rotted out of my head, and i'll have thin wirey hair and i'll be standing in my mother's kitchen, barefoot, with a wifebeater and pajama pants on, screaming and ripping through the kitchen cabinets, furiously searching for one more piece of candy corn. just one more. this is the way it goes with addiction. it's love and it's hate. i am loving on you, candy corn. you don't always love me back, but you love me sometimes and it's enough. it's enough to keep me going... summer comes with sunburn. you come with elevated blood sugar levels. but this is why i love you both. you nourish me. you destroy me.

if this all seems like a sugar-induced rambling, that's probably because i just ate 3/4ths of a bag of candy corn. so it's entirely possible that i have no idea what i'm talking about.

the state of things

for once in my life, i have actually been paying attention to the news, especially the news in politics. i was talking with my family last night and someone brought up when mccain ran for president back in 2000, and i had no idea what they were talking about. what? he ran for president already? where was i?? how do i not remember that? let's see...i was 20 in 2000, so that would have meant my second year in college, which would have meant i was working at the wet seal at the crappiest mall in richmond. that would have been the beginning of my self-absorbed phase, which lasted until at least the summer of 2004, when i moved up to washington, dc. so that explains the lack of interest in politics, because clearly, at 20 years of age, i personally would have not given a rat's rear end about health care or the economy or gun control. i'm pretty sure i didn't even vote in the first election i was old enough to vote in, probably because that would have taken some time out of my day that i could have spent sleeping. not so this time around. it seems that once one actually has a job and a 401k and an insurance plan, some things that were at one point completely irrelevant suddenly become the most important things in the world. i don't want to pay taxes on my health care plan. i don't want to see the taxes that i do pay used to fund a war i don't understand. and i certainly don't want to continue paying close to $4 a gallon for gas. it should cost what it cost when i started driving: 99 cents a gallon. so, for the first time, i find myself riveted to the television, watching the debates, honestly caring about where the candidates stand on certain issues...it's insane. the more i find out about the government and the election, the less i care to know. all of this name calling and pointing fingers really gets redundant after a while, and if i were a political analyst on cnn, aside from making passes at anderson cooper, i would flat out tell america, hey ya'll...we're gonna be screwed for a while. everybody messed up and now we all have to pay for it. things might get worse before they get better, but they'll get better before long and it'll be another ten years before something like this happens again. but in the meantime, don't spend more money than you make and quit trying to skip out on paying taxes. it's interesting, this whole being a grown up thing, worrying about how much of your income will go towards a social security system that will more than likely implode by the time you're old enough to need it, or what the next president will do to decrease dependancy on foreign oil...i didn't even CARE about that kind of stuff before.

what i DO care about now, aside from all this economy and health care and foreign affairs crap...is that people start using the word "maverick" correctly.