Songs I'm currently enjoying on the 90's channel that I never hear on the regular radio:
1. Michael Penn: Romeo in Black Jeans
2. Black Box: Strike it Up
3. Color Me Badd: All For Love
4. Tevin Campbell: I'm Ready
5. Babyface: Cool in You
6. Maxi Priest: Close to You
7. Real McCoy: Another Night
8. Everything but the Girl: Missing
9. Deep Blue Something: Breakfast at Tiffanys
10: Rozalla: Everybody's Free (to Feel Good)
Friday, March 24, 2006
The Nurture part of Nature v. Nurture
When I was younger, I was a pretty good kid. I wrote thank you notes, was polite to my parents (except for the weirdness that comes with being 15), helped out around the house, and got mostly A’s in school. One day I heard my mom’s friends talking about me. They said “oh, that’s FFF, she’s such a sweet girl, her mother has done such a good job on her.” I told my mom about the comment, offended. I was the one that was being good, why was it that my mother got the credit?
Now that I have a son of my own and I’m trying to teach him good habits, like going to bed at 8 pm each night, I realize that my parents did deserve the credit, or at least part of it. My dad taught me by example to look on the bright side of things and not to be moody. My mom taught my by example how to forgive and how to tell when someone needed a hug. They would buy me pretty note paper, and show me how to make people feel appreciated in a letter. They taught me how to let things go, how to love.
When I was about 16, I recall asking my parents for permission to go do something that they thought I was too young for. I remember telling them “look, you raised me right, taught me what to do, now trust your parenting skills and let me go do this, I’ll be fine.” And they did. And I was. I hope the same happens with my son one day.
Now that I have a son of my own and I’m trying to teach him good habits, like going to bed at 8 pm each night, I realize that my parents did deserve the credit, or at least part of it. My dad taught me by example to look on the bright side of things and not to be moody. My mom taught my by example how to forgive and how to tell when someone needed a hug. They would buy me pretty note paper, and show me how to make people feel appreciated in a letter. They taught me how to let things go, how to love.
When I was about 16, I recall asking my parents for permission to go do something that they thought I was too young for. I remember telling them “look, you raised me right, taught me what to do, now trust your parenting skills and let me go do this, I’ll be fine.” And they did. And I was. I hope the same happens with my son one day.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Yadda Yadda Yadda
Most people have a filler word or phrase they use. "Like" and "you know what I mean" are two common ones my friends use. But I've been noticing filler phrases in songs lately too. Here are some examples:
- Kelly Clarkson's Since U Been Gone ("yeah, yeah, since u been gone")
- Maroon Five's This Love ("whoa oh oh, whoa oh oh" before "I was so high I did not recognize the fire burning in her eyes")
- Avril Lavigne's Happy Ending ("So much for my happy ending, oh, oh, oh, oh")
Is this a new thing, or did it start with the Beatles ("she loves you yeah, yeah, yeah")? There's even a group called the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Food Rituals and Weirdness in my family
I sent R to the store to pick up some yogurt and he also brought home Drumsticks for dessert as a surprise, yay! Drumsticks take me back to middle school. For 35 cents you could get a vanilla icecream cone with nuts and that amazing chocolatey core in the last bite. This also got me thinking about funny food rituals in my family.
I'll start with me. I always save my best bites for last. If I'm eating a piece of pizza, I'll eat the crust and the tip first, saving a bite with the perfect assortment of toppings for last. My last bite of Chinese food will never be just plain rice--it will be the right proportion of sauce, meat and rice. And I always make sure I have a good dollop of hot fudge left to eat the last bite of my McDonalds icecream sundaes. My dad and sister do this too. The only problem is that my mom tends to steal our last bites. She won't order whatever we are eating, and then will resist sharing as we work our way through whatever we are eating. Ultimately, she gives in to her salivating tastebuds, cannot resist, and takes a bite--but by then, we are on our last one. It happened so often, my dad and sister and I would preemptively give my mom a caveat--I have three bites left, now two, tell me now if you want one, because you can't have the last one!
But the problem with the Drumsticks is that my mom liked the last bite best. She liked cones, bread, crust--I guess she's more of a carb person than me. (My philosophy has always been if you are going to waste calories on eating something, it better have chocolate in it. Preferably chunky, chip-y, fudgy, swirly, rich chocolate). My pie crust got stolen so often, I don't even like it anymore; I never developed a taste for it.
My mom also orders like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. She's a big fan of getting things on the side. That's not so weird when you order a baked potato or want your salad dressing on the side. But once she ordered a pasta with chicken at the Olive Garden and wanted her sauce on the side. I'm not kidding. She had a bowl of noodles, and then a bowl of sauce with grilled chicken on the side.
My sister has her own food issues. She (and I do this too) cannot order buffalo wings without getting both ranch dressing and blue cheese, but has to gesture for each sauce separately. I'm not sure she could order wings while sitting on her hands. She also has very specific rules about which restuarants she will go to. No Mexican restuarants that don't give you free chips and salsa. Italian restuarants that don't include bread or salad complimentary with the meal? What's that about? And don't even get her started on restuarants that charge you to split a dish!
Me, I love to read menus. I stopped at almost all the restuarants as R and I bummed around New Orleans on holiday one year and drooled over the dishes. I read them online now whenever I'm going to a new restuarant and its posted. When we go to a new restuarant, I can scan the menu and can usually with 98% accuracy rate predict what R will order. If it has sundried tomatoes, its usually a good bet. R once told me he was a vegetarian, but he ate hamburgers. And chicken and turkey. But no OTHER red meat or seafood, you see.
My grandfather loves to write letters and emails about food. He'll describe with delectable detail what he ate for lunch, or what he ordered for dinner. It probably became a habit for him because my grandmother was an amazing cook.
Okay, I'm going to go read Like Water for Chocolate now. My mouth is watering. And like that book explains, you should never leave the last lonely chile pepper on the plate out of politeness because you don't want to look greedy. Take it! You don't want it to feel sad!
I'll start with me. I always save my best bites for last. If I'm eating a piece of pizza, I'll eat the crust and the tip first, saving a bite with the perfect assortment of toppings for last. My last bite of Chinese food will never be just plain rice--it will be the right proportion of sauce, meat and rice. And I always make sure I have a good dollop of hot fudge left to eat the last bite of my McDonalds icecream sundaes. My dad and sister do this too. The only problem is that my mom tends to steal our last bites. She won't order whatever we are eating, and then will resist sharing as we work our way through whatever we are eating. Ultimately, she gives in to her salivating tastebuds, cannot resist, and takes a bite--but by then, we are on our last one. It happened so often, my dad and sister and I would preemptively give my mom a caveat--I have three bites left, now two, tell me now if you want one, because you can't have the last one!
But the problem with the Drumsticks is that my mom liked the last bite best. She liked cones, bread, crust--I guess she's more of a carb person than me. (My philosophy has always been if you are going to waste calories on eating something, it better have chocolate in it. Preferably chunky, chip-y, fudgy, swirly, rich chocolate). My pie crust got stolen so often, I don't even like it anymore; I never developed a taste for it.
My mom also orders like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. She's a big fan of getting things on the side. That's not so weird when you order a baked potato or want your salad dressing on the side. But once she ordered a pasta with chicken at the Olive Garden and wanted her sauce on the side. I'm not kidding. She had a bowl of noodles, and then a bowl of sauce with grilled chicken on the side.
My sister has her own food issues. She (and I do this too) cannot order buffalo wings without getting both ranch dressing and blue cheese, but has to gesture for each sauce separately. I'm not sure she could order wings while sitting on her hands. She also has very specific rules about which restuarants she will go to. No Mexican restuarants that don't give you free chips and salsa. Italian restuarants that don't include bread or salad complimentary with the meal? What's that about? And don't even get her started on restuarants that charge you to split a dish!
Me, I love to read menus. I stopped at almost all the restuarants as R and I bummed around New Orleans on holiday one year and drooled over the dishes. I read them online now whenever I'm going to a new restuarant and its posted. When we go to a new restuarant, I can scan the menu and can usually with 98% accuracy rate predict what R will order. If it has sundried tomatoes, its usually a good bet. R once told me he was a vegetarian, but he ate hamburgers. And chicken and turkey. But no OTHER red meat or seafood, you see.
My grandfather loves to write letters and emails about food. He'll describe with delectable detail what he ate for lunch, or what he ordered for dinner. It probably became a habit for him because my grandmother was an amazing cook.
Okay, I'm going to go read Like Water for Chocolate now. My mouth is watering. And like that book explains, you should never leave the last lonely chile pepper on the plate out of politeness because you don't want to look greedy. Take it! You don't want it to feel sad!
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Andrea Yates
This story about Rusty Yates getting married came out a couple of days ago. I've been trying to make sense of the jumbled thoughts I have about Andrea Yates, but I haven't come to any brilliant conclusions. Even after one child, I know that post-partum depression is very real. And five kids in seven years would physically and emotionally exhaust me. My husband was so supportive of me after Boo Boo, and knowing he would do whatever he could to help me with all the life changes we faced together made such a difference. Rusty pales in comparison. I just don't think he took care of his family. I can't imagine how or why he didn't notice a change in his wife and try to get her some real help after the first or second baby. When a woman gets to the point where she's about to kill her children, surely there are warning signs for those who care enough to pay attention. I guess that's the answer--he just didn't care that much about her. He sure didn't wait to remarry.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Practical Beauty Find #1
I heart Cover Girl Lip Slicks. They give a hint of soft sheer color, lots of shine without that crazy, sparkly lip gloss look, and keep your lips soft and moist in the dry winter. A great practical beauty find for about $3.99!
Teething
Boo Boo is teething and his fingers are constantly in his mouth. And there is drool. Everywhere. Your Honor, at this time, I would like to introduce what has been marked as Exhibit A:
Even though you cannot hold him without getting drooled on, it's pretty cute. Until the crying starts.
My Continental OnePass balance is growing
R and Boo Boo managed to survive without me for one night while I traveled for business, so I promptly left two days later to go to NYC to visit my sister. She is getting her MBA at NYU and is way hipper than me, and I need some girl bonding away from the boys in my life.
(Aside: The trip to see my sister has been planned since January when we had assumed Boo Boo would be sleeping through the night as Dr. Ferber, guru of child sleep, promises all babies that are 5 months old can do. Boo Boo is learning, with some resistance, to fall asleep by himself at 8 pm after his bath, books, and snuggles, but still wakes up after sleeping for about 5 or 6 hours in the middle of the night to eat. Either he has a small tummy--he only barely weighs 14 lbs at almost 6 months of age--or he just likes the party at his crib at 2 am, yo. But anyway, he isn't sleeping from 8 pm to 6 am, which we would like to see him do. Which is all a long way of saying I owe R some sleep for this trip.)
Anyway, the mini-vacation for me was a lot of fun. We saw the St. Patrick's Day parade, the John Lennon memorial in beautiful Central Park, and fancy department stores like Bergdorf Goodman. I also ate some great food: seafood linguine with pink sauce in Little Italy, the best hot dog ever on 5th Avenue, and delicious lobster eggs Benedict from Thalia. I also did some shopping in Chinatown and am now the owner of Chanel earrings and a new Gucci purse and wallet. It was a little shady, what with the police scanners in the shop, earrings pulled out of saleswoman's sleeve and pushed into my pocket, and the fake wall that opened into a dark back room of Fendis and Louis Vuittons, but a fun adventure. And one of the highlights of the trip was getting to see more paintings by the Belgian surrealist Renee Margritte at the Museum of Modern Art. I've loved Margritte's work since I first saw a collection at the Menil, right here in Houston, so it was amazing to see some of his other work in New York.
(Aside: The trip to see my sister has been planned since January when we had assumed Boo Boo would be sleeping through the night as Dr. Ferber, guru of child sleep, promises all babies that are 5 months old can do. Boo Boo is learning, with some resistance, to fall asleep by himself at 8 pm after his bath, books, and snuggles, but still wakes up after sleeping for about 5 or 6 hours in the middle of the night to eat. Either he has a small tummy--he only barely weighs 14 lbs at almost 6 months of age--or he just likes the party at his crib at 2 am, yo. But anyway, he isn't sleeping from 8 pm to 6 am, which we would like to see him do. Which is all a long way of saying I owe R some sleep for this trip.)
Anyway, the mini-vacation for me was a lot of fun. We saw the St. Patrick's Day parade, the John Lennon memorial in beautiful Central Park, and fancy department stores like Bergdorf Goodman. I also ate some great food: seafood linguine with pink sauce in Little Italy, the best hot dog ever on 5th Avenue, and delicious lobster eggs Benedict from Thalia. I also did some shopping in Chinatown and am now the owner of Chanel earrings and a new Gucci purse and wallet. It was a little shady, what with the police scanners in the shop, earrings pulled out of saleswoman's sleeve and pushed into my pocket, and the fake wall that opened into a dark back room of Fendis and Louis Vuittons, but a fun adventure. And one of the highlights of the trip was getting to see more paintings by the Belgian surrealist Renee Margritte at the Museum of Modern Art. I've loved Margritte's work since I first saw a collection at the Menil, right here in Houston, so it was amazing to see some of his other work in New York.
Even though it was my cabbie's first day driving a cab and it took us twice the normal time to make it to La Guardia as he had to stop and ask for directions, I made it home safely, was able to put Boo Boo to bed last night without getting any "who are you?" looks, and am now back at work.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Adventures in Mississippi
Apparently there are some army troops being deployed to Iraq from the Jackson area this week. So all the hotel rooms in Jackson, Pearl, Flowood and Hattiesburg were booked up, reserved by families of soldiers in town to see off their loved ones. And there were no rental cars available at the airport. I managed to score a room at a La Quinta in Jackson by using hotels.com, but would have to take a cab to the rental car place in another county to pick up a car so I could drive to Hattiesburg where my hearing was. My two options were a Dodge Caravan minivan, or a PT Cruiser. I went for the PT Cruiser. Getting to the rental car place was an adventure.
In a burst of efficiency, while I was printing out my boarding pass at the office, I printed out mapquest directions from the airport to the rental car place, from the rental car place to the La Quinta, from the La Quinta to the courthouse, and from the courthouse to the rental car place. But I was in a hurry. So I didn't actually type the name of the places on the mapquest directions, I just had a bunch of sheets of paper that had directions from address 1 to address 2, and I scribbled what they were on top. I land at 5:10 in Jackson. The rental car place closes at 6. I haven't checked any bags, and the lady at the rental car place had told me she was just 15 minutes from the airport. Not a problem. I get in a cab and tell the driver to take me to Enterprise on Pearson. He seems confused, says there is no Enterprise there. That should have been my first clue. But no, I tell him, here are the directions, and I hand him the mapquest print out. He says, well, maybe its a new location and gamely sets of to Pearson. Sure enough, he took me to the La Quinta. I had given him the wrong directions. We raced back to Enterprise and I made it there at 5:55. Moral of the story: when printing multiple mapquest directions in another city, type the name of the place in too, not just its address.
Updated to add that the hearing went just fine, thanks, and yes, the sleep was glorious!
Monday, March 13, 2006
My first overnight business trip after the baby
Tomorrow I am leaving Boo Boo in the capable hands of R while I travel to a small town in Mississippi for a hearing. I will miss the munchkin, but I will get sleep, glorious sleep!
Saturday, March 11, 2006
If you can't laugh at your kid, what's the fun in having one?
My son sat up for the first time last week. I have pictures, but instead, I choose to share with you the picture of the first time he fell backwards.
Doesn't he look like he is doing some kind of fancy kung fu move? Look out Jackie Chan!
Thursday, March 09, 2006
If you lived in PA ...
... would you vote for Raj, the bow-tie wearing, ice-cream scooping, tennis player chasing, former Apprentice wannabe? Me, probably not. I know he's a moderate on many issues but he is the son of immigrants that wants immigration reform. Code for there's too many of those folk. What's up with that?
Fortune cookies are American
In this story, Will Smith says he wants to try authentic chicken tikka masala when he is in India. I love the creamy goodness that is chicken tikka masala as much as anyone, but he might be disappointed... most acknowledge it's a dish created in Indian restuarants in Britian and not India. Ofcourse since there is now an Indian Idol, maybe the dish will be at restuarants in India too.
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