« April 2008 | Main | June 2008 »
What they tell you: "Although he has a merry and tractable disposition, the Beagle is not the dog for every family. His wanderlust, need for activity, and loud voice make him unsuitable for sedentary families or for apartments or unfenced yards. This is a sociable dog developed to work in packs. Beagles have a need for constant companionship."
What they don't: The Beagle doesn't even want you to take a bubble bath alone.
A couple of months ago Abigail got herself a library card and it was blah, blah, blah, the library is the most important invention of our time, for weeks on end. And I was like, c'mon, the library is what the bookstore is for. And she was all, when the Truth is revealed to you, me and my fellow library card holders will not judge you for your previous disbelief; we am morally superior on account of all the free books. Turns out she was right.
Last month I was strong-armed into a library card, and now I am superior, too! I thought the process of procuring the actual account with the library would be much harder than it was. Like, not long ago I opened up another savings account at my bank--the bank at which I have been banking for my whole life possibly--and it took two entire hours with all the background checking and interrogation and whatever else. That is: I was putting even more money into a bank at which I already have money, and they treated me like a common burglar. I took a whole file folder of documents to the library: driver's license, debit card, credit card, passport, bank statement, phone bill, resume, background check, list of books I've read, essay on Robert Frost--just in case. But all they needed was my address and a handshake. They gave me two library cards--one for my keychain and one for my wallet--and told me I could check out 50 books right that second if it pleased me to do so. Also: free wi-fi, free coffee, and library t-shirts for only ten dollars.
In Georgia, we have this thing called The Pines system, which is a state-wide online catalog of all the books in all the libraries, and if you want a book that is in very south Georgia delivered right to your very own library, all you have to do is log on, search, and click. In only twenty-four hours the librarian is calling to tell you to come on over for your book, and she made some homemade banana-nut bread; she'll save you a piece.
I ordered ten entire books from The Pines that will be here today. Which is actually just in time, because yesterday I finished the last Gossip Girl recap of the season. And I need something to take my mind off the pain.
Thank you all for your suggestions for the caption contest. I specifically liked when Tim said I could fly! Amy and I chose Shannon as the winner because her suggestion made us laugh out loud on account of how true it is. Plus also, she appealed to the Harry Potter part of my heart. Here is her winning caption. (Shannon, email me about your prize!)
Yesterday I went to PetSmart for the fourth time in five days, because Scout's sole purpose in life is to wreck all of the toys in all of the world. I told the sales associate at PetSmart that I needed an indestructible toy for a Beagle. She tried to give me this flimsy rubber newspaper, and I was like, woman, my dog will destroy that with her mind before I get in the front door. I said the only solution I can think of is to let Scout chew on bricks, but she won't do it because there's no squeaker inside. After testing it with my own teeth, I ended up purchasing the Bamboo Play Combat X Battle-Tested Tug Bone, with squeaker. It's been 15 hours, and it is--amazingly--still in tact. Probably because Scout has spent most of the last 15 hours chewing on Margaret.
Time for a contest! Below is a picture of the best dog in the world. And also a picture of Scout Portard. Leave your LOL Caption in the comments for each picture. The winner gets an Amazon gift card, plus also a free Beagle puppy!
Heh. Just kidding. I mean, I am serious about the gift card, but not about the Beagle.
When Scout came into our lives, the question Amy and I asked over and over was, "Can Margaret learn to love a puppy?"
Answer: apparently so.
Amy and I call this Number One Top Movie Snack. See, it's popcorn with M&Ms sprinkled on top. Just say that out loud, roll it around in your mouth: popcorn with M&Ms. Genius. If you're one of those people who enjoy salty and sweet together (like Amy), then this is going to blow your mind. If you're one of those people who enjoy salty and sweet separately (like me), you can eat the delicious popcorn first while the M&Ms get warm. Then you can reach down into the bottom of the bowl and pluck out the M&Ms when the shell is thin and the chocolate is melty and delicious. It's a win-win-win for anyone who is awesome. (Like you.)
This is my week in arts and entertainment. What are you kids reading and watching? Raise your hand if you're going to see The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian Friday night for the action and also to see the Harry-Potter and the Half-Blood Prince teaser. Just me and Amy, then? Alas, earwax.
Books!:
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Jane Austen does not have an equal in wit or social candor; and to quote Prudie from Karen Joy Fowler's Jane Austen Book Club, "Austen can plot like a son of a bitch." She is my favorite author, moving me from giggle to adoring sigh to disdain to raucous laughter all in one paragraph. But there is something... unfair in all of her books, save Persuasion. My sister and I call it "The Austen Payoff." She draws her readers' emotions deeper and deeper into her stories until we are about to bust with longing for Elizabeth or Emma or Elinor to shout out how deeply they are in love, and then Austen just... pulls out. Pardon the double entendre, but it really is quite like deliciously excruciating foreplay followed by a yawn and a, "Well, that was fun; shall we sleep?" Right at the climax of the story, Austen is all, And what did they say to each other now that their true feelings were revealed? Well, pretty much what you'd expect two people in love to say. Then they got their parents' permission, and it was good. The end. Maybe it is because it was her last novel, or maybe she just wanted to stick it to Charlotte Bronte, but when Anne and Captain Wentworth come unglued at the end of Persuasion, it feels so authentic. It is Jane at her best. I reread Persuasion earlier this week and my number one feeling was swoon.
Mercy Watson to the Rescue, Written by: Kate DiCamillo. Illustrated by: Chris Van Dusen
Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Desperaux is one of the most perfect stories ever written. And The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane moved me to tears more than once. The latest character DiCamillo has brought to life is a little pig named Mercy Watson who loves his toast with a great deal of butter. These books are aimed at a much younger audience than DiCamillo's previous stories, and while the first one in the series, Mercy Watson to the Rescue, is cute, what really drew me in are the illustrations. Chris Van Dusen's incandescent, classic drawings of Mercy and his parents and the two old sisters who live next door just made this story. Look at this:
I'd never heard of Van Dusen before this, but I would gladly give him and J. Otto Seibold the brushes to paint my whole world.
Remember Me, Sophie Kinsella
I checked out books from the library for the first time this week, and my librarian practically forced Sophie Kinsella's Remember Me into my hands. Even though I read loads of kids' books, I am, for some inexplicable reason, all judgey when it comes to anything that appears to be chick lit. I mean, I am a chick. I love chick flicks (see below) more than any person in the world. This book was absolutely 13 Going on 30 meets The Devil Wears Prada meets Bridget Jones's Diary. It was no Persuasion, but it had me laughing out loud the whole way through, and I learned some new British slang. I don't know why I have an aversion to books with bright pink or turquoise covers, but this was a step in the direction of curing the literary asshole in me.
Movies!:
Baby Mama
Here is what I learned from Baby Mama: If Tina Fey asked me to have her babies, I totally would. Yeah okay, I already knew that. Baby Mama was a hoot. A predictable hoot, but a hoot nonetheless. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler should make a gazillion movies together, and I would pay to see every single one of them. Next time, though, they should write their own screenplay.
What Happens in Vegas
There are always people who dismiss the rom-com and judge me for not watching more Important Movies, but you know what? I like to watch people fall in love. And I like to laugh. And I love happy endings. The romantic comedy is a perfect situation for me. It's not that I don't know what's happening in Tibet or what has happened in Rwanda. I know it a lot; that's probably why I need the distraction. Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher are endearing in What Happens in Vegas, and their chemistry puts this one shelf above the average chick flick. Their sidekicks' tag during the credits was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I'll be quoting it for probably ever.
Everyone has to be terrified of something, I suppose. Not long ago, in fact, Amy, Jenn, and I had a conversation about what if all of a person's biggest fears combined to form one huge Super Fear. Amy said her Super Fear would involve enclosed spaces and height and the ocean, like maybe being tossed out of an airplane in a coffin which plummeted into the sea. Jenn said her Super Fear was to be stuck under water with the only way of escape being to swim through a ring of fire, then a ring of porcelain dolls, then a ring of clowns. I was unsure what my Super Fear would be, so Amy cleared it right up. "Your Super Fear is being attacked by bears," she said. "No, vampires. No, no, check this out: vampire bears. Your super fear is being attacked by vampire bears. Vampire bears who are like, 'In addition to mauling you and sucking your blood, we're here to tell you Bette and Tina will never get back together!" By that time, I was curled up in a little ball, crying.
Happy Wednesday, friends. What's your Super Fear?
My sister called yesterday, and I’m sorry to say the first words I said to her were, “Hey, Je—Get her head out of your mouth! Margaret, drop the puppy! PUT HER DOWN!”
“So,” Jenn asked. “How’s that stay at home mom thing going?”
The truth is: I hardly recognize myself since I left my job. I’m doing things I would have never done before, like laundry four times a week and dishes every day, and—get this—cooking from recipes. I have also taken to talking about our dogs’ poop, like that is ever acceptable. Every afternoon, I end up telling Amy when and where the dogs went, and how, and… God, I can’t even talk about this. It’s important because we have to keep our eyes on Scout’s bowel movements for the vet, and also because we need to try and deter her from crapping the floor.
There are other things, subtle things, too, that have changed since I became a mother of three. Well, mother of two, really; the cat practically runs her own business out of our sun room. Yesterday Amy came home from work and said, “Oh, you’re all dressed up. What’s the occasion?”
I was wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops, which I quickly pointed out.
“Yeah, but you’re usually in your pajamas by 5:00,” Amy said.
I tried to blow it off like it was no big deal, but she’s right: I usually am in my pajamas by 5:00. Yesterday, however, I needed to wear jeans, because, see, I can’t eat M&Ms at room temperature; I only like them if they’re warm. And the best way to get them warm is to stick them in your pocket. And pajamas don’t have pockets. So I put on jeans. To warm up chocolate candy.
I should probably sit and ponder this sad state of affairs, but I have to go now. I haven’t folded laundry in, like, 45 minutes.
After my International Tour de Potter, I decided it was time I give the books a reread, which I haven't done since Deathly Hallows came out. I finished up Chamber of Secrets last night, and at the end of the book there was a blurb for Prisoner of Azkaban. I read it, and then I called my sister to see if it was the same in her copy of the book. It totally was.
A prize to the first person who spots Scholastic's mistake.
There was a time--though I hardly remember it now--when Amy and I would lament the nights Margaret woke us up by scratching on the front door to let us know she had to go to the bathroom. Yes, my perfect, celestial dog, who descended straight from The Lord with a fully formed sense of mercy and justice, an intrinsic desire to please us, an innate capacity to discern our moods, a complete arsenal of tricks, and the absolute inability to piss on the carpet. Never mind that she snuggled me when I was sick, or let me cry crocodile tears onto her head when I was sad, or that she always alerted me five minutes before Gossip Girl was to start: I complained about her. The really stupid thing about our whinging is that even when we had to get up in the middle of the night to let Margaret out, the only thing it involved was opening the front door and letting her run into the yard, where she promptly and politely relieved herself, and ran back inside, looking appropriately contrite for having awakened us. Oh, how we took Margaret's perfection for granted, until we rescued The Beagle.
There was a boy named Howard at a summer camp I worked at once, and it was common knowledge that his mother had been on drugs when Howard was born. Nothing was physically or mentally wrong with Howard. In fact, he was kind of a genius. But every time one of the counselors would start to correct his behavior, his grandmother--who worked there also--would say, "Don't get on to him; his mama was on drugs when he was born!" One afternoon, at the Martin Luther King Jr. museum in downtown Atlanta, Howard ran out into traffic. I shouted at him to come back to the sidewalk, and his grandmother shouted at me not to shout at him. "He was a crack baby!" she said, as if that would cause a cab to bounce off of him ten years later.
When I got home from Europe, Scout became my Howard.
She'd already had her first heart treatment, and there are so many things she isn't allowed to do: she can't get her heart rate up, she has to eat loads of food to build up her strength, she has to rest to fight off the bad effects of the drugs. Amy had practically been awake for two straight weeks dealing with Scout. In addition to all the things Scout can't do right now because of her heart, there are dozens of other things we have to keep her from doing because she is a puppy. Leave your shoes on the floor? Devoured. Let her sniff the carpet for more than three seconds? Poop. Walk outside without letting her know you're leaving? She will wake up Canadians with her howling. For a few days, I let all this slide. "Her heart is unwell," I kept telling Amy. (A cab will just bounce off of her.)
Yesterday, as I was walking outside to get the mail, Scout darted past me out the door, weaving herself between my legs and barking to beat the band. I fell over into the bushes. "What the hell?" I said, as she stopped in front of me to continue wailing. "You almost broke my frikkin' neck." Margaret was sitting on the landing, just inside the front door, waiting for the command to come outside. She has two barks. The first says, "There is an axe-murderer in the front yard." The second says, "In case you missed it, the doorbell just rang, signaling that the pizza is here." She doesn't go anywhere without permission.
"You are perfect," I called to Margaret, as she sat inside and wagged her tail. "And you," I said to Scout. "You are kind of a moron."
The things we have to correct about Margaret are like: "Don't sit so close to the television, Sweetie. It's bad for your eyes."
With Scout, it's beyond the point where we are surprised or exasperated when she eats our things or wets our beds. With Scout, when she poops on the floor, the best we can do is: "Just... don't eat it."
Every time I travel, everywhere I travel, I find myself gloriously surrounded by Australians. I don't know if it's the amount of sun they get or what, but Aussies are, generally speaking, the most amiable people on the planet. Plus, they make such better use of swear words than Americans or the English. I started making a glossary of Australian phrases when I was in Italy, and once my friends from Down Under found out about it, they offered up loads of vocab lessons, writing their favorite terms on napkins and place mats to help out with the spelling. Even though I butcher the accent, several Aussies offered to sponsor me for me for dual citizenship, so long as I promised never to say "shrimp on the barbie" or drink Foster's beer.
And now, as an honorary citizen of the greatest country/continent/commonwealth in the world, I find it my duty to educate you.
Australian For Beginners/Yanks
Food and Beverages
Grog = Alcohol
Bottle-o = Liquor store
McErs = McDonald's
Snags = Sausages (These you can put on a barbie.)
Lolly water = Sugary alcoholic drinks
Bugger (The most versatile word in the country.)
Bugger = Dammit
Bugger off = Go away
Bugger all to do = Nothing to do
Adjectives
Narky = Annoyed
Munted = Screwed Up
Bogan = Unkempt (You could also say "Yobo" here.)
Dag/Daggy = Uncool
Phrases
Off your tits = So drunk
Going off = When a place is thumping
Out whoop whoop = A place in the middle of nowhere
Game on, Moles = It's on, bitches.
Pull up your socks = Stop slacking
Cutting my grass/ Cutting my lunch = Moving in on a guy/girl that you are into
What's the haps = Sup?
What's the go? = What's are we headed?
Once you've made flashcards and studied up, we'll move to Intermediate Aussie, and I'll teach you a pub chant, and let you know why it's not okay to shout said chant in Berlin.
I prefer books to knick-knacks, it is my way. I didn't buy any lace or masks in Venice. I didn't buy any perfume in Paris. I didn't even buy a beer stein in Germany. For European souvenirs, I bought books.
German books.
French books.
British books.
Italian books.
Because, hello, they match my American books.
The world's not so big!
The last thing I said was Verona, but from there I went to Venice and from Venice to I went to Switzerland and from Switzerland to Paris. It was warm enough in Venice for short sleeves, and I ate a LOT of pizza and gelato, plus also I took a gondola ride and visited the Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica, both of which BLEW. MY. MIND. In Switzerland I took a train ride up into the alps and then a sunset boat ride across Lake Lucerne. I took more pictures there than anywhere else on account of it was like being inside a painting. In Paris I did... everything. I had quarter-sized blisters on my feet after two days in that city, and it was very worth it.
When I got back to London, I nearly prostrated myself before the Underground station in Russel Square, so happy was I not to have to wrestle the trams in Amsterdam or the taxis in Munich or the subway/bus/bike stations in Paris. In Amsterdam, I caught the correct tram back to my hotel at 11:53 pm. (Trams stop running at midnight.) And in Paris, I caught the 11:45 train back to my hotel. (Trains stop running at midnight.) Part of my public transportation woes was the language barrier, part of it is that I--like Joey--need to go inside a map to read it, and part of it is that The Tube spoiled me, what with it's circus-colored map and the lovely lady with the perfect accent that says, "Next stop: Victoria Station. Mind the gap between the train and the platform." Sadly, London lulled me into a false sense of security, because it was there that my backpack was stolen.
I was just coming out of a Waterstone's book shop when I noticed a woman in the middle of Trafalgar Square that seemed to be in serious distress, but every one was sweeping past her without stopping. I rushed toward the woman, reaching out to catch her just before she hit the ground. She was having a full blown asthma attack, and her inhaler was empty. I shouted for a doctor or a nurse, because I was just a dumb tourist, but no one in the growing crowd had any medical training. Finally someone came up with an inhaler and the woman was able to catch her breath enough not to die. I phoned her husband as the ambulance was pulling up. It took her away and people patted my back, and then I realized my backpack was missing.
My money belt with all money and credit cards and my passport and a list of phone numbers was in my backpack because of the way I'd rushed into traffic from Waterstone's. Also inside was my camera, with all my European pictures, and my souvenirs. Some things happened then with phone calls and emails and paperwork, and then the most outrageous thing of my life: I went back to the police station and the person who stole my backpack had returned it! He said it was a bad omen to steal from someone who was saving someone else's life. The backpack was checked for drugs and explosives, and insanely enough, it was fine. Not even my one pence coins were missing.
My trip was better than anything I ever imagined. It was actually kind of perfect. So, too, is being Home.