Why didn't I think of that?

There are many ideas (and works of art) that seem so mind-bogglingly familiar that it seems inconceivable to me that I didn't think of them - nay! It seems inconceivable that we haven't all thought of them. Those lids for paint cans that have pour spouts - that's the perfect example. How did I not think of that?

Or PAM cooking spray. Or Twitter (frankly, I'm glad I didn't think of Twitter. Sorry, Nik). Anne got lippy with me the other day because I didn't think of Harry Potter, but I maintain that having a spouse who doesn't think of elaborate epic plotlines is an occupational hazard of marrying someone with ADD. I got lippy with her for not having thought of laser levels, so tit for tat, as they say.

Now Anne has pretty high expectations for herself. She gets particularly frustrated with herself for not having thought of stuff when we are in the toy department at Target. (Which happens much more frequently than you would think, and you can go ahead and judge, just keep your mouth shut because I bet I've got something on you too.) Sometimes I understand the frustration. They were selling, for example, hula hoops with a little light thingy in it that rolled around inside the tube lighting it up and spinning around. It was really cool. I can't believe that given two reasonably intelligent people in one household, neither of us had come up with light up hula hoops.

We continued through the aisles, and Anne let out a loud groan.

"Why didn't I think of that?" she asked, smacking herself on the forehead.

"You're mad at yourself for not having thought of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?" I asked disbelievingly.

"Yes." There was a great deal of sincerity in her voice, so I didn't push it.

What I think is odd about this is that we really are joking when we're "mad" that we didn't think of the light up hula hoop. It's so trivially goofy that I like to think that we didn't think of it because we were just thinking of much more urgent important things like the California budget crisis or the Ebola virus or pizza. But for a moment there, Anne seemed really and sincerely frustrated with herself for not having combined the concepts of mutant and teenage (which actually do fit together pretty snugly) with both ninjas and turtles, which are related insofar as they seem mutually incompatible.

And that is why I maintain that marriage can never become dull. Who knows what ephemeral concepts will tantalize and frustrate us as we go through our lives not having come up with stuff? The possibilities are infinite.

Stop the presses.

I am trying to redesign this blog so that it isn't so cluttered. Last weekend I pored over thousands of template designs, and submitted three that I was sort of all right with to pauverine Anne, Mom, Niki and my cousin Kristin, all of whom are far more visual than I am. Most of them voted for one that was also the one I was leaning towards, except that it feels a little dark and cluttered and nothing could be changed. I was sitting here today thinking about how I was going to execute this particular move knowing little of html, xml or what the difference between those two apparently incompatible things could be.

Then I found this website, and I could feel my blog step back from the edge of awful layoutedness. It shouldn't be long (like tomorrow) before I've got this puppy reorganized. These templates are so much nicer, so much cleaner, and so adaptable: I can't wait to get started when I get home tonight!

Three cheers for un-cluttered blog!

It's ALIVE!

Anne found me a blackberry on ebay. Nothing has changed about my cell phone use - we still just use it as telephone/text messaging. We don't do data plans. But the addition of a to-do list, a calendar, and a qwerty pad have tipped me over the edge into a pit of technophilic OCD. As I type my 98-book-long reading list into the memo pad and my life on my blackberry gets more and more organized, the laundry piles up and the dishes sit in the sink not washing themselves. How dare they?

Lalalala, going quietly mad.

Funny Thing

Did you know that if you blog about really personal health stuff, your website gets a lot of hits? 

 

I guess the internet is just like high school after all.  Where’s my locker?

Surprise!

This is the blog entry you've all been dreading. It's the blog entry where I share way too much.

It's just so funny, though, I can't help myself. And unlike other funny stories that I'm not suppposed to share, this one only involves me, which means that I'm not supposed to share only because it's too much information, and not because I'm trying to protect someone I know from public humiliation. So here I go. Sorry, everyone.

I've had lots of wonderful surprises in my life. I remember my twelfth birthday, when I opened a little jewelry box from my parents to find glittering peridot earrings for pierced ears. I remember my sixteenth birthday when Katrine scared the pants off of me with a huge suprise party that I had no idea was coming. Just a few months ago I got an LSAT score I wasn't even dreaming about.

But yesterday I got a terrible suprise, one of the most unpleasant ones I can think of outside the realm of the truly tragic. I went to the doctor for a physical for law school with a form. I figured we would be confining ourselves to the issues on the form (which covered issues like eyes and ears and infectious disease, but nothing gynecological) because I just had a full regular physical two years ago. Instead, I got into the doctor's room to find the dreaded little cape and sheet that they reserve for pelvic exams.

"But I'm not supposed to have one of those until next year!" I whined to the physician's assistant, who looked sternly at me, and said,

"Well, your insurance covers one of these per year, and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

I probably could have put up more of a fight, and thought bitterly of the republicans in congress trying to put a halt to Obama's health care program which is intended to cut unnecessary medical procedures.

But then I decided that this meant I could put another one of these off for three more years, and that sounded good as I hear the Bar Exam is unpleasant enough on its own.

For those of you of the male persuasion, a good doctor will ask a woman if she needs to use the restroom before a pelvic exam. There's just a lot of pressure.

I was in the little paper outfit, which conceals nothing, before realizing I had to pee. I was just about to try to dart across the hall to the bathroom when the doctor came in.

"Legs up," she said, pointing to the stirrups.

I probably should have said something at this point, but she seemed like she was in a hurry, and I didn't want to be a bother.

"This will be easier if you relax a little," she said kindly.

So I did. And I think I peed on her a little. I will not write on the internet why I think that.

Ah, revenge.

It was accidental. But someone should really have offered me the opportunity.

The real kicker was that after the exam was over, I was given a cup and instructed to give a urine sample.

I'm finding a new doctor.

Pizza Mia

The pizza was a minor success, and a constructive learning experience.

Lessons learned:
1. Without a pizza stone, pizza crust cannot reach its full potential. Pizza pans make an okay crust, but you just can't get that nice crispy bottom without the stone.

2. Mozzarella that goes on pizza should be dry, NOT in water. The thin layer of water on top of a pizza coming out of the oven doesn't taste bad; it just tastes like water on a pizza, which is like one of those Highlights exercises from the doctor's waiting room: which of these things is out of place?

3. Making your own pizza crust is one of the easiest things in the world to do.

4. Don't bake the basil - it doesn't taste bad, but it sure doesn't look as pretty.

5. Pizza is one of the most delicious foods in the world, despite the above-mentioned problems.

Here are pictures:

Mom, please don't show this to Dad.

My father is not a health nut in the spelt and flaxseed sense of the expression that is so common here in granolaland. (But no one eats granola here anymore! Have you read about the fat content? Or the taste? I kid, I kid.) But he is a health nut in a very sensible way, operating under the philosophy that if you avoid bad cholesterol, you are also by proxy avoiding bad fats and bad calories - this, if you will notice, is not a fad diet that forces you to give up carbs, but an extremely sensible way of just making smart decisions about food.

Now, I generally make smart decisions about food, but I am not anywhere close to being as conscientious about it as my dad, and those years living in the South didn't really do a lot to make me altogether calorie-conscious. My cholesterol is under control and I am decently physically active, so I just try to be smart on the whole and operate on the philosophy that if I'm going to throw health food to the wind, it had better be worth it. I only want the good stuff. I have not entirely been able to get away from the guilt aspect of this type of eating though, hence the title of this post.

But seriously, those years in the South helped me to discover what the good stuff really is. I mean, I already knew about good cheese, french onion soup, prosciutto and ice cream, but as far as I'm concerned that's just about all the gourmet world has to offer in terms of sinful delights. The rest of it lies in the deep fried pickles, barbecued pork butts and mashed potatoes of the southland.

Since I met Anne, she's been talking about fried green tomatoes, which is something she had unlimited access to in college in Alabama. I was not so lucky (stupid Massachusetts, where there isn't a frying policy) (seriously, the first time I met Anne's dad, he looked at the dinner that I made and said to me, "If you ain't fryin', you ain't cookin'." It was old-fashioned in-law ribbing, and he was mostly joking, but there really is a policy issue here), and thus have been hearing about this wonder of the fried world, without ever having had a chance to sample it. We tried to grow a tomato plant in Chapel Hill, but we just couldn't get enough sun on our porch - we wound up with an enthusiastic grower of leaves and pretty yellow flowers that just fell off without ever producing a single fruit.

But now, as you know, we have a green tomato plant. And last night, I bit into the most wonderful flavor I think I've ever experienced. It was sweet, it was salty, it was crunchy. It made me think that maybe we should try frying green apples. I took one bite and was transported back to the sultry evenings we spent in Williamsburg during Anne's internships at William & Mary in grad school, where we sat on the front porch of the house the theater put her up in for the summer. It didn't have air conditioning, so we spent every evening slapping bugs and reading Harry Potter on the front porch drinking lemonade. It was wonderful. The house was about a quarter mile from Colonial Williamsburg, so we would walk up the dirt road, kicking up dust just like they do in the movies. Once each summer we would have a nice dinner at one of the historic taverns, and at all times the main character was the heat. It made this haze over everything, and everyone was all shiny and sweaty, and there were fireflies, and that incredible sound of cicadas everywhere. I really miss that. And that's what this tasted like.

So here are the pictures that none of you can EVER show my Dad - and remember, if you're going to eat badly, only eat the good stuff.