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Famous People Who Want To Be My Neighbor

August 31, 2010 By 7 Comments

Catchy title, huh?

Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.  And clever with titles.

Brendan Fraser would love to be my neighbor.  I just typed “neighbro” by accident, which sort of works, because I can imagine having a sibling-kind of relationship with him.   I cannot explain WHY he would want to be my neighbor other than that.  I think we’d get along.  He’d like my family.  He’d hang out on the back porch.  He and my husband would help each other trim tree branches and paint stuff.  He would like my cooking and frequently filch cookies from the counter before they’ve cooled.

Heather Graham would also love to be my neighbor.  My husband thinks this is an excellent idea, by the way, but I suspect his reasons are different from my own.  As my friend JennRuss would say, AHEM.  Heather would constantly be barging in the back door at all hours of the day and night.  At three a.m. she’d show up and ask, “Did I wake you?  OH MY GOD!  I’m so sorry!!!”  And it would be impossible to be annoyed with her because she’s freaking adorable and fun and so Heather Graham-y.  Plus she’s be holding a bottle of Vicodin and asking, “I think my dog ate a bunch of these.  Is that bad?”  Or she’d show up at nine on a Sunday in a sequined mini dress from the night before, asking if she could just sleep for a few hours because she’s locked out again.  But could she first borrow some bandaids or maybe some gauze because she tried to break in but cut her thumb.  Then we’d end up in the Emergency Room.  Heather would often need to borrow a plunger.  She’d be a regular last minute Thanksgiving dinner guest.

Joe Scarborough would LOOOOOOVVVEEE to be my neighbor.  I, on the other hand, would hate it.  He would love it because he would get a huge charge out of coming to my house every damn day and trying to convince me that he’s smarter than I am and that he’s right and I’m wrong.  Every once in a while we’d agree on something and I’d think I’d be safe for a while, but he’d only be encouraged and come back with some ridiculous statement about immigration or Rahm Emmanuel and we’d be yelling again and I’d be waving my arms and rolling my eyes so far back in my head that I’d get a migraine and TWGH would just sigh and go in the house (smarter than both of us by miles).    Scarborough’s wife would call him on his iphone, “Get the hell home for dinner, Joe. Leave the Dunnings ALONE.”    Eventually, he’d just be like Mr. Roper.  Always around and making noise, but a familiar presence.

Angelina and Brad.  But only because kids love to play at my house and theirs would just roll on in and make themselves at home while Brangelina jet off to make movies somewhere.  Hello free babysitting.

Wanda Sykes practically IS my neighbor.  And is my goal to get her to Wednesday Spaghetti.  Hello Wanda??!!  We’ve got a big one coming up!  Call me!  Wanda and I would be best buddies.  She would drop in all the time just to say hi and to drop off her kids when she needed some “me” time.  I would do the same with my kids.  Soon, my kids would call her “Aunt Wanda,” and tell outrageous stories about the nutty stuff “Aunt Wanda” does.  They wouldn’t even know that she’s a big star, because she’s grounded and real and shops at the Acme just like we do.  Wanda would come over and just hang out, and before we knew it, it would be midnight and we’d have killed a few bottles of red wine and our stomachs would hurt from laughing so much.   I know I could count on Wanda to pick my kids up if I’m running late, and she knows that if she’s out of town on business, and her pipes burst, I’ll make sure the plumber comes and everything is fixed up by the time she gets home. Because that’s what neighbors do.

This is only Part the First of my list, because I can’t finish it now.  I left my wallet at Target and have to go retrieve it.  I’m blaming adult onset ADD.  Or dementia.  Or the fact that I’m back at work after the best summer ever and am so depressed about it that I’m contemplating taking the dog’s sedatives to get through the day.

Filed Under: Celebutaunt, I Just Make Most of This Up Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Is it Hot In Here or Is It Just Me?

August 25, 2010 By 14 Comments

In which The Well Read Hostess gets uncharacteristically personal.

Feel free to change the channel.

I’m looking at you family members, neighbors, former and future students (who shouldn’t be here in the first place, buzz off and anyway, trust me, you are going to be so sorry if you stick around.  Don’t say you weren’t warned.)

I just discovered that I need those reading magnifier glasses.  I’m pretty OK with that.  I’ve always liked the idea of wearing them on a funky chain and perching them on the end of my nose and looking at people over them.

I have white hair.  Not that you’d know that if I didn’t tell you.  But I do.  Not gray.  White.  Opposite of black?  Yeah.  Like that.  I knew it was coming;  my mom’s hair was white when she was in her late 20′s.  On her it was and is gorgeous. On me, less so.  But I’m keeping one small stripe of it in the front – sort of easing into the concept of white haired lady.  Plus I like how the stripe looks.  The root upkeep is the stuff of nightmares, but since I don’t do a whole lot else in the way of preening and primping, what the hell.

Since I turned 40 every carbohydrate within a ten mile radius seeks out my ass like an ICBM.  And my metabolism has slowed to a pre-global warming glacial movement pace.

This summer I had a dime sized hunk of cancerous flesh carved out of my chest.  I looked good during those years of anointing myself with Johnson’s Baby Oil and laying out from 10-2 like it was my paid job, but everything has a price.  I have been assured that this was the first of many such carvings to come.

Last summer I had a procedure called a uterine ablation.  I’ll spare you the gory details and summarize thusly:

Had babies, periods become horrible, ow ow and really messy, nice doctor gave me IV drugs and burned out the lining of my uterus, ta da.

Different people have different results with this procedure, and often women have some sort of periods on a regular basis – nothing is different hormonally, after all.  I, however, have had a total of about five minutes of discernible menstruation in the last 14 months.  Once a month I get a big zit or two, my boobs get sore, I get a little bitchy, irrational, possessed by demon hellmonsters tense, and then…nothing.

In the last week I’ve been blindsided by emotibombs four or five times.  La la la, minding my own business, making a sandwich, walking the dog, taking out the trash, whatever….bawling.  Ugly, snotty sobbing over absolutely anything – a nice email from a friend, it’s not raining, I like my kid’s first grade teacher, the dog looks cute.

Do you see where this is heading?

I’m not really sure if I get a period or not.

I keep asking my husband if it’s “really hot in here.”  (Answer:  No.)

After I adjusted the air conditioning for the third time today, my husband very delicately suggested that possibly maybe could it be that honey do you suppose it might be?

They’ll never find his body.

I thought I was going to come unglued when I turned 40. I even prepared for said ungluing by leaving town and psychologically bubblewrapping myself ahead of time.  I did fine, though, and have, indeed, loved being 40, 41, and 42.  And since I’ve decided to stop at 42, I expect I’ll keep on loving 42 until I die!

But holy shit people.  The M word?  I don’t know if I’m up for this.

p.s.  My mother is either going to call, email, or comment within ten minutes of reading this to remind me that my grandmother started menopause at age 32.  Save your dime, woman.  I know.  She also rode around in a horseless carriage, relied heavily upon Bisquick and jello in the kitchen, and wore a D cup;  we have a lot in common but not everything!

Filed Under: Facts of Life, I Just Make Most of This Up, Keeping it Real Tagged With: , ,

Doesn’t Everybody Have One?

August 24, 2010 By 6 Comments

Everybody has place to go with a creek.  Right?  Or a river?  Or a stream?  Or a run?  Or a something?

Maybe not.  I guess people in New Mexico or Arizona or Nevada or East Texas or some other dry place might not.  Poor saps.

Everywhere I’ve ever lived has had one, though.  And this summer, I’ve been every day.

The creek.  The woods.  The place you go when you’re a kid and catch frogs and splash around and pretend you’re a pirate and build a fort and get filthy.  The place you go when you’re a slightly older kid to brood after school and sneak cigarettes and beers and hopefully not much else on the weekends with your friends.  And the place you go when you’re over all that for a walk, or a jog, or to clear your head, or because your dog needs exercise, or because your kids need to get out of the house, or some combination of all of the above.

Today we went to the “college woods,” through which Crum Creek flows.  These are the woods of my youth, located one town to the right of us.  I was craving variation from our regular haunt, The Old Mill – Ridley Creek runs through those woods.   When we lived another town over, before we had kids and before this dog, we frequented Rocky Run and Chester Creek.  When I lived in Chestnut Hill it was the Wissahickon.

Each has its own atmosphere, psychic temperature, and offerings – there’s a great rope swing at The Old Mill, and we sometimes find fossils.  Crum Creek yields plentiful pottery, some truly old and interesting (although I did have to spend some time convincing one intrepid future archaeologist that “Yuengling Bottle Circa 2009″ was really not such a rare treasure).  Chester Creek is clean and cool and full of trout.  The Wissahickon has the Indian statue and secret bridges.

My favorite will forever be Greenough Park in Missoula, Montana.  Maybe because of when I when was there, but maybe that’s not it.  I ran then – and it’s almost exactly a one mile loop.  My big Bernese Mountain Dog and I would go, planning to run it twice, but never did.  Once was good.  Parts of the path were paved and perfectly maintained and parts were wild and overgrown.  My best friend’s neighbor used to threaten to go rake it when her life was feeling out of control.  You’d go one day and the leaves would be on the trees, and the next you’d be knee deep in snow.   Rattlesnake Creek runs through Greenough Park.  The name wasn’t chosen to sound all “Wild Westy;”  it’s more of a descriptor.

The second summer I lived in Missoula was “a hot one.”  One day Dexter (the dog) and I showed up at Greenough to find that someone had damned up a section of Rattlesnake Creek to create a pool at its widest point – about 25 feet across – about four feet deep.  My Swiss Mountain Dog, a previously non swimming dog, swam in slow, languid circles, using his tail as a feathery rudder for hours.

God, how I miss that park.  Almost as much as I miss the dog.

Filed Under: Back to Nature, Facts of Life, Synecdoche Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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