ends and odds

1. I was doing my laundry at my friends' house this weekend when their kid, Max, who was hyped up on Sheer Attention Potential (both of his parents, his grandma, and I were all there to dote on him) followed me down to the basement.

"What's that?" he asked when I pulled the lint trap from the dryer.

"Lint."

"Lint? LINT!?!?"

And then he bounded away.

2. I was out this weekend when I heard three different sets of parents call to their children.

"Gatsby, no!"

"Yeats, come over here!"

"Karma, sweetie, time to go."

I'll give you three guesses as to where I was. (Hint: The answer rhymes with Ark Snope Slayground.)

3. There's apparently a perfume out there that you can bathe in that makes you smell like a big, fat, walking dryer sheet. I only know this because the woman sitting painfully close to me at a meeting on Friday had bathed in it. Eau de Bounce, anyone?

4. I watched Midnight Run recently and the screenwriters on that film have invented a new technique for dealing with sticky situations: when Robert DeNiro's character gets into a tight spot, he simply punches somebody's lights out. Doesn't matter if you're in a car, in an alleyway, flying an airplane... one good sock to the head and you're out!

5. On the train the other day, a very large, intimidating-looking black man got on and sat down next to me. I was thinking about feeling small and intimidated, but then this teeny tiny voice squeaked out of him, "Hello? Is it me you're looking for? I can see it in your eyes, I can see it in your smile, you're all I've ever wanted and my arms are open wide..."

I think he was actually singing it to me, but I pretended that I didn't even hear him. Because really, am I going to be wooed by the cheesiest song in all of history? I don't care if you are large and intimidating. You're singing LIONEL RICHIE for crying out loud!

6. I had a dream the other night that I was dating my physical therapist (the one who used to yell at me but now treats me like a princess), and in my dream, we sat down to dinner with his parents and his twenty brothers and sisters. It cost $5,000. And then I woke up.