ho ho oh my tummy!

A Recipe:

3/4 cup butter
1/4 cup milk
2t vanilla
9 cups powdered sugar
4 awesome friends
16,349,271 cookies


Combine first four ingredients, and add to food coloring in five different bowls. Slowly add friends (one of whom got a little lost on the way and stumbled across a lovely neighborhood man masturbating in the park, and another of whom asked for directions near the subway and was answered by a woman whose mouth was entirely filled with gold -- and I have the audacity to say I live in Park Slope??). Start frosting the 16,349,271 cookies.
I had my Second Annual Cookie Decorating Party today, and the results were just as spectacular as last year's. If you recall, there was a great deal of sugar ingested, and some moaning in agony several hours later. I think much of that was curttailed this year by the introduction of several savory foods, and some bloody marys. But maybe I am only speaking for myself...
(Some participants were better prepared than others, simply for having gone through the agony of the tummyache last year. This unnamed participant was not one of them.)


One of the best parts about this year's party was that it combined five of my favorite women, none of whom had met each other. So it was an opportunity for my worlds to really collide -- with frosting!
Andrea (above) was a meticulous decorator, creating this year's Best In Show. However, her perfectionism kept her low on the productivity scale. Keri was a little slow to get the creativity flowing (her first cookie, Christmas Rock, was one of the winners in the Ugliest category), but once the roll started, there was no stopping her. Lisa got onto a piping kick -- so much so that we were considering an entirely new category called Best OCD, in which the only contenders belonged to Lisa and Andrea. Ruthann showed some serious growth since last year, not making a single black cookie this year. And me? Well, I think I stuck like to glue to my traditional theme -- after all, I do eventually want to eat or give away these cookies. (Too many ugly ones and your options are limited.)

But enough build up! The envelope, please!

In the Best Traditional category we have:

Santa (by Kate), Menorah (by Lisa), Ice Skate (by Ruthann) and Christmas Tree (by Kate).

In the Best Non-Traditional category we have:
Boot (by Ruthann), Hugging Stars (or Fucking Stars, depending on who you ask) (by Andrea), Gray Christmas Tree (by Keri)

I would like, ex post facto, to add another contender to the Best Non-Traditionals, the Flipping-You-The-All-American-Christmas-Bird-Turned-Into-A-Dreidel (by Lisa)
(Perhaps you can see how this cookie was made from a hand and then turned itself around, through love, dedication and hard work, into a festively American dreidel. Perhaps not.)

A new category this year -- Best Gingerfolk:
Generic Vet (by Andrea), Rock Star in a Monokini (by Ruthann), Chest Hair Man (by Andrea) and Kate's Ice Skating Date (by Kate) (duh).

Everyone's Favorites, of course -- Ugliest!
There was an almost clean sweep in this category. Christmas Pile (by Ruthann), The Statue of Liberty (by Keri), Christmas Rock (by Keri) and Swamp Thing (by Keri).

And of course, everyone's favorite, Best In Show:
This is Suburban Mom (with fanny pack, festive sweater and easy-to-manage hairdo) (by Andrea).

I love this party for several reasons -- 1) it gets me to clean my house, 2) it lets me spend time with my fabulous friends doing something creative, 3) I get cookies, 4) it forces my friends to drag their butts to my house (from as far away as Columbia and the Bronx!), 5) I get cookies, 6) my friends get to hang out with each other, and 7) I get cookies.

I feel really lucky to have the friends I do. And I will throw this party every year if I have to put on 75 pounds each December to do it. My friends are worth it!

the single girl and her christmas tree: a parable

Once upon a time there was a girl in the city and she was single. She was content to be single because, well, that's how it was, and there was really no point fighting it.

One fine, December afternoon, the single girl called her friend and neighbor, Jimmy, to see if he wanted to come pick out a Christmas tree with her. He had helped her last year, offering his opinion on her shrub selection, taking the trunk end as they wrangled the tree up the stairs and generally bringing holiday cheer to the event of Tree Selection.

This year, however, Jimmy was out of town, and the single girl really needed to get a tree TODAY. (It was going to snow tomorrow, and she had to have it in time for her party next weekend.)

So the single girl bundled up in her coat, grabbed her granny cart, and trucked off to the local merchants to buy a tree.

Sadly, the folks at the Polish grocery store were extorting their customers, charging $35 for a tree that barely reached the single girl's chin. Lenny's Pizzeria was also selling trees, but they were all taller than the single girl, and she didn't want to bite off more than she could chew. Or carry.

So the single girl headed out to the dreaded no-man's-land called Home Depot. Her married friends refused to go there anymore, calling it the Auschwitz of Trees. ("Birchenwald!" the single girl thought to herself as she strolled, cracking an inappropriate smile. "Firschwitz!") But they would have a tree for her, she knew, and they wouldn't charge her an arm and a leg. "I'm brave," she said to herself, "I'll be too busy shopping to think bad thoughts."

She was right.

The single girl had no idea what kind of tree to get, so she started shopping by height and price. Anything around or under $30 would be acceptable. Of course, this being Home Depot, nothing was labeled, nobody seemed to work there and the single girl very quickly became overwhelmed and lonely.

Focusing on the task at hand (and not at the tears pooling in the corner of her eyes -- loneliness? or just the biting wind??), she picked a tree, held it at arm's length (which is a very inconvenient length from which to survey a whole tree) and decided hell, it was good enough, and she plunked it perpendicularly across her granny cart, taking out everyone in a five foot radius.

When she got to the teller, to her delight the single girl discovered her tree was a mere $24.95, and that the woman with the chainsaw would chop off the bottom inch for her. Her shorter tree was then placed into friendly netting and the single girl popped it into her granny cart to stroll off into the sunset.

Near the middle of the parking lot, however, the single girl noticed her tree was leaning over like a drunk on a barstool, causing the granny cart to list and veer to the left. She rearranged her Adorable Single Girl's Purse and really put her back into it. This is what single girls have to do, afterall.

By the time the single girl and her drunken tree arrived at home, the single girl was running through a list of all the things she liked about being single. "I don't have to smell anyone else's bad breath. I only have to clean up my own mess. I don't have to do anyone else's laundry. I can come and go as I please, without reporting to anyone on my whereabouts. Nobody wakes me up in the middle of the night." She mumbled these under her breath as she considered calling her single aunt to commiserate. (She decided against this, fearing her aunt would not only not adopt her positive skew but complain so badly it would only depress her further.)

By the time the single girl was lugging both the granny cart and the tree up the stairs, she felt defeated. "Stupid Christmas. I hate being single!" She yanked the tree out of the cart, jabbed it onto the spikes in the holder and trundled the whole thing into the living room, muttering something about wanting to be Jewish.

The next morning, however, the single girl awoke to the smell of pine in her house, snow swirling around in the streets outside her window and an overall Christmassy spirit.

She ventured into the living room. "Good morning, tree!" she said, delightedly. She took a deep, piney-fresh breath and announced to the whole apartment, "I did this all by myself. See this tree? This big, fat, attractive, inexpensive, lovely and festive tree? I got it. I bought it, I carried it, I jabbed it on its spike, and I made it not be tilty. I am the coolest single girl in the whole wide world."

And she was right.

The end.

why hello, 4am! haven’t seen you in a while

It's very early. (Although not quite as early as it was when I got out of bed... three and a half hours ago.)

I just had one of those can't-sleep-anymore nights, and figured that rather than lay around in bed, I'd get up and make the best use of my time. (And by "best use" I mean "um, I probably should do all this crap and now's as good as any time.")

Here's my recommended list of Ten Things To Do When You Get Up Godawful Early And Can't Get Back To Sleep:

1) Watch an episode of CSI, thinking it will lull you back to sleep.

I highly recommend NOT picking the episode with your boyfriend, Alan Tudyk, in it, as you will have to stay up and watch it (even though Alan plays a gay pedophile who (spoiler!) was guilty.) *sigh.*

2) Clamber back into bed, thinking that you are now on a different brain wavelength (especially if you accidentally watch the Tudyk CSI and feel your heart palpitating with odd, gay, pedophilic love) and will be able to drop off to sleep instantaneously.

This step may not aid you in getting back to sleep, but it will offer you the opportunity to eat a slice of bread (to quiet the rumbling in your tumbling) without having to consider it part of your caloric intake for the day. "I must have been sleep-eating" you hear yourself say later.

3) Surrender to being awake.
This involves putting on pants (fuscia) and your robe (lavender) and your sleep shirt (black and red) and looking like a supermodel.

4) Balance your checkbook.
No, I'm not kidding. Your math will suck just as badly at noon as it will at 5:30 a.m. so why not get it out of the way? Sure you'll be depressed longer about how little money you have but some things are just bound to suck anyway.

5) Listen to your podcasts.
You're reading a new book that is a) almost 500 pages and b) due back in the library in probably two weeks, so you're reading that feindishly on the subway. You'd pick it up now, except it'd probably put you to sleep... Wait a second...

However, listening to your podcasts (espeically if they're NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me) may yield you checkbook-balancing balance: turns out, Women with small waists and big hips also have big IQs. How cool is that?

6) Write in your blog.
Your readers have noticed a considerable drop off in your writing in the past few months. I'd recommend adding some sort of apology, like how your new job actually keeps you busy all day and makes it hard to have inania to remark on. (Sorry readers!) (Oh, also sorry that "inania" isn't a word. It should be.)

7) Scrub your shower and hang your new shower curtains.
What? You did that last night?

8) Mop your kitchen floor.
Ok, surely you're joking now. I balanced my checkbook and filed my paperwork. What more do you want???

9) Sew that button back onto your jacket.
You know, Kate, you're really pushing it here. It's already 7:30 and I regularly get up in half an hour anyway. Why don't I just go back to bed?

10) Resist the urge to go back to bed and be thankful that it's Friday.
At least you can sleep in to your heart's content then.

If none of these solutions work for you, then clearly, you're not me.
Good morning!

tag-a-doodle-doo

I've been tagged! Gasp!

Apparently, these are the rules of having been tagged.

1. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.2. At the end of your blog, you choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

Except that, aside from my tagger (Aaron) and a couple of other friends (a few of whom were tagged pre-Aaron), I don't know anyone else who writes and would actually post this.

(Does that count as a random fact about myself?)

Ok, so here goes:

1. When I was a kid, I used to call pillows "pellows." My friend Sherri Berglund called me on it once and when confronted with the truth, I lied like a rug. "That's how Swedish people say it," I claimed.

Um, yeah, Sherri Berglund was also Swedish.

2. This is creepy. Aside from a rug, a bookcase and a shelving unit in my kitchen, I have not purchased any of the furniture in my house. (Awesome roman shades do not count.) Most of it has been passed down in my family, given to me as a gift, inherited from old roommates or boyfriends, or simply picked up off the street.

3. Sometimes my pantyhose are so tight that they give me a tummyache.

4. I have a rabid fear of puke. If someone on the subway looks green, or a kid nearby starts to cry and cough, I change locations. I haven't seen someone puke in years, and I have absolutely no desire to see it again any time soon. (I mention this only because I almost barfed in a cab today. I didn't! But it was definitely an option.)

5. I loathe reality television, and yet I'm secretly addicted to The Biggest Loser. I am rooting for just about everyone on that series, because, really, who doesn't want an unhappy fat person to be a happy thin one?

6. My favorite parts of a man's body are his hipbones and his upper arms/shoulders. However, my only physical requirement of a man is that he be able to pick me up and carry me. (Not into the next county, for example, but at least into the next room.)

7. I don't always flush the toilet every time I use it.

8. I can put leftover frosting in the freezer and forget that it's even there. However, once I re-discover it, I usually can't walk away from it and end up having to throw it out. (Why save it in the first place, you ask? Hmmm. Good question.)

So here's the part where I tag people, huh? Well, how about these fine folks:
Sara
Romero
Christina
Ian
John
Marcia
Bonnie

Bring it on, guys, bring it on!

yay! canstruction!

What do you call it when a bunch of artists make a building full of sculptures out of cans of food?
Canstruction, of course!

(From their website: "A foundation of the Society for Design Administration (SDA), Canstruction® is a design/build competition currently held in cities throughout North America. Teams of architects, engineers, and students mentored by these professionals, compete to design and build giant structures made entirely from full cans of food.")

Last year was my inaugural year, and, like many good things done more than once, the second time didn't quite live up to the first, but it was delightful in its own ways.
My favorites from this year include:

..The cute little car from Cars, that, if I were younger or older (or married with children, rather), I'd probably be able to name. I think I'm thankful that I can't.
Also on the kiddie tip... although this one's universal.
Hmmm, I'm sensing a theme here. Strangely, most of the attendees were adults. I thought for sure this would be something kids would want to see, but then again, it's probably something kids would much rather smash apart, so it's probably best to keep them home.
I liked this one because it was both retro and meta at the same time. (Don't forget, all the cans in the sculptures and the cans donated as entrance fees go to food banks -- one sculpture of a polar bear was made entirely of ingredients for New England Clam Chowder, all of which had been packaged and processed in New England. Talk about meta!)

And then, every year, there seems to be a pervading element. Last year there were lots of dragons/loch ness monsters (another one showed up this year, too), but this year, everyone had somewhat more of a dairy thing going on...

I scream:

You scream:
We all scream:

My two favorites, though, were both way cooler in person.
There was a sign at this stop saying "View through your camera or SQUINT." (I guess the woman at the front desk was tired of telling people what this was.) (It's Mona Lisa, if you can't see it.)
And this one was pretty dazzling to look at -- the color, which is not well reflected, thanks to my crap-o camera, came from the fact that it was constructed entirely from canned salmon. (bleck!)

A funny note about last year's canstruction -- if you look back at the old link, you'll see a collapsed statue. Yeah, that's the one that won the judges' award for structural integrity.

Oops.

This year's exhibit runs through tomorrow (Wednesday) at 5pm and costs only a can of food. You should check it out of if you can. It's really pretty amazing.

my brief foray into photojournalism

The weather was not cooperative this year in terms of my ability to pursue my photojournalism project, The Geriatric Pumpkins of South Park Slope. It was too warm for too long, and nobody really carved their pumpkins until the very last minute, and of course, they then molded and caved in and died on November 1st.

However, this weekend, I stumbled across two new additions to the project, making TGPoSPS almost a viable project for 2007.

So, my project started last year, when I caught this guy, aging and sighing, and complaining about how when he was a kid, things were so different and children had more respect:

This year, his cousin (son? grandson?) on the same stoop also got really old really quickly (although there's something almost down-syndromy about this particular gourd):
And then there are this weekend's finds (caught with my cameraphone, so the quality's a little pathetic).

Old Pumpkins In Jail:
("I didn't do it, man. Don't let them convince you that I did. How could I? I have no teeth. Can an old man with no teeth have committed a crime like that? I ask you.")

and Aging Is Hard On The Skin:
("Don't buy that Pearl Cream secret-of-the-oh-wee-ent stuff. It doesn't work. I repeat: IT DOES NOT WORK. But come on in. I have cookies. You look like you could use a cookie.")

The Christmas decorations are already up. I don't think pumpkins and santa should overlap.

today’s accomplishment

If you were to move in across the street, you wouldn't be able to see me roaming around in my apartment, thanks to my new roman shades! (Of course, if you lived across the street, I'd worry about you, since that's a junior high, but that's a whole nother story.)

I still have venetian blinds behind the roman shades -- I guess because I wanted a united Italy in my window. Come to think of it, I've been wearing a lot of brown shirts recently, so if I change my name to Mussolini, someone come over and punch me.

If you're an astute picture-looker-atter, you'll notice my ATTRACTIVE hot pink velour pants and non-matching t-shirt in the mirror. Also, if you're wondering what the splotches are on the left hand window, that's a vine that's grown from a bean-in-a-can that my cousin gave me last Christmas. And if you had just-outside-the-frame-vision, you'd see the magnets I stuck to my ceiling last weekend. I've had a tin ceiling for over two years now, and only just caught on to all the things I could be doing with it! Ceiling collage! Magnetic poetry for those reclining on the couch! A new place to hang postcards!

I think I need to get out more.