Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Warning: Diatribe

I’m very reluctantly (almost angrily) addicted to Chrissy Coppa’s Storked! Blog at glamour.com. It happened after the original Slaves to Fashion blogger left (got fired? or the more genteel ‘let go’?) and while that was offline, bored, I clicked over. The blog is about Coppa’s experience being single and pregnant at 25. I abhor it, and yet, I keep reading it, perhaps in the same way I would be irritatingly glued to the profile of my arch enemy or ex-crush on facebook.

Maybe I’m just being a jealous jerk because she has a book deal, but Coppa annoys me in so many ways. She writes about her life in New York pre-pregnancy—how glamorous, how witty, how sassily independent she was, as were all her friends, and oh how the men came running after them—so heavy on the narcissism it’s like she might as well stand outside the theaters of Sex and the City crying “that was my life!”

I’m being mean. I am just a jealous jerk. But seriously…today she wrote a haughty post about how a young, single woman in the grocery store didn’t smile at her baby. And she was pissed about it:
“I watched as she looked at him. Looked away. Looked at him, again. No emotion. Would it have killed her to smile at my BABY? No.” And then, “Suck it up. Smile at my baby, because I strongly believe if you can't smile at an unassuming BABY then you really need a reality check.”
Coppa acknowledges that maybe the woman was having a bad day or (horrifically) “might have had an abortion or something.”

I’ll easily admit that I’m one of those people who doesn’t smile at babies, and it’s not because I just had an abortion. Sometimes I just get tired of the Mom Smile I get in return. The “Yeah, I know my baby is the most adorable/cutest/sweetest, and now you know, too” Mom Smile. It just irks me. Sometimes I know the Mom in question is waiting for me to notice, and something just won't let me give her the satisfaction. Hey, I never said I was nice.

Your baby will get a smile, ONLY if he or she deserves it. You see, Chrissy, I take smiles kind of seriously and not all babies earn them. And if I’m having a bad day or just got an abortion, I kind of think that it might be your kid’s job to really put it out there and make me smile….and if he or she is not up to the task, what do you want me to do.

Reviewed: Feeling like a kid

Today I’m cooking one of my newfound favorite lunches—Amy’s Organic Alphabet Soup. I accidentally stumbled across this soup, which tastes exactly like Spaghetti-O’s (only healthier with green beans and other vegetables) after having half my mouth numbed at the dentist and nothing else to eat. Obviously, I spilled it all over myself.

Even in a normal day as much as I try to be careful, invariably, I spill food all over myself. Joe witnesses these messes and just shakes his head like he can’t believe it. I guess I wouldn’t limit it to food either, since last month I dropped an inky pen on my chest. No one was around to see me do it, for which I am glad, because it involved some borderline-idiotic pen flipping.

I have many painful memories of childhood spills, one of which involves French dressing on the carpet in front of my dad and the other involves the worst fight I ever got into with my little sister, who ended up spraying carpet cleaner in my face.

Anyway, I’m in a dilemma right now as to whether or not I should give in to fate and change my clothes—out of the Robert Rodriguez dress I got at Beacon’s Closet for $24 and which retails elsewhere for $400, and into my Derek Jeter shirt—or take the risk that I am capable of eating grown-up Spaghetti O’s without ruining my clothes.

11 Stars. The soup, however, is delicious.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Reviewed: DIY

So today I watched Georgia Rule instead of working on my DIY project. I guess what I’ve come to realize is that I don’t really believe in DIY. Perhaps it is because growing up my father was so pro-DIY that it was the only option, which is the reason why none of the toilets in the house flush without having to hold down the handle. I would rather DIWSWKWTD(*) which means Do It With Someone Who Knows What They’re Doing (and they do all the work).

And you know what? Georgia Rule was actually kind of good. I might even be enchanted enough with it to remove the “kind of” and just go for the good. It’s weird, too, because I usually hate Lindsay Lohan. I mean, that stealing thing was kind of yuck. But I think the biggest part of the problem with the movie was that it was marketed as a feel-good comedy when it is far from it. LiLo is the scene-stealer of the movie as a victim of sexual abuse, and Felicity Huffman is almost just as good as the mother who just then finds out. Jane Fonda, you know, whatever. I wasn’t impressed. And also, how does Cary Elwes, aka As-you-wish-Wesley, manage to be so child-molester creepy? Yikes.

So the thrift store dining room chairs I’m going to repaint got about half-sanded. Sanding is hard work. Don’t they make machines that do that?

30 Stars. And, Georgia Rule’s on HBO On Demand right now. It will save you the embarrassment of renting the movie.