It's a Sunshine Day

Edited to say:

Oh, Jaysus, I just accidentally hit "publish" on a garbage post. You were not supposed to see this post, my friends. I was just type, type, typing away on my Na$onex high and then BAM, my fingers did the walking to a place they shouldn't have gone, and there it was on the worldwide web. I even disclosed the P-Dawg's top secret identity. Crap. I hope you enjoy.

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Remember my dizziness problem?

Well, I've cured myself!

Actually, the P-Dawg cured me. (Did I ever mention that he's a doctor? He also fixed a kink in my neck the other day. I was unable to play with MegaBlocks due to the enormous pain in my neck. The V-meister said, Why don't you ask Daddy to fix it and I said PSHAW because even though the P-Dawg saves lives left and right every single day, I have no faith in his healing powers. But I made a great show of pointing to the problem spot and before I had a chance to blink THERE WAS A GREAT PAIN as the P-Dawg showed my pinched nerve who's boss and then just like that, it was over, and I was cured.)

So I decided to follow his suggestion to try Na$onex for my possibly migraine and/or allergy related vertigo and lo, I've been vertigo free for going on three weeks now. I've spent the last few days turning my head this way and that just because I can.

So, yes - Na$onex. And believe me, that dollar sign is there for a reason. I almost choked on my pomegranate juice when the pharmacist gave me my total. Then I jumped out of the driver's seat, vaulted through the drive-thru pharmacy window, and demanded to look at my information on the computer screen. While there, I nabbed a few extra bottles of Na$onex and that's how I ended up writing this post from county jail.

Ha!

Not really, but I just may have taken a few extra squirts up the schnozz this morning because, boy am I in a good mood! And considering that I uttered all three of the following sentences before ten o'clock, that is no small feat:

"No, you can't drive yourself to school."

"FEH! Take your hand out of the toilet."

"Get out of the dishwasher right now, and nobody gets hurt."

Spied at the Neighborhood Coffee Shop

Heh, heh, heh.

Saturday Mornings Ain't What They Used to Be

The little J-dog has been waking up at 6:00 AM.

As soon as he finds himself conscious, he lets out a little cry of indignation, then quickly sets about the work of kicking the bejeebus out of the wall next to his crib.

He goes through his repertoire:

"Mama"
"Da-DEE!"
"No"
"Mine"
"Ball"
"Obama '08"*

Meanwhile, in our bedroom, the P-Dawg and I feign sleep. Who will be first to give themselves away?

The J-dog throws Doggy, Monkey, and Blankie out of his crib.

"Buh-bye buh-bye buh-bye!"

Then starts crying, 'cause, frick! Toys are gone!

He kicks on his low-on-batteries-since 2005 Fisher-Price Aquarium.

Twinkle, twinkle little whaaa-wha-wha-wha-wha-whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

After a few laps around the crib, he's ready to call in the troops.

MAMA!!!!! Da-DEEEEEEEEEE!!! BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

In our bedroom, the power play continues. When it sounds as though the J-dog has taken up a sledgehammer and is mere inches away from bashing a hole clear through the wall, I say:

"J-Dog's calling you."

P-Dawg: "He said "Mama."

Me: "He said Da-DEE."

(Crickets)

Me: "I would go get him, but my eyes are glued shut. "

P-Dawg: "Ooof! My back is killing me."

Then the sound of the V-meister scrabbling at the doorknob before bustin' out of her bedroom in S.W.A.T. team fashion.

Little footsteps padding into the bathroom.

The sound of tinkling.

The sound of silence.

The sound of a roll of TP being unraveled in its entirety.

Then, "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamaaaaaaaaaaa! I POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPED!!!!"

And we're up.

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Saturday mornings ain't what they used to be.

But they're not half bad, either.

One day, when the decades have passed like a bullet train, I will surely yearn for cartoons and coffee on the couch among a jumble of limbs in assorted sizes, cozily intertwined.

And as the P-Dawg and I absently do the crossword over a breakfast of Sanka, oatmeal and prunes, the jangle of our stirring spoons will ring too loudly in a half-empty house.

We'll likely still rise early, unable to to linger in a lazy morning haze.

Because we'll know, as we suspect already, that time is not ours to waste.


*While the J-Dog is impressed with Barack Obama, he is as of yet an undecided and wholly ineligible voter.

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But, wait! I have bling to pass on.

The lovely and ubiquitous MamaGeek (the blogger formerly known as Works for Mom) thrilled me to pieces with the "Daily Dose Award," which I've since learned is like saying "Your blog is a drug I cannot live without."



(I like to think of my blog as a Sudafed. Small, pretty, sugar-coated, it can clear your sinuses and give you a wacky little buzz, but is relatively harmless when dosing instructions are properly followed.)

And so without further ado, I would like to pass the Daily Dose award on to Slouching Mom, who has it all - a healthy dose of introspection laced with a bit 'o humor, all wrapped up in gorgeous prose.

The next piece of bling, the Sassy Mama Blog Award, is from Jennifer at Faking It. I recently discovered Jennifer's blog and am really enjoying her beautifully articulated and often humorous insights into motherhood and life in general.



I would like to pass the Sass Award on to Amy at Milkbreath and Margaritas. Just look at her profile pic - "sass" is her middle name.

Slouching Mom recently gave me this:



I KNOW!!!

I am asked to pass it on to ten bloggers, and they are:

Melanie at BeanPaste
Jennifer at Faking It
Beck at Frog and Toad Are Still Friends
Jen at Get In the Car!
Loralee at Loralee's Looney Tunes
KC at Where's My Cape?
Melissa at Domestic Irritation (who hasn't posted since November, but I'm still hoping she'll return because her blog is, indeed, excellent.)
Painted Maypole
Ruth at Ruthless In the Suburbs

and

The Shotgun Investor

Tastes Like Chicken

Dear waiter dude at (insert name of local eating establishment here),

My kid just started eating meat, oh, maybe three days ago? Prior to that, she was a dedicated carbovore/herbivore (but not so much with the herbivore part, really.)

Imagine our elation when the V-meister deigned to sample a fish stick slathered in ketchup the other day at dinner and deemed it "pretty good."

It was a shining moment in parenting.

Anyway.

Yesterday, during our super-duper special mother-daughter bonding lunch, she worked up the courage to order a plate of chicken fingers and a Sprite (shut it, people) from your greasy old dog-eared menu, all by herself.

Yes, the V-meister beamed with pride at this accomplishment and me, well, I was practically humping the booth divider out of the sheer joy of protein.

Why, then, did you find it necessary to wag your stubby, bloated 'ole finger under her delicate little nose and taunt:

"Chicken fingers? Are you sure you want to eat chicken FINGERS???? Heh, heh, heh."



Then later (after I'd explained to the little V-meister that it wasn't so much chicken fingerz she'd ordered as lips and a$$ [kidding!]), when you overheard us talking about the (dumb) joke you had made, did you have to pull up a chair and tell us the one about the first time you ever witnessed a whole chicken being boiled? About how the chicken legs looked just like human hands, heh heh heh, and lawdy, lawdy, but it was the most disturbing thing you'd ever seen, you daresay it was?



I had to chuckle bitterly when, as the V-meister and I were preparing to leave your fine establishment, you swung by our booth one last time and, noting the untouched meat on the V-meister's plate, asked, "Aren't you gonna eat those, hon? You want me to box 'em up for ya?"

I would like to box something up for you, champ.

(How about a chicken knuckle sandwich????)

Regards,
Rimarama
Drama Mama


(The irony in this post is that, while writing it, I was eating a frozen chicken penne pasta marinara lunch product and damn if I didn't gag on a knuckle. Or something.)



That is all.

Parading Around the Living Room

Our Mardi Gras care package from Painted Maypole arrived in the mail yesterday. Packed full of beads and other carnival loot, it bought two exhausted and slightly edgy parents a good half hour of couch vegging time. (Thanks, PM!)

"Rawk-N-Roll"

"V-Meister Bündchen"


"J-Doglander"


"Well done, Maypole!"

(The V-meister, perfecting the subtle art of winking)

This Might Earn Me an NC-17 Rating

P-Dawg: "Hey, Rimster, what part of the human body expands to twelve times its normal size when subjected to external stimulation?"

Rimarama: "Your pecker?"

P-Dawg: "No, the pupil."*


*This question was originally posed by Winston Churchill during a 1930s Cambridge lecture.

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But this is how I know we're no longer newlyweds:

Rimarama (excited): "Hey, P-Dawg, I took this "Which Lost Character Are You" quiz on Facebook and you'll never guess who I am!!!"

P-Dawg: "The evil guy with the bug eyes?"

(Actually, I'm Doctor. Jack. Shephard.)

Tou-shay

The P-Dawg and I got on the subject of memes tonight.

P-Dawg: "I think you're pronouncing it wrong. I think it's pronounced, 'Me!Me!'"

Me: "I always thought it was pronounced "mem," like the French word that means "same."

P-Dawg: "I don't think the French even know how to get on the Internet." (You must understand that, back in our dating days, I broke up with the P-Dawg to go live in France for a year. But I don't think he's ever been a fan.)

According to the research I conducted on the world's foremost authority on everything, the word is pronounced "meem" and originates from the Greek, "mimeme" (something imitated).

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My 100th post came and went last week, and it was about puke.

But Miss tagged me for this blogging meme today, which seemed easy and fitting enough in light of my 100 post landmark for me to give it a stab.

How long have you been blogging? Not quite six months.

What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors? I discovered that any fool could get a free blog on Blogger, and that was enough to inspire me to foist my thotz upon the world at large. But once I started writing, I realized that I very much enjoyed painting what I see as my quotidian existence in a humorous light. One of the first "journal" type blogs I discovered was, of course, Dooce, soon followed by Suburban Bliss and Oh, the Joys. Of the three, I'm sure it comes as no surprise that OTJ was/is a mentor figure.

Are you trying to make money, or blogging just for fun? Just for fun, but I've entertained the thought of trying to earn a monetary reward. My husband thinks I'm crazy for not slapping up an ad or two. I tell him I could probably find more change in the couch cushions than I could ever make from blogging, but we'll see.

What three things do you love about blogging?

1. Before starting to blog, I was a very private citizen of the Internet, lurking on a few pregnancy and parenting message boards, but never jumping in. I thought I was too private a person to do that. I didn't realize that I would end up feeling so connected to my bloggy friends, and that has been the most rewarding part about it.
2. Stuff I write looks pretty in "published" form.
3. There are people out there who read my posts and leave comments! This makes me infinitely happy.
   

What three things do you struggle with?

1. Feeling as though I "can't keep up."
2. Feelings of inadequacy for posting mainly cotton candy in the face of so much thought provoking and gorgeous prose in the blogging circles I frequent.
3. The occasional fleeting sense that I am back in high school. And I'm wearing headgear.

I think I'll tag MamaGeek for this one. And, of course, anyone else who's interested - this meme is yours for the taking.

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Yes, I've been playing with my banner again. I can't help myself. However, I think this one might be a keeper, at least for awhile.

The J-dog is now healthy and no one else has fallen prey to the puking illness. (I am fully aware that I have just jinxed myself. What is the statute of limitations on this bug's incubation period, anyway?)

Germs Are in da House

We've been dodging it all season, but the puking illness finally struck the Rama household last night.

I like to make sure my kids have the most colorful and chunkalicious meal possible before they fall ill with a gastrointestinal virus. (I also make it a point to lick their plates clean for them and request that they sneeze directly into my face at least once during the crucial incubation period, but who doesn't?)

In keeping with this tradition, I kissed the little J-dog a thousand times yesterday and fed him winter squash, blackberries, and some Red Dye #2 pellets for the dinner that he proceeded to chuck up at various intervals throughout the night.

Consequently, the P-Dawg and I stayed up half of last night cleaning carpets, stripping and laundering sheets, and hosing down our youngest spawn.

The best part about the puking illness is you never know how many times it will hit, or when!

And Murphy's Law states that, as soon as a soiled set of bedding is replaced and the stricken child has been bathed and clothed in clean pajamas, the process will repeat itself. The child will not -WILL NOT - stage a repeat performance until every last morsel of recycled material has been cleaned up from the previous show.

Now I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Who will be next?

Thank God I saved my biohazard suit from two Halloweens ago. It's probably too late to avoid contamination, but one can never be too careful.

Do I Seem Paranoid?

This blog is having an identity crisis.

Sometimes it wants to be flip and sassy, giving you short, frequent posts about events or observations that are neither here nor there. (For example, how the P-Dawg* offered the 2007 Costco Shareholder Annual report to the V-meister as a bedtime story last night.)

Other times, it would like to regale you with more substantial tales centering around the pedestrian, yet mildly entertaining existence of its author.

Sometimes, it feels compelled to act as public servant, offering you totally serious tips and information. In fact, at this very moment, it is working on a post that details how the Rama family finally succeeded in curbing the V-meister's explosive tantrums. But it's a little nervous about publishing, because doing so would fly in the very face of the blog's reputation as class clown.

Other times, the blog would like to simply slap up a Utube link and call it a post.

Every once in awhile, the blog starts to beat itself up about it's rather shallow nature. It has contemplated posting deep, mind-bending material . . . but doing so would make it feel somewhat fraudulent. Because, when it comes right down to it, the blog just wants to have fun.

Sometimes, the blog has realized, it would like to watch Oprah and, you know, just veg out a little. It's even considering jumping on Mrs. Flinger's Blog Guilt Free bandwagon so that it could post like a fiend when it feels the urge, and then chill out for days at a time.

The blog has started and deleted approximately five bajillion posts that it deemed JUST PLAIN STUPID. Who really wants to read about how Rimarama almost burned the house down trying to reset a clock for the J-dog before remembering that he doesn't know how to tell time?

Not even the P-Dawg. (Sob.)

The blog wants to be all things to all people, but only on its own time.

It is obviously going bonkers and needs to put itself in timeout.

But! It also craves attention and cyberhugs (it is a co-dependent blog) from its dear and faithful readers.

All of this egomaniacal navel gazing has paralyzed the blog into a mute stupor. The blog wants only to eat a ginormous ice cream sundae and self-diagnose itself over an episode of House, M.D.

Also, the blog is insisting upon renaming itself "The Tufted Titmouse."

Is that so wrong?

P.S. The P-Dawg just informed me, "A lame post is better than no post at all." Is this true???

*He informs me I've been misspelling his name.

A Handful of Words

. . . that crack me up:

titmouse
goji berry
dingleberry
cockles
goober
wanker
squeegee
pecker
nubbin
doofus
Huckabee

You're welcome.

Care to add to this by no means comprehensive list?

Go ahead. You know you want to.


Tufted Titmouse

The Dog Ate My Calendar

Some of you have expressed amazement that the V-meister's school didn't call me when she didn't show up last week.

I was a little surprised at this myself, but when I approached her teacher at pick-up yesterday to apologize and explain that our family had been stranded on a remote island in the South Pacific with no cell phone service*, she admitted that they had all been very worried, but had assumed that the V-meister was still sick.

She had been out before the holiday break with a very bad double ear infection in which both ear drums were ruptured and her hearing was severely compromised. The school was under the impression that her hearing had not yet returned to normal (it has), hence her prolonged absence.

(And while we're on the subject, if your child suddenly starts acting extremely irritable after having been sick with a cold and complains of strange noises/discomfort in her ears before Mount Vesuvius erupts and begins flowing out of said ears in copious amounts, might I recommend taking said child to the Pediatrician ASAP instead of, say, telling her the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf? For instance.)

I have a sneaking suspicion that people at the school actually know I was smokin' banana peels* and watching the Home Shopping Channel last week when my kid was supposed to be back at school. At pick up yesterday, the utha muthas greeted me with a snarky, "Oh, hi, Rimarama! We missed you guys last week! BWAAhahahaha!!!!! "

I gave them my patented Stare of Damnation and exited stage left with a perfect ten round-off/back-handspring combo.

I'm just hoping they weren't having a candelight prayer vigil for the V-meister while she was boomeranging around the living room on a leftover Christmas candy sugar high.

Because that would make me feel kind of bad.

*lies

Where Are the Truancy Police When You Need Them?

By last Friday, the V-meister's holiday break from Montessori school was starting to wear me down. She had been out sick for the entire week before Christmas, so we were nearing the end of three-and-a-half weeks of an extended stay-at-home squirmfest.

"What are you doing?" I asked as she ran, for the fourth time in a row, full tilt into our front door, hit it, then collapsed with drama onto the hardwood floor as I watched warily and the J-dog clapped with glee.

"Just practicing bouncing off the wall, Mama."

This activity was performed at regular intervals throughout that last vacation week, interrupted only by the occasional knock-down, drag-out fight with the J-dog or a combo thumb sucking/hair twirling/squirm session on the brown TV watching throne.

Today, however, was a day of restrained joy, tempered only by the agony that had to be endured as the V-meister prepared for her first day back at school by staging a level six meltdown at the suggestion that her hair be coiffed into a pony tail.

I'm pretty sure she was all the way out of the car at drop-off before I careened out of the school parking lot, leaving a thick cloud of exhaust fumes in my wake.

The J-dog and I then proceeded to the supermarket, where, heady with the excitement of a one kid grocery run, I almost felled a couple of tottering seniors as I zipped up and down the aisles with speed and precision, the J-dog's hoodie flapping behind him in our manufactured wind.

When we returned home, the J-dog immediately set to dismantling the fireplace grate while I busied myself with important tasks such as crossing off dead calendar days, calling in sick for this afternoon's dental appointment, rifling through paperwork, and surfing real estate sites.

And that's when I discovered it - the 2007-2008 Montessori school calendar, with it's bold face statement that school will resume for all students on Wednesday, January 2 of this year.

Uh . . . . . . . . last week, then.

'Roundabout the time the V-meister was backing up for her fiftieth consecutive wall run, I presume.

(And that thar's called shootin' yerself in yer own dayum foot, folks.)

Let it Out

When I first started blogging earlier this year, I wrote a very raw post about mothering after a particularly bad day with the kids. The process of putting it on paper was therapeutic in and of itself, but I debated whether or not to publish it. In the end I did because, when all was said and done, I needed some reassurance that I was not the only one who ever "lost it."

Despite the fact that several readers commented on it, I didn't think my honesty was particularly odd. After all, isn't a personal blog meant to air out just this kind of dirty laundry? A way to commiserate with others in similar situations?

Now that I've been blogging for the better half of a year, I've come to realize that posts in which parents "spill the beans," so to speak, about the frustration, loneliness and sometimes naked rage that is parenting, are few and far between. We often hint at misery and weakness, use humor (ahem) to take the edge off the ugly, but we don't often journey into the dark that, I suspect, many of us experience from time to time.

It's understandable. No one wants to be a whiner or to be harshly judged. What if I'm really the only one who's ever done this, ever felt this way? Who wants to read another post about depression? If it's so hard, go get a job - you made the choice to "stay at home."

Finslippy recently posted about a bad episode with her son and asked readers to share their own stories of "parental ineptitude."

If you've ever felt alone as you stumble along this dimly lit corridor of motherhood, go read the one hundred plus comments that readers have left on her post.

They will make you shudder, cry, sigh, laugh out loud, and, finally, (hopefully), deeply exhale.

Honesty.

It does a mother good.

But First I Removed the Beam from My Own Eye

My husband has hyper-sensitive eyes protected by lashes so long that they enter the room a full minute before he does. (A cruel joke of nature that such bounty should be wasted on a man, but there you have it.)

You can't so much as wave an index finger two feet from his ocular orb without the P-dog flinching in terror before collapsing to the floor and folding himself into a turtle shell.

As you might imagine, a foreign particle, such as the one that was apparently trapped beneath his eyelid last night, constitutes a five-alarm emergency.

After a few minutes of back and forth over the the various chores involved in shutting down the house for the night ("Hey, P-dog, will you run the dishwasher before you go up thanks!" "I ran it last night." "Yeah, but I unplugged the Christmas tree." "I'll do it if you turn down the thermostat and check the front door"), we headed upstairs to execute our unique bedtime rituals.

My bedtime routine involves tooth brushing, flossing (six teeth a night, give or take a few, every five days on a rotating schedule - huge time saver), face washing, moisturizer, lip balm, noise machine volume adjustment, an occasional Benadryl or Tylenol PM, obsessive sheet straightening, and five minutes of reading the New Yorker before it falls on my face, waking me up.

The P-dog's routine involves tooth brushing, thorough flossing (except when on vacation), face washing, and two minutes of reading The History of the World before it falls on his face, waking him up.

Last night, his routine was shot to hell by the foreign object the P-dog was convinced was lodged beneath his eyelid.

Just as I finished positioning my stack of pillows just so and settled into bed, the P-dog came staggering into the room with one hand covering his left eye, ranting about the splinter that was rendering him senseless with pain.

Although it inconvenienced me to no end, I put my magazine down and agreed to take a look around, see what I could find.

Flipping the P-dog's eyelid back and shining an ultraviolet fold-up clip-on reading lamp into it did not yield favorable results and almost got both of us killed.

(There was a lot of thrashing, lamentation, and gnashing of teeth while the procedure was being performed, and the P-dog, besides being a whole foot taller, also outweighs me by about a hundred pounds.)

I suggested that perhaps his eye was simply a tad dry and would he like some Visine?

Did you ever see that episode of Friends where the gang wrestles Rachel to the ground in order to administer eye drops?

A similar scene took place in our bedroom last night, the P-dog being physically and psychologically incapable of himself executing this task that he considers akin to gouging his own eye out with an ice pick.

It was not easy, but I managed to keep his head relatively steady while squirting a stream of thirst quenching drops in the general direction of his left eyeball.

"Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh! You're killing me, Rimster! Killing me! Enough! Enough already!" he wailed.

But the source of ocular irritation persisted.

"Why don't you sleep on it, P-dog, and maybe it will work itself out by morning."

"I don't have the luxury of time, Rimster! If this pain does not end soon, I will be a cyclops by morning ! How would you like a one-eyed husband?"

(Squints at me with one eye shut while making pirate noises.)

After a few more minutes of moaning and writhing, the P-dog finally fell asleep.

I didn't get a good look at him this morning before he left for work, but I think I would have noticed an eye patch.

Men are so sensitive.

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I want to thank everyone who commented on yesterday's post about vertigo for your concern and earnest suggestions.

I am going to try making some changes in my diet, as Gadzooks and Alejna suggested, and see what happens. (You just gave me free license to eat potato chips all day long.)

I'm a little wary of going to a chiropractor, as Kathryn suggested, but I would give acupuncture a try.

Amy takes the cake, though. How could I not further investigate author Stasi Eldredge's claim, in her book, Captivating, that her severe dizziness was the result of spiritual attacks??? I heart you, Amy.

Spin Control

Internets, I need your home remedies against dizziness.

I've been dizzy off and on for about half a year now and it's starting to get a little old. Laugh if you will, but I'm almost completely serious.

I would say that I wake up feeling light-headed three out of seven days a week, and if I proceed through the day in a reckless fashion (for example, turning my head from side to side with wild abandon or going back and forth from fridge to microwave one too many times), the situation quickly deteriorates into full-on vertigo, and I am forced to bark ineffectual commands to two renegade children from a recumbent post on the couch until help arrives or the spinning subsides.

There is nothing quite like being laid up on the couch and watching your twenty-month old scale a set of bookshelves on his quest for the shotgun lighter your husband got as a Christmas gift. (Splendid idea, Marge! We'll get the non-smoking family with two kids a lighter in the form of a toy rifle! It's just the ticket!)

Before you become too alarmed, let me add that I've already been checked out by a bona-fide neurologist, who, after subjecting me to various examinations and maneuvers that would make any circus side-show contortionist proud, was unable to find a specific cause for my troubles.

I was, however, reassured that I don't have a brain tumor, although this hasn't stopped me from Googling it on an almost daily basis. It's just part of my routine: wake up, check site stats, Google "brain tumor + symptoms of."

Now, I do realize that things could be a lot worse and I am truly thankful for my overall good health, but holy stinkin' heck, is it too much to ask that I be able to whip my head around in periscope fashion without the earth spinning off of its axis?

With two kids under the age of five, I have to use the periscope maneuver almost every day. In fact, you would be surprised at the number of mundane activities that require one to turn one's head with some regularity.

Anyway, here's what I've tried so far:

• drinking more water
• taking vitamins
• Anti-dizziness medication
• Exercise (strangely, if it doesn't send my brain into orbit, it does sometimes help)
  
• Pomegranate juice (um, only one glass so far because it tastes like poison. POISON.

Anyone else out there dizzy? What is the antidote, if I might ask?

(Oh yeah, and all you symptomatic Googlers out there, check out this little article - When the Patient is a Googler.)

Gulp.

Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily

Happy New Year!

(Pretend it's yesterday.)

We spent New Year's Eve drinking cocktails and eating eight astounding appetizer courses (beef satay with peanut sauce, cocktail shrimp in tomato vodka sauce, potato cakes with creme fraiche and smoked salmon, spring rolls, spare ribs, roasted red pepper soup with risotto balls, scallops with papaya and coconut sauce, and tiramisu for dessert) prepared by our chef friend, V, in between rounds of karaoke in the basement-turned-cabaret of our good friends, Rima and Derek.

(I have a friend name Rima. She doesn't live inside my head, but about a half hour away. "Rima" is kind of like "Jennifer" if you're Lithuanian.)


My Friend Rima

Derek was the star of the show, playing several original songs, plus this nostalgic little number on guitar as the assembled thirtysomethings danced like it was 1991.

If it weren't for the occasional bleep on the baby monitor propped next to a beer bottle, you would have thought you were in a real club, what with the recessed stage, disco ball, cavernous lighting, and cabaret tables positioned just so around the dance floor.

I had my first run in with a karaoke machine.

It was not a smashing success, as you might be inclined to believe.

While I do still consider myself a supah-stah, there were several forces, (my song selection, a lack of understanding of basic karaoke rules, tone deafness) working against me.

Luckily, my friend V bailed me out as I was standing helplessly with microphone in hand, staring at the lyrics on the monitor, wondering when Whitney was going to kick in with "I Wanna Dance With Somebody."

But all in all, the evening was a hit.



Derek Clapton


My Friend V and Me


The Newly Engaged Couple


The German Visitors

I don't speeken zee German. I used this website for my German captions, so apologies if I've called you a donut or a hamburger.

Glückliches Neues Jahr!