Sometimes...

Sometimes the best thing to do is go home with the emptied-out day in your pocket before it starts to swallow you. And when you get home, then, after eating a little snacky bit, and starting to feel warm defenses coming back in, it should change outside from dull hail to purple skies and soft gray snow falling under streetlights and making cushions on each leaf. When you go out for a crik-crunchy walk in it, it's best to get your feet wet and nearly fall over for looking up and always up and then to meet someone from Arizona who has just made her first snowman on the sidewalk and her first snow angel in the street. It's also a good idea to find tracks (of cars maybe) and hunt them down, all their quotidienne secrets revealed, aha! I make my own tracks too, to see if you can follow them. Mysterious dark tracks, commas, questions, and snakes. If you can write something on the ground at the school yard that is good too. The best is throwing snowballs at a friendly window to make him come outside for a chat.

If it starts to rain after all of that, however, best go back home. And don't throw snowballs at your girlfriend through the screen door. That makes the hot chocolate harder to make.

I forgot how to use a dishwasher

Yesterday when I went to "help" Magnificent at work, I accidentally ran the dishwasher with diswashing soap, rather than dishwashing detergent.

I remember thinking as I poured it in the little trays (BOTH pre wash and main wash): Wow it's so transparent! and so green!

So massive bubbling ensued. Plus an additional hour of scooping out soapy water and scrubbing the inside of the dishwasher, plus another two hours of running the dishwasher repeatedly and cleaning up subsequent suds and wiping up the floor. I don't know why I haven't made this particular mistake before in my life.* Perhaps because Mom always used the solid detergent flake things? Because I think of dishwashing soap as coming in smaller bottles than the detergent? Because soaps of all kinds now come in designer colors and textures so nothing surprises me any more?

Siiiigh. I dunno.

Both of us are still mystified why anyone would make a dishwasher that isn't even water tight.

Anyway, Magnificent, sorry that I wasn't that much of a help, but I loved spending the day with you anyway.

Your's truly,
Two Shoes (aka Amelia Bedelia)


*Mom, I know what you're thinking; that was the time some one ELSE (not me, and not Magnificent) put Cascade Liquid Gel in the stupid jet dry hole so that all the dishes got clean in the regular cycle and then had soap spewed over them and baked on in the "dry" cycle. But that WAS the two of us who gave up after weeks of trying to clean it and just didn't use the damn dishwasher the rest of the year.

Hung up is off the hook!

The thing is I really truly thought that Madonna didn't have it in her any more. I was so underwhelmed when that song "Hollywood" came out, all tinny and flat.

Then I came across her video "Hung Up" on you tube. Madonna takes this song (from ABBA's Gimme Gimme Gimme a Man after Midnight) and makes it better. (!)

Plus her leotard! Plus the Pink! The stretch sequ*n belts! The shoes! Oh my god can this woman dance; I love how she showcases the other dancers too. Plus I (heart) the boombox. I'm so impressed. Seantoki and I were listening to it on constant repeat last night and drinking beer and dancing in the kitchen. Fun times.

Mom, I really hope you watch this video!....Ooo, plus here is the video for the Milkshake song we were talking about.

And DTG, I don't know why, but I saw this one and it made me think you would find it funny too...tee hee!

And just so you don't think that I'm not studying, here's a special video about, um, urban planning...

Two Shoes

What I'd love to know is...

How can I keep Barack Obama from breaking my heart?

I was reading an article in the Stranger last week that reviewed his book "The Audacity of Hope," and when the reviewer started talking about the return of American Reason I got seriously choked up. I realized that I can simply not conceive of a life where I'm actually proud of a national leader. What if I even loved our president? What would happen then? Would I actually want to work harder to restore some sense of our national dignity?

What if I felt that way about a president and then something happened?

In many ways it seems like it would be easier to stay in a shell of cynicism: "we can't do anything about anything anyway." Of course. Cynicism is just too easy that way.

But I'm with you, Tater.

Let me know your thoughts...

Two Shoes