Newly Apponted Geezer Status

I’m babysitting. Again. In order to keep them in one place I popped in Toy Story 2, the most recent movie I have in my vhs collection besides the “remastered” special edition Ariel, into my vhs/dvd player. As it was at the end, I needed to stop it and rewind.

“What are you doing? Why isn’t it playing?”

“I have to rewind it.”

“What? What are you doing? I wanna watch the movie.”

“I’m re-wind-ing...”

Then it dawned. These kids had no clue what rewind meant. Gah, I feel old.

Post-it Portraits

While baby-sitting I tried to steer my charges away from the Sesame Street website (there's only so much giggly Elmo laughter one can take) and towards artcyclopedia. I was looking for images of Picasso's portraits so I could show them that artists don't always draw things as they are in life but rather as how they envision them. While browsing through the images with the older one the younger one promptly grabbed my post-it notes and pen. Thirty seconds later she thrust this post-it note in my face declaring it was a portrait of me.



I'd like to think she learned well but I suspect she's still stuck on realism.

The dangerous effect of too much time

I hope all of you had a great long weekend. I'd like to say I had a great weekend too but it really didn't even register. In order to appreciate days off you have to be doing at least something in order to take a break from it.

I've gotten to this strange point in my vacation where I've actually thought "I'm looking forward to classes starting up again". Then I automatically place the back of my palm onto my forehead just to make sure the thought wasn't the product of some delirium. At first, I thought the hundred dollar cancellation fee for my summer class was totally worth it. An extra month without having to read Victorian literature? Fantastic! But now I'm re-thinking my thought process. I've done all the typical stuff- watch films, read, go out- but it's like I'm waiting for my life to start back up again. It's gotten to the point where I re-sorted my book shelves into periods. Pondering whether Rushdie belongs in the post-colonial or post-modern section took a good twenty minutes. And where the fuck does Borges go?

Today it reached a point of no return. I entered the kitchen. That strange gravitational pull you felt around noon? That was the universe indicating something unatural had occurred. Me, who one week ago nearly burned my eye just by boiling water for green tea, set out to make dinner for visiting family. From scratch. In case you skimmed over that, I'll reiterate. From SCRATCH.

I whipped, crushed, boiled, kneaded, reduced, seared for over six hours. I made dessert that didn't come from box much less with pictorial instructions. The fact that my mocha semifreddo with a pecan shortbread cookie crust was better than any item from Baskin Robbins should have been enough to make my family keel. But I also made homemade chicken fettuccine alfredo sauce and homemade pasta. Without the use of a pasta maker. That little old lady featured on TV living in the Italian mountains making pasta for a living? Even she makes pasta with a pasta maker. I must have rolled for three hours straight. I picked cherry tomatoes from my garden as a garnish. The only thing that didn't pass through my hands was the wine. But had I had one of those tubs from that I Love Lucy episode I would have gone grape stomping too.

A monster has been created, people. Julia Child eat your heart out.