Breakfast

I love breakfast.

I could expound for hours on the relative bliss of breakfast, how I could eat a form of breakfast for every meal (and sometimes do). I love going out for breakfast, and lingering over coffee and the remains of an omelet bigger than my head. I love breakfast at home, fresh cinnamon rolls and hot crispy bacon and sleepy heads of sleepy kids munching lomtiks of toast while they watch Spongebob. I love breakfast in bed...I love breakfast over a campfire...I love breakfast brought to your room and left outside the door by the lovely British woman who makes sure there's milk for your tea and marmalade for your rolls.

Continental breakfasts at hotels? Bring it on.

Late breakfasts on the weekends at Cracker Barrel? Ohbabyohbabyohbaby.

Egg and cheese pie for dinner with greasy sausage links beside? Oh you tease.

Breakfasts at work are a different affair. I have no time to linger, to savor, no time to prepare something delicious and piping hot. This morning, for example, I ate a cheese stick and a tin of sardines in mustard sauce. It filled the gap, but was completely unsatisfying. (And I can hear some of you gagging out there at the thought of eating fish for breakfast. In my defense, it did taste good, and has that good fishy oil. But yes, it is not my first breakfast choice.)

I'm now longing for a large bowl of oatmeal swimming in brown sugar and cream. Or a toad-in-the-hole. Or scrambled eggs.

What are your breakfasts like?

Poetry Friday: College

Today's challenge is to describe a college experience. You don't have to have gone to college to do this. Hell, if you watched "Animal House" you have enough to go on here.

Here's my snippet:

It snowed a lot at Local University. The dorm I lived in faced several other dorms, creating a blustery courtyard in January where ice storms created skating ponds, and snow drifts became quick freezers for vodka.

One morning my roommate and I woke up and pulled up the blinds that revealed the courtyard. Blinding sun bounced off the snow drifts, and as our eyes adjusted to the morning, we realized that some creative types had spent most of the night outside. Sculpting.

They had sculpted a penis. With balls. Out of snow. An entire story high.

We dressed, woke up the girls next door, and ran outside to take pictures of ourselves with our arms wrapped around the erect ice phallis, before the sun melted it, before the RAs saw it and knocked it down.

I can't find the photo, and of course it was before digital photography, so it may be lost forever. But thank the Google, we still have young drunk college students who have way too much time on their hands. (NSFW)

Poetry Friday Word-ish Copout Bad Blogger Thing

Well, hum. There's a smell in the air here at University Town, and smell and a sheen and a squeaky clean-ness (tinged with stale beer) that means the students are coming back...something we townies both cherish and dread. We love the activity, the fresh faces, the buzz. We hate that the town isn't ours anymore...now we face traffic, long lines at restaurants and theatres, plastic cups on our lawns and dead spots in the grass where drunken frat boys have pissing contests.

With this in mind, the Poetry Friday WORD-ISH for Tomorrow is...for you to describe a college experience...it can be real or imagined, funny or embarassing, short and sweet or detailed and thought-provoking. Explain your work. Use a number 2 pencil only and fill in the ovals completely. No texting during lectures.

You may open your test booklets...now.

Where The Jonas Brothers Meet David Cassidy

Girl-child is transparent like scotch tape. She’s eight years old, going on raging teenage-hood any second. Her bedroom walls are covered with posters of Disney Channel celebs…High School Musical Cast, Miley Cyrus, Zack and Cody, and other assorted teen cute-miscreants. She falls asleep every night under a poster of Zac Efron, showing his amazing rows of perfectly straight white teeth. Probably capped. Paid for by the network.

Girl-child’s latest celeb-crush is The Jonas Brothers. And why wouldn’t it be? They’re, like, frickin’ everywhere. And since we are terrible parents and let the kids watch Disney Channel ad nauseum, every other commercial break is peppered with a Jonas Bros interstitial or music video or teasing, taunting glimpse from some network-arranged “concert” somewhere.

I am more than happy to give Girl-child the chance to long for older teenage boys.

Because my mother let me do the same thing.

Of course, my walls had photos of David Cassidy on them, and Davy Jones from The Monkees, and god-knows-who-else.

I can see that gleam in Girl-child’s eyes when she picks up a tween magazine with the Jo Bros on the cover, that sort of glazed look wherein she’s trying to decide, Do I want to be Mrs. Nick Jonas, or Mrs. Joe Jonas, or Mrs. Kevin Jonas? I know who she’d pick, of course, ‘cause I’m a girl and her mother, and I know we have similar tastes (for example, we both love her dad and think he’s the cutest). I’ve even posed the question to her…”Which Jonas Brother do you like best?”, and she does the right and sensible thing and plays Sweden (or Switzerland, whichever is the most peace-loving) and says, “I don’t know.” But I know. Oh yes, I know.

The thing is? That damn Disney? The videos? The constant teevee time? I almost hate to admit it…but…those JB songs are growing on me. I know…argh…right? But really...it’s not so bad, enjoying what your young daughter enjoys, seeing the world through her eyes, feeling like you did when you were her age, like life was as wide and expansive as Montana, everything was open to you, and love was this thing that you didn’t understand a bit of but knew it made that flutter in your belly. It didn't and doesn't matter that the pop phenoms were and are manufactured by networks, agents, and marketing execs. Not when you're a tween girl.

I’m thinking of getting Girl-child a Jonas Brothers cd today.

Maybe they’ll have a David Cassidy one for me, too.

Here are those damn cute Jonas Brothers:



And David Cassidy:

Michael Phelps may be my new Fantasy Boyfriend

8 Gold medals, baby. EIGHT. I think that puts him in the Fantasy Boyfriend Floater position, at least. (Get it? Floater? Swimmer? Urgh.)




NBC has pretty good video, if you can get past the upload-y thing. Click on the 100m butterfly for the Best. Finish. Evah. Or try this and sit through the commercial.

Congrats, Michael. You are teh awesome. Mwah.

Poetry Friday: Weather

The Poetry Friday Theme for this week is Weather.

Feel free to explore the Weather in your post today, in whatever form pushes that little button on the handle of your umbrella to fling it wide open...story, poem, song, window washing secret, tanning experience.

Me? I gotta defer to the easy side today. You all may have noticed that my Poetry Friday contributions this summer fall under the category of "Sucked". That will change once school starts after Labor Day and I'm back to working on Fridays again. Somehow I can't manage a sit-down in front of the computer on days I sleep in. Go fig-yah.

"Weather With You", Crowded House

Poetry Friday Word-ish for Tomorrow, question for Imelda

This week’s Poetry Friday Word is a Theme…centered around WEATHER.

No matter how smart we humans think we are, the whole of our lives are controlled by the weather. In Michigan, the world stops in its tracks when we have a blizzard in the winter. Our schedules and desires change when it reaches 72 degrees in June and the sun begins to brown our skin. Rain dampens plans, hail requires trips to the auto body shop and the insurance office, and tornados change our sleeping arrangements. We are simultaneously fascinated and pissed off with bad weather…and sometimes good weather, when it requires a job of us (like that damn lawn that needs mowing).

For Poetry Friday tomorrow, tell us about your experience with weather…good, bad, indifferent. Does it inspire you? Does it make you nostalgic? Does it send you straight for the liquor cabinet? You may expound away in story form, poetry, song stylings, Technicolor video, scratch-n-sniff (good luck with that one), photos, readings from Poor Richards Almanac….

Question: Would you wear someone else's shoes? If you were to, say, buy some used shoes in a thrift shop? Do I dare donate half a dozen slightly worn pairs of shoes, or is the thought of the general public that worn shoes are icky (like used underwear, but not THAT icky)?

The Breakfast Club...Now 40% Off!

Sergei and I saw a commercial for JC Penney the other night that tried to be The Breakfast Club. And sell jeans at the same time. Similar high school, similar song, similar statue.

Now, I loved The Breakfast Club when it came out. I was older than a high schooler (but if memory serves, Judd Nelson was too). It was the 80s, and John Hughes ruled, and the characters were cute and rebellious and I loved Simple Minds. Shermer High School. Shermer, Illinois. 60062.

I thought it was a cute commercial, and promptly forgot about it. Until the news today made me remember it, and the comments on the story were so polarized, so passionate, I had to mention it today.

Here's the JC Penney commercial:



And here's the 1980's trailer for The Breakfast Club:




The movie? Dated. Cheesy, almost. Do I still love it? Hells yeah. Do I want it to sell jeans and babydoll blouses? Not really. But it's not my choice. John Hughes needs to pay the rent? Sure, sell the rights to the movie and keep that roof over your head. I don't care. What the commercial did do for me was make me realize how old I've become, and how the things that mattered 20 years ago seem simple and silly now. And...how much I really need to see that movie again.

Don't mess with the bull, young man, you'll get the horns.

Poetry Friday: The Word is CUT

Feel free to hack away at your blog posts today, incorporating the word CUT. Extra bonus points if you write a song about it...just because. Have a good weekend, y'all!

Guess What I Did Today (Haiku)

Your belly peeks out
From once big football jersey
Time to buy school clothes


Damn, she's good:

Poetry Friday WORD for tomorrow, in brief (not boxer)

The Poetry Friday WORD for tomorrow is CUT.

Due to my insatiable appetite for Project Runway (running with scissors), nearly every cooking show on Food Network (cuts like a knife), and my lust for good film (cut...print...lunch).

Feel free to carve a niche in your blog post tomorrow using the word CUT in any of its incantations...story, poem, hippie love song, spectacular independent film, recipe for mock turtle soup, teenage shaving recollection.

I'm being watched. So I bid you adieu, hasta manana.

Mona and the Bad Eggs

I’m not a stupid person.
I have a college degree and a number of years analyzing complex computer systems.
I learned to cook when I was 9.
I have experienced things in life that I shall never divulge to my children or the media.

Why is it then?

Why is it that I can’t peel a goddamn hard-boiled egg?


For years I have eaten hard-boiled eggs at breakfast. Easy, quick, full of protein. I have boiled them for 10 minutes. I have boiled them for 12. I have gotten them to boiling and turned the water off to let them cook “naturally”.

It doesn’t matter.

If I bring two eggs to work, one is always, inevitably, impossible to peel, and I end up eating only one.
If I bring one egg to work, it is always the "impossible to peel" one, and I end up with an ort of pock-marked white and squished yolk, and end up supplementing my “breakfast” with beef jerky from the machine in the break room.

I have peeled them dry.
Or under running water.
I always break the “air sac” first.
I have shocked them with cold water as soon as they’re done cooking.
And let them cool on the counter at their own speed.

What.
The.
Hell.

I have come to the conclusion that it’s not me.
It can’t be.
As I am smart and egg-friendly.
It must be the eggs.
They’re BAD EGGS.
Or do you know something I don’t?

Poetry Friday: Sweat, y'all

For today's Poetry Friday, feel free to explore that wonderful wetness that runs down your face, streams down your back, and makes a general eau de cologne from your armpits...sweat. ("Perspiration" for the gentler souls out there.) Write a story, concoct a poem, take a photo, share your favourite recipe for natural sweet-smellin' underarms...whatever rocks yer world.

I took Girl-Child shopping for deodorant yesterday. We found a section of teen-inspired deodorant, with scents like "Pop Star", and "Berry Blossom". Yeah...after I totally dissed berry-scented deodorants yesterday...and THAT, kids, is why I'm not in Marketing.

Anyway, I let Girl-Child get "Pop Star" scent, and once we got home she rolled that sucker all up and down her armpits. And then of course forced me to smell them.

Mmm...pop-py.

Tonight, Girl-Child's friend Lovely Eyes is over for a sleepover. The girls just got everything unpacked for the event, and Girl-Child rushed in with Lovely Eyes. "Look! She has Sweet Strawberry deodorant! It's the same company as mine is from! So cool!" And they ran away to compare notes on Hannah Montana, the Sprouse brothers, and fruit snacks.

Their deodorant? Teen Spirit.

Heh.

Those girls....