Seriously.

Is there anything better than driving around on a sunny day with the windows rolled down and the music turned up loud enough to annoy all the neighbors?

Make way for the funk-tastic Nano-licious Goddess mobile, Bitch-ez.

Last Christmas My Ho's Youngster made me a mix CD as a gift, which I thanked him for sincerely and then didn't listen to until, like, February. Because I was afraid.

The Youngster is a member of a high-school garage band named "Ocelot Slaughterhouse." I have never seen them perform in person, but one time My Ho played a CD for me, which Ocelot Slaughterhouse had recorded in one band members' parents' basement or something, and while their enthusiasm was admirable, I found the music to be a smidge heavy on the screaming for my taste. I was pretty sure that this mix disk probably contained a lot of the same.

In fact, there is a little of the screamy stuff on it, but a lot of it is really not all that bad. In fact, some of it is really pretty good, and by bands I probably never would have heard of if not for his gift.

I became so obsessed with one song in particular, "Certified," by Diverse, that when my Nano finally arrived, I went straight to iTunes and downloaded the whole album. I'm sure I look very cutting edge, a thirty-something mother of two driving around in an aged white Honda Civic, blasting the hip-hop music through her iPod. You can call me G-mom. The Original Goddess.

It is, as the kids say, tight.

So Dear, and Also, So Thoroughly Disgusting

Over the weekend I was in my backyard mowing the lawn when I came across an empty hole in the ground, about the diameter of a Coke can. Next to the hole was a little pile of dried grass and grayish tufts of fur, a clear sign that this hole had once been home to a litter of baby rabbits.

Our neighborhood is thick with rabbits, and my dog has caught several in our backyard. One time I opened the back door to let her in the house, and she came trotting merrily up the deck steps with the freshly eviscerated remains of a full-grown rabbit hanging out of her mouth. I could see that she had plans to bring her prize inside to finish snacking on, on the living room carpet no doubt. After some prying, I got her to drop the carcass into a garbage bag, and when I let her in the door, sans carnage, she flashed me a look that I would later see many times on my thirteen-year-old daughter, a look which clearly said, “Why do you have to be so MEAN? Gawd!”

So on Saturday, as I kicked loose dirt into that hole to fill it in, I tried not to think about what probably had happened to the baby rabbits. I hoped really, really hard that I would not have to find out for certain what had happened to those baby rabbits.

Then, last night, it was dark outside and starting to rain, so I opened the door to let the dog in. As I was admiring the little yellow flowers that have sprouted on the tomato plants in the pots just outside on the deck, the corner of my eye caught something dangling from her muzzle. Before I could say, “NononononoNONONOOOOOOOOO,” she had strolled past me and dropped her dangling something onto the kitchen floor. It was a dark, wet, shapeless little pile, which had tiny pink rabbit feet attached. Based on the smell, these remains were decidedly un-fresh.

Another plastic bag later, the offending pile was out of the house, but its aroma was not. Disgusted, I put the dog into her kennel and latched the door shut.

I watch plenty of “The Dog Whisperer.” I understand that my dog is an animal, and she was only doing what she, as a dog, is hard-wired to do. But at the same time, I was so appalled that I could not even look at her.

This morning when I went to let her out again, I thought I still smelled that smell. Maybe it was only the memory of it that I was detecting. Or, more likely, my darling hound probably took a nice, long roll in her stinky pile before picking it up to bring in the house, and I am going to have to give her a serious scrubbing in deodorizing shampoo tonight.

I am choosing not to wonder exactly how many baby rabbits were once in that hole.

I am also choosing not to wonder where exactly my dog might have others stashed away for later.

Mmmmmm... Rabbits...

I Have an iPod!

I have an iPod!
I have an iPod!
I have an iPod!

I pretended for a really long time that I didn't want one at all, because I didn't WANT to want one. But really I DID. And now I have one of my very own, and it is all silvery and awesome and full of This American Life podcasts and music that is inapproproate for children.

Joy.

Sigh.

Because Batgirl is my friend, and because I compeletely understand and respect her reasons for ending what has been a beloved gift to Twins fans and baseball lovers everywhere, I am not going to tell her how genuinely heartbroken I am right now.

R.I.P. Batgirl.

You will be sorely, sorely missed.

(Also, see here, and here, and here.)

Maybe With a Squeeze of Fresh Lime

It’s been a few days since I posted, so I thought that today I’d share the e-mail I wrote this morning in response to my lovely sister’s inquiry as to how I’m doing:

Well, yesterday I took the morning off of work to try and fix a pipe that was leaking water all over my basement. I thought I had fixed it, and it IS better, but it's still dripping. I think I put a part on wrong, which means I have to take it all apart again. Just about every six months, it seems, some random bit of my house starts dripping/leaking/spurting water. It's awesome.

Last night I busted a DemiGoddess (who shall remain nameless) in the middle of chatting online in Facebook. I've told the Demis that they're not allowed to do online chat rooms, and My Space is forbidden. I never mentioned Facebook specifically, but given that it wasn't until my third inquiry that she finally admitted what she was doing, I'm pretty sure she knew I would not be okay with it. The cable modem is in my purse until further notice.

Yesterday after a visit to her friend's house, the other DemiGoddess (who shall also remain nameless) walked in the door and said to me, "This is going in my memoir, and you are NOT going to look good." My offense? Making her walk home from her friend’s house, which is half a mile away (the same distance as the coffee shop that she walks to at least once a week). With gas at $3.40 a gallon, I will not be driving her a half mile to anywhere.

I didn’t bother to mention that the only reason she got to go to her friend's house after school at all was because I was so distracted by the dripping pipe yesterday morning that I forgot to tell her I had changed my mind about letting her go based on the latest grade update on the school website. Specifically, her grade in Chorus, which was a letter that a person would basically have to be sleeping through Chorus class to receive.

After fighting unsuccessfully with our CD-R drive and ending up listening to the playlists on the Demis' iPods in the car on the way to the lake for Mother’s Day weekend, last week I finally broke down and ordered a refurbished 4 GB Nano for myself. I'm simultaneously wracked with guilt over spending money on such a frivolity and obsessively checking the "Order Status" link on the Apple website to see when it’s coming and where it is today (Sacramento).

Other than that I've pretty much been driving the Demis around (to places that are more than half a mile away) and watching crappy-ass baseball on TV.

Except for last night's game, which was magnificent.

I bought a bottle of cherry lambic at Trader Joe's last week and I'm thinking seriously about drinking the entire thing tonight while I watch the "Lost" season finale.

Aren't you glad you asked?

DemiGoddess the Elder is a Poet

A few weeks ago, Demi the Elder told me that she’d entered a poem she had written into a poetry contest at school. I knew she was clever and creative in many ways, but until then I did not know she wrote poetry. Intrigued, I asked if I could read her submission.

No, she said. It’s too embarrassing.

Oh, my child, I said. You have no idea about embarrassing. I told her that I had, buried in the basement, reams of my own high school poetry—self-obsessed, pretentious, over-the-top with angst high school poetry. Poetry that is the very definition of embarrassing. And which she might read, if she would let me read hers.

It was a deal.

Her poem is called “Soon They’ll Come Out with a Barbie Girl Mastercard.” It’s a commentary on some of the more rampant consumerists in her peer group, and is scathing, earnest and funny.

Yesterday at school Ms. Elder found out she won first place in that poetry contest at school.

I’m hoping she’ll use the Barnes & Noble gift card she received as a prize to purchase something a little more worthwhile to read than my eleventh-grade creative writing.

22 Games, 2 Home Runs

Halfway through the eighth inning of last night's Twins/Bitch Sox* game, Chicago was ahead 4-1, thanks in large part to an ugly and totally avoidable throwing error by the starting pitcher, Boof Bonser. I left the TV to change laundry loads in the basement (the washer is fixed now—woohoo!), resigned to the fact that this was going to be another one of those games.

When I came back upstairs, the score was 4-3, and thank goodness the DemiGoddesses had been watching so they could fill me in on all the mad piranha action that I had just missed.

To quote Mr. Gleeman: “…if you're going to extend your [hitting] streak to 22 games like Hunter did last night, doing it by tying the game with an eighth-inning, two-out single is the way to go.”

Hell yeah, it is.

And THEN? Justin Morneau came through with a tenth-inning, three-run, second home run of the game (and a monster of a home run, too), for the win.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy the celebratory man love?

*See Batgirl.

Ten Thousand Years in a School Auditorium Will Give You Such a Crick in the Neck

The four-day run of DemiGoddess the Younger’s school musical, “Aladdin Jr.,” took place over the weekend, and as a result I have had the song “Arabian Nights” circling in my head since Friday evening. Not even an excessively loud Flogging Molly session in the car on the way to work this morning had the power to exorcise the thing from my brain.

(“…more often than NOT, it’s hotter than HOT, in a lot of good waaaaaaays…”)

In the days leading up to opening night, Ms. Younger had expressed doubts about how the choreography was coming along, and commented disdainfully that some of the other actors were still not “off book” yet. (Apparently that’s theater speak, and means that they still hadn’t memorized their lines. Aren’t we just thespians?). But in spite of her reservations, it turned out to be a fun show, with colorful costumes and lots of high-energy musical numbers, and all the kids did an impressive job with the singing and the dancing.

Ms. Younger’s performance, including several spoken lines and a couple of short singing solos, was as spectacular as expected. And I was astonished to hear her good friend K., whom I had long been convinced was incapable of speech (she is almost always completely silent whenever she is at our house) belt out her solo parts at an ear-splitting decibel level. Who knew?

And after three hours of “The Visit” on the previous weekend (not to mention the rest of the past years' consistently lengthy productions) I am not too proud to admit that my favorite part about this particular show was that it was one hour long.

I kept checking my watch after it was over, feeling like someone had just sprung ME from a magic lamp.

1+1 = So Out of Luck

Remember a few months back, when I did some significant upgrading to my home PC? I had finally started using a digital camera, there was the blogging, the Demis were pining for iPods, and they were both increasingly using the computer for Important! Homework! My old desktop computer was just not cutting the mustard, so, with a little help, I installed a new processor and a new motherboard, boosted the memory and upgraded the software. And for a while, it was all very exciting and good.

The irony, of course, is that the upgrades have allowed the DemiGoddesses to become heavy users of things like iTunes, YouTube and instant messaging. And with just the one desktop PC for the three of us, well, let’s just say that the math hasn’t worked out quite the way I had hoped. I've been forced to come up with some very creative chore assignments just to be able to check my e-mail ("This dog needs waxing. And you, go rotate your dresser drawers. Do I have to do everything around here?").

Oh, the bickering.

So, a couple of weeks ago, when my workplace announced a drawing for a bunch of used IBM Thinkpads, I was all over it. With a laptop, thought I, I would finally be able to get some screen time at home. Why, I could even take a laptop to the neighborhood Cairbou Coffee, where I could drink expensive coffee drinks with whipped cream and candy bits piled on top while I blog, just like the cool kids.

So last week I was thrilled to learn that I had won one of those used IBM Thinkpads, and once again enlisted my skilled and generally high-quality friend Daniel to get me set up with a wireless network. Which he did, again, for the price of a sandwich from Jimmy John’s.

And just last night, after some network wrangling and one more trip to MicroCenter for an Ethernet cable (and, since I am incapable of leaving that store with only the item I went in to buy, a wireless mouse that is SO COOL), we went live.

…aaaaand within fifteen minutes, DemiGoddess the Elder was adding photos to her blog on the desktop PC, while DemiGoddess the Younger was researching current events for school on the Thinkpad.

At which point I went out to the backyard to scratch my next blog post in the dirt with a pointed stick.

In Which I Become a...

The DemiGoddesses have been busy, busy, busy young thespians lately. DemiGoddess the Younger is just finishing up rehearsals for her school musical, “Aladdin,” a junior-high-appropriate show based on the Disney movie. And, over the weekend, DemiGoddess the Elder played a news reporter in her high school’s production of “The Visit,” a play that is weird and dark and a lot like a three-hour episode of “The Twilight Zone.” With eunichs.

My Ho and I saw the show on Friday night, and just like when she performed in “Grease” and “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Anything Goes” and “Love’s Labours Lost,” I was astonished at how articulate and composed Ms. Elder is on stage. I had another one of those sobering moments when I wondered who that pretty dark-haired young woman was, and then realized suddenly that she was my daughter, so close to grown up that it knocked the wind right out of me. Again.

She had a good-sized bit of dialogue, all of it in a single scene toward the end of the play. Because there was no flash photography allowed during the performance, after they'd taken their bows, the kids returned to the stage and worked their way back through the show, re-creating a number of key scenes so that the parents could take pictures. I waited patiently while they set up props and changed costumes and posed for dramatic moment after dramatic moment. As the drama teacher called out scenes from nearer and nearer the beginning of the play, it became clear that she had skipped over Ms. Elder’s big scene. Conflicted, I watched the mass of parents jostling back and forth in front of the stage, cameras flashing as they elbowed each other out of the way, and considered whether the desire to capture my daughter's big moment for posterity outweighed my reluctance to become one of those parents.

The next thing I knew, I was standing behind the drama teacher saying, “Um, excuse me… Hi, I’m Demi the Elder’s mom. Do you think maybe you could have them do that town meeting scene? It’s the only one she had lines in.”

It turned out that the teacher had intended to set up that one, but she’d overlooked it in her notes. She thanked me for reminding her, and then quickly had the kids change back into their act three costumes. I got my superstar her photo, and I only had to hip check two bald guys with video cameras to do it.