Well, my niece Maddie has been tossing cookies left and right for about a day now. My goodness–even observing is exhausting. Seeing a baby get sick just breaks my heart, but my sister and her husband are simply amazing, attentive parents. They have a tag-team thing going when it comes to clean up and cuddling that no American Gladiator could contend with.

Things are winding down here for the evening–a few friends are over and a movie is on, but the movie is just too mainstream and corny for my tastes. Or maybe I’m just missing the attention span necessary for optimal viewing. I myself am recovering from Thanksgiving dinner–of course I had to have a bit of turkey, and of course I ended up getting quite sick myself(I’m a vegetarian, so yeah I took a risk on that one. Stop making turkey good and I’ll proceed with more caution, maybe).

Before I dive headfirst into some muchneeded writing, I thought I would share the following:

The Bra Stash

Satin Bra Stash allows you to carry credit cards, currency, room keys, or valuables in your bra. It is a satin, washable pouch with snap closure, with two straps that snap around the base of each bra strap. Very lightweight and comfortable, it is even hidden when wearing a tank top.
3.5in X 4.5in

Survival kit-in-a-can

Contains 38 items which can provide warmth, shelter and energy in life threatening situaions from the desert to the arctic. Compact, lightweight, and watertight. Items include waterproof matches, boulion soup packet, bandages, compass and more!
4.25″ x 3″ x 7/8″

from flight 001

The What the F or, what they call, the Lillebaby Euro Tote:

Who the hell carries their kid like an under the arm hot dog?

Camera From Paris

Disposable camera that contains 27 undeveloped souvenir shots of Paris photographed by up-and-coming artists (every camera is different.
(from up to you toronto )

Holy canoli–what a game. I wasn’t convinced of the potential addiction to it, until I picked up the guitar and started trying to play. Note the term “trying to play.” Gotta check that dexterity.

This is my favorite character:

He is a bastard child of Batman’s Penguin villian, Meatloaf, and the entire band Kiss. Fat with a hawk-like nose and spike belted hips. A monstrosity to be reckoned with.

some of her work…

By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP)

As he steps out on a speech-giving tour at college campuses, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may soon wish he was still talking to hostile congressional committees.

Gonzales, who resigned under fire two months ago from the Justice Department, was booed, heckled and called a criminal and a liar by students while giving a speech this week at the University of Florida. At one point, someone wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and a black hood calmly walked onstage and stood next to Gonzales as he was speaking.

For his part, Gonzales defended the Bush administration’s treatment of terror suspects and did not engage the rowdy crowd, which included supporters as well.

“No one is perfect,” he said. “What is important is that we identify our mistakes and correct them.”

It was Gonzales’ first steps on a trail well-trod by former politicians and celebrities: speeches for cash. For his appearance Monday in Gainesville, Fla., Gonzales earned $40,000. He’ll make another $30,000, plus an additional $5,000 in travel, reception and security expenses, at a Feb. 19 speech at Washington University in St. Louis.

Neil Patel, president of the undergraduate students’ association at Washington University, said his campus invited Gonzales after being approached by a speaker’s bureau seeking audiences for the former attorney general.

“One of our goals this year was to make the campus politically active,” said Patel, 21, a Miami native. “We figured we’d try to get into the activism early and bring in a speaker who would incite a lot of discussion, and probably bring a lot of dissent.”

Coming up with the cash to pay Gonzales’ fee was not easy, Patel said.

Campus groups relying on student fees generally bankroll such speeches and “it was kind of difficult finding student groups who were willing to support him,” Patel said.

Gonzales is being offered to audiences by New York-based Greater Talent Network, the same organization that arranges speaking tours for “Sex and the City” author Candace Bushnell, outed CIA operative Valerie Plame and ice cream guys Ben & Jerry. Calls and e-mails to the firm, which bills itself as “America’s leading celebrity speakers bureau,” were not returned.

Despite any discomfort the speeches may bring Gonzales, their payoff comes as he faces mounting legal costs for an investigation into whether he mismanaged the Justice Department. The department’s internal inquiry is looking into allegations that he lied to lawmakers and illegally allowed politics to influence hiring and firing at the department.

Gonzales has hired defense attorney George Terwilliger, a former deputy attorney general, to represent him in the inquiry. Additionally, his friends and former associates are collecting donations - and reportedly seeking contributions ranging from $500 to $5,000 - for a legal defense fund should he need it.

The former attorney general’s pricey speaking fee so far has deterred at least one potential customer. Students at liberal arts school Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., considered inviting Gonzales to speak on campus next spring but could not afford paying the $30,000 to $40,000 he requested.

“He has a rather substantial speaking fee,” Pomona associate dean of students Neil Gerard said. “I believe that’s dead in the water.”

The controversy surrounding Gonzales does have an up side: It ensures he’ll remain a well-known name and help bolster his appeal as a speaker.

“He was the attorney general and was a big name, and he’s in the news,” said Gerard, adding that Pomona students became interested in hearing Gonzales after being approached by a speaking firm working on his behalf.

“President Clinton spoke on our campus last year,” Gerard said. “And I’m not equating those two people, but I think there is an interest in big name speakers.”

Many Thanksgivings ago, she was MIA.  We tried to wait for her–hunched little grouping at my aunt’s family table.  My aunt, but her family–not mine.  I didn’t mind going there since it was once a year, and a bit of tradition, and it gave my grandmother a chance to take a long ride in the car and get out of the house.  I loved to sit behind her in the car because she was so short, her brilliant red hair just barely a tuft from my line of sight.  She was so small to me, and downright miniature in a motorized vehicle. 

 Nobody touched their food but me.  I had already decided that I would eat counter-clockwise–start with potatoes, hit the greens, mingle my way to turkey, and come back ’round to the starches again.  This is a habit strictly reserved for holidays and huge family occasions.  I think it is a comfort thing.  We waited like fake flowers vaseless, making the kind of talk that is never made except when you are waiting for someone or something.  I listened for rummaging at the front door like a dog.  I thought she was on her way, and I thought this for hours.

The phone rang.  The receiver handed to my sister.  It’s hard to remember much, expect Thanksgiving was officially over and I crammed as much turkey in my mouth as possible, rolling more of it up into a napkin.  Mom was in jail. Mom was arrested. My sister had to go pick her up. Thanksgiving was over.  The once a year tradition ended with the ding of tines to plate.  Sometimes you just know these things.  On the way out I started memorizing things about my aunt’s house because I knew they wouldn’t be seen again.  I heard her son yell at his wife upstairs and his voice was gone from memory by the time I got in the car.  I knew a lot more than anyone would tell me.  I might have wondered what christmas would be like; I might have hoped for an impromptu gas station stop so I could tease my nose with the kickdrum scent of gasoline.  I migh have hoped that this was all a joke, and we were really just travelling to somewhere better–like the ocean, or to a bigger Thanksgiving dinner, or the park.  There wasn’t a frost yet.  We still had time.

I was getting laughed at the other day, while talking about my childhood panic attacks.  Others found the oddity of triggers to be amusing, I guess.  I had one during the summer between third and fourth grade, while staring at the ceiling fan.  The fan was on a lackadaisical speed–not too fast, not too slow, just making the rounds so to speak.  I started focusing my eyes on one single blade, following it in circle after circle without moving my head.  It provided a pace, and behind my eyes the brain started matching it, and the heart held onto the bumper like a champ–it all came crashing in.  For some reason I was convinced that there was homework–homework due any minute that I hadn’t completed–even though it was mid-July and I had nothing to do but be a kid and enjoy it.  I ran all around the house, looking for someone to convince me that things were okay.  I was alone.  The only way to get calm was to get the hell away from that fan. 

 I still find that stunt from time to time, my eyes tracking up to a spin on the ceiling, and I have to resist singling out a blade to follow.  It’s just going to make me nervous.

My other early panic attack came from Roy Orbison.  My second step-father was a big fan.  One summer we spent almost a month on a house boat in Dale Hollow, and my step-father had the live video of an Orbison performance.  It’s the one with Springsteen on guitar. Anyway, he put it on the tiny television one afternoon, while my mother napped.  Something about “Only the Lonely” and my mother being unattainable in her REM state drove me crazy.  I had to walk down the dock, away from the scene–I had three stepbrothers at the time and I didn’t feel they had the right to see me cry.  How would I explain such a thing.  As I’m typing this, I just remembered another little panic instance–unrelated to Roy, but related to my mother’s slumber.  Perhaps something about her naps disturbing.  What’s so strange about sleep?  I’m not sure but I can remember feeling as if she was pulling away from me.  The year before Orbison, she was napping at our condo and “More Than Words” came on the radio.  Of all songs, right? 

All my moments of sheer terror were rooted in potential abandonment.  As if I knew one day my mother would leave me.  As if I knew my mother would always be leaving me and that one day she would become a stranger.  Can little kids know that stuff?  Do all children get nabbed by a fear they can’t quite express, aside from emotional response? Where does that fear come from?  

 Well a few people laughed when I told them about these instances of freak out from the past.  They laughed.  I don’t care if they laughed really, I care more about the fact that no one shared anything in return, not a shred.  A bit of me hung out there in the air and rolled around the floor between all of us and so I had to do the polite apologetic stoop n swoop to clear away any remnants of spilling my heart out. Again. Always again.  But that’s how I go. 

and then there is this pen trying to document the gait of plaid jacket dancers entering the bus legs the exact circumference of muscle the driver’s beard growing in the flecked fragment of paper scrap stuck caddycorner to a chignon I can’t Clear that out of the head the mess of Sky this morning that slung in like night my Alarm set normal but seeming so early  And then there is the pen Attempting a squabble down of Ambulance alarms and generally specific City living Oh I know Wills of knots are twice concerned with Other steerings in other palms Slick and stick messed up not stutter no Then this, This I try to put it down like it might be mine for Just a moment of misunderstanding always sitting always Hitting drums with hips never yours then Maybe clouds considering the intrigue of being fog will fall Stargazer killed by spacejunk, call the press and get them prepped since They love this sort of shit And a sky Not mine not yours not even the sonnets own And then There is this pen like walking stick posing Out by my usual block & corner, crooning flimsy stomping, grunting past the gutters just walking the groceries home.

http://www.break.com/index/super-mario-brothers-is-frustrating-part2.html