Where the hell have I been?

I'm still asking myself that question.

I've been away in Florida for a few days, and it's been Memorial Day Weekend...

But before I break it down for y'all, the following quaint scene from Ye Olde Beacon Hille.... this morning, around ten, under a blue, gently cloud-fluffed sky, O and I headed up the hill to spend some time at Myrtle Street Playground, a favorite of ours because it's very much geared towards the under 4 set. As we start into the playground, closing the wrought iron gates behind us, I notice a rail thin, bedraggled old man in an Army jacket on one of the benches. It's oddly incongruous (I know this sounds unfair...) to see the very old in this playground (as it is, also, to see the ugly, the fat, or the poorly dressed), but I was cool with it. He then sparks up a match to light his pipe, and I'm mildly annoyed; there are, after all, small children playing nearby. I turn with the stroller to find another bench, and as I do so, the old man collects his newspaper, sucks on his pipe, and gets up to leave. It wasn't until the gate was latched behind him that the distinct, acrid tang of marijuana smoke wafted over to me. I watched several expensively casual moms wrinkle their noses, but I just smiled. My annoyance was driven away by the thought of a grubby old man smoking his weed in a corn cob pipe on the hallowed playgrounds of Ye Olde Beacon Hill.

Princess Leatherhooter

OK, so one of the fun things about having parents who only really embraced the internet in the last five years is that there are still a lot of forwarded humor emails that they send along - ones I've seen a few times, but might have forgotten in the years since we were all newbies to mass emailing...

Today, Mom forwarded me a formula for finding your stripper name.

Yep, you guessed it. My stripper name is Princess Leatherhooter.

Priceless!

Contentment

Apparently Maurice feels at home here at my place of employment. Silly pug dog.

I Love Me Some Classic Film Spoofs

I got this link in an email today.

The Ark, Floating Floors, the GrandDog, the Benefits of Plans, and Rkzom

Since I left you we have acquired a crew for the Ark... and once again, the crew from the Lord Roland Oranthal Sebascodegan Bluesbagpiper III, Esq. Memorial Cruise '02 has turned their collective "mines" to piracy... And I found our ship. We saw her the final day of the aforementioned cruise, and fell promptly in lust with brigantine Fritha. The Northeast Maritime Institute of Fairhaven, Massachusetts has recently acquired her... So close, and yet so many millions of dollars away...

In other news, the painting of the dining room is nearly complete, and Mark put the floating floor down in the living room, so it kind of looks like a real house chez nous these days. I'm psyched!

We hosted a Mother's Day Brunch for our parents on Sunday, and all went very well (nothing like a GrandDog to break the ice!).

My WW adventures have continued to be positive; you can see the results here. I'm pretty proud of myself. Apparently, I just needed to get the rest of my ducks in a row before I could get down to the business of re-losing all the weight. Nothing like a plan, you know? I've got a plan for decluttering and organizing my house, and a plan for getting in better physical shape, now I can focus some of my conserved energy losing the weight and straightening out my finances! Oy. When did I get so .... adult?

Speaking of adult things, I saw my old friend Stephanie on Friday. O and I met her and her 5 month old son for lunch. It was really nice to reconnect, and I marvel again at how nice it is to just fall back into conversation with someone you haven't really talked to in 11 years, and have it be completely unforced. Then it was inventing code names for cute boys (ie: tall, blonde minstrel "Rkzom"), now it's gabbing about husbands and houses and babies, but it's still fun!

I Heart Saturday Mornings Again

Dragged my ass to meeting this morning, despite wanting to curl up in a ball. I even knew I'd had a great week on program. This rain is making me depressed.

But...

I lost 1.6 pounds!

Holy motivation, Batman...

Now Accepting Applications for My Ark

Because, People, it is never going to stop raining.

You can trust us, Mark's a really good carpenter. And I'm a great cook - it'll be like Noah and the animals meets Celebrity Cruise Lines!

Applicants should be intelligent, honest, hygienic, hardworking... be aware, however, that we're heavily biased towards people we like.

Act now, don't delay. I don't like to be an alarmist, but the end is clearly near.

I Am Wicked Unique

Clearly my parents were striving to separate me from the millions of gals with the surname "Brown" when I was born, because namestatistics.com (which uses the 1990 US Census) says the following about my first name:

C- is the #1862 most common female name.
0.003% of females in the US are named C-.
Around 3825 US females are named C-!
source namestatistics.com

And "Brown" gets:

Brown is the #5 most common last name.
0.621% of last names in the US are Brown.
Around 1552500 US last names are Brown!
source namestatistics.com

Now, my married surname is a different story:

G- is the #57134 most common last name.
0.0005% of last names in the US are G-.
Around 1250 US last names are G-!
source namestatistics.com

Apparently, by marrying Mark, I've joined a cult of French Canadians 1250 strong ::grin:: That's pretty good for a cult. Actually, there's this geneaologist in Florida who's traced the name back to France, and claims that every G- on the North American continent descends from this one guy. Crazy huh? Knowing how few of them there really are, I guess he could be right...

The Lives We've All Got

My Mother said to me, on Saturday, as we were getting ready to head southwest to Danbury for Ari & Julia's wedding, "You know, I said to your Dad the other day, that your old high school foursome is all married now..." And I had to stop and swallow a spoonful of old. Whoa! So many hours in the middle years of high school I could be found at the Tatnuck Bookseller in Worcester consuming bottomless $1 cups of house coffee and reading/writing bad poetry/dishing/wailing/bitching with my three best friends.. and now we're scattered to the winds, married and living our lives, and I find myself the one who still connects with each of them.

One is a deputy editor for a nifty section of the Wall Street Journal, recently transplanted to Westchester County with her husband. One lives at a Buddhist center in northern California with his husband and a peahen and studies religion, philosophy, language, and raccoon behaviors. You all know my story. Which leaves the fourth, married on Saturday to his college sweetheart and honeymooning before coming home to NYC.

Fun wedding!

There were 6 of us there from our alma mater, 7 if you count the groom, and with spouses, fiance/es, and s.o.'s we filled a table. There was dancing, drinking, cigars, reminiscing, catching up, speculation, and so much goodwill - it makes me happy to know that 11 years later we can all pick up where we left off, without all the bullshit that divided us when we were seventeen, and that, for the most part, the partners we've brought into our lives rounded out the group. Is that rare? It feels like it is. For all I know some of us will go another 11 years before we catch up again, but I still feel like the goodwill I felt on Saturday night will re-emerge.

I did stop to wish that all four of my old foursome had been there, but life sometimes gets in the way. And that's OK; the lives we've all got suit us.

To Ari & Julia, a lifetime of a life that suits you! Mazel Tov!

It's May!

I know it's been May for 4 days now (look out Boston, all the Plastic Paddies head south of the border for Cinco de Mayo tomorrow), but we've had gray skies and rain, which puts a damper on life with kids... So today, O and headed out along the River Charles to check out the playground up at the Mass Ave Bridge.
Good times! O harassed squirrels, I got to walk for an hour in the sunshine, O played on the structure (remember when they were called "jungle gyms?"), and I smiled smugly in order to fit in with the other Back Bay moms/caregivers. O got home, ate lunch, and zonked out, leaving me time to hit the treadmill and the showers before blogging. Life is.... GOOD!
Except for this tree:

This poor tree has always looked a bit craggy and gnarly, but it's had a rough winter, and that makes me sad... J and I used to play near/on this tree when he was little like O, back when his family lived up in the Back Bay... At least it's still got its dignity.. the MDC hasn't called in the butchers with the chainsaws yet...
Tonight's a long night for me. Mrs. X is working late, and Mr. X is taking J to the Sox game, so I'm staying until 9ish with E & O. Bedtime is fun, right?

Decluttering

I am in the process of reclaiming my life from the hostage situation in my cluttered house. I found a website/mailing list with tips and scheduling ideas, (motivational hoohah) and I have to say it's working. In two weeks I've added a few small things to my morning and evening routines, and an awareness of small things I can do throughout the day to help, and my house has never been more organized - even the construction zones!

Other benefits have been a kind of zen-like ability to leave behind some of the more financially crippling "city girl" habits I'd developed in the years since college (manicures, pedicures, $75 salon trips, expensive dinners out every weekend...). Witness my somewhat trepidatious trip to SuperCuts last night. And my hair looks cute today, too!

I've got bags and boxes packed up to go to the GoodWill folks, and our trash has been overflowing the last few weeks, and through it all, I've been less stressed, happier, and lighter feeling altogether. I've even managed to have a week and a half of solid WW success and real progress in my 5K training. Perhaps I'll even manage to declutter my body as well as my house?


With all my newfound, organized time, I had time to get a lot done opver the last weekend, including the first primer coat on the DR trim, and planting two trees in our backyard! Here's a shot of the primed trim, with the aforementioned color swatch on the wall.

We even invited my cousin and his wife over for dinner in a month, which should force us to get everything all done. I'm wicked sneaky, right? I can't wait to have a room done! (once again, I need to exclude the flooring, which is an entirely separate phase of our remodeling) Mark's working on digging footings for the little deck he's planning off the DR - just enough space for the grill and our outside table and chairs. After the deck, it's time to get serious about demolishing the "bad" side of the house, and starting the long road to a front parlor and an office with attached full bath... Sweet dreams!