3am in the Peds ED:

Phone rings...

Me: Hello?

ED Resident working for the Dark Adult Side: I knew it.

Me: Knew what?

ED Resident: That it was you working over there tonight.

Me: Oh?

ED Resident: Two techs just crossed to our side, one saying "Holy shit, our doctor is knitting at night!" That pretty much narrowed it down.

This is what I heard Romney say:

1) It's silly to invest in solar and wind power.  Let's suck this planet dry and then leave it to the future citizens to figure out what the hell to do when there are no more non-renewable resources to renew.

2) I live under the illusion that individuals can "shop around" for insurance companies.

3) The only thing I care about is making jobs in this country.

4) I'm going to reduce the federal deficit by cutting federal jobs in this country.

5) I am not even remotely embarrassed that I believe health care is a privilege. In fact, though I espouse my Mormon heritage and it's Biblical truths, I have no problem living with the immorality that every citizen in this country is not guaranteed health care.

6) I have short term memory loss. I want to stop shipping jobs overseas, but yet I was the big man on campus at one of the nation's largest corporate outsourcers.

7) I would rather have people admitted to the hospital with acute, expensive, preventable illnesses and let them take on the hundreds of thousands of dollars this accrues just so I am not caught in public saying that I would support adding an average of $2,500 per year to families. I would rather them be hundreds of thousands dollars in debt.

8) I believe Obama is responsible for the two smoke and mirror wars that cost trillions of dollars in the eight years preceding his entry into the Oval Office.

9) I care about education. But Big Bird can suck it.

Opposite of Sycophant

All I've wanted to do this week was come home and send ANGER ANGER HATE HATE HATE out into the internet unknown, but I felt this was probably unproductive and would not necessarily be helpful. So, instead, I channeled my rage into writing. Thus, I give you:

The Opposite of Sycophant

By: Me. 

Forcibly spending a week with you

was like attending a lecture on Jerk

You showed off its malice, its bally-hoo

in mincing comments regarding my work

I skimmed the lecture’s whole outline

having taken this class times before

it’s clear you think you hide it with saccharine

but your charms and your tricks, I abhor

I can usually hide indignation,

and play right along with the games,

but with you I can’t hide my frustration

you’re Satan finessing his flames

I can’t stand your insincere candor,

with students and colleagues alike,

it’s clear that you want them to pander

to your ego that rivals Third Reichs’ 

You imply that I’m stupid and lazy

veiling thinly the truth of your joke

through questions irrelevant and crazy

that make my eyes seem appealing to poke.

What made your curriculum so bitter

worse than most assholes’ I’ve known

was your critique that my notes, they did fritter,

any story or use on their own

You told me to read what you wrote

about the team’s patients and plans

You asked that I pare down, not emote

you’d never seen something so rambling, so bland.

This hurt more than the barbs you had crafted

since it wasn’t intentionally mean

for you attacked all that had lasted

of the me that med school wiped clean.

You couldn’t have known that you’d done that,

but I know it’d make your short self seem tall,

to realize you won in our combat,

with an offhanded comment so small. 

Though I failed all your quizzes by guessing,

and despite all the spits and the swings, 

This week did teach me one lesson:

You’re a dick and you don’t know a thing.

Clueless

I can't tell you how many times I watched the movie Clueless growing up.  I can tell you that if we had time to kill waiting in an amusement park line I could recite you the first twenty minutes without stopping to breathe.

So, naturally, when I needed some audio accompaniment to my knitting this weekend, I chose the best movie I could enjoy without watching on Instant Netflix: Clueless.

When I was younger and the TV used to do that thing where Pay-Per-View was just a channel and it played the same movie 24/7 until it switched to a different movie, I would just watch movies over and over and over. My Dad is a local sports announcer and we got all the zillion channels for free, so, why not? 

We would also tape (on VHS)(VHS! How weird is that!?) the movies we liked so that when the 24/7 week was over we could continue to watch them again and again and again. And by we I mean me.

I did dupe some friends and family members into joining my couch potato-ness. In fact, I remember sitting next to my mother watching Clueless and feeling only marginally uncomfortable when it was the cafeteria scene where Dee asks Tai if she's ever done it in water. I remember my pre-adolescent self wondering... do what? Do what? And concluding that I must've missed something in the earlier conversation. Them talking about doing their homework or clipping coupons, and how crazy it would be to do poolside. Or something.

Needless to say, this time around the jokes made a whole lot more sense.

The portion where Amber tells the gym teacher that her plastic surgeon doesn't want her engaging in any activities where balls fly at her nose and then Dee quips, "Well, there goes your social life," was not in fact a nod to Amber's intramural dodgeball league that I assumed she competed in on the weekends. 

Nor does an "herbal refreshment" refer to an all natural breath mint. 

Though, to be fair to pre-adolescent me, Dee and Cher didn't get the reference either. "Well, we don't have any tea, but we have Coke and stuff."

"No shit, you guys got coke here?!"

Again, I thought... oh, poor Tai! She really is clueless! She doesn't know what Coke is!? Joke's on you past me. Joke's on you.

Last Week's Haiku

Adulation of vacation.

Nine days with no work.

It was bitchin': beach, books, bff.

I will miss this bliss.

Emma

She needs no introduction.

Except to those of you who've never met her.

Emma is the world's sweetest dog and I say that as a dyed in the wool cat person. A mama cat, if you will.

She is some sort of genetic salad originally from Oregon, facts that no doubt set the stage for her beyond mellow demeanor.

She is owned by one of my husband's BFFs. Said BFF is a veterinarian and has a soft spot for animals. (Why yes, I have encouraged him to feature this prominently on his dating profile!) During their college years The Vet (ernarian. We have way too much fun playing off vet and making 'nam jokes. I think they're only funny to us.) was traveling through Oregon with his family. They were minding their own business putting birds on things and paging through Powells' books wearing vintage get-ups, you know, basic Oregon stuff, when a dog ran across the highway in front of them.

The Vet, being the aspiring vet he was at the time, had his family stop the car, pick up the emaciated young dog and take it to an animal shelter. The dog had no collar and I guess they were in the middle of nowhere so, given her condition, assuming no owner seemed a safe bet.

The shelter put animals down if no one claimed or adopted them in 3 days. The Vet flew back home to Long Island and called daily to check on the dog.

On the third day when no one had claimed it and she was mere hours away from the big sleep, he paid to have the dog shipped across the country so he could be its puppy daddy.

My husband accompanied The Vet to JFK where they met *triumphant fanfare*: Emma.

From that moment on it's as though she knew what The Vet did for her, what he saved her from, and she has been the sweetest, most obedient, loyal dog since. (Healthy now, too. She's been with the Vet a solid 7 years at least.)

The Vet decided to move to Denver a few months ago and moved in down the street (thereby bringing me one step closer to a life long dream of having a posse akin to Friends or How I Met Your Mother. He's kind of in a Barney/Ted phase right now. Ted circa season three.) so Emma is a regular presence.

We went camping a few weeks ago and Emma of course dutifully came along. We were in the mountains whose weather is a solid twenty degrees lower than Denver's usually, so at night The Vet put Emma's sweater on and my heart melted.

She's not a teeny dog, she's a solid medium size, probably on the larger end of medium, so her garb was just so cute and utilitarian rather than annoying and pretentious. The sweater was a thick, cabled, heathered yarn number that exuded outdoorsy-ness.

Clearly she needed something more feminine.

Thus, I made Emma a sweater. Something a bit more fetching, and a little lighter for the spring and summer nights.

Why wouldn't I wrap a gift for a dog?

Hottie at the Hydrant!

Robo-Emma. 

Love it.

I used the Hoodie Dog Coat pattern, but left the hoodie part off given the bad rap they get these days. The yarn is a wool blend that I let my husband pick out. The color way is "Whimsy."

That is so fetch.

I made this.

Because I have an unhealthy obsession with Mean Girls and/or crafting.

It's an iPhone case.

Awkward Girl Problems

In conversation with my Nigerian co-resident:

Me: Did you make it to book club last night?

Her: Huh-uh, you?

Me: No, I got stuck at work. Blah blah needy sick children blah.

Her: I didn't read the book, so...

Me: Oh, yeah, it was okay. I'm kind of excited for next month's pick though.

Her: What is it?

Me: It's like a chick-lit-y looking book. It has legs AND high heels on the cover, so, you know, legit.

Her: What's it called?

Me: It's whhhhhy, huh... I... don't remember...?

Pure Pageantry

When you spend most of your days taking care of children with chronic illnesses who have parents that are scared suspicious (a gentler and more mistrustful form of shitless), having a life outside the hospital is key. 

When you’re only guaranteed four days off a month, you need escapism.

Lately, my favorite getaway is TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras. You can’t get further from reality.

The program is akin to watching an anthropologic study unfold. There’s a culture, a culture you even recognize as human, but it is completely foreign. Or in this case, jaw droppingly back-asswards.

The most recent episode I watched flashed a 3 day old baby boy donning a onesie that was basically the equivalent of a  t-shirt tuxedo. 

I’m not sure which voice in my head was screaming the loudest... HE HAS NO IMMUNE SYSTEM! HE’S A HE! FAKE-O T-SHIRT TUXES ARE ONLY OKAY IN ATLANTIC CITY!

Interestingly, they very well may have been in Atlantic City. The show seems to showcase locales that are generally well past their prime. 

Much like the contestants' parents.

I will give the program some benefit of the doubt though... It’s hard to imagine anywhere with a modicum of liberalism embracing junior tiny misses. By eliminating those, right off the bat you’re left with West Virginia, the deep South, Youngstown, Ohio, and most other destinations that would add steep competition to an “Armpit of America” crowning.

On the show the parents generally fall into three main categories:

1. Shameless former pageant princesses themselves (surprisingly the minority)(at least in terms of who is featured on the show)
2. Those who are obese, impoverished, insecure, or some combination of the three, and using their children as a public dumping ground for their own self hatred
3. Repressed gay men

It all boils down to one thing: projection. They may as well call the program Vicarious Living Goes Blingin'.

There is a mother on one of the episodes who enters all five of her daughters into competitions. The eldest two are fraternal twins who were about 6 years old when the show aired. In an interview their mother says, aloud, in front of television cameras, for people to see and hear, “Mary looks like mommy, and she’s the one who wins the most. I definitely think she’s the prettiest of the group. Her sister, Jezebel, has a bigger nose and is just... timid. I don't expect her to really do much.” 

The show then cuts to the two girls in separate interviews. Mary says she loves pageants b/c she wins. Jezebel says she doesn’t like competing against her sister because it makes her feel bad.

Uhm, hello. Pathology much?

She's three.

The irony being the years and years of therapy these kids will rack up will altogether probably cost less than the amount their parents have invested in toddler pageantry careers.

It’s insane.

They're airbrushed to boot. Airbrushed. Pretty sure skin is never nicer than when you're under the age of 5.

The documentary usually starts out in various competitors homes and they then follow the competitors through their categories on to crowning. Too frequently they have wide angle shots of low income housing with dilapidated roofs, outdated kitchens, and just other stigmata of hard financial times, and then pan to the mothers talking about their daughter’s $3,000 dresses. 

As in $3,000 for one dress. That they will wear as a 5 year old. Which means it will fit them for like five minutes.

How terrified are you right now?

These little girls get spray tans (at least it's just spray? slightly redeeming?), manicures, facials, pedicures, fake nails, fake eyelashes, and “flippers.” Not aquatic flippers as an accessory to the swimsuit competition like I originally thought, but rather a panel of plastic fake teeth that they can wear over their unsightly natural teeth. Mothers have said they choose this option to hide their child’s yellow teeth, lost teeth, crooked teeth, or abundant gums.

I mean seriously. You think you're gonna sleep tonight?

You can just see all the self-esteem the parents wish they had getting leeched out of their offspring criticism by criticism. 

And their routines... oh God, the routines. It’s so horrifying you can’t look away. You really can’t. It varies from comic awkwardness to painful foreshadowing of future stripper careers. The worst are the fathers who are choreographing the routines and are clearly looking past their kid to visualize the true calling as a Vegas show girl they (the dad) could have had if they weren't born into a den of evangelical Christianity. 

DSM-IV diagnoses at these things are more ubiquitous than hairspray. 

I understand the arguments for building confidence and supporting what a kiddo thinks they want their hobbies to be... but good lord. The parents will say in their interview that oh, their 30 month old ASKED them to do pageants. They WANT to be on stage.

The cameras then cut to the child’s individual interview and the kid has a speech delay so stark they have to run closed captioning on the bottom of the screen so that we can understand that they say, “Mommy makes me.”

Furthermore, the awards these kids get are things like, “Best Smile,” “Most Beautiful,” and don’t even get me started on the hierarchy of Grand versus Ultimate versus Supreme versus Brattiest Brat of all the Brats. What message does that transmit?

It’s fascinating, disgusting, and transfixing all at once.

I have to say though... even if some of these parents are way wakadoo and off the deep end, it's kind of nice to see them involved in their child’s life. And there are the rare families here and there who you can tell legitimately are doing it for fun and are able to keep their kid balanced.

But then there are the others, ohhhh the others, who make really terrible parents, but really great television.

To boot, my birthday was last week, jeering on another year.

When I was younger my family had an Apple IIc. I was pretty pissed about it because all of the good games seemed to be for the Apple IIe. I had to settle for a pixelated Carmen San Diego and embarking on a pretty damn stagnant Oregon Trail. Those wheels may have been turning, but that Conestoga on screen NEVER MOVED.

I think it goes without saying that I was a weird kid. I mean, we all were in our different ways. I just happened to be a half-ethnic emotionally stunted girl with authority issues who liked type A reclusive "games" (i.e. playing JCPenney catalogue service... answering fake phone calls and filling out fake orders on fake papers that I'd make my Dad copy for me at his work).

In one of my various iterations of cubicle-dwelling corporate minion, I had a typing tic of sorts. I would practice over and over typing out my full name, first and last, followed by: this is your life.

Pants McSlacks, this is your life.


That was probably my conscience trying to wake me up and realize I should go out and see the sunshine where other kids played, but I interpreted it as proof positive that some day I would be on that show, "This is Your Life."

I don't think it exists any more. In fact, I'm not entirely sure it even existed in the 80s when I would have been doing this... regardless of how I knew about this show, I would imagine being on television listening to voiceovers of characters in my short life and practice thinking really hard about who they were.

I think somehow doing this Pants McSlacks this is your life business ingrained in me from an early age the layout of the QWERTY keyboard.

I guess.

I don't know. I also played a lot of piano so my fingers were pretty used to working independently of one other.

All this to say, I'm a fast typer.

Growing up my next door neighbor had that Mavis Beacon typing game which was basically like nerd girl crack. You had to type and type and type the words that flashed across the screen and whatever velocity you achieved was how far your little car went. 100 words per minute was a mile. Et cetera.

Any mistakes became bugs on the windshield. And you better believe that that overt stigmata of failure was damn fine motivation for a spaz like me.

So today I was minding my own business, typing up my progress notes on patients for the day, when I realized the new med student was staring at my hands. Had she identified her identical hand twin?

I wish. That would've earned her some cred for getting a Joey Tribianni reference.

No. Instead she commented, "You must be an AOL Instant Messenger baby."

I looked at her.

"What?"

"You're typing so fast, you must have been bred on AIM."

"You... weren't?"

"No, that's more of a your generation thing. We text."

We.

It was worse than the time my Physician Assistant students didn't understand when I introduced a discussion of supernumerary nipples with a reference to the magical entry of Narnia.

They're nubbins, people! Nubbins!

Saturday Haiku

Just think a happy thought. Be thankful you're not the patient.

Sometimes scared parents

use their words to make you cry.

It's not personal.

Saturday Haiku

Kurt Vonnecat and Lila Cutie Blume. Best money I've ever spent.

Night shift. Fourteen hours.

Trying to sleep in sunshine.

My bowels are confused.

I'm Pregnant!

That is, if I lived in Arizona, I would be.

(My husband just lost a year off his life.)(He HATES Arizona...)

Thank the holy good God that I don't live in Arizona. I can't imagine living in a state that is governed by such idiotic, racist, misogynistic, imbeciles.

Now signed into law, LAW, is the supposition that pregnancy begins TWO WEEKS PRIOR TO CONCEPTION.

As in TWO WEEKS PRIOR TO CONCEPTION. What? I mean... what?

If I am understanding this correctly, as far as Arizona is concerned, any woman who is ovulating is pregnant until proven otherwise.

Surprise! Your seventh grader's tampon isn't the only thing making her lose her virginity (don't get me started)! The Arizona state legislature is as well! Well, that's not fair. The loss of virginity supposes some sort of intercourse which this definition DOES NOT. Immaculate conception all around!

Regardless of whether sperm is in the equation or not, according to Arizona, the first day of the last menstrual period prior to conception (generally, for most women, 2 weeks prior to ovulation give or take a few days) is the start of pregnancy.

Oh my God.

Can they just... do that? I mean... isn't pregnancy a medical term?

I'm a doctor. I went to medical school. You can not be pregnant unless an ovum and a sperm have formed a zygote. Those are the rules.

OF NATURE.

OF BIOLOGY.

OF COMMON SENSE.

I hate to go all Elle Woods here, but if this is the precedent that's being set, how is it then that all women who don't have sperm introduced approximately two weeks following the last day of their menstrual cycle aren't recklessly abandoning "children" all willy nilly?

This is just stupid.

Ova are not "life." An ovum is a cell. It's a cell that when met with a specific other kind of cell can proliferate into more cells. LIKE A TUMOR.

TUMORS DO THAT. Why aren't we all up in arms about their excision? Okay, so let's say that someone with a modicum of biological knowledge, which will necessarily exclude the members of the Arizona legislature that voted this heinous monstrosity into existence, shoots back and says, ho ho, but tumors don't have the capacity to generate LIFE!

Fine. So let's talk about pluripotent hematopoietic cells. Oh, I'm sorry, they didn't teach that vocabulary in the institutions of higher education that are now hopefully nationally shamed that they produced such simple minded idiots? Okay.

These cells are cells that each and every one of us, boys and girls alike, has in our bone marrow. They're what enables us to regenerate blood. We aren't born with all the blood we need. We are constantly manufacturing new blood.

You know, blood? The thing that carries oxygen all around the body?

Well, to me, and likely to most of the sound minded world, oxygen is necessary for life. Without oxygen, we die. Cells die, tissues die, organs die. That is a FAR more rational argument for life giving in my mind. But yet, pretty sure bone marrow transplants, bone marrow excision, bone marrow biopsies are all legal beagle, and if anyone were to suggest otherwise they'd be more or less a pitied laughingstock.

Where are these legislators coming up with this stuff? And more importantly, why CAN they? They are not doctors. They are not scientists. They can not just change definitions of conditions that aren't limited by semantics. Pregnancy is pregnancy, end of story.

Potential is not pregnancy.

We don't give NFL caliber contracts, paychecks, benefits, endorsements, et cetera to promising young athletes with potential. (See how I stereotypically gendered this to help out all those male legislators? YOU'RE WELCOME.). Sure, they MIGHT down the line be recruited into a formal professional athletic organization, just like an ovum MIGHT down the Fallopian line meet up with a sperm, but we don't know until it does or does not happen.

Arguments to the contrary are tantamount to fortune telling. But hey. At least those fortune tellers will be right at home with all the rest of the carnival and legislative freak shows going on in Arizona.

And, to be clear, there are zero fetuses in my uterus. ZERO FETUSES. (Interestingly, I think I just named of my next girl group.)

Double Jeopardy Indeed.

There's a whole lot of hoo-hah going on about Ashley Judd's face and Ashley Judd's retorts to comments about said face.

I'm impressed by the defense she launched.

I'm less impressed by the media outlets that are marveling that she wrote such an intelligent, insightful article. That is the news they're using as their hook. Is that because she's an actress? Is that because she's not a journalist by trade? Is it because she's a woman?

Fictional Ashley Judd: Hi. Please stop catapulting my face to the top of the day's news issues. Not only is it irrelevant, but it's perpetuating the ubiquitous media misogyny that is becoming as equally acknowledged as it is ignored.

Fictional Press At Large: Whoa. She spelled misogyny correctly.

Fictional Ashley Judd: Women are... wait, what? Yes, it's spelled correctly...

Fictional Press At Large: And... her prose is lucid.

Fictional Ashley Judd: I did in fact proofread this before sending it to international media outlets.

Fictional Press At Large: Hey look everybody, Ashley Judd is writing intelligent things! With appropriate syntax!

Fictional Ashley Judd: Well... yes, but...

Fictional Press At Large: She's defending herself! She's criticizing us for criticizing her! But we're so supportive of her cause ourselves we're going to publicize her remarks! Because holy crap!

Fictional Ashley Judd: Okay. Sure, but you seem to be missing...

Fictional Press At Large: Hey Earth! This actress constructed sentences with more substance than her waist line!... What? Oh right. Her waistline is expanding... well, please direct your attention to the beautiful woman that sure, might be puffy, but that's okay since her statements make sense!

Fictional Ashley Judd: Forget it.

I think it's awesome what she's saying. I think it deserves to be printed and deserves to go viral, but I don't think it deserves everyone else reading it and writing new stories about how "surprising" and "refreshing" it is to see such opinions publicized.

It's all very pat you on the head little girl.

You're too pretty to do homework, but turns out you're smart and don't need to anyway! My God! The revelation!

Let's write news stories about it and completely perpetuate the very thing she's arguing against!

This just in, Pretty Woman Writes a Literate Article! I Think It's About How The Media Should Stop Being So Ignorant!

Ohhh, progress.

Saturday Haiku

Laundry. Taxes. Oy.

Adult? Fingers in my ears.

La la la la la.

Bloom

I've mentioned before that my husband is the sporty spice of our pairing.

His dream vacation would be akin to Bear Grylls's day job -- man versus wild. Given his druthers, the hubs would bliss out by running up a mountain until it turned snowy, strap on some snow shoes, ascend to the peak, do that scary skiing where your heels lift out to get back down, until he reached an ocean where he could surf and surf and surf, until the dolphins thought he was kin. He'd sleep in a yurt and create sustainable, no trace meals at a fire pit he dug out with bare hands.

There'd be a lot of plaid and facial hair involved.

My druthers, on the other hand, are dipped in glitter.

I think I would sit under a gauzy cabana beside an impossibly turquoise ocean scape and have Muppets bring me pina coladas. I'd lounge in a velveteen hammock with snuggly kittens and the latest NYTimes Bestseller that featured shoes or legs on the cover. I'd sleep in a suite and would sustain myself on pizza.

There'd be a lot of lethargy and sarcasm involved.

Given our disparate ideas of what constitutes a good time, we're pretty good at compromise. He will occasionally help me wind skeins of new yarn with While You Were Sleeping playing on loop in the background; I will occasionally leave the house. Fair's fair.

Today was one of those days.

I invested in a bike at the end of last summer when the gettin's were good. I have decided cycling is infinitely less degrading than running. Sure you wear indecently tight shorts, but they're so binding nothing can jiggle! No cadencing cellulite for all to view and mock!

The weather in Denver has been pretty schizo of late. Saturday was so hot I was sweating through my underwear from the exertion of exhaling. Tuesday I was scraping snow of my car.

Today was sunny, breezy, not too hot, not too cold, and was apparently extremely inviting if you happen to be a flowering tree.

We live near a 65-ish mile path that circumnavigates most of Denver and has numerous branching off points to shorter trails for those of us who aren't bat shit insane. The majority of the path runs parallel to an old canal lined with mature trees that were erupting with blossoms today. It was beautiful.

The thing that really made it worth dragging myself off the couch, besides the investment in my marriage, was the scent of it all. I spent a good five miles trying to piece together words that might adequately capture the smell. It's hard.

It's lame and trying too hard, but I couldn't get the idea out of my head that the scent of spring is akin to flatulence, in that each passing of gas is individual and nuanced, but yet somehow they're all really the same.

I pedaled past the trees and hoped to be down wind. There was something so sweet in the flowers. It almost made my stomach growl. There's probably literally some kind of sugar there that lures insects in, but still.

I finally landed on this:

Take one of those long, fat, pieces of grass, the kind that can whistle just right, and glaze it with equal parts cake baking and your grandmother's perfume.

Spring kinda smells like that. There's a bit of fresh, a bit of sweet, and a bit of nostalgia.

To be clear, I'm not thinking moth balls, I'm thinking more along the lines of the floral spiced scent that smacks you in the face when you open her old jewelry box.

Less smacky though. Not the hefty aroma that gives you a headache, but rather the remnants left in the air after she's gone out to the grocery store.

Anyway. That's what I landed on. Succinctness has never been my strong suit.

At any rate, 16 miles later, I have lived to tell the tale and deemed it official... join me in welcoming the season of whining and sweating; springtime is here.

Rim Jobs with Balls or This may or may not have been fueled by margaritas

I love salt. My husband thinks this is because I'm from the Midwest. Or, what he deems, the land of butter, salt, and frying anything potentially edible. There may be some merit to that. I still consider Bob Evans haute cuisine.

At any rate, one of my favorite things about margaritas, besides the tequila, is the salt rim. Genius, right? Why aren't more drinks rimmed in things? There's a place in Denver that will rim sweet margaritas (e.g. the strawberry pomegranate acai blended concoctions) with sugar. Also good, but nothing compares to salty.

It made me realize though... you could technically rim a glass in anything.

With a baby shower coming up this weekend and free time during which I don't know what to do with myself, I decided to turn to the internet to see if there were any party suggestions featuring rimmed glasses.

I was not disappointed.

Using a mish mash of instructions from various sites, I decided to give it a whirl.

I chose Cut Crystal Chinet cups (due to their minimal lip around the top and therefore promise of easy rolling) as my guinea pigs.

I shook out a bunch of those small rainbow colored balls usually reserved for sugar cookies or ice cream onto a plate. I did this on my porch. I didn't feel like having them roll all over the floor and then having to deal with the mayhem of kitty sugar highs.

Next, I secured a small reservoir of honey. Using a foam brush I swept a layer of honey around the Cut Crystal Chinet cup edges. Subsequently, I rolled the cup in the plate of rainbow balls.

Said honey, rainbow nonpareils, and foam brush. I may try the pink sugar sprinkles next.

It worked:

Wax papered tray to minimize clean-up. Because I don't have THAT much free time.

The honey wasn't drying out the way I'd hoped in the sun. Turns out sun makes honey run/melt. So I put the tray in the fridge for about half an hour and BOOYAH.

Completely unnecessary, but bitchin'. Would also work well for circus themed child's birthday...

Superfluous, yet awesome, baby shower cups. Instant flair!

I'm also working on pinwheel/carnation centerpieces. Because there's something wrong with me. I'm not even hosting this thing!

Becky's Baby's Booties

Can you tell I'm on an elective month?

One of my fellow residents decided she likes kids so much she's going to go ahead and have one of her own! Her shower is coming up and for the first time I will have a baby project completed prior to their arrival!

For these (pattern: Be Mine from Leisure Arts' "Booties By the Dozen")(which yes, sounds pornographic, but in fact is clean as a whistle and features baby sandals as well as baby bunny slippers!) I used Aunt Lydia's Bamboo Thread size 10 and a 1.65mm hook. The bamboo was markedly softer than the regular cotton which I felt was more in keeping with baby stuff and simultaneously a nod to my wanna-be hippie ways.

I love using crochet thread and steel hooks. There's something so satisfying about creating the intricate stitches and wrecking my eyeballs. Part of the fun I think is that the projects turn out so difficult looking when really they're just crocheting on a small scale. Granted, I don't think I could knit on this small of a scale... that would drive me insane. Crochet is just so much more forgiving and you can really "sculpt" with it.

I've got one bootie down and one more to go!

My next project will be finding a cute, sustainable way to wrap these bad boys.

Feeling Impotent

I was so fired up the other day about reproductive health rights, but felt like there was nothing I could really do. I don't have a platform to be influential, most of what I say is emotionally fueled, and if I were ever to debate someone it would dissolve into a toddler tantrum with stamping feet faster than you can say, "transvaginal."

So... I did this instead:

One step above completely passive aggression. It's a bookmark. So all the folks sitting around me at coffee shops will know they'd best hold on to their vas deferens or start urging their candidates to make a modicum of sense.

Next I'm going to start knitting rebel messages into scarves.

Just... what?

This bonanza over birth control makes as much sense to me as Chris Brown still being on the airwaves.

How is everyone not looking at each other, aghast, wondering, “Uhhh... hello? What’d I miss?” Birth control is responsible. Chris Brown is abusive. Done and done, right?

Well, interesting.... The Right. Yes. That is where a lot of this seems to be stemming from. The masochistic, inane, completely flabbergasting rhetoric being thrown around by some of the presidential candidates and their party cronies is just... I don’t even know a word that would properly encompass my feelings.

Pitiable? Infuriating? Stupid?

Do they not realize that without the use of and access to birth control they’d have a pied piper following of illegitimate children all their mistresses would produce? Show me a politician who hasn’t had an affair. It’ll probably be easier to find a frat boy who’s never tasted beer.

Oh, I’m sorry, are those broad sweeping generalizations not even remotely based in fact? Guess where I learned to do that?

The idea that the government, the GOVERNMENT, is making inflammatory decisions about women’s health care based on moral rationalization rather than, oh I don’t know, legitimate data outlining how this issue is even remotely relevant, makes me livid.

Hi, you’re not doctors.

The short sightedness and... I don’t know, again, stupidity? that’s not even a strong enough word... of these people truly makes me want to... vomit feces, I guess. I can't think of a bodily function repugnant enough.

If you’re really so concerned about lost souls or innocent children or whatever the hell you’re calling zygotes these days, DO SOMETHING WHEN THEY’RE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE UTERUS.

You don’t want to imbue public education with any funding, you don’t want to expand social services, you’re cutting down on the already scant mental health resources available, you’re ignoring the reams of scientific literature linking unwanted children and risk of abuse, and you’re making statements outside the realm of your expertise.

Unintended pregnancies know no socioeconomic limitations, but the resources available for them once they slide down the chute are obscenely imbalanced amongst societal stratification.

I see the evidence of this every hour of my 80 hour work week.

How is birth control viewed as anything but preventive medicine? Pregnancy is not a benign condition. Women shouldn’t have to be penalized (HA!) for choosing not to put themselves at high risk for medical morbidity.

It’s on par with refusing to pay for someone’s statins because they CHOSE to eat all that McDonald’s and trans fat and blahbity blah - insert any American cuisine - and have a massive heart attack. In covering their anti-cholesterol, anti-inflammatory agents aren’t I just giving them carte blanche to go eat willy nilly whatever the hell they want? Veritable permission to go be junk food whores? (I'm looking at you, Rush Limbaugh.)

Why does everything change when you substitute in “birth control” for statin and “pregnancy” for myocardial infarction?

If you’re thinking of an argument that involves Jesus, then it should be off the table. Pretty sure there’s separation of church and state. Pretty sure that the justification you’re providing, that your God says it’s bad (paraphrasing), is completely unrelated to the governance of our country.

I could bring out Harry Potter and tell you what Dumbledore tells us to do. Would that be useful? Then at least I’d be speaking on your terms. Oh, going through Platform 9 3/4 is impossible is it? So is walking on water.

Believe what you believe. I don’t care. Just don’t make it law to believe what you believe.

There is absolutely nothing in these campaigns or in these politician’s track records that smacks of God’s love, forgiveness, justice, equality, unconditionality, concern for the least of us, on and on and on... so quit using it as an excuse. Walk the fucking walk, boys.

A Sure Sign of Spring

Oh yes. The Shamrock Shake.

I once nearly missed a friend's wedding trying to snag one of these babies. My roommate at the time and I were McDonald's hopping, hell bent on treating ourselves before they disappeared for a whole year. We kept trying one more Mickey D's, then one more, and oh, there's gotta be another one around here somewhere... Ultimately we dashed, empty handed, into a pew just as the sanctuary doors were closing to unveil the bride.

Turns out the Southern Ohio chains eschewed it. Which, I guess, figures, Southern Ohio being a sink hole for fun and delight. Unless you count racism and gun slinging. I do not.

The friend's wedding was on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day. They requested all of the guests wear green and bedecked their reception tables with shamrocks.

No, they weren't Irish, just theme oriented. It was cute.

But you know what would've been cuter?

Having a Shamrock Shake in my hand.

At any rate, I had one today for the first time in many many years. And oh, I'll just say it, they are indeed worth nearly missing the nuptials of a friend who six years later you don't even pretend to keep up with on Facebook.

Act fast, their minty days are numbered! Get you yours: http://www.shamrockshakefinder.com/