Etiquette & superstition: nuts

I know one good joke about nuts, but you’ve probably heard it already so I’m not going to write it here. Also, it’s my mom’s birthday and I’m not sure she would like the joke I know about nuts. Actually she probably would, but I’m still not going to write it here.

ETIQUETTE: Most finger foods that you serve at the dining table are supposed to be served on a doily-covered plate or platter. One exception to this is food that is served in bowls, such as nuts. I haven’t found any explanation as to why things in bowls don’t need doilies, but anyway: hooray, nuts!

SUPERSTITION: A person who gathers nuts on September 14th is sure to meet Satan on his excursion. As noted in Poor Robin’s Almanack of 1670, meeting the devil on this trip will likely “scare him worse than a rosted shoulder of mutton will do a hungrie man.” Yeah, I’m not a fan of mutton either.

Photo by ~BostonBill~ on flickr

My mother gave me some facial cleanser for mature skin

It’s my birthday tomorrow. Guess how old I am.

Fancy notions #14

Today’s offering of fancy notions comes with a confession. It has to do with childhood stubbornness and hygiene. You’ve been forewarned.

As a child I had really terrible hygiene. It went beyond the normal hatred of toothbrushing – I didn’t like to brush my hair or take showers or even change my underwear if I could help it. The new underwear was so cold and scratchy, and the old underwear was soft and warm…. As for the hairbrushing, I eventually had to cut a huge rat’s nest out of my hair at the nape of my neck. Dandruff was also involved somewhere in all of this. Surprisingly, I had friends, but this situation was getting to be a real problem.

My mom decided that she would set up a positive reinforcement system in which I had to check off on a chart each time I washed my face and brushed my teeth and changed my underwear.  If I performed all of my hygenic duties during the week, I would get a reward at the end of the week. At the time, I was really into these stuffed mice that wore costumes, so my promised weekly reward was a new mouse of my choosing. I really wanted those mice, so what do you think I did? I cheated.

I started feeling really guilty about cheating however, and eventually my hygiene got better. I suppose it did, anyway. You tell me.

So today’s free gift to the first or most sincere person who writes into the comments section asking for it is one of these costumed mice. I have to add a disclaimer that this particular hula girl mouse is not one of the ill-gotten “reward” mice; this mouse is from the era when I had stopped being so disgusting but my mom decided she really liked costumed mice so she kept buying them and would give one to me whenever my dad seemed curious about the new acquisition.

You not only get a hula girl mouse, but two plastic rods shaped like bamboo that can be used either as Hawaiian Pu’ili implements for the mouse or as polynesian-themed purse handles (for which they were originally intended).

The edges of the bamboo sticks are a little scuffed from the previous purse handle fabric that had to be forcibly removed from them, but I’m sure a little Goof-Off and elbow grease can take care of any imperfections.

Tell me you want these things, and I’ll mail them to you. Sorry, dirty underwear not included.

Soft and sweet

I’ve got it – the answer to my and Benny’s job woes. We are going to quit our jobs and make a zillion dollars by marketing a doll that is both slutty and scary. It’s a sure bet. Little girls are only interested in dolls that are slutty or scary, but try as I might, I can’t come up with one example of a doll currently on the market that is both slutty and scary. To wit:

• Bradley dolls: My mom was so vocal in her disgust of these big-eyed dolls that I found myself saying I hated them too, even though I secretly coveted them. A sympathetic friend finally got me one in high school, and that’s when I realized that Bradley dolls weren’t just ladies with fancy oldentimes dresses, they were 19th century prostitutes.
• Baby Alive: I see that Baby Alive is still alive and more gross than ever. Not only does she need to have her diaper changed (when I was a kid, if you fed her the prepackaged “banana” mush, she’d shit yellow mucus), but now you also need to give her medicine and administer a neti pot to remove snot. Next year maybe she can get hives.
• Bratz: The Bratz never cease to amaze me. They actually have a slutty infant line of dolls. I think the name “Sticky Face Fun Fair Cloe” speaks for itself.
• Tuesday Taylor: Okay, actually Tuesday Taylor is kind of both slutty and scary. When I was a kid, however, the Suntan Tuesday Taylor doll always struck me as low class and unclean. I think today I would classify her look as “has crabs.” Slutty wins.
• Charmin Chatty:  She says proverbs. Also encourages her owner to say, “I’m a pig.”
• Growing Up Skipper: I had one of these when I was a kid, so I was going to say she fell into the slutty category, but now that I see those mosquito bites I’m not so sure (not that big boobs necessarily = slutty). She might be the crossover in the Venn diagram of slutty and scary.

Okay. I think if we combine Growing Up Skipper with some sort of maniacal laughing homunculus, we’ll have a bona fide hit on our hands. Hmm. I’ve got to sleep on that idea a little. Sweet dreams.

Happy Mother’s Day

1. My mom was a very glamorous movie star.
2. She let me cultivate my own sense of fashion from a very early age.

3. I’m obviously leaving out a lot of things about my Mom here in this list.
4. Anyway – thanks, Mom. I love you.

Snap, crackle, flop

When my mom and dad were courting, my dad would tell my mom about the difficulties of living in small mining towns in Mexico as a boy. He said that he ate plenty of horsemeat, and that all their packaged foods from America took such a long time in transit that they were always stale by the time they got to them.

Horsemeat, my dad said, was actually not bad to eat at all, but the stale packaged food was really a drag. Regular crackers were limp, graham crackers were dry, and cold cereal? Forget it. He said he never understood, for instance, why the Rice Krispies mascots were named Snap, Crackle, and Pop. His cereal never made a sound.

So anyway, the first morning after my parents were married, my mom decided she would prepare a superspecial wedding breakfast for her new husband. She woke him up, sat him at the table, and presented him with his breakfast.

“What’s this?” he said.

“A big bowl of fresh Rice Krispies! Listen!”

“Did you hear that, honey? Did you? They actually snap, crackle, and pop!”

“Oh. (beat) Yeah!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. This is great!”

“But, well… I don’t… actually… like Rice Krispies. That was just a story.”

You can fit 49 pounds of candy in a pillowcase if you try hard enough

Happy Halloween! Stop carving your pumpkin and put on your costume already. What?!? You still don’t have your costume figured out? Lord. Here. Put on these boxes. You look fine. Now let’s get out there and get some candy before it’s all gone.

Photo of scary ghost and sexy cat by Anne Herndon circa 1972

I CAN’T HEAR YOU

EVEN THOUGH SHE PROBABLY DOESN’T KNOW IT, TODAY IS MY MOM’S FAVORITE HOLIDAY – INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY. A WHILE AGO, MY MOM STARTED FORWARDING ME EMAILS FROM A FRIEND OF HERS WHO TYPED IN ALL CAPS AND ALSO PEPPERED HER SENTENCES WITH LIBERAL DOSES OF LOLS. THEN MY MOM STARTED TYPING IN ALL CAPS HERSELF.

I EXPLAINED TO HER THAT TYPING IN ALL CAPS IS THE EQUIVALENT OF YELLING IN AN EMAIL, AND THAT IT IS ALSO THE STYLE OF CHOICE FOR SPAMMERS AND CRAZY PEOPLE. SHE SAID THE REASON SHE WAS DOING IT WAS BECAUSE SHE AND ALL HER FRIENDS HAD BAD EYESIGHT AND SHE THOUGHT THAT ALL CAPS WOULD BE EASIER TO READ. THEN I EXPLAINED TO HER THAT COUNTLESS WRITING STYLE EXPERTS SAY THAT WRITING IN ALL CAPS IS NOT EASIER TO READ AND IT IN FACT SLOWS DOWN THE READING PROCESS. I HAVE ALSO FOUND THAT IT LEADS TO INCORRECT PUNCTUATION AND RAMBLING INCOHERENT SENTENCES.

MY MOM THANKED ME AND THEN SHE FORWARDED ME A BUNCH OF PHOTOS OF A BABY DEER.

Bois ha ha

Despite a disappointing role as a dryad in a community theater production of The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe as a child (Mom made me a very frumpy tree person outfit that looked quite sad next to the other dryads dressed like verdant Stevie Nickses), I’ve long been interested in the look of wood grain, especially in odd contexts. I never thought I was the only person interested in fake woodgrain, but I was a little surprised to find that there was a whole community of people devoted to something called the “faux bois” movement.

I’m a little wary of getting too involved here, because I find people who get so embroiled in an aesthetic or subculture that they can talk of nothing else to be rather boring and sad even if I like the aesthetic or subculture in question (see: steampunk, tiki, mod, rockabilly, ’60s punk), but I have a feeling there’s a limit to how embroiled you can get in faux bois. I guess I’m a little late to the party anyway – apparently Martha Stewart and Todd Oldham got over this stuff a few years ago.

Maybe I’m wrong about how embroiled you can get, though. The website It’s (K)not Wood is showing me a whole bunch of fashion options I am quite taken with:

• wood shoes (no, not wooden shoes; wood shoes)
• sunglasses (although I think I would go with the real thing in this case)
• belts
• wallet
• hardhat

With a nice a-frame a-line woodgrain dress, what a lovely ensemble that would make! Okay, wait; I should definitely be careful with this stuff before things get out of hand.

Where’s my concerned phone call?

Dear Mom,

I hope that everything is okay with you. I’m a little concerned, because here I am in LA where we had an earthquake this morning, and I haven’t yet gotten my “I just wanted to make sure everybody is all right” phone call from you. While it’s true that today’s quake was more like this:

than this:

you always call after an earthquake. You always call after a thunderstorm, in fact. So what’s going on? I could be seriously hurt right now. Couldn’t I? There’s a plant that almost fell off its pedestal here at work. I mean, it wasn’t really wobbling that much but still it seemed like it could have fallen. I took the plant off the pedestal just to be safe. And yes I’m fine, Mom, IN CASE YOU STILL CARE.

Love,
your daughter

UPDATE 2:57 – She called! She called! “I just wanted to wait until the phone lines weren’t all tied up with emergency calls.” Mom still loves me!