August whatever bleeehhhh

I've hit the end-of-summer-ickies, which means my house, garage, yard, clothes and refrigerator all gross me out beyond belief because it's been so long since I've tended to any of them. It's worse this year than usual, because we've had such fabulous weather I haven't had a single rain day to wash so much as a sock.

Well, ok, yesterday it rained, but I took the kids to see Sky High, which I'd been promising for more than a week but the only thing I can stomach less than cleaning my house on a nice day is sitting in a movie theater.

Anyway, Sky High was TOTALLY GREAT. Kurt Russell's best performance since Big Trouble in Little China, I kid you not. I was seriously in tears...Finny kept angrily asking me "moooommmmm, what's so funny!?" It's just hysterical, people, one of those great family movies that's really way funnier to the adult than to the kid. It's a spoof on kid movies, super hero movies and John Hughes movies all in one, and there are tons of funny cameos in it. Go see it, even if you don't have little ones, I promise you'll love it!

On the flip side, before the show we were treated to a trailer for the new Cheaper by the Dozen, does that look brutal....looks like they've turned it into one big stupid gross-out joke. What's with Dennis Quaid, anyway? I thought his star was back on the rise. Leave the regurgitated family crap to Vin Deisel.

Thursday night, I got the last minute call from my pal Em, telling me she'd had a crap day and wanted to go see a band called Hookers-n-Blow at Gluek's. So I put on a clean t-shirt and went over to her house, then we picked up all her neighbor lady friends and went downtown. This band was pretty darn good, I have to say.

We're laughin' and singin' and whatnot when I get a tap on my shoulder, and it's an attractive young lady who asks me if I have a boyfriend.

"No, but I have a husband," I tell her, all happy and glowing and I-still-got-it-y.

"No big deal," she says to me. "My buddy here wanted to meet you but when you turned around I could see you were a little... mature...for him."

WHAT THE F@#$%^&O%^&*$!!!!!

if the sight of my time ravaged, craggy assed face made you re-think my suitabitlity for your friend, why didn't you just change tactics adn just ask me what time it was or something? Clearly you thought substituting the word "mature" for "old" was going to spare my feelings and guess what, it didn't!

It's fine, I'm fine, it was no big deal, really. I'm so not obsessing about it WHAT THE F!@#$%^&*&^%$#!!!!!

So of course I got treated to the horse laugh from Emily...at least it cheered her up.

For half of the ride home, one of the gals with us was complaining about how some scummy guy tried to hit on her on the dance floor. I sat there all grumpily silent, screaming on the inside "well, at least no one was trying to sell you an Aarp subscription!

I'm getting Botox.

Just finished reading In Her Shoes. It was just ok. She's a good writer, about a billion times better than other chick lit chickies, but the story was pretty ehhh. However, I am gonna see the movie, and all based on the poster. That's the best poster I've seen in years. Simple, intriguing...whoever designed it should win an award.

I'm making dinner the other day and Molly is begging me to play something with her and I'm all "Molly I can't I'm trying to fry this walleye", so she goes into the living room and starts bouncing on the couch and sings, "I'm a little girl....and no one plays with me...ever..."

Good grief.

August 19, '05

I'm getting ready to ship the babies off to sumer camp. What was I thinking??? It's sleep away camp for a whole week! I'm freaking out. I'm a worry-wart by nature, why did I let them talk me into this? I'm sure they'll have fun, it'll be great, blah blah blah, but honesty to gravy. I intend to re-decorate their bedrooms while they're gone...and call the camp ten times a day to make sure they're ok.

New show: Starved, Wednesday nights on FX...brought to you by Eric Shaeffer, who is resposible for the movie My Life's in Turnaround, which was great, and If Lucy Fell, which wasn't but had enough good lines to make it a solid rental. It was watching that movie that I realized Sarah Jessica Parker had yellow teeth. Not exactly a life altering epiphany, but they can't all be life altering epiphanies, now can they?

Starved is a half hour dramedy about people with "food issues". Sounds terrible but it was really entertaining, in a macabre way....and I keep not shutting up about it, but if you aren't watching Comedy Central's Stella, you are seriously missing out.

August 24 '05

Big weekend....Molly had her first I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT MOLLY, WE SAW THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN LAST NIGHT AND IT WAS SOOOOOOOO GREAT!!!! Seriously, it's tied with Cinderella Man for movie of the year. Totally funny, and yes, it's raunchy and low brow but it's also incredibly sweet and Steve Carrell is so completely loveable, it's a perfect mix. He does such a stupendous job of being really, REALLY hilarious yet endearing and heartbreaking, you just want to take him home and make him soup. Paul Rudd has become my favorite funny movie sidekick guy. Dear Heaven, the last scene is so butt-gustingly funny I thought Mike was gonna have a brain hemmorhage.....ok. so go see it.

Molly had her first soccer game, which was also quite hilarious.  4-year-olds running amok is what that was. Unlike her brother and sister before her, she was right in there the whole time, had a few good runs down the field with the ball, who cares if they were in the wrong direction? At one point she was running alonside two kids who were fighting over the ball, and they collided and fell over, so she fell too....not because they knocked her down, just a courtesy fall.  Every once in a while she'd tug on her coach's shirt and say, "I can do gymnastics!" and do a cartwheel.

Took the older kids to camp, they'll be gone all week. YEEK. The night before they left, we were playing charades, and all Molly's turns involved her carwheeling wildly around the yard. It's not like she's good at them, mind you, it's anyone's guess how she'll land.  Anyway, all her charades were "Doing Gymnastics" and "Practicing Gymnastics", until finally I told her they had to be a movie or a book or a tv show. So on her next turn she pantomimed scrubbing a floor and then she did a a cartwheel.... "Annie Doing Gymnastics."

N'kay...but I miss the babies TERRIBLY. It's way too quiet around here.

Made a new dessert tonight, something called chocolate pudding cake. It's in the new Cooking Light. it involves making a chocolate brownie-like batter, then pouring hot sugar water over it and baking it.

"Weird," I thought..."Why pour hot water all over perfectly good brownie batter?"

But I followed the recipe and did what I was told. In the picture, it looked like chocolate cake with fudge sauce on it, so I assumed the hot water part morphed into a sauce.

Pulled it out of the oven, let it sit ten minutes, hacked into it.

Back when we were kids, we had this dog named Jennie, who was the biggest spaz in the universe. She was forever charging into closed doors and eating chicken bones or waxxed paper, which resulted in her pooing dark brown syrup all over the place all the damn time. That's what it looked like the cooked brownies were sitting in. Looks can often be decieving in the culinary arts, I know this, so I took a bite. Tasted like chocolate brownies that had been sitting in a pan of dog diahrrea. Possibly the grossest thing anyone's ever called dessert, worse than the olive oil brownies from last month.

Just watched an ad on Minneapolis public access for a benefit being held for the former lead singer of Toto, who has hepetitis C. EXQUEEZE ME?? I'm supposed to care about some idiot's self inflicted liver damaging sexaholic VD?? And is the benefit just for him? He doesn't have insurance? I'm sorry, but it's not like the guy has Lupus or ALS or something...

"98 percent of the evening's proceeds will go to the Toto guy for his Hepetitis C, and 2 percent will go to his neighbor, who has crabs. Thanks and God Bless!"

August something, 2005

Good morning, Sarah....It's 10:35 and I have finally dragged my increasingly large ass out of bed. The husband is nowhere to be found and the kidlets are all watching Star Wars. I love having kids old enough to get their own Cheerios and work the DVD player. I would say I'm sporting a bit of a hangover, but I don't get hangovers anymore. Scary.

The Franks left, so we're all in Post-Frank-Letdown mode...it's actually kind of nice, we've got three weeks to do nothing and let them get good and bored so when school starts they won't mind so much. When I'm done here, I'm gonna go sign Molly up for pre-school...4 afternoons a week.

(cue clip of Mel Gibson in blue face paint)

FREEEEEEEEEEDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I actually get giddy just thinking about it. Don't get me wrong, ya'll know I love the babies, but anyone who's spent a third of their life trapped with people who routinely wet themsleves knows exactly how welcome my little break will be.

Uptown Art Fair was this past weekend. Went Friday, navigated through all the usual crap while absent-mindedly shoving mini-donuts in my mouth, when all of the sudden the heavens parted and we came across this adorable little Peruvian watercolorist who did the most beautiful paintings, which he was selling for not even close to enough. Landscapes and seascapes and scenes of Latin American life....breathtaking. I bought two little ones on Friday, went back yesterday and bought a big one. And I've decided to email him later for another big one, and I'll hang them over my mantle together. A bit extravagant, perhaps, but I'm still riding the "You-were-gone-all-year" wave as far as my sugar daddy goes.

But here's the guys name and info, I encourage all of you to check out his stuff because he absolutely deserves to be rich and famous.

Armando Freyre

armandof@earthlink.net

Got a sweet new bike. I fear expectations are now much too high....what's worse than a jackass who shows up at a race all decked out in top-of-the-line equipment and then comes in 47th??

I'll write more later, I promise. There really is much to say, but the coffee's all gone and somebody's screaming.

© Katie McCollow, 2005 • katie.mccollow@mac.com