Yada, yada, yada

Well I guess I'll just tell you my new year/school year resolutions for 2009 since I'M so bored Taradise.  In fact, I sent her a text hours and hours ago telling her how I was going to pass out from all the boredness I was having.  Anyways.  So starting a number of years ago I decided to make New Years resolutions that I could actually keep.  The first one from "the new deal" as I like to call it was returning my shopping carts to their respective pens no matter what.  And 4 years later I'm still doing it.  I'm like a postal worker, I deliver in any weather.  And it felt so good that I decided that one resolution a year just wasn't enough.  So then I started the school years resolutions which encompass a semesters worth of time.  So basically 4 resolutions a year and then my "themes" (another time for those - or not, who are we kidding?).  

So drum-roll please..... My new years resolution is to enjoy all the different kinds of lettuce out there.  So far I've moved from Iceberg to hearts of Romaine and now field greens.  But why stop there?  I'm going to take another look at the produce department and break into Radicchio, endive, arugula, boston lettuce...I could go on. 

 And even though Fennel is not technically a lettuce, I'm MOST excited for that one.  So if anyone could help me out and share a delicious recipe for anything other than my current lettuce's then please do because then you will have the satisfaction of knowing you helped me accomplish  one of my goals and you can also feel better than me for once because you already eat other lettuce.   

And now my school years resolution for the next couple months is to find things to love about Arizona because I don't love it yet.  So far I am appreciating the winter warmth and all the pharmacies on every street corner.  It is very comforting to know that no matter where I am if I suddenly need anti-fungal cream or the Plan B pill (it's just a fancy name for the morning after pill so people don't feel as slutty) it is never more than 1/4 of a mile away.  It is a work in progress to say the least.  OH!  How could I forget?  Mexico is only 3 hours away!!!!!  I LOVE that.  Guess where I'm gonna be May 5.  

Smell you later

I've always been a firm believer in pheromones.  Especially when trying to figure why some girls always had boys after them even though they weren't that cute.  What else could it be but pheromones?  It was like whenever I was out with my friend Stasy and we would see a boy she liked and he was with a girl.  That girl obviously had to be his sister.  

It just makes sense.  

I never had the "magical" pheromone that some girls had, maybe because I AM just that cute to begin with *cough*.  Until now.  But I could have used it during Laquina: the college years.  Especially early on.  It took me a while to jump on the bronzer band wagon.  And then another year or so to realize that not all makeup needs to contain glitter.  We've all been on that train - scented body glitter gel anyone?  Yeah.  

But I've definitely hit the pheromone jack pot as of late.  I feel like I need to knock on wood right now so I don't jinx this.  It started right about the time I moved down here to Arizona.  I was walking into Home Depot (it's amazing how many sentences start with this now....) a while back and this man pushing a cart past me in the parking lot says "hi there young philly" or something equally silly.  "Uh..." I muttered as I half smiled and kept walking.  A couple nights ago I was at my corner pharmacy getting a redbox movie and I look out the corner of my eye and there is this man standing right next to me out of nowhere.  And when I mean right next to me I mean it.  For comparisons sake you could have slid a small text book in between us.  And that was before he leaned in to watch me scroll through the screens.  He was asking me all sorts of questions about the process and then he commented on my selection, "blood and guts, huh?" he said as I nodded yes in reply.  Finally after not talking to him for a bit he sauntered off.  Weird.  And even this temple worker leaned into Rich and said "I guess I don't have to tell you about your wife's big brown eyes".  Thanks, thanks and thanks again men of Arizona.  You have made me feel uber-welcome through your stares and comments.  And in response may I say that I don't even care that all of you have been 65 or over because it still makes my self-confidence sore.  

Just like a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, so is getting hit on by any age.

Army of Darkness

I'm living in a different kind of world.  A world where vitality and stamina aren't really going to take you to the top.  Where being young makes you the underdog.  A world ruled by the undead...the elderly.  It's like a different breed of Zombies.  I never am, but I'm sure that if I was up at 5 am there would be packs of them out slowly shuffling and limping their way down the avenue next to our house in search of their brand of human flesh: the early bird special.  Instead of rising at nightfall they rise at dawn and bed again before dusk.  The landscape is punctuated with these undead.  The sun setting at night is all but blocked out by the giant parking lots pushing their sarcophagus of choice: the RV.  These monsters occupy full city blocks each promising a bigger vehicle for less money for the driver whose vision is less than perfect.  Perfect for me, the driver in the little car next to them.  They are very exclusive those un-dead.  They live in their own communities with quiet safe streets until dawn of course when they trip over each other pushing for the exit and the dry desert air.  It's just like a scary movie when in the moment of despair every direction you turn there are Zombies bearing down on you.  Parking at the grocery store you turn to open the door and BAM old woman shuffling past.  You jerk your head quickly to the other side only to be confronted with a Jazzy chair.  The other day at Home Depot I became dizzy and disoriented from whipping myself around so much trying to avoid them.  WHAM!  Man in overalls.  POW!  Trucker hats and suspenders.  And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse I was confronted with the most scary thing of all:  a geriatric biker gang.  There they were in the parking lot of Lowe's turning it into some seedy section of town whipping out their blood pressure cuffs to get a reading before zipping onto the highway on their mad machines.  You haven't seen it all until you've seen 10 men and women over 60 wearing tank tops and leather vests.   

(I took this from a distant, I didn't want to risk angering them)

Well folks, I had almost seen it all until the other day when I was roaming the aisles of my local Trader Joe's and heard the distinct lull of a Swiss accent which was quickly validated as I turned to look and heard the Swiss undead ask where the Muesli was.  Bingo!  The Swiss just can't get enough of that Muesli.  But I couldn't tear my eyes away.  She wasn't the typical undead in stretch-waist pants with thick soled walking shoes and a sun visor on.  No, she was a mutation.  She had on bright pink sweatshorts, very short I might add, to accent her VERY deep caramel tan and white tee with matching pink jacket.  Her silvery-grey hair was neatly swept up into a bouncy ponytail directly on the top of her head in the middle accented with a pink scrunchy.  It was like a silvery fountain cascading all over her head.  And the piece de resistance was the stretchy head band she was wearing like a sweat band across her forehead and around the back of her head made of what can only be described as the same material jelly shoes are made of in a web pattern in what other color?  Pink sparkles of course.  Absolutely mesmerizing.  I was trying so hard not to stare but I could. not. turn. my. head.  Until she stared me straight in the eyes and I got a ghastly flash of her playing tennis in her undead community and I pulled myself out of it.  

You know I'm not that into Zombies.  I won't watch movies with Zombies unless it's Shaun of the Dead and only twice a year because it is still pretty gruesome even though it is pee your pants funny at times.  But I don't mind the undead.  I mean they are not really dead if they are the UN-dead right?  It's like the potion man said in Princess Bride.  They are just mostly dead.  And that's something I can live with.  Ha, get it?