And then you end up at like, a Chili's, havin a bloomin' onion with a buncha secretaries

So, Chili's has come back into my life -- or, perhaps, I have come back into its.

The very same outlet I wrote about in 2011 (on what turned out to be just ten days before Danger Secondgrader's birth), in fact. And I've learned, finally, how to properly access its wares: A couple times a month, my friends and I will go directly from our workout at the trendy HIIT gym, cross the SUV-and-Tesla-filled parking lot, and skip the dining room for the bar area. We order chips (which are always delivered fresh and hot, if not salty enough, but that's what the shaker's for) & salsa, one small adult beverage each, and something off their $8 lunch menu -- the cup of soup and half a turkey/bacon/avocado sandwich is quite edible. It's a good time, the servers are always happy to see us, and we tip really really well (which maybe is why they're happy to see us? also we're nice and not the kind of middle-aged suburban women who Speak to the Manager). We avoid the rest of the insanely-long menu, and there's not a Chickie Nob in sight. It's actually kinda like when I was a teenager, except I don't get carded anymore -- just a fun, cheap hang with friends.

So like, this is not exactly an Endorsement, but it is a reflection on revisiting things and allowing them to have a different place in your life at different times in your life. Plus also, anyplace that can serve me a beer THAT cold is to be applauded, whenever and wherever it may be.

Florals, for spring. Groundbreaking.

OK so the Fashion silhouette of the moment is: Bad.

Got those high, high, HIGH-waisted pants paired with boxy crop-toppy things, often with sad 70s Office Working Girl ruffles (even if the top in question is a SWEATER, y'all) and weird flaps and tiebacks and shit. I mean -- not me, I'm personally not wearing it, but like. If it doesn't look good on teenagers, and ya can't make it look good on professional clothing models, then I just. Don't hold out a lot of hope for us Normals. Especially not for me, personally, who has a literal inch between hipbone and bottom-most rib. At 46, I'm in the best fucking shape of my life, my bod is ROCKIN, but I look like the most amazingly misguided/overmedicated child's drawing of a girl in those outfits -- it's truly an abomination unto the Lord who Made Me. Thank christ I'm old enough not to fall for that shit again, midway through my fifth decade on this boiling blue marble, right?

And if it's not that, it's Dresses. Why god why. I don't wear dresses, except on very formal occasions, for reasons I may yet detail here (where the fuck else would I, right?), but -- ok. Look. I like dresses in theory, they look really good on y'all, and DAMN I have the legs for a dress but I cannot and will not wear dresses as a regular thing, so all these cute dresses that like, fucking Gap and Boden and whoever the fuckall Kim France is loving at the moment (and don't get me wrong, I fucking LOVE Kim France, I just have no idea who she's talking about, designer-wise, at any given moment, on account of having lived an entire life of thinking $80 is a real lot to spend on a shirt) are just -- not gonna happen for me.

And so: Here we are again, with me in distressed black jeans, band T-shirts, a flannel as a stand-in for the Northern-California-Perpetual-Light-Jacket-Item, and whatever footwear is at the axis of my personal assessment of Cool vs. Comfortable that particular day. I have Fly London, and Frye, but also I have fleece-lined Cons. So ...

Fuck, man. My Birks -- yes ok I have them, this is who I am now -- need to be tightened after a winter of wearing them (IN THE HOUSE ONLY, I SWEAR) with socks. And y'all tryna get me to wear dresses, or Skinny Jeans with a gotdamn 11-inch rise and a shirt with the lines of a Chinese takeout box. [siiiiiiiiiiiiigh] Whatever.

a very delicate balance of cannabis, 12-year Scotch and Zoloft

Who Else Is in the Weed Store At 10:30 a.m. on a Monday? A Partial List

--Me, a 46-year-old suburban mom with Elizabeth Warren stickers on the back of my hybrid SUV, still in my workout clothes, having come straight from Orangetheory to get my mints (and the CBD balm for my knees).

--Lenny Kravitz's 22-year-old doppelgänger, who spends a lot of time consulting with the budtender before making his (clearly very educated) choices.

--Three mid-50s white guys in well-used coveralls and steel-toed boots, on break from their construction jobs, first taking care of chronic pain issues with some long-acting edibles, and then picking up extra stuff for fun ("Yeah, this's for the weekend!" one of them laughs, high-fiving LK22yod).

--A heavyset late-20s Asian dude and his similarly-situated Mexican friend (sporting a "Fuck Yeah I'm Mexican!" t-shirt, is how I know), who seem to have recently upgraded to retail weed, after a decade of just having a guy; they talk about gaming in very serious, very excited, but low tones while they're in line to pay.

--A bearded and bespectacled whiteboy twerpo you can just tell is A Writer™️ who needs to tap the profoundly deep well of his Creativity™️ so he can get his novel finished before #PitMad.

--Three other suburban moms, none of whom appear to know each other and only one who probably Speaks to the Manager pretty much everywhere she goes.*

---------------------------------------
*Joke's on her, though, cause the manager here is a super-hot 23-year-old gal who would 1000% love to remove the complainant's head, scour the skull clean, and make it into a bong for regular customers to use for sampling the store's wares onsite. 

Also the movie Broadcast News, which I thought of, randomly, today for the first time in like eight years. It's good stuff.

Some Things I Am Grateful for, Right This Minute: A Partial List

Lizards. I love lizards, and they're all over my back deck. Sprawling posture, FTW!

Tank tops. It's 91 degrees. I can't wear t-shirts when it's more than 72 degrees out; my armpits make like volcanoes and start pouring superheated toxic steam.

Sunless tanner. It's not like that orange shit we used to use in the 80s; it dries fast, shows color quickly, and is natural-looking if you apply it carefully.

TV. Orphan Black is back, The Americans is back and in TOP FUCKING FORM y'all, VEEP is coming back, I'm going to mainline Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt when Mr. Gleemonex is in Vegas (have so far experienced it only in gif form) -- and so much more. Yay TV!

I'm only happy when it rains

New Year's Potpourri

Girl in a Band, by Kim Gordon
This book, an xmas gift from the marvelous Mr. Gleemonex, is making me feel a whole bunch of feelings -- mostly in a good way, but not always. Nostalgia for old New York mixes with annoyance at all the talk about art shit (I have less tolerance for art talk than I do for podcasts, which if you'll recall, is really saying something), and I'm kind of skimming the deep dives into Sonic Youth's songs (I was never really a fan of theirs, musically -- I just kind of admired their whole deal in general, and the person Kim Gordon in specific). But then Kim will hit me with something like this, and it's devastating:

Writing about New York is hard. Not because memories intersect and overlap, because of course they do. Not because incidents and times mix with others, because that happens too. Not because I didn't fall in love with New York, because even though I was lonely and poor, no place had ever made me feel more at home. It is because knowing what I know now, it's hard to write about a love story with a broken heart. 

Fur Elise
So we were watching the excellent, troubling, tense and strange show The Man in the High Castle, and Fur Elise was playing in the background of this one scene, and I could. not. stop myself. from singing the lyrics, to Mr. Gleemonex's mild annoyance. It has lyrics, and you know them: "Oh I wish I were already there / instead of here / playing this song / oh I would have a big chocolate shake / a cheeseburger / and also  -- whoops -- and also fries / and I would eat / my fries myself / and not give any / to my dumb brother / hands off, they're mine all mine" (etc.). Come on now.

Rain
My SHATNER, how wonderful this rain is! Four blaring sun-baked years entirely without it, and it's all we Californians can talk about -- my brain is a jumble of rain lyrics, which sometimes get released out loud (e.g. I'm bopping across the blacktop to pick up the kid, muttering "and this rain it will continue / through the morning as I'm listening / to the bells of the cathedral ... I am thinking of your voice") and I'm pissed whenever the sun manages to break through -- FUCK OFF, SUN! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE, YOU BIG SHINY ASSHOLE!

"Oh, the Danburrys! Big alums!"

In my current lifestyle, I not infrequently come into contact with people who are at that next level of wealth and connection -- the one where it goes beyond just having a comfortable income and having what you need in terms of consumer goods and the like: the level where they're not the ones going to the gala charity functions, and not organizing them, but being the whales that support them or the name that gets it done in the first place. But I think this is maybe where I, personally, top out -- me with my small-town Methodist pridefully-poor background, my scholarship-supported Ivy League education, etc.; I get glimpses of what happens behind those doors, and occasionally get vaguely invited into the lobby ... but I don't know how to walk through, nor, honestly, what I would want that for. Case in point: a family party Mr. Gleemonex and the kids and I went to on Saturday night. Fun party, love the hostess, but the place was chock full of the kind of people who are on the boards of stuff (i.e., a person more adept at and desirous of making that type of connection could've had a very productive evening), and I spent fully half of my time talking to two 20-something German au pairs. Oh well! They were funny and interesting -- who cares if they can't get me on some bullshit board.

You can take your daylight and go right to hell with it

Everybody keeps bitching about Daylight Saving Time ending, but I LOVE it. I'm sick to death of this blaring fucking sun (it's really my main beef with California -- this neverending goddamn sunshine -- and I'm fucking serious) and so the getting-dark-at-like-4:00 is fine by me, plus! I can put the kids to bed earlier without them calling BS on account of it's only 6:30. Also the day it happened, and the kids woke me up at bullshit-o'clock, my idea of going out to breakfast was a good one (that didn't end up working out all that well, but that was for logistical and interpersonal reasons, not lack of validity). Thanksgiving -- the best holiday -- is coming, I'm already ordering Christmas presents, and the season of baking has begun. November: The Awesomest Month!

Although the red-jacketed still-black Michael Jackson put in a good effort, the kid in the homemade dinosaur/dragon thing -- ON STILTS -- won Halloween.

Overheard this morning as the school Halloween parade dispersed:

Second-grade girl to second-grade boy, who was wearing the most perfect Luke Skywalker getup I've ever seen: "There were so many Darth Vaders, I don't know which one was your father!"

Bonus good times: Shout out to the Indian kid going as Tupac, complete with fake Thug Life tats. Extremely well done, young sir.

Gentle and soft / smoooooooooth and easaaaaayyy

So I was practicing my bass this morning (I do 10 minutes a day -- at this rate, I'll be an expert pro bassist in four million years!), and I was working on "Hotel California," and I could not stop laughing to myself, thinking of this, which is the most brilliant thing in the history of ever and if you are not watching the entirety of Documentary Now, you are MISSING OUT:

Mad, Mad, Mad Respek for the Mouse

In Which the Blogger Gets Over a Not-Small Amount of Snobbery and Learns to Love -- I Mean, Fucking LOVE -- Disneyland

You guys, the Mouse has got it DIALED.

There is a reason people go there, and then go again and again and again. Every detail -- holy shit, they have every detail covered. Everything from ambient music to shop fronts to the way the queues work -- every perfectly-groomed trash-and-gum-free border planting -- every attendant's themed uniform -- every vista -- every bathroom, for chrissake!  The rides are fun as hell (OMFG, Radiator Springs Racers! Worth the park admission all by itself!), the FastPass system is genius, the workers' commitment to upbeat hospitality is awesome, the experiences of each area and attraction ... holy crap, you guys. I cannot praise this family vacation highly enough -- we barely looked at our phones, except to coordinate our movements and meetups, and we watched precisely zero TV or iPad for five straight days, which is miraculous for us. We walked as much as 13.2 miles in a single day, we blazed from six a.m. to 10 p.m. three days in a row ... we are all fucking exhausted but had such an awesome time! I'm over being a snob about the kind of people who go to Disneyland -- cause now I'm one of them, and I love the Mouse.

Herewith, some thoughts:

• I would under no circumstances attempt Disneyland & California Adventure:
• at anything less than 90% of my optimal health and mobility (CHRIST there's a lot of walking, stairs, walking, getting in and out of small spaces, onto boats, etc., and walking), 
• with any child under 40" tall (the threshold for virtually all the best rides), 
• without the Extra Magic Hour/Magic Morning (obtained either by staying in an on-property hotel or via buying the whole package through Costco Travel -- a whole hour before the park opens to the public. It's worth every penny)
• or with less than a 3-day park-hopper pass (there's no way to see/do everything you want to do in less time without dying of exhaustion). 
• I was under the impression that the FastPass system was pay-to-play -- but it isn't. I won't explain it here, but all it is is, with a little planning, you can skip lines and just ride rides. DO IT. 
• Cars Land -- Radiator Springs -- is the greatest theme park "land" I've ever seen in my life.
• The animation academy -- learn to draw a Disney character in about 15 minutes -- was fun, and not something I'd've thought to do, but Kid Gleemonex wanted to, so we did, and now I want to do more of them.
• The spaces allowed by the queue fencing on all the older rides (basically all of Disneyland, and anything built before, say, the mid 90s) are hilariously narrow -- not built to accommodate today's XXL American Physique, lordamercy. 
• World of Color was kind of meh -- it's supposed to be fountains and fireworks, and it is, but it's also -- primarily -- this weird worship service for The Genius And Wonder of The Most Beloved Dreamster Of All Time, Walt -- WONDERFUL Walt -- Disney. 

Mekka-lekka-hai, mekka hiney ho

People, The Dailey Method is not a workout. 

I'm not saying it's not hard, or it's not work, but it isn't a workout. I think I'd actually like it (if they'd let me in, despite my lack of an Acura MDX to get there, and Lululemon outfits to wear during it) -- I'm into Pilates, and ballet, and all that stuff, and it is really pretty awesome. But it doesn't really make you sweat, and if you're looking to lose weight or burn calories or get some cardio? This is not your jam. Therefore: The Dailey Method is not a workout. It is an activity. 

Your turkey sub, your clothes, the fact that a woman of your resources and position lives like some boxcar hobo, or maybe it’s the fact that while I’m saying all this, you have a piece of lettuce stuck in your hair.

Here is a thing I do: Whenever I am about to go out for the evening -- generally with Mr. Gleemonex, although sometimes with "the gals" because in my Suburban Mom lifestyle I have to invest social time on my kids' behalf so Ava Gracelynne and Tallulah Stringbean and Kal-El Darth Transformer, et. al., will invite my chirren to their parent-child slumber parties (1:1 supervision, can't be too careful) and "fun" soccer-based outings at some steaming sunscraped park or whatever it is instead of shunning them because I'm a social zero -- anyway, whenever I'm about to go out for the evening, I realize I have a closet full of:

• Office clothes I don't wear anymore and wouldn't even if I started back at an office tomorrow because they're all a minimum of four years old at this point and tbh mostly about 6-7 years old
• Evening dresses, like you'd wear to a fancy wedding
• Mom Outfits for a Hot Arid Climate (e.g. J. Jill tank tops, J. Crew chino shorts, stuff from Eddie Bauer)
• Jeans
• T-shirts with words on them (band names, Vandelay Industries, RBG, etc.)
• A shit-ton of workout clothes & athletic bras

What I lack is: going-out clothes, e.g. the kind of top a grown woman wears out with some skinny jeans, like kinda sexy but not trying to be 21 years old, a little more special than plain knit stuff, you know what I mean. I ain't got any of that.

So what I do the day after this inevitable fail is, I go online and look for stuff like what I'm picturing in my head. I troll the sales, I load up carts with this that and the other hilariously aspirational item (while my brain screams GIMME A FUCKING BREAK YOU KNOW YOU CAN'T WEAR A BRA WITH THAT), and I buy -- or should I say, rent -- a bunch of stuff. Then it comes to me, trickling in over the next couple of weeks, and I try it on, and go "UGH NO," and send it all back. I only buy with free shipping and returns, so I'm only out the $$ temporarily (plus also the ass-pain of packaging it all back up and filling out those stupid forms you're supposed to include with the return), but it is a dispiriting process that does cost me, mentally. Christ I wish I knew someone who liked shopping and would do 100% of it for me ...

Plus a whole bunch of New Yorkers

The summer do take a bite, don't she?

Some Books I Have Read Lately, and Brief Thoughts Thereupon

Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood: Short stories, some of which are loosely connected, all of which are goddamn ridiculously good and stick in the brain like oatmeal in a toddler's hair.

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast: Cartoon memoir, I guess? Powerful, occasionally funny, occasionally bleak, had the side effect of making me see the silver lining of my parents both dying relatively young and suddenly.

Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel: Hoooooo boy. Apocalyptic/dystopian, aka right up my alley; Atwoodian, even further up my alley. Absolutely fucking compelling (I mean I for real COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN), and in parts extremely unsettling.

Fun Home, Alison Bechdel: Still not finished, but really liking this -- I'm not generally the graphic novel type (the Chast notwithstanding), but it's the perfect way of expression for this story.

Microserfs, Douglas Coupland: A re-read, at an interval of about 10 years. Still love it (although I skimmed a whole lot of the Deep Thoughts About Man and Machine). Fun to see what has and has not changed in Silicon Valley (Apple, for instance, is circling the toilet at the time of the novel -- people hoping for a buyout package so they can leave, Steve Jobs ousted, etc.). Made me ugly-cry at the end.

The houses that handed out booze were my favorites.

Halloweenies: Notes on the Most Wonderful Night of the Year

• There was a dad at Kid Gleemonex’s school Halloween parade dressed in the orange tux and top hat of Lloyd Christmas (he even had a cane), and it was ALL I COULD DO not to go up behind him and thwap the back of his knees with my umbrella. The only thing that stopped me — and y’all, it was close — was: What if he didn't get it? Like, a friend talked him into a two-person costume he really didn't understand all that well? And here's this crazy lady at an elementary-school Halloween parade, assaulting him for no reason …
• The girls’ costumes at the same event ran about 20 percent Elsa and Anna. The costumes were clearly stratified by price, from the $8.99 grocery-store version (the modern take on the cheapo-mask-and-plastic-bib store-bought costumes of my childhood classrooms) to the fitted, heavy $140 one with a long train, real beading, and a full, flowing satin skirt with lace overlay and real-looking long braided wig. 
• I wasn’t able to stop myself shouting “Oi! Potter!” in my big fake British accent at the dozen or so Harry Potters I saw that day and evening. I am what I am. 
• Rainbow Brite is apparently back. 
• My own couples’ costume idea came too late to be usable (Friday morning): Werewolf Bar Mitzvah. One person is in a werewolf mask and glove/claws, but wearing a suit and a yarmulke and carrying the Torah. The other person is dressed as a rabbi (also wolfed up). I love a costume that like four people on Earth, one of whom is Tina Fey, would get. 
• The kids got a great haul in the spiffy neighborhood we trick-or-treated in, but who were the cheap motherfuckers who were offloading all their Celebrity Cruises pillow chocolates? I’d like to go TP the fuck out of their house, man. Shaving-cream their windows too. 

Little in the middle but she pack much back

This post has nothing to do with the title -- "Baby Got Back" just happened to come on the car radio today, and my kids think "I like big butts and I cannot lie" is the funniest fucking thing in the history of the world. 

Bumper Stickers and/or Car Decals That Bum Me Out: A Selection of Recent Sightings

MITT

NRA Member Since 2012

Got Twins +1?

My Pugs Are Smarter Than Your Honor Student!

[Calvin, down on his knees, praying before a large cross]

JAGERMEISTER

Nader 2000

[license plate] 4WRKGOT

Also I almost never pass a day without at least one Mitch Hedberg assay flickering across the old brain pan.

Two Unrelated Things

1) It is a rare day that I do not think to myself, "Settle down, Beavis!" Some days I say it out loud, but about 93 percent of the time it stays in my head.

2) When *I* go to BevMo, I come back with the thing or things which I intended to buy there (e.g. a handle of Stolichnaya, an xmas-gift-level bottle of sipping tequila, a sixer of wine for a party, what have you). But when *Mr. Gleemonex* goes there to pick up some Glenlivet, which for some reason has turned both rare and expensive around here (?huh?), he comes back with three bottles of Glenlivet, a twelver of Spaten, a bottle of sake (Wandering Poet label -- which of course, dear Twelve, made me think of the Troubador -- wonder how many times he's been nut-punched over these many years?), some Knob Creek, and a plastic "travel flask." He ... already has a very nice leather-bound flask. So ... I don't know. I like all this stuff, but -- for why is it here?

The "You Pay $8.95" Tax Plan

Due to a strange confluence of circumstances,* I am now a member of more gyms than I have legs.**

The workouts I do at my #1 gym of the moment -- a fancy place -- are part of a fancy-place program of mainly HIIT/Tabata style workouts that kick your ass (and abs, glutes, erector spinae, hip flexors, neck cords and whatnot) in 45 minutes -- I LOVE these sessions, honest to Shatner.  And but so the other day, I went to like a starter Pilates class -- you have to take four before you're allowed into the real Pilates classes that are part of this program -- and encountered the teacher, this totally strange spacey lady, for the first time. She was like what Sybill Trelawney looks like in my mind, if Professor Trelawney weighed 87 pounds and wore loose-fitting yoga duds. She spent 35 minutes on breathing (I wish I were kidding), and the rest on floating judgmental comments into the air, at no one in particular, about "those other workouts" (the ones I like) in which "people abuse their bodies" and how "some people" aren't interested in the "mind-body connection." So I'm lying there, "tightening my pelvic cradle on the exhale" (not a euphemism), thinking GOSH, Judgmental Pilates Lady sure is judgmental!

That's ... all I got for ya, pals.

------------------------------------
*Briefly, it is this: Summer 2011, I join a local bare-bones gym with a childcare area staffed by one of the warmest and most wonderful caregivers I've ever met. Summer 2014, I grow bored enough with treadmills and elliptical machines to seek out other gyms with good GroupX offerings; I find one, via a friend I'd like to see more of anyway, and join up. Three days later, THREE DAYS, I get a response to a weeks-old pitch I'd made, via email, to yet another, fancier gym, in which I proposed that I get to do their new, fancy, expensive workout program for free in exchange for blogging about it. I never thought in a million years that they'd accept this pitch -- but it was a damn good 'un, and I guess they felt the same, so until I get those other memberships canceled or suspended (which I think takes an Act Of Congress? I've petitioned Nancy Pelosi, haven't heard back, she must be busy), I'm a member of three (3) gyms. 

**MICK! That one was for you! Dave Barry's greatness will never fade! I've recently rediscovered him, because a copy of Dave Barry's Greatest Hits that I picked up for 50 cents at the Friends of the Library Sale is what I read, most nights, sitting on my daughter's bed trying not to lose my shit absolutely while my daughter faffs around NOT getting ready for bed. 

Pinacoladaberg

Of all of the things you can find on a beach, why is a used Band-Aid the most loathsome?

This is what a feminist looks like

So the kids're into a new-to-them show, a bland and ultra-formulaic computer-animated thing apparently written by Google scriptbots, called Paw Patrol. It stars six "pups" -- as in, puppies -- and one teenage (?) boy who is their ... idk, their minder? Scout leader? Whatever, he's the one who receives the incoming distress calls of various types at HQ, comes up with a plan, and gives the pups their orders, after which the day is, inevitably, saved (often, this involves apps, like on an iPad -- it's kind of confusing). There's a Moustache Pete type character (who does not have an Italian accent), and the town's mayor is a black woman, so -- I guess there's diversity kind of? Anyway, all the pups have cute short sassy names (e.g. Rocky -- I'm pretty sure Rocky is one of them) and some type of special skill with equipment to match, all of which are called into action -- COLLABORATIVE action -- with each mission. Aside from its general kiddie-show banality, my main beef with it was that there's just one female pup. Really, Paw Patrol? Grrrr.

But so then one night at dinner, Kid Gleemonex, age six, randomly muses, "I love Paw Patrol. But only one of the pups is a girl."

I say, "Yeah -- you noticed that too, huh?"

"Uh-huh," she says, with champion-level eyebrow. Then, sunnily and with an air of utter conviction: "But it's OK. She can fly."

California is both the greatest, and the worst.

Goddammit, we have to talk about vegetable lasagna. Or, rather, vegetable "lasagna," because that is some air-quote-deserving bullshit right there.

Why do people think that people who don't eat meat or just don't feel like it today would rather eat a goddamn panful of wet gross zucchini and wrong-textured bell peppers sliding all around over the noodles instead of: CHEESE LASAGNA? The kind that is just like the traditional meat version, but without the meat? It's the same people who, if you say you don't want meat on your pizza, will come back to you with a pizza-like item that is fucking covered with two pounds of broccoli and red onion and (again -- AGAIN -- with this fucking stuff) zucchini. What the fuck is that? I didn't say I wanted a fucking farmer's market on top of some bread, hippie! And listen, don't try to tell me that the vegetable "lasagna" or the Jolly Green Giant "pizza" is healthy, or even "healthier," because it's not -- you already made the decision to eat something that is basically carbs and cheese, so own it, and get that cock-knuckled vegetable shit out of my face.