D i e n u

(since i can’t share this day with my mom, i thought i’d share a little bit of my mom with the world. she wrote this poem when i was a freshman or sophomore in college.)

Our TV blew up yesterday,
Now Maurey has nothing to say.
The Price isn’t right,
X-Files no fright,
Our TV blew up yesterday.

A quiet’s descended our house
No Scooby, no Rugrats, and no Mickey Mouse
There’s no Highway to Heaven,
No film at eleven,
Our TV blew up yesterday.

The rain hasn’t let up for a minute,
Life’s hard when there’s no TV in it,
I’ve stared at the screen,
Wished it into being,
Our TV blew up yesterday.

Did Courtney and Beth get married?
Or is their boyfriend still harried?
Oh what I wouldn’t give
For just “One Life to Live,”
Our TV blew up yesterday.

Our TV has gave up the ghost,
No game shows and no talk host,
There ain’t no Marshall Dillon,
Oh I’d give a million!
Our TV blew up yesterday.

The warranty must have run out,
To the day, to the second, no doubt.
I’m mad as a hatter but,
What does it matter?
Our TV blew up yesterday.

The screen just sits there so black,
There’s no “Murder, She Wrote” back to back,
I can’t stand it no more, no
COMMERCIALS GALORE!!
Our TV burned up yesterday,

I say….
Our TV blew up yesterday.

The End!

(Happy Mother’s Day!)

A little holiday greeting I recorded with my nephews:

Did I mention that my sister has been stationed 90 minutes away from me?

Best. Christmas. Ever.

Dear Makers of the Harvard Polar Air Hockey Table:

Thank you so much for manufacturing a product that offers the promise of so much fun and excitement. There was a day when, if I wanted to play some air hockey, I had to drive all over town looking for an arcade with a table. But thanks to you, I can have air hockey excitement conveniently located in my very own basement! The Harvard Polar Air Hockey Table was definitely a much-appreciated Christmas gift.

Though it took us several weeks to unwrap the table from its cardboard prison, be assured that, as we approached the task yesterday, we were filled with the appropriate pre-air hockey excitement and anticipation. We got down to business and were able to assemble it with a minimum of frustration. Randy didn’t even throw a screwdriver!

Imagine our surprise and delight when we realized that the table came with not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different pucks! Round pucks in classic red and groovy translucent orange. A blue octagon and a yellow TRIANGLE puck! And all of these in both large and small sizes.

We set up the table, readied our puck and strikers, and turned that baby on. The smooth whoosh of motor-blown air serenaded us and we were off! Randy won the first two games, but they were both close ones. We stopped there, so Randy could have some dinner, and I could plan my comeback strategy.

Later that evening, we came back into the basement, ready for Tournament Matchup Round #2. Though Randy won the first round, this game would not fall so easily. I handily defeated him and celebrated my win by running all over the room and shaking my booty and singing the universal hockey victory song, the one that goes kind of like, “Dah dah DAHHHHH da! Da Da Da! Da Da DAHHH!” Randy just hung his head.

We were smack in the middle of game #4 and I was WINNING, when suddenly, something was wrong. The puck, which had been sailing weightlessly along, began skidding across the table. Try as we might to bash the crap out of it, the thing just wouldn’t move along. We ran our hands over the table’s surface and were dismayed to discover that there wasn’t much air blowing through the little air holes.

Randy crawled under the table to investigate. The news he sent back was distressing.

“Baby,” he said, “there’s a TON of air blowing out the BOTTOM of the motor. It’s all backwards!”

We tried to fix it. We turned it off and back on and then off and back on again. We tried tightening the motor a bit. We tried giving the table a wee little jostle. Nothing worked.

Finally, we were forced to admit that the unthinkable had occurred: Our fabulous Harvard Polar Air Hockey Table had broken after only three short games.

We searched for a while on Google, but were not able to find any information on the problem. All the usual key words turned up nothing. Air+hockey+table+backwards+blowing didn’t work. Neither did harvard+air+motor+hockey+table+broken. No matter what we tried, the result was always the same. Failure. Defeat.

Randy will be calling your customer service number shortly. Or, more realistically, Randy will forget a number of times to call your customer service number, so I will call you sometime next week. I do hope that this problem can be resolved, because I would so love to kick his ass when we pick up where we left off.

Sincerely yours,

Jenny Nicholson

This has been a WordGoddess collaboration.

So, 2005. Party! Woo!

I feel like I need to write some profound New Year entry, in which I expound upon the goals and hopes I have for the coming year.

But I don’t feel like it. The last day of the 2004 calendar didn’t flip over with a bang. One day just kind of slid into the next and, before I knew it, I had to change the last number of the date I signed on my checks.

In the past, I’ve written about all the resolutions I am determined to fulfill each year: get exercise, keep my house organized, stay in touch with people far away, read more books, finish my cast-aside sewing, quilting, and knitting projects…The list goes on and on and on and it seems like, every year, the same damn things keep showing up.

So this year, I’m not bothering. I’ll still be dealing with the same kind of crap that I dealt with last year. I’ve come to accept some things. I’m always going to struggle to stay organized. That doesn’t mean that I’ll give up and quit trying, but it DOES mean that I’m not going to start off my year proclaiming that this, THIS will be the year that I finally become Heloise, Mr. Clean, and Martha Stewart all rolled into one little package. That’s just setting myself up for failure. I’m trying to be better about keeping in touch with people I care about — but it’s always been hard for me and I have a feeling that it will always be hard. I’m still trying and I do think I’m getting better, but I’m not going to keep writing this cosmic to-do list.

So there. Screw you, New Year’s. And your little resolutions, too.

Along the same lines, I also committed this year to not having super-high expectations for New Year’s Eve. For the last several years, I’ve always insisted that the NYE celebrations must be intensely fun and wonderful and fabulous and great. And every year, I’ve been let down because December 31st NEVER turns out to be as fun as you hype it up to be.

In 2003, I was insistent that NYE would be great. That was the night, long-time readers may remember, when after a long day recording with his band, dearest Randy said that he wanted to have fun at home, just the two of us, and then proceeded to fall asleep on the couch at 10:30pm.

I haven’t forgotten that disappointment and there was no way I was going to go through that again. So, when friends asked me about plans, I informed them that I would not be in charge of planning anything and would do whatever came up.

And that’s exactly what I did. Myself, Randy, and a large group of friends went over to a local bar that was having a dance party. I had exactly 1.5 drinks, danced a lot, toasted at midnight, and went home at 12:45 am. It was perfect.

The only downside is that I left my driver’s license at the bar and haven’t gotten around to inquiring after it. I figure I probably need a new one, anyway.

And now I’m back at work, trying to get used to this whole idea of going to my job for FIVE whole days EVERY single week! It’s crazy. They actually expect me to put in FORTY hours. I haven’t done that in months, it feels like.

Happy New Year!