one more bite five more times

the dishes are drying next to the sink, and the leftovers from the very simple dinner i cooked are in the fridge for tomorrow's lunch. i'm wearing pajamas-- a t-shirt with a nun surrounded by penguins-- and the stubborn pink hairs that remain from last week's spontaneous attempt to shampoo my hair bright red have been pulled up into a ponytail.

it's the first night in a while that i've had any real down time alone... got home from work around 8pm after a voice over with the world's cutest 9 year old. When I opened the door to the sound booth to set him free, he hopped off his chair and literally hid in the corner-- curled up in a ball with only his tiny FBI hat visible, and begged, with actual small tears forming, for me to let him "keep reading with him". It was beyond sweet, and left me in an estrogen cloud that the best of my estrogen/ovary puppet shows would not be able to keep at bay ("ew, that baby's sticky" ... "shutup! it's the precious! we wants one!")

left to my own devices and immature pajama choices, i'm realizing that the past few weeks have had a level of small-scale indulgences that i haven't allowed myself in a long time... and i'm loving it. they aren't big indulgences-- some are actually miniscule -- but the sense of letting certain vulnerabilities in after working hard for them is freeing.

.exciting.
after a month of working our tails off, beth and i discovered that... (drumroll)... (eggroll)...
WE WON THE PF CHANG'S TRAINING VIDEO GRAND PRIZE!!!!
holy crap! "Service With a 'Stache" beat out 53 (55? 60?) other videos from around the US, and will be played for every poor soul who ever trains to work at pf changs. yes, they will have to endure 15 minutes of fake mustaches, mustaches drawn on fingers, god-awful british accents, jane singing two part harmony, and sorority girl terra cotta chinese warriors.

not that there can be any bad news about winning the grand prize, but we were a little disheartened to learn that after winning $5,000... we're only getting about $350 each since Chang's is taking over 40% and taxing the living crap out of the pool. Contrary to popular belief, we didn't enter the contest for the unadulterated glory of getting up at 5am on our weekends :)

.decadent.
never-before-seen guilty pleasures in my fridge... bacon for sunday breakfast. slow-churned ice cream. orange juice that wasn't even remotely on sale. chocolate...lucky...charms. WHAT! moderation truly is key. :)

impulse attempts to temporarily dye my hair red

driving up to longmont on a complete whim just to make corny jokes with my dad on a saturday morning.

playing the new guilty pleasure song four times a night, three nights in a row.

curling up under a blanket during a thunderstorm with a movie and a kindred spirit. and then doing the same things a few days later during another storm.

just being home-- in my tree bed, with a great book, a bowl of cereal, friends just a voice away on my phone, tea in big mugs, just out of the dryer pillow cases, and good music playing

and the best indulgence of all...
thad's coming home in the morning for a visit, and we're already planning every evening of the next week. they will all look like this:
snuggled in the tree bed, reading stash of snark-filled essays Thad's been collecting that summarize-- with quick wit and good points-- our unadulterated hatred of The Secret and everything under the earth related to it. The following is from an essay by Emily Yoffe that Thad sent me tonight as we both giggled uncontrollably into the phone while making dinner (in Boulder and LA, respectively):

"Byrne says Shakespeare, Newton, Lincoln, and Einstein all owed their achievements to their understanding of the law of attraction. She asserts that "the discoveries of quantum physics … are in total harmony with the teachings of The Secret." To prove this, she explains, "I never studied science or physics at school, and yet when I read complex books on quantum physics I understood them perfectly because I wanted to understand them." (Pop quiz, Rhonda: What is the energy of a single photon [in eV] from a light source with a wavelength of 400 nm?) The book is dotted with quotations from great men of history that supposedly back up The Secret's assertions. Take this one from Winston Churchill: "You create your own universe as you go along." Something about this struck me as sounding not terribly Churchillian. I looked it up and it turned out Churchill did write it, but it was his mocking characterization of the metaphysical twits of his day.

At this point I should add that The Secret is not only drivel—it's pernicious drivel. The obvious question that arises from its claim that it's easy to get what you want, is: Why do so many people get what they don't want? As Byrne writes, "Imperfect thoughts are the cause of all humanity's ills, including disease, poverty, and unhappiness." Yes, according to The Secret, people don't just randomly end up being massacred, for example. They are in the wrong place because of their own lousy thinking. Cancer patients have long been victims of this school of belief. But The Secret takes it to a new and more repulsive level with its advice not just to blame people for their illness, but to shun them, lest you start being infected by their bummer thoughts, too."

I hate this kind of feel-good bullshit that masquerades as quasi scientific spiritual hippy-dippy self-centered egocentric unicorn prancing patting-yourself-on-the-back serendipitous fortune. it's anti-intellectual and selfish on a level that makes me want to start eating my own ears, $6.99 target earrings first. and i can truly say that my hatred of this kind of 'philosophy' is equaled, if not topped, by my love of my friend thaddeus, by the other friends in my life-- new and old-- and by my delightful collection of small, inconsequential indulgences.

This is a happy chapter opening in my life... I can feel it. Every time I get too worried about my dad, he laughs just loud enough to get silly and I lose myself laughing with him... each long day in the office is ended with a drive through country roads that have magically burst at the seams with deep greens and budding trees. It can feel scary to let go and enjoy... truly enjoy... what or who is in front of you, but it's been so long since I've let go and really just enjoyed being in the moment. I wish I'd been this brave sooner... it's not as emotionally reckless as I'd chalked it up to be.

With whipped cream, a cherry, and a commercial-free junky tv show,
.mae west.