Because c'mon! Shame on Invasion's slowburn peril for not providing them a more frequent showcase.

He's my boyfriend. He is. No, he just is. He's all green-eyed, widow's-peaked, melting-pot hotness and oiled-massage voice. He's it.

Figuring It All Out

My dream of dreams used to be simply to possess a backpack and those items which could fit inside. My backpack and I would have great adventures travelling around, with only a vague notion of where we were going and only the generosity of folks with transport to get us there. Very Kerouac. My new dream of dreams does not shake off the Beat altogether and, I suppose, the hitchhiking with a backpack odyssey could be the means to get me where I'm going even still.

My new dream of dreams is to be the proprietress of one of those cliff-edge motel/restaurant/gas stations on the PCH of California's central coast. For there is but one road on that very long stretch of shockingly beautiful highway that will allow drivers to escape east over the Santa Lucia Range. If they don't exit on the rinky-dink G18 south of Limekiln State Park, they're in it for the long haul -- south all the way past the Hearst mansion and Cambria where the 46 will take them out through vineyards to the 101 or all the way north to Carmel. The going is relatively slow and exceptionally winding, with stomach-churning drops to the blue Pacific on one side and high-flying cliffs waiting to bury everything in mudslides on the other. It's like nature's most leisurely and thrilling amusement park ride, somehow both claustrophobic and boundless.

To be the owner of a gas-food-lodging establishment on this stretch is to hold travellers in your thrall. For miles and miles, you're the only hint of civilization except the ranch fences winding along the tops of some of the cliffs. And you've got kickass scenery to offer the running-on-fumes (in both senses) lot who wind their way inexorably in your direction. They will get hungry and spend nigh on forty dollars for a salad and a plate of pasta because it's to be had at the only place to eat for hours. They will need a pee break and will use your loo next door because hours. They will need gas, no matter that they filled up ahead of time at their guidebook's gentle warning. If they haven't planned well, or are just taken in by your spa suspended high above the ocean or the croaking chorus of frogs out back of your toilets, they may even pony up a substantial amount of cash to spend the night rather than navigate the highway's twists after dark.

As a bonus, you get to live far far away from much of the annoying trappings of other people except them that fall into your high-priced web. And those dudes are almost completely at your mercy anyway.

The only way I can think to improve upon this dream is to situate my Last Resort (heh) on a similar stretch of road in Australia if such a one exists. If not, I suppose I can sponsor some Aussies' work visas and surround myself with fab accents, sunny positivity and disconcerting friendliness without expatriating.

However, if I cannot have my new dream of dreams, being an expat is an alternate. Others include: teaching ESL, owning one of those ranches that takes in retired racehorses, dedicating my life to learning new languages, performing autopsies and getting really good at surfing, some martial art or playing an instrument.

Holus-Bolus, Indeed

To inaugurate my new site name (an auspicious occasion if ever there was one) and say goodbye to the old, I have for you a holus-bolus post. To wit:

Au pair 2: Bostonier

My laugh makes babies cry. I'm serious. It wasn't just Number One Daughter's newfound aversion to strangers, either, because after four (out of seven) hellish days of my constant presence, she finally decided we could be friends again. Yet every time I would laugh at something in her presence, she would look around all startled, the lower lip would start to pucker and the hysterical, dear-god-what-was-that-noise?! bawling would begin.

My laugh makes babies cry.

Thankfully, in those early days when the kid hated even the sight of me, I had The Waifs to get me through. They played a show at The Paradise and CY got me in gratis with some I-know-the-bartender kung fu. I used the fifteen dollars I saved to buy drinks.

Anyone (i.e., Girl-Bart) wondering why they won't be touring Stateside for the foreseeable future needed only look to the fact that both Vikki and Donna were hugely pregnant this go-round. They're due to drop more Waif spawn on the same day even. Donna went and married opening act and Minnesotan, Ben Weaver. Let's hope he does the sensible thing and hightails it to Western Oz with her.

The rest of the visit was mostly packing- and move-related which sucked to the nth degree chiefly due to the melting heat and the a/c unit that was running, but steadfastly refusing to cool anything outside a ten-inch radius of itself. God, that sucked! The One Who Doesn't Talk knows my pain.

I made off with some lovely parting gifts, though, played a lot of Tekken, drank amarula (it's how elephants get drunk so you know it's good) and had the distinct pleasure of hearing Fyfe announce over a clean-out-the-fridge lunch of kidney beans, corn, broccoli, hardboiled eggs, and pasta that it was the "fartiest meal" she'd ever made.

I also got to take the Silver Line bus to and from Logan, which was much faster than switching between three T lines and ran almost entirely within the Big Dig. I guess I take the underground part of subways for granted. Driving beneath the earth in a bus for longer than it takes to pass through a tunnel is kind of disconcerting. Next time -- just for fun -- it's the airport water taxi for me!

Poo Like You Mean It

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a person with constipation problems. Quite emphatically the opposite, in fact. But if I were a person who had to suffer so, it would cheer me to find there is a delicious, nutritious, refreshing way to solve my problem and it is currently 50% off at a Jewel store near me!

I speak of pomegranate-cranberry juice, folks. It is delicious. It is the 100% juice variety, so it is undeniably nutritious. In these unspeakable Days of Heatwave, it is most gloriously refreshing to drink with an ice cube or two floating musically within.

It is also, evidently, chock-a-block with fiber's sinister cousin or something because I've gone through two rolls of toilet paper in just under 36 hours. Two rolls. Explosively, as it were.

The Most Heartening Acronym Known To Man (And It's Not Radar)

This afternoon, self-medicated via my personal pharmacopoeia but none too certain of my intestinal fortitude, I went to the post office. Despite the 90-ish temperature and the 1000% humidity (modestly estimated), I took it upon myself to walk home the long way round. You know, for a different view of the neighborhood and the world and life itself perhaps. (I may have been delirious with heat exhaustion.)

Then what to my wandering eye should appear through the trees? On Southport, no less? With rays of godlight shining from behind it and a heavenly chorus on the soundtrack?

O Lord, thank you for Thy bountiful gifts! Thank you for bringing us out of the Dark Ages and into the heralded Era of Delicious Soft Serve! I thought there was a suspiciously high number of DQ commercials on my TV of late, as this lowliest of Midwestern cities knew not Your gifts of the Blizzard nor the Peanut Buster Parfait, but I dared not to dream You would shine Your golden light down not a mile from my apartment. I prostrate myself before You, Sir. You are truly a benevolent force.

Once I finished hyperventilating and debating the wisdom of motivating myself for daily exercise with the promise of DQ, I threw digestive caution to the wind, bought a butterscotch sundae and snarfed it on the way home.

Now if only I could find someone selling those little sundae cups with the wooden "spoons."

Yet More Evidence The Universe Has My Best Interest In Mind

Pale & Hairy in CA
My Grey Area

Tomato Nation
mimi smartypants
tinyluckygenius
Chicagoist

Television Without Pity
Go Fug Yourself
Hacking Netflix
BookCrossing

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