ding-a-ling

last week i updated my main ringtones. i used to have a one-for-all-and-all-for-one three musketeers approach minus the pointy swords, finely groomed facial hair, and velvet capes. no matter who called me, my phone ribbetted and tweeted like a rainforest. but not any more! ladies and gents, i've finally joined the age of basic-yet-useless technology for dummies age.

when my mom calls, my phone tells me via "mom is calling back" (a parody of justin timberlake's "sexyback"). for todd, i get the smooth, hip hop rhythms of usher. and when my older younger sister calls, i get "scoobydoobydoo." for our real estate agent? house music. umf-uh umf-uh umf-uh.

today's forecast: tons of action sweeping through the lower regions

me: why are wednesdays so jam-packed?
em: no idea. it's hump day.
me: so the day is trying to screw me?
em: hahaha

my nana

my maternal grandmother has been in the hospital for the past few weeks, and today she told me how she finally had some "real food," saying, "your grandfather brought me a frostee freeze today, and i drank it all up. how do you like them apples?!?!" in addition, she has a new mission upon discharge: to design an easy-to-use bedpan for the smallish-to-average size person. hey, a woman's gotta have goals.

i returneth.

today, my sister finally gave me the heave-ho, saying, "your blog has been lacking. unacceptable." eek. when my own sister tells me that i (or my blog) is unacceptable, well, that's fairly serious. according to her, dying my hair pink is encouraged, burping the alphabet would win me a medal (i'm very, very medal-less at this point), and should i choose to dance along the golden gate bridge on a cold winter morning, she would shower me with standing ovations galore. case in point (for her):


the 13 second mark is my favorite, even with the video upside down. so em, here's a photo for you, snapped along irving street in the sunset last month.

oh, and i'm back.

beau thai

it's my sister's 26th birthday today, and the following is from our most recent, rambling, and birthday-centric conversation.

b.: have you eaten?
e.: yeah i ate leftovers from last night
b.: darn.
e.: why?
b.: i was going to surprise you with a hot cycling guy delivering thai food.
e.: where would you find that?
b.: idea first, practicalities later.

it's the thought that counts, right?

a wrinkle in time

dear mom,

for mother's day, i'm going to send you something that you would never ever buy yourself. or that you wouldn't think to get. or that might surprise you enough to say, gee, this is pretty cool! or that you might even need. which is why i'm not taking dr. kim up on his mother's day special offer. you look great, and you'll thank me one day. at least i think you will.

love,
becca

__________________________

dear dr. kim,

thanks for ruining every san francisco mom's self-esteem. you really understand how to put the "happy" in happy mother's day.

becca

at least it's not my range rover.

recently, i visited some family and one very special, fantabulous person in florida, and this was the best photo from the trip. and by best, i mean funniest.

boo to you, too

halloween is right around the corner. well, if the corner equals 24 days. maybe this is a long and winding corner... my neighborhood's younger family quotient keeps shooting skywards, and we've even gained a bouncing baby boy right across our hall. here in the semi-big city by the bay, halloween's a sight on the bus, what with people dressing up in crazy costumes at 7am and trying to balance their pointy hats, capes, newspapers, blackberries, and pumpkin spice chai all in one hand while we lurch up alamo square. but in reality, at least my reality, halloween's sole purpose is to jumpstart pumpkin pie testing. and tasting. and then some more testing.

my costume skillz back in high school tended to lean towards the robe and slippers. what am i, people would ask. i'm at home! haha! harhar! oogabooga! yeah. not funny. i think the best time to dress up was when i was a toddler. there wasn't much judging who had the best/coolest/hairraisingest costume (although i remember finally giving in to a hideous neon green barmaid costume for my 12th birthdy party... but that was a birthday, not halloween, so it doesn't count!!!); instead, back in the day, all hallows eve focused on using your imagination and celebrating the naive idea that everyone had an inner cauldron-stirring witch who wore a tiara.

today if i were a tiny tot, knew how to use the internet, and was left to my own devices to trick-or-treat sans stroller, i'd be all set to hit the town el cheapo style, thanks to drugstore.com's plethora of buyseasons' hokey costumes. and as a side note, mom: thank you thank you thank you for handmaking the strawberry and cat costumes. and for not sewing together a whoopie cushion one. or any costume featuring fake muscles or boobs or alluding to a stinky smell.

but not engrench

me: i'm trying to multitask with work, but also planning this trip to vancouver. we decided to ditch whistler and victoria, and just split our time between vancouver (city) and vancouver island. whoever thought that vancouver island had a rainforest??
em: oh
me: and there are orca pods. and hiking. and sunsets. and storm watching.
em: it looks gorgeous.
me: funny enough, we'll be there for canadian thanksgiving.
em: haha. tofurkey?
me: are canadian tofurkies bilingual? maybe they squawk english and french canadian...
em: i think they do. my friend (from bc) speaks only a little bit of french so i think the tofurkies speak frenglish.

list this

my mom and kev-friend are in the city for a month, and ever since their first few visits, i’ve been keeping a mental list of things they might like to do, places they may want to visit, etc. a few years back, i started with this list. since then, they’ve become semi-regular sf visitors, so the usual golden gate bridge and coit tower tour are sort of been-there, done-that. we also only hit four places on the entire list, so i know it's more of a wish list than anything else.

semi-off-topic: i don't know where i get my list craziness from, but no one else in my family seems to keep lists. or plan more than a week or so in advance. i think it's a regressive trait like blue eyes and blond hair or webbed toes. funny enough, i'm a list-maker and a procrastinator; just because i make lists doesn't mean i follow through on them in a timely manner!

but just like slim shady, mommy's back. back again. i’ve revamped the list, tailoring it towards things i’d like to show her and kevin. my outlook is rosy; if i knock two off of my to-do's, i'll be very, very impressed. plus, todd's mom is visiting sometime in september, so perhaps my list can do double-duty.

• the pirate store aka 826 valencia. because everyone loves pirates, trap doors, and laaaard. aaaargh, matey.
• tartine bakery
• opera in the park is coming up! i’ve never been to an opera, but there’s a right time for everything, right?
  
• the annual chocolate festival, featuring… pizza.
• tidepooling in pescadero or half moon bay. i think they’ve been, but i don’t care. let’s pet some sea anemones and stroke a starfish.
  
• buying tons of mochi at benkyodo and sharing each piece four ways.
• tracking down the wild parrots of telegraph hill. squawk.
• hot cookie, making a repeat performance from the original list. no one else makes macaroon boob cookies quite like hot cookie. plus, you can tell everyone you nibbled your boob today. very, very san francisco. and if anyone cares, em split a butch bar with todd last year.
  
• the cal academy of sciences reopens at the end of next month. family outing!
• the best place to get vegan moon cakes and a perplexed look of confusion- the autumn moon festival!

my underpants swear today's monday. or at least body by victoria.

with the ohio trip not too far away, i have things to plan like:

1. what clothing to pack. pleather, spikey heels, and spandex are a general no, all of which i don't own anyway.


2. general topics of conversation that won't cause faces to flush or anyone to run out of the room crying buckets. examples of approved topics include the weather, sports, my poor driving skillz, orion's belt (not re: men in black, and only allowed at night; it's the only constellation that i can ever find), and kittens vs. bunny wabbits.


3. buying a kim kardashian butt pad to protect the toukas from my grandmother's hourly butt taps.


4. creating my "guide to midwestern vegetarian myths." no, just because you baked the salmon next to the potatoes and asparagus doesn't mean that deceased fish is now vegetarian. no veg via diffusion.
   


5. topics that didn't fit into #2 that would be perfect to share with tim, em's manfriend. like when she would (and probably still does) burp the alphabet song in the car, mall, movie theater, or doctor's office after downing a dr. pepper. or let me put manic panic stripes into her hair with a toothbrush. or wear her day-of-the-week underwear on different days on purpose, mostly likely with the intent to confuse me (and how i knew this, i'll never tell...)!

o no you di-int.

this evening, todd looked over at me lovingly and said, "if we put an 'h' and an 'i' right here (pointing to my sternum), you'd have ohio (as in o-hi-o)!" with that said, the trip to the midwest is 13 days and counting...

don't be a wimp.

we're heading to ohio next month for my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. todd and i arrive several hours before my mom, em, and their men handily in tow, and my grandmother was excited about our "alone time," wanting to take us to the air force museum. unfortunately (or maybe not), i reminded her that we went with them last february, and most likely nothing's really changed. unless they've retired the most recent air force one... thankfully she agreed that another 4-hour visit isn't necessary, and it now sounds like we're heading to ajanta for an indian (and mostly vegetarian) lunch buffet followed by a nap in some lovely yet sagging twin beds before a big dinner that night. but maybe, just maybe, we'll get to go to wympee's. i'm not sure why i want to go. i've never been in the 28+ years i've visited the great corn-producing state of ohio (or if i have, i don't remember much about it). and it wouldn't surprise me that they probably think a veggie burger is beef with tons of iceburg, tomato, and pickles piled atop. but something about the name just sounds right, sort of like whoopie goldberg's white, introverted, midwestern sister.

mum's the word

dear companies who bombard me with email every april and may,

many thanks for your thoughtful suggestions on what i should send my mom for mother's day. you always seem to know what she'd like! whose mom wouldn't want a pink baseball bat or stila hair refresher or a trip for two to sweden (ya!) or hideous jewelry that i didn't even make myself or nautical-themed pottery or breast implants and a 20 year old's body with a gift-with-purchase terrycloth robe? only this year, i decided to go out-of-network. but thanks for thinking of me! er. i mean her!

regards,
becca

ps- click on the image to see it at readable and full-scale size.

anal retentive

after my camping conversation post, my mom emailed me:

Just so you don’t feel left out, do you remember going out west and getting up at the crack of dawn to float down the river and view wildlife? Or stand by Old Faithful in rain ponchos, or drive through Lion Country Safari in the heat of summer, smelling the odiferous wildlife while they were mating? Camping has different meanings to different people, I thought Mickey Minnie and Donald were pretty wild.

sadly, I don't remember the scent of wildlife going at it as we huddled closely together in our land rover, but i do recall tubing down the snake river and watching ol' faithful spout water tens of feet high. still, neither were camping in the roast-some-stew-over-an-open-fire and build-a-tent-while-fighting-off-bears-and-ticks sense of things.

we did, though, have a very nice time up near bodega bay, camping just about 50 feet from the ocean's edge. all through the night, we heard the whoompfh of the water soaring in and out, which was very calming, sort of like alphie purring at my feet at 3am only with less moisture...

and on our way up to bodega, we drove through sebastopol to try a veg restaurant (yum!), and then we passed by this school. it's real name is analy high school, but some kids went a little happy with their stickers...

going to camp

me: i've never been camping.
someone else: what??? never as in never ever? didn't your family take vacations and go camping?
me: nope. we lived in florida, so we went to disney world.
someone else: so you never saw any wildlife as a kid, huh? that's too bad.
me: chip and dale regularly joined my family for breakfast at the polynesian (and i have pictures to prove it!), and there were giant mice running around everywhere! strangely, at the time, i didn't feel like a deprived non-outdoors adventuring 8 year-old.

queen of hearts

do you know what today is? yes? good for you! it's my grandma's birthday! happy birthday, nana!

oh. you meant valentine's day, huh? yep, it's that day, too. todd and i don't do much for v-day. we're both on the same page, thinking we shouldn't just express our love (and sometime's utter disgust for how one of us--me-- has lost the basic aptitude for multiplying simple fractions on a tuesday night) on one single day. plus, who wants to pay $100/person to have a sub-par meal and feel compelled to throw in an extra $16.99 for flimsy rose petals and two candlesticks for fear of not seeming "in love enough"? right.

in honor of v-day, i searched high and low for the perfect heart-shaped cookie cutters. williams-sonoma, sur la table, macy's, mervyn's, you name it. but the best ones i found ( 1) b/c of the color and 2) b/c the folded metal piece was on the outside of the cutter) were at crate and barrel. and at $5.95 for a set of 3, they were a steal! go get a set. now.

i used these to make hazelnut cookies (which i think i underfilled with scharffen berger hazelnut ganache; they'd be just as great with raspberry jam, too!) and easy breezy beautify fake fudge (which tastes more like chocolaty marshmallow than fudge, but my pregnant coworker doesn't really seem to care... and i think that's a compliment...). the cookies were ok, but they seemed a little dry. perhaps a little bit more butter... and tons more ganache.

mark morford has a great list up of the worst v-day gifts ever. i'm not quite sure what a "fistful of penguin" is, but the rest of it is pretty insightful.

in other valentine's day news, my 21-hayes bus was surprisingly empty this morning, probably due to some post-coital procrastinating and pancaking... which means i didn't get hit in the head with backpacks or have to hold on for dear life! maybe there are some pluses to v-day, afterall:)

the guardian

becca: why do you need a stamp?
todd: to send this back to guardian.
becca: what are you sending to guardian?
todd: they sent me a form asking me if i was pregnant.
becca (2 minutes later): and what did you say?

back to school

late last year, i received an email inviting me to be part of my 10-year high school reunion committee. i sat on it, but finally decided that since i had no plans to go to reunion, i obviously shouldn't be on any committee. in fact, i'm in touch with only a handful of members of my class (and my hands hold approx. 4 people each). that really says something about my school spirit.

earlier this month, i found out that one of my illustrious and well-known classmates intends to attend (does that rhyme?), which convinced me (and another lifer) to throw in the towel and commit to possibly (but not definitely) attending. at that point, i realized that i should probably reply to the original "be on our committee" email, as my mom has instilled good manners in me like taking a hostess a gift and always speeding around elderly drivers (really, you're doing them and your sanity a favor). spooning my soup away from me, though, and performing a perfect foxtrot i learned at cotillion. that, too, i can thank my mom for.

my email reply went something like this:

"I received you email, well, months ago. At that time, I wasn't planning on attending reunion, but as of now I starting to sway to the Maybe/Yes side (specifically if ms. x and ms. xxx attends)! I'm not quite sure I'm the right "kind" of person to be involved, as I left PC after my junior year for college and I'm not sure what I can do out here on the West Coast, but I'd be happy to email others in my class whom I'm still in contact with or help generate ideas of how to "lure" the Class of '98 back to Ft. Lauderdale. Perhaps a Facebook events page? And maybe emails with planning info, hotel discounts/group rates, photos of "way back when," etc.? In the past, I've only received event notices about a month ahead of time, which doesn't make travel planning very easy!"

A few days later, I receive an email to proof. huh? what? and why? well, because apparently now i'm on the official reunion committee. and there's a letter with my and 4 other peoples' names on it at the bottom. like my fair skin and the sun at midday, reunion committee and i don't go together. i'm the girl who ditched her senior year to run as far away from ft. lauderdale as us airways could take her. but now i'm stuck in "pay $75 to relive old and possibly traumatic memories while comparing who has become the most successful/rich/wordly/botoxed/etc." hell. brian promised to give me some "stories" to tell people (and he's a professional writer-- cash cab and trl are on his resume-- with a sometimes dirty mind) so that could be a plus. or maybe i can just tell everyone i invented post-its.

what a happy family...

tuesday night/wed. morning, middle of the night, moon overhead

alphie (at the foot of the bed): *aaaschnew!*
todd (groggily, to me): want a kleenex?
me: that was alphie!
todd: oh. bless you! *snore*