NEW STEVE CARREL/TINA FEY MOVIE: DATE NIGHT-WHO'S WITH ME ON THIS???

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

So...I was reading my friend's blog again, "rachelsaysso.blogspot.com". A discussion ensued about irrational things that we fear. Not all the time, just maybe those times when we're laying around in the dark and can't sleep....stuff like that.

I had a moment like that yesterday. I was laying in an MRI tube. I was in LA. I had taken my bra off (because of the metal snaps) and put it in my glove compartment in my car. I know, I know, why didn't I just do it in the lab. It's a long, boring story. I ran into the lab, and was in the MRI. Well, as I was laying in the MRI, I couldn't help but think of "THE BIG ONE". I mean, really! I was in LA, earthquake central. And what if it happened when I was in the tube? And me without my bra? Oh! The humanity!

I never used to fear MRI tubes like that. But when I worked at Eisenhower, specifically NEXT to the MRI magnet, we had a quake...a good-sized quake, and we had a gentleman in the tube...right before we lost power. Thank goodness he was unconscious. But I thought, poor dude! Yep. I thought, "poor dude" as I grabbed my purse and was heading for the door....which I didn't get through because my big, strong, Viking co-worker (who lived her life in the desert ON the San Andreas fault) grabbed the back of my shirt and slammed me back onto my chair. She said, "we're going nowhere, just get under your desk". At that time, I heard the tech yelling for us to help him get Mr. Dude out of the tube manually. Nice.

So, needless to say, I shudder when I go into the tube...not for the claustrophobia...but for the potential of being stuck in there during the big one. *shudder*

But as I said on Rachel's blog, just in the event of the big one, I keep a change of clothes on my dresser next to my bed to put on just in case. I also keep a pair of good walking shoes next to my bed that will protect my feet in the event I have to walk around in post-earthquake conditions (shards of glass, ickiness). You just never know around here. It's a little creepy...

I'm also afraid of getting an electric shock. I've been shocked pretty bad in my life and it's so disturbing to me, I can't overestimate how much I dislike it. When I was pregnant for Emily, I got shocked so badly in our kitchen it threw me backwards and then down. No bueno. I think that explains Em's electric blue eyes....or not....my recessive gene baby.

I fear dog vomit.

I fear having something stuck in my teeth. I guess that's not a fear as much as maybe just neurotic kind of worry. Same with the dog vomit.

Hey, this isn't a very uplifting post. Sorry. I'm just killing time and procrastinating writing my paper on false memory syndrome. LAME.

BEVERLY HILLS...9021 OHHHHHH

I wish I would have taken pictures. I took my camera, but since I was driving, I couldn't snap the darn thing. I was all by myself, so I had no "other arms" to help me... rats....

I love going into L.A. I thoroughly enjoy that city. I'm such a tourist!!! And when it comes to Beverly Hills, well....it's over. I love that city. I love Santa Monica Blvd. I love Wilshire Blvd. I love looking up to the Hollywood Hills and seeing those beautiful houses. The architecture of the businesses is just stunning. They make beautiful use of gold and white. It's so rich looking, which it's intended to be.

Today, I had two appointments there and they were several hours apart so I had to kill time. I wish now that I would have driven up into the canyons and done more sight-seeing, but I enjoyed my afternoon. My first appointment was on Overland, right off Wilshire. I saved $9.00 in parking by using the lot down the street and walking. Yeesh, guys! Then, I drove down to La Cienega Blvd and grabbed a subway sandwich and sat in my car in a pretty neighborhood and ate it while I did a sudoku puzzle. It was pretty-the neighborhood, not the puzzle. And then it occurred to me that Beverly Hills is not all glamor. Beverly Hills has a "bad part of town" to it. It has more than one zip code (shocked gasps)!

So, I'm sitting in my car and I'm looking at these beautiful homes and I'm thinking, "Gosh, these houses are kind of small. They're pretty as all get out, and really charming, but not what one would call grand." And then I started to look around at the people. These weren't the same people I saw "uptown". These were old people that were stooped and bent over. These were young couples with baby carriages, just starting out. There were lots and lots of students. There was much more diversity and a lot more pedestrian traffic so I kept my eyes open and....yep! there it was...a bus. So I thought, these people have a mailing address of Beverly Hills and it's the seedy side of town. I almost laughed. People must assume so much about someone that lives in B.H. For instance, if you go to buy a car and they ask where you live and you say, "Beverly Hills", do you think they're going to cut you a break? Then you feel compelled to say, "No, I'm not rich. I take the bus to work and my kids go to public schools!" Sure fella....

Wow....I guess everything is relative...it was quite the eye-opener. I don't have any big insights, I just felt compelled to share my thoughts, as that's the purpose of this blog...it's my journal and written more for my kids and family (and posterity) than for anything else...

So there it is, my daily nugget of knowledge and insight...more like a crumb...maybe even a molecule...an atom?.....quark?.....I'll stop now....

JOHN SEBASTIAN...I BELIEVE IN THE MAGIC....

John Sebastian and The Lovin' Spoonful. Remember them?...mainly, remember him? I fell in love with Mr. Sebastian's voice. I was young. First off, I was a quiet kid (yea, I know)-but I spent several hours a day just listening to my transistor radio. John Sebastian's smoky, velvety voice was a fixture in the 60's. One of his songs in particular just spoke to me. It was called, "Do You Believe In Magic?" It was about the power of music. Some of the lyrics went like this...

Do you believe in the magic of a young girl's soul?
Do you believe in the power of rock and roll?
Do you believe that music can set you free?
Do you believe like I believe?

Thank goodness we lived in Ohio! I would have followed him into the ocean...

Flash forward a few years and there I was at the old Mershon Auditorium at the Ohio State University with B.J. Hartman who had scored a couple of tickets to Steve Martin's comedy show. Guess who his opening act was? Yea....John Sebastian. I figured B.J. must have been in serious love because his shtick was scoring rock concert tickets so for him to go to a comedy show, well....

Anyway, Sebastian came out, sat on a stool, played his guitar, and sang all of these songs from my childhood. I was caught up to 7th heaven. I heard him on the radio the other day and was carried away to another place and time and I thought, "what the heck is wrong with me? It's 2009, I have ITunes...yeesh". So...here I am....writing this post, listening to Mr. Sebastian's beautiful voice...and hovering over my chair as I write this....

Thank you ITunes....thank you B.J......and thank you Mr. Sebastian....don't anyone call me for a little bit...I haven't quite hit the ground yet.....apparently I still believe in the magic.....

THE SENSE OF SMELL...FOR BETTER OR WORSE...

I had to go to the desert (my previous neighborhood) early this morning. While traveling there and back, I made a startling discovery. Actually, it wasn't so much a discovery, as much as it was a confirmation: I am losing my sense of smell. This is disturbing. My sense of smell is not entirely gone-it's diminished. I don't know if it's going to stay at this diminished level, or if it's going to leave entirely. I know how, you may ask? As the boy and I were driving into the desert at 7:30 this morning, we encountered what appeared to be a "foggish" substance in the atmosphere. As we live in southern California, what could be a fog, could be smog, but it could also be smoke. As I wasn't particularly keen on driving into a raging wildfire that early in the morning, I woke up the boy and asked, "Hey! HEY! HHEEYY Do you think that's fog or smoke outside"? He looked around and said, "Why don't you roll down the windows and sniff"? I snorted in reply, "Well sure, if you wanna do it the easy way!" So, we rolled down the windows and....I couldn't smell anything. Nothin'. Faking it with ease, I looked over at him while rolling up the windows and asked, "So...what's your take?" He said he didn't think it smelled anything like a fire so it was probably just fog and I agreed with him. I totally faked it.

My grandmother lost her sense of smell and I have a cousin who lost his. I did some research and while there are some genetic traits associated with familial anosmia (loss of the sense of smell), we don't really fall into that pattern.

I'll follow an "Occam's razor" approach and go with the simplest explanation before moving onto alien abduction. And how embarrassing would THAT be?...get swiped by aliens, get experimented on, get a "new guy" that's training-have him totally mess up your sense of smell so that you're basically no good to them anymore and then YOU become the "throw back" human....way to go newbie....

Anyway, I'm going to assume first and foremost, that possibly it's temporary. Maybe it's just a cold or something. If not, I'm going to assume it has to do with age. I know I have a hearing loss that is, indeed, familial and bilateral. I'm on the bubble for a hearing aid (according to the physician who told me this and who also happened to sell hearing aides), so I'm not worried for awhile. If my loss of sense of smell (I can't say "loss of smell" because that sounds like a good thing, right?) goes with age, there's nothing I can do about it. In fact, the alternative is to not age and we all know how THAT works out....

If the loss of the sense of smell (LoSOS) is related to the temporal lobe epilepsy (the temporal lobe is in charge of that particular sense) then, again, there isn't much I can do about it. I take my medicine and that's all I can do. Pssssttttttbbbpppppp<----------- raspberry. I have skated about as much as anyone can with that issue. I don't have "fall down" seizures or anything like that, but I know that in time, I'll have to "pay the piper" for getting off so easy. I'll have to send a search party out one day for my shrinking hippocampus. Here little hippocampy....come to momma.....leave a trail of bread crumbs....debbie droppings.....something....

On the way back to the desert, as I was rounding a mountain, the traffic started slowing down. Soon it came to a complete standstill. I didn't understand why until I slowly drove past the flashing lights of the fire truck and saw the blackened vegetation and the billows of smoke. I was driving through the birth and death of a wildfire. I didn't smell a thing...and I was driving right through ground zero. The firefighters were still there! The cops were directing the traffic. Not even a sniffle.

But I was heartened when I was rounding the next curve and almost gagged when the vineyard I passed had covered several hundred acres with manure....I've never been so happy for that much poo since I was a new mommy.....

AMERICAN BUTTER, CHRISTIAN BALE, CURSES. DON'T EVEN TRY TO FIGURE IT OUT.

I have been cursed in my life. Only a couple of times, but apparently there are "lifetime" curses. One of these curses is this: "You will never own a toaster that functions properly"... and I don't. I'm sitting here with slices of toast that are beautifully tanned on the upside of the bread and shiny with real butter (American butter, not the Irish butter that attracts so many global hits on this blog...sheesh, what's that about?). But this toast is absolutely white and totally non-toasted on the bottom. Absolutely untouched on the bottom. How does that happen while it's in the toaster oven? It's hot in there, right? Shouldn't it get a least a little crunchy? But nooooo, I'm putting butter on a crunchy, normal toasty side while the other side is...well...soft and "giving"...it's like biting into a beef sandwich and hearing the cow said "moo"...it's not normal...

The other curse is brownies. The curse must have gone something like this, "You will never make a perfect batch of brownies for as long as you live"...and I don't think I have. They're either too moist or too stuck to the pan or too dry or too something. I just don't get it. It's not like rocket science. I don't even make them from scratch; they're from a mix, for cryin' out loud. But do you think that appeases the brownie gods?....huh uh...ZAP! Another batch bites the dust...and by "bites the dust", I mean we eat it with spoons if we have to...we're not stupid...

Make-up. I don't understand it. I never will understand it. I purchased some foundation yesterday. I bought it because Diane Keaton was on the cover. Why did I do this? I know better than anyone that she looks great on that cover because 1. air brushing. 2. she's probably had her faced "professionally" peeled, scrubbed, fired, sand-blasted, lifted, tucked, folded, molded, and anything else that one can do to prolong their youthful appearance. Puhleese. At that level, beauty can be rented. If beauty was a luxury apartment, I'd be living under a bridge. Emmy suggested mineral make-up. "It's all powder" she said. I don't know if that's good. With my lines, I'm looking into spackling compound.

Walking in a noble manner. Nada. I do not possess a queenly demeanor, nor do I have a royal bearing. I walk like a 12-year-old. My spine, which has somehow remained flexible (thank you Lord!) is kind of all over the place, so my stride resembles a gangly adolescent, as opposed to the confident, professional woman I'm trying to pretend to me. Let's hope "walking" is never part of a job interview. Combine my walking with my schlepping of a big computer shoulder bag and an equally large purse and I resemble a mule with an attitude problem. Lovely.

Cooking. Can't do it. Don't particularly want to. Haven't got "the touch", the time, or the temperament to toss tasty tidbits together to create a terrific ...well...you get the picture. The boys are lucky to get a "home-bought" taco for dinner. Yea...guess who ISN'T a Stepford wife?

Well, it's getting late and I'm getting depressed thinking of all of the things I can't do. So, I'll practice a game I learned on one of my favorite blogs: rachelsaysso.blogspot.com.

It's called, "The Glad Game"; where I list something I'm glad for.

I'm glad for my family. I'm glad for my blog so I can record my thoughts. I'm glad for my little, "emergency back-up" dog, Buddha, who loves me and follows me everywhere *I guess he's the next shift after Snoopy :)* I'm glad for my children and grand children and their health. I'm glad for my mother and mother-in-law and siblings and their families. I'm glad for lots of things-many more than my curses. In fact, I'm feeling gladder and gladder.

Who needs double-sided toast, perfect brownies, perfect make-up and a perfect stride? I've got a blog about Irish Butter and international hits...I don't even want to tell you the hits that Christian Bale brings....I'm feeling better already....

CAUTION: SLEEPING 2-YEAR-OLD AHEAD

Shhhhh....there's a little 2-year-old asleep on my couch. No one wants to wake him...well, except the dog. My dog really wants to wake him up. He can't understand why the person closest to him in size isn't playing with him. The dog just stands there and stares at the couch. He put the ball next to the couch in an attempt to waken the boy. It didn't work. Then the dog stood next to the ball and stared at the boy in an attempt to use his canine vibes to magically stimulate the boy into wakefulness. That didn't work either. So of course the only logical thing left for the dog to do was to begin to groom himself. And I'm being polite here.

So I thought I would just come over here and begin to do some homework...you know...catch up on one of my classes and write some more on a paper that's due at midnight on Saturday. But I can't seem to concentrate. It's like having a picnic on the San Andreas Fault....something could happen anytime. Any squeak, any move, any anything and I jump and run or start and stop. I can't concentrate. I can't do anything. I'm typing this post right now but fortunately, I don't have to look at the keyboard when I type...because I'm staring over the couch as I type this...

Okay....apparently I am a slave to this child. I. am. a. slave. His blue eyes rule me. It's over. Game goes to Boy. Forget about homework. Forget about my term paper. Yeesh....I'm glad the Yankees don't have to face him...