Absolutely Bananas: Seattle mom blog

My hairstylist has an evil master plan

… to make me look like Rachel.

You know, Rachel.

Rachel with the poofy hair and strong chin and killer wardrobe who everyone loved to love- Rachel who dated Ross- until she didn’t- and then DID again- and then definitely didn’t- and whoops! there they go again-RACHEL.

Rachel with the haircut that millions and kabillions of women just HAD to have.

The thing is, I have this GUIDELINE when it comes to my hair wherein I try to avoid looking like TV characters from 15 years ago.  Generally speaking.

So I go in to the latest in a long line of hairstylists, plop myself own, sip some fragrant tea and say something like, “just a trim… I’m growing it long.  And freshen up the layers.  Nothing too dramatic.”

I’m thinking something like THIS:

or even THIS:

(it’s not that I’m opposed to Jennifer Aniston, per se…)

But my dear hairstylist, dear sweet misguided hairstylist, she’s thinking THIS:

Don’t believe me?

Witness:

Don’t you see it?

Ok, how about NOW…

HELLO 1990 pop culture… it’s nice to meet you.  Oh, and… I’ll be there for youuuuu…

(sing along, won’t you?)

If you are vin diesel, CLICK HERE

For today, I thought we could play a little game where we laugh and marvel at the WEIRD STUFF PEOPLE SEARCH FOR that leads them to my blog (the vin diesel edition):

“if you are vin diesel”
Click Here!

“pin in my mouth”
Pin head.

eco friendly way to kill spiders
Um… smash them?

help i have fly at my house
Hello… FLY SWATTER…

how do you make an egg laugh
Tell it a yoke?

funny things your husband says
How about, “I help with house work.” HA HA HA HA HA HA! Good one, honey!

i love gas-x!
ME TOO!!

And finally, the CLASSIC,
if you are vin diesel, yell veri loud

©2008 Absolutely Bananas. All Rights Reserved.

My fantasies may never be the same

“I want to see Iron Man,” Jay says with conviction.

I roll my eyes.

“We are NOT seeing Iron Man when INDIANA JONES is in the theater. I mean, come ON!”

I don’t want to be bossy, but… seriously.

Ok so this may be a “date night” and TECHNICALLY we should choose the movie “together,” but again I have to say COME ON!

Seriously, people, rules don’t apply when we’re talking about THIS…

and THIS…

When it comes to those things I have only one response.

With a bit of wheedling and a teeny-tiny bit of whining, I help Jay to realize that he really WANTS to see Indiana Jones.

And so we find ourselves in the theater, bucket of popcorn propped between us.

The theme song begins to play and I feel the drool pooling under my tongue.

Indy! Indy! Indy! Indy!

Oops! Was I chanting that OUT LOUD?!

Anyway…

I hate to be the party pooper. Honestly, I do. But it has to be said.

When you go to the movies expecting a little bit of THIS,

And you get served some of this

Well, it’s just not the same.

Call me ageist, but I want young Indy back.

***
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©2008 Absolutely Bananas. All Rights Reserved.

Save me from the vegetables!

At some point earlier this year I had one of those moments where I thought I was an organic-vegetable-eating, brown-bread-making, healthy-meal-serving kind of person.

I know, I know… I was clearly out of my mind.

Anyway, I signed up for this organic vegetable delivery service. You know, the kind where they deliver FRESH FROM THE FARM vegetables in a big bin to your doorstep every week.

What’s not to love? We’ll eat FRESH veggies! Organic veggies! From a farm!

Right.

Like so many things, reality is a whole lot less exciting.

Oh, we get the farm-fresh organic veggies delivered to our doorstep, alright. And therein lies the problem. Turns out the vegetables that I actually like, know how to cook, and am willing to eat are few and far between. Carrots, salad, broccoli… well, that’s about it, to be honest.

And I DEFINITELY don’t do things like chard (chard? what kind of a word is CHARD?) or beets or turnips or cabbage or… the list goes on and on.

So every week we get a bin of very organic but not-all-that-appealing vegetables.

It just might end my marriage.

The thing about me is that I’m a vegetable optimist. Oh! Fresh squash! I’ll just bake it and whip up an appealing squash souffle! I think. Riiiiiight.

Jay, on the other hand, has MAJOR ISSUES with throwing away food. You’d think he was raised at a food bank. Every time he finds something rotten in the fridge (which is frequently, I’ll admit) a reddish hue creeps up his neck and to his ears and I KNOW I’m in trouble.

JEN! He shouts in outrage, his red ears smoking, CAN YOU BELIEVE ALL THESE VEGETABLES I’M THROWING AWAY?? DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH THESE COST??!

Um… like $3…

But that’s not the point. The point is the MORAL INDECENCY of throwing away rotten food.

And so the battle in front of the refrigerator wages on, bitter and bloody. Me unpacking pomegranates and walnuts and spinach and other highly nutritious things that we’ll NEVER eat, and Jay unloading the rotten remains of the food that’s been left untouched, his bitter anger intensifying at the discovery of each brown banana.

These days it’s with nervous anticipation that I open up that big grey bin. Today was especially bad- an oddly-shaped squash, green chard, spinach, an unidentifiable green leafy thing, green onions, hard brown pears… Pretty much the only thing in there that we actually EAT is broccoli and carrots, and we already have a fridge full of those.

How will it end?

It can’t end well.

***
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Blogger brown is the new black

A few weeks back Jay and I did a massive overhaul of our bedroom closets. 17 bags to the Good Will later, I feel mostly certain that my closet contains NOTHING that shouldn’t be there. So, when I saw that PBN was hosting a contest in which you’re supposed to post pictures of horrifying wardrobe items, I thought Oh ho ho… that doesn’t apply to ME!

But then I remembered…

it

The t-shirt…

Hidden away in my drawer…

And I knew I had to come clean.

Back when I was at BlogHer, sponsors gave out t-shirts galore. Most of them, in my never-to-be-humble opinion, were hideously ugly. I either refused them on the spot or gave them away to my unsuspecting roommates.

But there was this one…

I was walking down the hallway between sessions, hurrying to try and ensure a place at the table (those were the only spots with plug-ins), when I had a strange encounter.

Jessica (you know, of Oh the Joys fame) was walking towards me. RIGHT towards me. Is this some of weird game of chicken? I wondered as she bore down on me… A blogger hazing of sorts?

And then, at the last possible second, she veered left just enough to keep from running into me, and thrust a bundle into my hands. “Keep it or pass it on.” she whispered, in a husky secret-agent kind of voice, and then she was gone.

I looked down. My hands held a brown rolled-up t-shirt. Nooooo!!! My mind howled in despair, I’ve been duped into accepting a t-shirt! All my efforts are for naught! The only question was on which poor soul I would deposit this undesirable item.

But then a sort of funny thing happened.

I brought the t-shirt back to the hotel with me, unrolled it and gave it a good look. And, sort of like the three-legged, flea-bitten dog that follows you home, I realized that I’d grown rather fond of it.

It’s a t-shirt, which of course goes on the “cons” column. But it’s brown, and it says “blogger”. Ok, ok, so Blogger is the name of Google’s blogging product, and it has a big fat orange Google Blogger logo lest you be confused. So that’s again in the “cons”. But still… there’s a sad pathetic little part of me that LIKES having a t-shirt that says ‘blogger’ on it.

So I brought it home.

And started wearing it, proudly. (But just around the house.)

One night after the shirt had made several appearances, I noticed Jay looking at me funny.

“WHAT?!” I demanded.

“Um, you’re not going to wear that shirt, like in public, are you?” he asked.

Funny thing about me, I actually wasn’t planning on wearing it in public. But the fact that he asked got my hackles up. “WHY?” I demanded, “Don’t you LIKE it?”

“Well, it’s ok for around the house… but it’s a little dorky.” he admitted, “I mean it’d be like if I wore a shirt that said ‘Designer.’”

“WELL I LIKE IT!” I announced huffily, and marched out of the room.

I still wear it. I still like it. It passed the very rigorous closet-clearing inspection a few weeks back. It made an appearance at the Oregon Coast this past weekend, and I’m wearing it this very minute as I type.

But now I turn to you, dearest of readers, closest of friends, scariest of Internet stalkers and plagiarists, and I ask with the deepest sincerest wanting to know,

Is it dorky?

Should I purge it from my wardrobe?

Now, before you answer, you might be interested to see some photos of OTHER PEOPLE who wear the very same t-shirt. Because I think I just might have started a trend…

(Yes, that’s Angelina)

Even party girls Britney and Paris are wearing them.

Madonna? Well she certainly knows fashion…

Even the Queen Mum! They say those Brits are fashion forward…

Is that… Can it be?… Bigfoot! He’s real! And he’s wearing a blogger tee! Will wonders never cease…Yep, I think I’m gonna have to keep it.

***

Thanks to Shannon at Believer in Balance for awarding this post a Perfect Post award!