From Helen Ficalora, 14k gold alphabet charms. All letters available in yellow, white, or pink gold. $85 – $95.
(Chain not included, but I’d put it on a ribbon, actually. A pretty silk ribbon.)
Aren’t they purty?
Just here to help, peeps. 😉
cullen and brian ….
I’ll be sending out your Word*Pie coffee winnings on THURSDAY, Nov. 9. Sorry for the delay!!
Sincerely,
Your procrastinating Word*Pie hostess
(I better get on that, Crackie!)
I love paper!
Ooh, I like this site. You can go to that page and dress ’em up. Favorite literary characters. Hollywood icons. Famous ballet dancers. I just find it soothing from time to time, clicking on the different outfits. Plus, I think the artwork on the dolls is just plain ol’ fun. (You can also order the paper dolls, if you like.)
Becky Sharp, Vanity Fair
Emma Woodhouse, Emma
Random Hollywood Glamour Girl
Rita Hayworth
And since I don’t want any of the fellers feeling left out …. here’s, well, Nijinsky for you …before he went insane (or maybe not). Hahahaha!
the banshee
Snippets from my afternoon with The Banshee. I’d spent my entire morning at The Beanhouse right before this. Let’s just say I was a little frazzled already.
I walked into my brother’s house and Banshee’s Uncle Chad was there. (My sister-in-law’s brother.) He was there to cover until I could actually get there. Uncle Chad is a newly minted lawyer in his mid-ish 20’s. He looks 15, like a precious little boy. He welcomed me with these huge eyes and pale face and began moving for the front door the minute I walked in. Banshee was eating her lunch. And before poor Uncle Chad could make it to the front door, she blurted:
“Chad on’y played with me for two minutes!”
Chad had already disappeared around the corner in his attempt to escape. But there was a pause and then, “Now, wait a minute, Banshee.”
Haha. The lawyer had kicked in. He came back around the corner. I just stood and watched and ate a banana. Not my problem.
He kept going.
“How many books did I read you?”
He was actually arguing his case with a 2-year-old. I kinda loved him right then.
“Uhh ….. four,” Banshee said to her plate.
“Right.”
And he kept GOING! “And how many stories were there altogether?”
“Uhhh ….. I finnnk …. six.”
“That’s right. So don’t be saying I didn’t play with you.”
Banshee’s head slumped towards the table. Chad had cross-examined her into submission and near-unconsciousness. God help me — it was a thoroughly satisfying moment.
He looked at me, utterly spent. “I gotta go.”
“Of course. I understand.”
He walked out the door, closing it a little harder than necessary, but I understood. I really did. I folded my banana peel — I always fold my banana peels — and tossed it in the trash while The Banshee began babbling about Halloween. I plopped in the chair next to her, pretended to be listening while muttering about the lack of coffee in the house. Then she chirped:
“Next is Fanksgiving!!”
“Yeah. That’s right.”
Her face fell, all the sorrow a 2-year-old could muster.
“But …. we doan have any food.”
They have plenty of food.
Split seconds later, brightness again.
“Fanksgiving means we get to watch football and take naps!!!!”
I exploded into laughter. My stomach hurt. Her little face. Those big blue eyes. She was SO EXCITED about the killer combo of football and naps. My brother’s prints were all over this one, I knew that. But I could not stop laughing, barely choked out my words:
“Banshee, do you like football?”
“YEAH!”
“Do you like naps??”
“YEAH!!”
(Are you in a cult? Have you been brainwashed? Are you now an Operating Thetan? WHERE is The Banshee???)
“Wow. Then that’s gonna be a GREAT day for you.”
“Uh-huh,” she agreed, munching on her peanut butter burrito.
“Tee Tee?”
“Yes, Banshee?”
“Mommy and daddy always tell me to smile. But you doan tell me to smile.”
“Do you WANT me to tell you to smile?”
“Noo.”
“All right.”
“Tee Tee, how come you doan tell me to smile?”
“Because I think a person should smile when they WANT to smile. Do they tell you to smile because they’re taking your picture, maybe?”
“Yeaah.”
“Okay. Well, you do have a pretty smile, Banshee.”
“Yeaah.”
Bite of burrito.
“Tee Tee, why are you wearing your hair in a tail?”
“Oh, just to keep it out of my face.”
“You should wear it down.”
“I should, huh?”
“Yeah, you should wear it down for Unca B(eloved).”
Spoonful of applesauce.
“I ready for my nap now.”
“Okay. I’m ready for my nap, too.”
lazy music meme
Lazy and FUN, peeps!
From Shannon C.
IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?
So, here’s how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool… (hey, that’s what the directions said, not me!)
Opening Credits: She — Elvis Costello
Waking Up: American Woman — Lenny Kravitz
First Day At School: Landslide — Fleetwood Mac
Falling In Love: Sweet Child O’ Mine — Guns ‘n’ Roses
Fight Song: My Funny Valentine — Bill Evans
Breaking Up: Lose Yourself — Eminem
Prom: Ring of Fire — Johnny Cash
Life: Fat Bottom Girls — Queen
Mental Breakdown: Bohemian Rhapsody — Montserrat Caballe and Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden
Driving: Walk This Way — Aerosmith
Flashback: Superstition — Stevie Wonder
Getting Back Together: I’ve Got the Word on a String — Diana Krall
Wedding: The Beautiful Ones — Prince
Birth of Child: Put Your Records On — Corinne Bailey Rae
Final Battle: The Ballad of Sweeney Todd — Original Cast Recording
Death Scene: Cast Your Fate to the Wind — Vince Guaraldi
Funeral Song: Don’t Walk Away — ELO
End Credits: Happy Birthday, Aunt Tee Tee — The Banshee Baby
Um, that would be the recording of my niece — The Banshee — singing happy birthday to me this past summer.
(Oh, Lord. I’m babysitting her tomorrow. Must remember those damn “special wipes.”)
Okay. I just added an item to the list:
Babysitting The Banshee: Oh, Girl — Paul Young
Hahahahahaha! Ohh, Grrrrrrrl!
messing with my scanner
From our photo booth session when Piper was here. Um, I think I had fallen out of the booth. The other two are insane, as you can clearly see. Their eyes. Their eyes are SO opposite of their personalities in this photo that it’s killing me.
Okay. I’d staggered back into the booth — or MB stepped out or something. (Oh, and I did some weird effect in i-Photo and I can’t make it go back. Whatevs.) I’m sticking out my tongue like a perfect lady, modeling appropriate behavior for my niece and she, apparently, has transformed into a vampire. Kid, I love you so much my heart hurts, but now that your teef are falling out, please, please grow some non-Undead teeth.
Um. We’ve discussed this horror before. The earrings I think I borrowed from … someone. And the hair I think I borrowed from the neighbor’s poodle. SO scary. Much scarier than Count Pipeula.
cold comfort redux
I can’t stop it. I keep rereading sections of this book. I finished it a few weeks ago — but was already well familiar with the story since I’m obsessed with the movie, you know, and the pre-nose job and pre-starvation diet Kate Beckinsale. And the cows. I really like the cows.
Okay.
Here’s another excerpt. Flora is going to church with her cousin Amos (Ian McKellan in the movie), a preacher at the Church of the Quivering Brethren. Flora is going to hear him preach because … well, she’s Flora and she has plans. As she enters the church and observes the faces of the Brethren, Flora has a flashback to another audience she was once a part of:
It compared most favourably with audiences she had studied in London; and particularly with an audience seen once — but only once — at a Sunday afternoon meeting of the Cinema Society to which she had, somewhat unwillingly, accompanied a friend who was interested in the progress of the cinema as an art.
That audience had run to beards and magenta shirts and original ways of arranging its neckwear; and not content with the ravages produced in its over-excitable nervous system by the remorseless workings of its critical intelligence, it had sat through a film of Japanese life called ‘Yes’, made by a Norwegian film company in 1915 with Japanese actors, which lasted an hour and three-quarters and contained twelve close-ups of water-lilies lying perfectly still on a scummy pond and four suicides, all done extremely slowly.
All around her (Flora pensively recalled) people were muttering how lovely were its rhythmic patterns and what an exciting quality it had and how abstract was it formal decorative shaping.
But there was one little man sitting next to her, who had not said a word; he had just nursed his hat and eaten sweets out of a paper bag. Something (she supposed) must have linked their auras together, for at the seventh close-up of a large Japanese face dripping with tears, the little man held out to her the bag of sweets, muttering:
‘Peppermint creams. Must have something.’
And Flora had taken one thankfully, for she was extremely hungry.
When the lights went up, as at last they did, Flora had observed with pleasure that the little man was properly and conventionally dressed; and for his part, his gaze had dwelt upon her neat hair and well-cut coat with incredulous joy, as of one who should say: ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?’
Will someone please please read this book so we may cluck over it like happy little hens? PLEASE!! It is ….. I’m checking …. 233 pages and just a delight! The season of delight is upon us — so treat yourself, dammit!!
halloweenish
— We dressed up for Halloween at the Beanhouse. I was a beatnik, with a black wig, black beret, black turtleneck, the heavily disassociated glasses.
(You’re a what? A beatnik. A what? A beatnik. WHAT?? Sigh … um, all right … I’m Cher with boobs. Oh, okay.)
— One of the guys came as — well, it’s hard to describe. He wore a calf-length short-sleeved dress. It was loose, shapeless, had a dark, floral pattern. His normally bald head was now covered by some Cruella DeVil fright wig, teased and frizzled and teased some more. A neon green sash served as a headband, circling this frowsy black-white hair cloud. Oh, and he had perky little breasts. Perky little navel orange breasts shoved inside a bra — which he tugged at incessantly. How do you wear these things? I can’t stand it! It itches! OW! It’s pulling on my chest hair! Then sometimes, his navel orange breasts would seem to fall out of their separate cups and line up, neatly touching each other, like billiard balls in the pocket. So he’d freak out all over again. Dammit! THEY KEEP MOVING AROUND! ARGGGHHH!
“Um, hon? What are you supposed to be?”
Tug. Smush. Grunt. I am dying watching him.
“I’m Macy Gray from beyond the grave! DAMmit!!”
“Oh.”
I look at the dark hair peeking out from his floral neckline AND his floral hemline.
“Well, hm, Macy needs a wax.”
“Actually, I saw her once in concert. She looks just like this.”
“She looks beyond the grave already?”
“Yup.”
“Wow. That sucks.”
His navel oranges are misbehaving again. He claws at his breasts frantically. Turns to walk away, trips in his heels. He’s a mess. He rights himself, starts singing:
Try to say goodbye and I choke
Try to walk away and I stumble ….
We are both howling with laughter.
— Later on, I invented a game I dubbed “Costume … or Bum?” It was a huge hit and I’m in talks with Milton Bradley now … so back off, ya stealers!!
— A house up the street from us — a purple and lilac Painted Lady — did a whole Bates Motel thing. People gathered in front to watch the silohuette projection of Norman Bates with a raised knife, about to strike. Then it would quickly switch to a reverse projection of Bates just standing there, looking out the window, head bowed, eyes up, all creepy. And up on the second floor balcony, rocking in her chair, was “Mother.” She’d rock and rock, then suddenly swivel her horrible skeleton face toward the crowd. I think the whole thing was mechanically operated, but, still, it totally FREAKED me out.
— The house next door to the Bates Motel had a huge Dementor billowing in the front yard and I cannot get past it. A freaking Dementor, people! I think I have to go back and egg that house for giving me nightmares. Kids seemed to love it, but I am now a quivering mass. Thanks, neighborinos!
— Oh, and elsewhere in my world ….. Piper was “so escited” because she was going to wear the neon pink Marilyn Monroe wig with the neon pink heart glasses she got for her birthday. She is obsessed with that get-up. I must get the full Halloween update!
name that …
Well, yesterday WAS Halloween, after all. And you’re supposed to be someone else, right?
Okay. So here I am, sophomore year in college, playing … who? In … what? Any guesses?
(Oh, and I’m on the left. We do not speak of the person on the right. She is simply She Who Must Not Be Named. You may, on the other hand, laugh freely about THOSE BANGS! Plus, I look like a bobblehead.)
