The Bed List/The Dinner List

Awesome, yet so underappreciated...

BED LIST: SEAN BEAN



I don't know about you, but I was seriously put out when Boromir bit it in The Fellowship of the Ring. I love staring at Sean Bean. I love listening to Sean Bean. I find it difficult to do anything but drool over Sean Bean, even when he's playing a major bad guy, like he does in Goldeneye and Patriot Games. He's so much more wonderful as a hero! Check out DVDs of the Sharpe series (Sharpe's Rifles, etc.) and Black Beauty to see what I mean. Come on over, Sean. I can show you a real ring of power...

DINNER LIST: JOHN C. REILLY



John C. Reilly's big number in Chicago, "Mr. Cellophane," laments "you can look right through me, walk right by me, and never know I'm there." Too bad that's too often the case with John C. Reilly. He turns in terrific performances every time he's onscreen, and the usual reaction is, "That was him?" I'll notice, John. Come on over Tuesday.

Amazing Disappearing Wife

Today I had the privilege of hauling self out of bed to go back to school for an inservice training. Sometimes inservice is like volunteering to tour the eighth circle of hell, but this morning's was pretty good. Stuff I can use, even.

Since DH and DS were out doing boy things when I called to say I was finished, I hied myself to the mall. Walked. Matched paint samples for my lovely neighbor. Then decided to get a makeover.

I must confess here that I have never been a girly girl. I do okay with hair and makeup, but I am definitely a low-maintenance female when it comes to cosmetics and "product." Less is more. But once you cross the "new thirty" barrier, you wonder if your look is calcified into 1992, so off to Prescriptives you go. In my case, that is. The gal in the black T-shirt looked more approachable than the lab coat at Clinique or the terribly fashionable pair at Shiseido.

We spend an hour matching foundation colors (Yellow-orange for my skin? I look like death on toast in orange clothes!!), playing with eye shadow, and setting my makeup with their totally cool magic powder, which feels like water going on. Then, eight hours after I left, it's back home to my live-in Fashion Cop, aka DH, to get the final seal of approval.

Thumbs down. He hates it. As in, "Where did my wife go?" "Spackle" was mentioned (He is so exaggerating. She did a great job.) So much for my great foray into expensive, "I'm worth $38 foundation, right?" territory. Back to the drug store. Anyone have any suggestions?

The Bed List/The Dinner List

Coupla guys!

BED LIST: STEVE CARELL



He's no virgin, and neither am I. But he is fortyish, smart, and hilarious. And cute, in a non-threatening-guy-in-the-back-row-of-English-class kind of way. I'd do him. And I wouldn't make him wax first, neither.

DINNER LIST: TED ALLEN



DH and I love Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. My husband flirts with metrosexual territory (although that forgetting to tuck his shirt in thing keeps him firmly in the straight-with-little-fashion-sense camp), so we've always enjoyed Queer Eye's take on fashion, decorating, and food. Especially food. Ted Allen's one of those men who not only can dazzle you with his food and wine selection, but can also keep the conversation lively and interesting. Straight girl, table for two?

Synopsis Hell II

Dream Agent calls and says things are going well, blah blah, going to be out of the country from X to Y, and by the way, would you send a synopsis for Crash Test so we'll have one in the office?

!!!!

I thought since it was finished, I'd dodged the synopsis bullet, but nooooooo. And of course, since I've revised the final, I had to revise the synopsis to match. Dang!!

Turned out better than the first version, but still. A synopsis is bad enough to write the first time. Having to do it over and over is like hooking up with the same bad boyfriend. You think it's a good idea at the time (and you're probably drunk at that moment), you try reallyreally hard to make it work, then you end up sending him (it) away in disgust. Let's hope the people reading the thing like it better than I do right now...

The Bed List/The Dinner List

Soulful selections for a rainy Friday:

BED LIST: GARY DOURDAN



I know several cops, and none of them look this good. Then again, Gary Dourdan is an actor playing a crime scene technician on CSI, but who cares. He can play whatever--and wherever--he wants!

DINNER LIST: STEVIE WONDER



I have admired Stevie Wonder for years. He's a true inspiration to countless musicians (india.arie for one, one of my favorites), a genius, a creative dynamo. Few of his songs end up sounding dated--a couple of unfortunate exceptions are Eighties mistakes "Ebony and Ivory" and "I Just Called to Say I Love You"--but for the most part you can wear out your CDs playing "Fingertips Pt. 1," "Lately," "Isn't She Lovely," and "Livin' for the City" over and over and over and over. Treat yourself well and buy copies of Songs in the Key of Life and Innervisions.

Hurricanes: Been There, Can't Fathom That

Hollow.

That's the only feeling I can muster when I watch the news reports from Mississippi and New Orleans. Hollow.

Hurricane Charley tore through our neighborhood last year, destroyed a huge tree in our yard, left us without power for nine days in an oppressively hot, humid August. Frances and Jeanne added insult to injury in the form of huge branches through our roof, water damage, and more powerless days. It took months to recover--months of sleeping everywhere but in my own bed, months of ducking under the plastic covering the huge hole in my bedroom ceiling, months of low-grade depression that didn't lift until I had a roof, a new ceiling, and normal life.

I cannot fathom what the people in Louisiana and Mississippi are facing. A friend of mine is a firefighter, someone in charge of a hurricane recovery task force who's flown to Mississippi to help. And there's nothing he can do. There's nothing there. No water, no food, no way out. Search and recovery is all they can do at this point; the time for search and rescue has passed.

I'm a little peeved that the international community that took us to task so harshly for our "stingy," "slow" response to the Asian tsunami hasn't lined up to help the people in our Gulf states. Those people have lost everything, and there's nothing to help them get back on their feet, since their livelihood is wiped out, too.

The nation came to our aid, and now it's our time to come to Mississippi's and Louisiana's. Donate what you can:

• Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
• American Red Cross

Hometown Girl

Tonight was so cool. The City of Maitland had a big celebration for the Little League team--parade, fair, fireworks. I have never seen postal trucks in a parade before, but we had 'em--along with guys on stilts, cheerleaders, half the Little League players on bikes, a couple of bands, Girl Scouts, and Shriners on those teeny little motorcycles. Slice of Americana.

Then we had food and speeches and fireworks. It felt like a real town instead of a 'burb. Saw all kinds of neighbors, watched kids run back and forth playing frisbee, made new friends. Just the kind of thing you want in a hometown.

Baseball. Best. Sport. Ever.

Zoo Class

After school today, my new office partner and another new teacher and I were discussing the peculiar psychology of the "zoo class." This is the one period of kids during the school day that can be counted on to act like marmosets on speed. Doesn't matter what you do to them or with them, they are--as the kids at my school say--"off the chain."

My zoo class is fourth period. It's not overly large, but it has one screwed-up dynamic; i.e. a sociology doctorate waiting to happen 55 minutes of every day. One side of the room is all boys, most of them jocks. Interesting répartée, to say the least, especially when the comic book/manga fiend speaks up. One gaggle of girls in the corner cannot. shut. up. Cannot. As in, couldn't hold it in at gunpoint. One of them taunts another girl across the room with badly-drawn pictures of Patrick Starfish, because Girl 1 swears that Girl 2 has Patrick's intellect (Girl 2, to her credit, thinks that Girl 1 is full of it and doesn't take the bait. Smart girl.) Two guys in another corner are quietquietquiet. You have to wonder if they're supremely introverted or just plain catatonic. Needless to say, it's a bizarro balancing act every day. Sometimes I make it. Sometimes I plunge screaming into the net and go begging for chocolate.

The trouble with zoo class? Despite all the weirdness, you can't help liking them for their spontaneity and unpredictability. Zoo class will definitely wear you out and send you groaning for the Tylenol, but it can also unearth some profound comments.

Still, every once in a while you wish you had a Cone of Silence to lower, for no other reason than thirty seconds of absolute quiet...

You'd Think They, of All People...

Not to get too involved in theological debate, but...

A group of folks at my church aren't happy with the direction the church is going in. You'd think they'd be forthright about their opinions and discuss them openly with the paster, right? That would be the Christian thing to do, I'm thinking. But is that how they handle it? Noooooooooooooooooo. Why be forthright and upstanding when you can start rumors and spread innuendo? I mean, that's what being a Christian is all about, isn't it?

Oh, wait. The charge is to "spread the good news." Hmm. You'd think people who claim to be so passionately interested in the church would get the point.

Maybe they need to spend more time listening on Sundays than they do talking.

*sigh*

Laundry Confessions

When the water heater went kaput, we had to move the washing machine out of the way. Washing machine stayed in the middle of the curling-vinyl laundry room floor for a week and half. Now that everything's turned back on, this weekend has been the Great Clean Clothes Marathon, aka tackling Mt. Washmore, as my friend Melynda calls it.

Things I have discovered while doing two weeks' worth of laundry:

• Every woman deserves her own front-loader.
• My husband has more clothes than I do, all protests to the contrary.
• My daughter has more underwear than a lingerie model (she's six).
• My husband has more underwear than a lingerie model. Yes, it's men's underwear.
  
• My son cannot keep track of his socks. Either that, or sock-stealing aliens from planet Coldfeet have been making repeat visits to our house while we're not looking.
• Some of my underwear is in really sad shape.
• I really need to purge my children's clothes. My son has several pairs of floods that would see him through hurricane season for the next several years, at least.
  
• Scariest of all, my family has enough clothes to get us through two weeks of no laundry.

Towels and sheets today, and then we rest. Finally. My mountaineering days are over!