Do Dirty Things to Me While Maintaining an Impenetrable Impassivity...Please...

So let's round out this month of thanks with a nod to one of my favorite walking money shots, Alan Rickman.

If you're too squeamish to be sexually molested by this embarrassing video, please feel free to skip to my commentary.

(embedding was disabled, go HERE to see the video.)

Okay. I admit that I'm obsessed with this.

The song is beyond hideous. Who is this Texas creature anyway? But I will tolerate her saccharine warbling ad infinitum for the sake of repeated droolings over my savory, succulent Alan Rickman--his raw middle-aged sexuality is positively inconvenient.

Let me analyze what makes me lust after this man to such an unseemly degree:

1. His obvious indifference. Take the opening scene. While the girl whinges on, Alan examines his fingernails. Detachment is dead sexy. He'll get to you when he's good and ready; not a moment before. No matter how much you thrust your proverbial bosom at him.

2. His jowls. Some might say these are the hallmark of drooping age and even the aftereffects of a younger life of undisciplined excess. I say jowls equal sexual experience. The jowly man has had many lovers. He knows how to please them and how to be pleased. Don't ask me why jowls prove sexual prowess. I just know somehow that they do.

3. His frowny face. Who doesn't like to have to guess whether one's partner is enjoying things? The disequilibrium a frowny man creates in one is shiveringly attractive. And if he once smiles even sardonically, even half-way, well, it's the last stroke.

4. Willing to tango in a gas station without a trace of irony. Yum.

5. Willing to be pushed hard against a concrete wall by a woman--the only trace of vampiric smile in the whole episode emerges--not afraid of being thought weak, and in that way is actually the stronger one. Once again, we revisit the concept of "topping from the bottom." I admit that I like a man who tops from the bottom. It's always unexpected and puts a girl at her dis-ease. Gratifyingly so.

6. Leaves the girl without a goodbye or even a nod, just a smoldering squint, a toss of keys, and a jowly frown.

There you have it, a quick analysis of what makes this droopy-jawed delight an obvious sex machine.

So who is your weird fantasy fodder?

My Secret Book

I'm so thankful for my book. I've been working on her for awhile now, off and on, and she gives me only the greatest joy. Even when I'm not writing at the moment, the characters are living inside me, and sometimes I feel giddy when I think of them. I really, really like this book. She's the very embodiment of hope, a tingling feeling of excitement that makes life worth living. Seriously, I'm not kidding. Actually, Book, I must confess...I think that I've fallen a little in love with you:

"How can I explain how I feel?
I'm like a little kid running at her heel
She's giving me looks like she thinks I'm a snappy dresser
How can I tell what I should plan?
I've never kissed a girl or held her hand
She's waiting for me to move, I've got to impress her"

I hope I can impress you, Book.

I Was a Child of the '70s...

...and I am thankful for that.




To what other occasion could one wear these plaid pants?

Thankful for My Daughter

On a Dust Taken Road by the Sea

On a dust taken road
on a long plundered day
I will find you here
where the sea gives away
in a dappled dell beside the sea
you and me are there
where the tide gives way
and the seagulls call
in a melodic stray
the ocean is as
clear as you and me.


--Hedgehog, Spring 2008

Thankful for My Daughter's Tae Kwan Do Master

Yes, I'm thankful for him. He has been an unexpected blessing in our lives. A wonderful, soulful man, who since meeting Hedgehog last spring has brought a sturdy, steady light into all our lives. So much more than just an instructor, he teaches kindness, discipline, generosity, and grace of spirit and body. He has become a role model for all three of us.

Just yesterday, I spilled some coffee in the beautifully appointed waiting room of the dojo. As I was down on my knees, blotting up his lovely mat, in my usual housewifely position and a bit embarrassed, he laughed and told me he'd put the outdoor mat indoors for just such occasions. I stood, and rolled my eyes in my jokily complaining way, saying, "ech, this is my life, forever blotting up carpets..." and he smiled and, not looking at me, said gently "you have a wonderful life."

It was not a reprimand, not confrontational, said in his sweet way, but with certitude; he really meant it. So what could I do but agree? I don't always feel that way, but I'll try to remind myself of his words when I feel down...

Thank you, Tae Kwan Do Master.

Fields of Athenry

Today I'm thankful for favorite family songs and long-lived romance...

I'm thankful for Hedgehog's little piping voice singing along while Sarge plays "Fields of Athenry" on his guitar.

I'm thankful that both Sarge and Hedgehog love to dissect and discuss song lyrics with me.

I'm thankful that after all these years, I still love a slow dance with Sarge, to "Misty Morning, Albert Bridge" or "Dixieland Delight."

Thankful for the Fire

I'm so thankful for my fireplace. It's as old as the house, over 150 years old, and I love to imagine the tenants of the past sitting by it, cooking over it maybe, warming themselves and feeling cozy like we do.

Thankful for Heinz 57

This is the expression my dear departed father-in-law used to refer to mutts, human mutts that is. And he used it in all fondness, being a mutt himself: Greek-Egyptian-Lebanese. When he welcomed me into the family, he told me how glad he was that Sarge was marrying a European Jew--he said it would make our children physically, psychologically strong, and more interesting to boot. So, Sarge has got a bunch of the Middle Eastern-African stuff plus English, Mexican, and perhaps some Native American. I'm Russian and Lithuanian, Hungarian and Polish, Jewish, and some bit of Southern Baptist from Kentucky (my dad's dad) via England and Scotland. So that makes Hedgehog proud full-blooded Heinz 57.

I imagine most of the people passing through here didn't come to America on the Mayflower...or whatever is the equivalent in other parts of the world...so what are the ingredients in your ketchup?

Thanks X 3

My mother-in-law is a strange cookie--a combination of control freak and adventuress. This is a woman who blows a gasket if you move her refrigerator magnets askew, but then scans the travel bureaus for tourist warnings, and books a trip to that country pronto.

Her latest trips have taken her to several of the more unstable -Stans and finally to Iran, from whence she just emerged two days ago unscathed and singing its praises. Ahmadinejad be darned, it's so festive over there! But all sarcasm and our sometimes uneven relationship aside, I do have a great deal of respect for this intrepid, self-sufficient, and rather open-minded 75-year-old woman. So my first thanks is for my mother-in-law. I know she loves me, and I love her, despite everything (like how she tried to get Hedgie baptized, for instance! But we won't speak of that now, because this is a thanks not a slam), and I know that I can count on her in a pinch, and besides, she did make Sarge although I'm pretty sure he's largely self-actualized.

She brought us many lovely and interesting things from Iran, but my very favorite is this:




Crackers from the flight! Perfectly un-cracked crackers, carefully saved for Hedgehog! This is one of the wonderful traits of an older generation, a generation for whom war was a reality at home not just something distant, for whom gross excess--of food, of consumer electronics--was the lifestyle of royalty, not regular people. My grandparents were of this generation, and they too saved bits of things for me and my sister. When they traveled upstate and stopped for lunch at the Howard Johnson's, they would always bring us little packages of strawberry jam and honey for a treat. These were people who rinsed out their paper towels and dried and reused them, who never left a scrap of food from a restaurant meal. To this day I feel positively decadent when I don't have a to-go bag of leftovers. Sometimes in a nice restaurant Sarge has to shake his head at me when he sees me gearing up to ask for a risotto doggie bag.

So Thanks Number 2 is for that careful frugality of our earlier generation; let's learn from then in this time of financial worry and instability!

Thanks Number 3 is simply thinking ahead to this evening's meal: hot soup on a cold November night.

Thankful for the Sabbath