There's nothing funny about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

... although it is important to raise awareness about this syndrome. By placing mannequins in their Nordstrom store bearing the hallmark characteristics* (wide-set eyes, flat affect, open-mouthed dullard expression), the Mall of America is doing just that. I also appreciate that the FAS kids are shown expressing some of the violent traits (Elmo strangling, etc) that sometimes appear in later years. It's also important to note that FAS crosses all racial lines and affects all ethnic groups.

"Mommy, me want to go to sleep. Put bottle down and read stowy!!!"

"Even dough we not smawt, we stiww in wuv."

"I fink I'm pwetty."

I hate my mommy for dwinking while she was pwegnant
so I'm going to kiww dis Ewmo."

* Wiki says: Refinements in diagnostic criteria since 1975 have yielded three distinctive and diagnostically significant facial features known to result from prenatal alcohol exposure and distinguishes FAS from other disorders with partially overlapping characteristics. The three FAS facial features are:

• A smooth philtrum — The divot or groove between the nose and upper lip flattens with increased prenatal alcohol exposure.
• Thin vermilion — The upper lip thins with increased prenatal alcohol exposure.
• Small palpebral fissures — Eye width decreases with increased prenatal alcohol exposure.

Happy Birthday to Jamwall!

Ode to Jamwall
on his birthday
this 207th day of the calendar year

i. første vers
In a landscape of 10,000 frozen lakes
and snow upon snow upon snow
a rare and precious gem appeared
seven and thirty years ago.

Fiery red, it blazed and burned
with peerless gifts and talents
in the soul of the boy;
to emerge as he grew,
lending wit, and vision, and balance.

ii. andre vers

No ordinary boy was he
nay, never.
Not to this day!
His eyes bear the spark
of vivid untiring imagination.
His mouth utters only kindness, humor, and love;
his heart is a drumbeat of loyalty.

Oh!

Your heart, your little heart …
it knows not how it sounds.
for it is the drum of drums,
it is the song of songs.*
Thumping in the rib-cavern of that
beautiful spirited child
for all the days
that came before I knew you.

iii. tredje vers

On a distant shore I lived
and wandered alone and wondered
whether in all my days I’d find a match
for the silly and lively spirit inside.

... A spirit that needed taming and compassion.
A spirit that compels with its fierce humor.
A spirit that sometimes does not brush its hair
and eats things it finds on the floor
and wears a box instead of pants
and draws oddly
and writes poems about raining noses
and cannot spell the word scissors.

Who would ever come home
to a spirit like that?

I had stopped looking;
I did not realize.

I did not know, I mean ...
... that you were there.

Nobody told me.

iv. fjerde vers

One day, suddenly, you appeared, beating your gong.

Verbally jousting with me
in the back-rooms of this virtual world.

Your writing tickled my funny bone
and brought out my inner feisty beast.
My true colors were fully unfurled!

Nothing was sacred, nothing was safe:Runways and hoo-hahs and relish,ice cream flavors and gobstoppers …
all of these we’d embellish.

When you said you "loved my guts" I fainted, a little.

v. femte vers
There was once a secret blog;
a playground we kept on the side.
Some of us would take comfort there
and lower our guard for a time.

In that hideaway long gone, you first
unveiled your face to me, and to the others.
I will never forget reaching out
and touching your face with my hand
on the flat-screen of my monitor.
That puckish dimple in your chin
has inhabited my dreams
every night hence.
Even now, two years since.

vi. sjette vers

One summer’s day in Boston-town
four bloggers were united
for a weekend of frivolity
and extensive monkey-business.

On the trolley, you touched my knee.

vii. syvende vers

(Angelic Chorus sings to the tune of Don’t Fear the Reaper):

Her knee! Her knee! You touched Spinnerina's knee!
The kneebone’s connected to the lipbone!
The lipbone’s connected to the heartbone!

viii. åttende vers
(Man with Cowbell clangs instrument three times and shouts):

Silence!
Let me explore the space now, baby.

[mellomspill] --- Bare ku bjelle (Cowbell solo) ---

ix. niende vers

Jamwall, thanx fo' show'n me T-H-to-tha-izzat you love me in all tha shawty ways . Ya fuck with us, we gots to fuck you up. I started yo' shit, and I'll end yo'shit. You is always there fo' me so jus' chill. I love you so mizzle fo' sho'! I cizzay imagine gangsta day going by wit'out you in mah life. Throw yo' guns in tha muthafuckin' air!

x. tiende og siste vers
Well, then.

Nothing sweeter
or simpler and truer than this,
so still your jibberish and listen:

I cherish you.

You are a comet that streaked into my life
and landed.

Happy birthday, sweetiepants.
Happy now, and always, and then some.

(final strike of cowbell)

(curtain)

*with thanks to Annie Lennox

p.s. I didn't get you a card, so bask in this meager tribute. Jeg elsker deg!

The Barnyard Blues

A fellow blogger and I had a heated debate (heated, I tell you! Boy was it ever!) about barnyard animal sounds. This stemmed from a discussion about how onomatopoeia (quack quack, meow meow, woof woof) is different in different languages (in Estonian, the same 3 sounds are prääks prääks, näu näu, and auh auh). This conversation segued into a debate about people's thoughts about barnyard life. The discussion went something like this:


SG: I think the general population, when thinking of a barnyard sound, thinks cock-a-doodle-doo (or kikki-ri-ki-kii, in my case).

Sexy Other Blogger: Ya think so? Why, because of the cock part?

SG: No, because of the rooster on top of the barn.

SOB: Hmmm, I don't think so; I think it's probably moo.
SG: No way, man.

SOB: Oh, I think so.

SG: Care to make it interesting?

SOB: You're on, baby. By the way ... what are you wearing?

So a wager was made. Luckily, I have daily access to about 85 members of the general population*; I would have them answer this random question for me. I just so happened to be giving a quiz on Newton's Laws of Motion the next day (you don't know them, do you?**), so it was the perfect opportunity to show SOB just how right I was.

Results:

Behehehehe!!!: 1 vote.

And good job on the quiz, Christian!

(A next-day inquiry confirmed "behehehehe" as a goat sound)

Neigh?: 3 votes

Quack/Cluck: 1 vote

(I believe this type of cross-species union is genetically impossible)

Snort: 2 votes



grrrrrrrr: 1 vote

(Pam lives on a bear farm, so these results are skewed)

The startled bicalllck!

a hen makes when the egg leaves her cloaca:

1 vote

A dying zebra: 1 vote

(I believe this outlier should be eliminated,

as Andrew was picking his nose at the time and didn't really hear the question)

was up: 1 vote

(I guess the barnyard is in New Haven)

bawk bawk: 2 votes


hee-haw: 1 vote



eeeoinkkkkkkkkkkkk: 1 vote



quack: 4 votes


onk: 1 vote

(?!)


cluck cluck: 4 votes


baa: 5 votes


one for jamwall

mooooo: 40 votes

Cock-a-doodle-doo: 1 vote!

Discussion and Conclusions:

Moo by a landslide. However, Gabriella is the nicest girl EVER so her cock-a-doodle-doo counts as 50 votes, so I still win. Christian has an A- in science. Andrew picks his nose. Most of the kids in suburban Connecticut have only seen farms in books or on TV; farm life is as foreign to them as life in Africa. However, if you tally up all the results, what we have is a typical storybook farm: a buttload of cows (one of whom wears a bell), a donkey, a few sheep and horses, some pigs, one dying zebra, one gangsta-rapper, a few chickens, and atop it all, proudly crowing to welcome the dawning morn, one bantam rooster.

* No minors were harmed in this process.

** Newton's Law Refresher Course
NL1: Law of Inertia. An object in motion will remain in motion at a constant speed, in a straight line, unless a force acts upon it. Ditto an object at rest.
NL2: An object accelerates in the direction of the force that acts upon it. This acceleration is inversely proportional to the object's mass. Also F= ma.
NL3: Every action force has a reaction force that is equal and opposite.

Repost: 100 things. I love reposting this because of #36-37, because I married him.

1. My first language was Estonian. I still speak, read & write it. All the time!
2. I didn't really speak English until I went to kindergarten,
3. where I learned the word "soon" and thought it meant one o'clock.
4. I thought this until I was 11 years old.
5. Because it rhymes with "noon", you see?
6. My twin sister Twirling Girl has always, always been there.
7. I don’t know what I would do without her.
8. My baby sister Tuuna Taco is my other best friend.
9. My parents are some of the best people I know,
10. And I don't tell them enough, so I am telling them now.
11. Since they read my blog.
12. Which sort of censors me, but that is probably a good thing.
13. I can be gross at your blogs, right?
14. I worry that if I ever meet any of you, you will discover that I am not really as pretty as the persona I have created
15. although I have begun to think of myself as "Spinning Girl" and would probably answer to it if someone called to me.
16. Sometimes I get terribly lonely.
17. Often, I love being alone & doing what I want, when I want.
18. I need to tune my piano so that I can play it.
19. I need to clean my chimney so that I can make bigger fires without fearing that I am going to start a chimney fire.
20. Some pieces of music are so beautiful to me that I cannot contain the emotion I feel when I hear them, and I just cry.
21. I can’t stand most of the music I hear on the radio.
22. There are some exceptions.
23. I have an almost unholy obsession with Yellow Ledbetter and every time I hear those first few hesitant guitar notes, I smile with glee.
24. I had a small alcohol problem once.
25. By small, I mean that it had a short life. Maybe two years of really drinking in a way I felt was out of control.
26. Plus 15 years of wondering if maybe I drank a little too much?
27. I gave up the booze on August 6, 2003.
28. In March of 2004 I drank 3 bottles of wine by myself and scared myself so much that I never want to drink again.
29. In July of 2006 I accidentally took a giant swig of my cousin’s vodka tonic, but only because our cups were identical and it really was by accident.
30. If I drink on purpose, I am afraid I will not stop, ever.
31. I still get mad that something so fun could turn into something so bad, but I’m OK with it and I don’t miss it. It just pisses me off that alcohol was such a mean trickster bastard.
32. I become smitten very easily.
33. Recently I was smitten with someone in my grad class.
34. But he never called when he said he would, so I had my answer.
35. That’s too bad, because I still find him really attractive even though I don’t talk to him much.
36. I am also completely infatuated with Jamwall, even though we have never met, because he gets me and we feed off each other’s sick humor in a truly exhilarating way.
37. Right now, I am imagining Jamwall naked.
38. Are you?
39. Someday, I hope to spend a weekend with him, romping through a condiment village that we have built together.
40. Sometimes I am perfectly happy with my life the way it has gone thus far.
41. But I am always ready for the next big, good thing.
42. I would like to be a mom, though not necessarily give birth.
43. Maybe I just need a pony!
44. Or a dog, a non-pooping dog.
45. Having to pick up shit is the one major thing keeping me from getting a dog.
46. Sharing my living space with a box of urine and shit and giant hair balls is what is keeping me from getting a cat.
47. I had the most amazing cat once, and he will never be equaled.
48. I fear the spider, but only once it has reached a certain size.
49. Spiders of Acceptable Size (SAS) are allowed to live freely in my home.
50. Spiders of Unacceptable Size – SUS-- are thrown outside, not killed, unless they are huge or move very fast.
51. I would probably go crazy if I woke up and discovered an SUS clinging to the tip of my nose with all 8 of its legs.
52. I can honestly say that I love my job.
53. It is like a dream. A job cannot be this perfect, can it?!?!?
54. I sometimes fear becoming debilitated and unable to teach anymore; what would I do then?!?!?
55. I don’t spend much time fearing the future though.
56. Most of my fears are fleeting thoughts, lucky me.
57. Maybe I am stupidly optimistic. That is fine with me.
58. I take life’s little luxuries very seriously.
59. My bed.
60. My coffee.
61. That’s a short list, but those are the two biggies.
62. When I was a child, my favorite place to visit was my grandparents’ house in upstate New York.
63. Sometimes we had to weed the garden, and we had to finish before we could swim.
64. This taught me self-discipline and delayed gratification.
65. I used to pretend I was a poor little slave girl, weeding my little row of carrots in the blazing hot sun.
66. Nothing equals the bliss of a cold swim after you have been sweating in the blazing hot sun.
67. There was (is) a spring-fed pond on my grandparents’ back property.
68. It is stocked with fish that were caught elsewhere & put there by my family.
69. They have lived & multiplied there for 50 years.
70. I used to catch grasshoppers in the meadow and then feed them to the fish.
71. I used to be very good at catching grasshoppers; the most I ever caught was 72.
72. Grasshoppers!!!
73. I fear that one day a swarm of locusts will land on me, as payback.
74. This fear, however, is fleeting.
75. When my family sells my grandparents’ house, I don’t think I will be as sad as I was over the past 10 years, watching it decline from what it once was.
76. Nothing gold can stay.
77. I hope that my parents’ home becomes that way for their grandchildren ... a really special place where you can always go and be happy.
78. I believe it is really important to listen to children and not try to spank too much of their personalities out of them.
79. Like the boy who made the grappling hook; it made me really happy to see that.
80. I can think of 5 teachers off the top of my head who would have said, “put that stupid toy away.”
81. Of course, I teach science, and can justify “allowing” a homemade grappling hook in my classroom.
82. It scares me how little science some people know.
83. I’m a little bit obsessed with Carl Sagan, and rightly so.
84. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is one of my favorite books of all time.
85. I should read it again soon. I tend to reread books I love several times.
86. I have read Lord of the Rings at least 22 times from start to finish, plus countless times of reading just certain parts.
87. For me, rereading a good book is like visiting a place that I love.
88. When I want to escape for a while, I go to Middle Earth.
89. I’m OK with being a total geek.
90. I have amazing tits, so I can get away with it.
91. Are you imagining my tits right now?
92. Go ahead, then. I am OK with being objectified by you.
93. Shit, I forgot about my parents reading this.
94. Sorry mom and dad, sometimes I say dirty things to be funny.
95. Dirty and funny is one of my favorite combinations.
96. Wow, 100 is a lot.
97. I might have dyslexia because I often reverse “tomorrow” and “yesterday” in my speech, regardless of what language I am speaking. I think those two concepts got stored incorrectly in my Wernicke.
98. I am a huge procrastinator, and I did this instead of grading papers.
99. I always feel better after a good day of procrastinating.
100. I’ll feel even better later when I get that shit done. Thank you for reading!

Today's Pictionary word: POVERTY

Nicely done, Jamwall.

Living with Jamwall is like this:

[excerpt from a conversation after watching The Kids are All Right, July 2011]

SG: Am I the bulldyke in our relationship?

J: Ummm ... what would that make me?

SG:  You're the gay man.

J:  umm ... ::crickets::

SG:  I'm kidding!  I'm just kidding, honey.  Sometimes you act faggy.

J: ::crickets::  (makes a face)

SG:  Fags would be offended that you are offended by that.

--THE END--

Disclaimer: I would like to alert my gay followers that I love everything about you and only use the word "fag" for comic relief here.  I hope that I do not offend.  Having dry-humped a few female cousins and fantasized about a friend's boobs, I consider within my bicurious right to reclaim these formerly offensive terms for ourselves!

I have earworms.

I sort of promised myself and a friend that I'd blog every day, regardless of how I am feeling or how blocked I am.  I think I have to write every day to discover things to write about.  Today I am going to write about earworms.

Dictionary.com:

Main Entry:	earworm
Part of Speech:	n
Definition:	a song or tune that gets stuck in one's mind and repeats  as if on a tape; also written ear-worm,ear worm;  also called cognitive itch, sticky tune
Example:	The song played in the grocery store became  an earworm for her.
Etymology:	German ohrwurm

So, because I share a house with somebody as silly as myself, there is a lot of verbal trash floating around in the air. Between that and choir and the general noise of my head, I have a few tunes & sayings that keep popping into my head and sometimes out my mouth. I really need help planting new worms! Help me!

Here is a sampling of what is going on:

• Cruel to be Kind by Nick Lowe
• And the Glory of the Lord (Handel, Messiah)
• tap, tap, taptaptap, taptaptaptap., Dog Show! (from SNL)
• They say love .... don't come eeeaaasyyyyy... (Wes, from the Bachelorette and now Bachelor Pad)
• "Totes" (Jamwall's way of saying "totally", picked up from Calzone the Dragon and friends)
• In Exclesis Deo from some Christmas carol

As you can see, it is quite noisy.  I am especially annoyed by Nick Lowe and Dog Show!

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to plant a few new earworms in my head.  Hopefully they will replace the existing ones and not simply compound the cacophony (say that 5x fast!).

Wait, you start blogging again, and you are talking about a LOG?!?

 

Jamwall and I have been burning eco-logs from time to time.  

He recently picked up this one made from recycled coffee grounds.  

I want to pour the smell down my throat!

I suddenly crave biscotti!

I am jittery and jumpy!

This post sucks.

I'm trying to come back.  Be gentle.

A photo from our wedding:

As you may recall, I married jamwall. Our photographer was so excellent. Please consider her for your photo needs!

I wore a bridal crown:

Tomorrow ...

I am marrying Jamwall.

My Sordid and Delicious Love affair: A Timeline

“I leave blogger for like five minutes and i come back and find u and Jamwall are an item? That is so rad.” – LBseahag, 1/1/09

Many of my regular readers may have noticed that I tend to mention Jamwall rather often on my blog; others have noticed years of electric silliness between us. What many of you may NOT know is that we have been secretly in love for a while now, have shacked up and are shagging like a pair of llamas in an open paddock. Here is a timeline of our evolving fervor:

September 16, 2005: Jamwall's first comment on my blog post about Magnetic Poetry

October 17, 2005: Jamwall does NOT turn up in my Tarot reading, and is consequently vexed.

January 2006: A secret blog-on-the-side opens, where many of us reveal our true selves and tell our life stories.

February 2006: Jamwall posts photos of himself. I spend 5 minutes touching his face on the monitor. I am instantly drawn to his rugged good looks and his maddening chin dimple. I post pictures of myself, and Jamwall later tells me he thought I was so pretty.

October 2006: Jamwall posts a "Blog Avatars Meet for Happy Hour" post that tickles me because I am included.

December 22, 2006: Jamwall offers to spread me on a cracker. A cracker of my own choosing.

December 27, 2006: Jamwall uses the word “spanking” in a blog comment. His bold choice brings our repartee to a whole new level.

January 2007: Jamwall and I begin a back and forth exchange about misusing condiments in ways that sicken our readers and blow through our free texting minutes.

January 27, 2007: I use the phrase “Minnesotan Manwich” in reference to Jamwall, in the famous Hive Mind post.

February 2007: Jamwall guesses my favorite word to be "Gobstopper" in my Stupidest Blog Contest Ever, and wins a prize. He later writes about it on our secret side blog, and I copy the post to my blog. Read it here.



March (?) 2007: Jamwall sends me gifts. I call Jamwall on the phone, and startle him. This begins the first of a few somewhat awkward phone calls.

Early Summer 2007: Jamwall, Calzone, Monkey and I begin to plan a trip to Boston.

August 4 2007: We all meet up in Boston and see each other face to face for the first time.

August 6 2007: Jamwall puts his hand on my knee and I have an epiphany. Later, we smooch.

August-October 2007: Jamwall & I talk every single day on the phone.





October 2007: We go on a 3-day vacation to Cape Cod. Numerous things happen which I will not discuss. Jamwall and I exchange cooking experiments. He makes Caesar salad. I make soup. We mail each other our inventions.

(November 2007 - August 2008): Jamwall visits me in New England numerous times. We go to New York City and he meets my family. He comes to my performance at Carnegie Hall. Somewhere in this time period, we decide we really like each other.

February 2008: I visit Jamwall in Minnesota. I have never been so freaking cold in my entire life. We have a blast. I meet his family.

July 26, 2008: Jamwall's birthday. I write (and post) a long and heartfelt Ode. I visit Jamwall and on a sunlit bench in a beautiful little park, he proposes. I say yes.

September 15, 2008: 3 years after his very first blog comment, Jawmall moves halfway across the country, into my house.



October 2008: We celebrate 1 year together in Cape Cod.

Now: We have mingled our stuff and our habits, are planning a July wedding for this year, and are dwelling in the bliss of the newly-smitten!!! I hope my favorite person can come to the wedding, because he was key in bringing us together. Besides encouraging us to free our minds and end self-censoring (the key to good writing), he gave us a forum in which we first broke the walls of anonymity and discovered that we were soul twins. We are forever grateful that the strange but wonderful world of blogging brought us together!!!