i hate christmas.

i hate all of it, except for the christmas lights. but lately even the christmas lights have got to be awful- these LED neon green and purple things are terrible. i was watching pbs the other night because i couldn't find the remote, which happens a lot now since lily started getting into things, and there was an excellent show about design on. the man, who talked with one of those accents- you can't tell if he's from the uk or australia so he was obviously to be trusted- was saying that aesthetic design in america is dead!



alas:

what are you trying to say with this, you jackass? there's a block in my mom's neighborhood where the stupids are apparently all trying to outdo eachother with these things. every other house has a lawn full of them.


this kind of crap is the reason that one day china will probably own all of us. we are sending our gold over there in exchange for inflatable lawn things! and snuggies. what must they think of us over there? they probably know we're not very smart and would probably be easy to overtake.


i didn't like presents, or santa claus or jesus since i was a little kid, but i did like christmas lights. but not for long at the rate we're fucking going.

september and october

goings on of august, thus far.

even though i'm by far the best mother i know, i'm reluctant to admit it because it it creates certain implications and leads conversations i'd like to avoid. parents are always trying to recreate my success and always failing. daily, i am bombarded with questions about what i feed lily, who makes her clothes, how i got her talking at six months, it goes on and on! and they look at me with such horror when i tell them lily doesn't eat baby formula, she eats nothing but jaeger schnitzel! excellence does not come from a can, my mother used to tell me while sipping her bottle of miller high life.

that's where it all started. i used to suspect that my mother's rampant alcoholism prevented me from becoming all i could be in utero, but now i know better. i was born with a healthy blood:petrus ratio in these veins and it's been my life's work to maintain that, although the bordeaux had to be downgraded, slightly. while i was destined to be a withered wino, lily has greater things in store for her; when i was pregnant, the only thing i could eat was wild venison. i couldn't keep anything farmed down. this was the first time i had to make the decision whether i wanted her to be great or happy, as usually the two get along as well as me and my driver. i chose great when i saw her, when they put her on my stomach right after she was just born. even through the bloody visocse, it was obvious she was pretty. she'll no doubt be able to flirt with doctors and get vicodin prescrptions if she wants to dumb herself down a little bit. but i'll leave that choice to her.

none of this came naturally to me. i lost my shit the first time i had to throw away a j.mendel leather jacket because it got drenched in baby puke. i reckened with it by realizing that while such jackets will come and go, my only daughter's youth is fleeting. her infancy is nearly gone and soon she'll be stealing my pearls and pizza rolls. the jacket may have cost me a fortune but the memory she'll have of it will be worth so much more!

time to upgrade to a 35 cm.

stupid shit people spend their money on.

my dad is a banker and all i hear from him lately is blah blah blah economic crisis blah blah. he says it's because of sub-prime lending blah blah blah blah. i say it's becasue of this:

http://www.charismabrands.com/Products_All.aspx?&CatID=201&cs=mo&Index=5

for the mere pittance of 140 us dollars you can own this treasure:

somewhere out there, someone thinks that this is a good deal! i know that for a lot of people 140 dollars is pennies but something tells me they're not the ones who are ordering these things.

i understand that some things make people happy and are therefore worth any amount blah blah blah blah. but seriously. if this makes you happy you should probably take a good look at your life.

i don't know why i'm so irate over this stupid doll. it's things like this that make me really, really dislike america and americans, for the most part. it also irritates me to no end to know that the jackass responsible for designing and producing these things is probably far richer than i'll ever be. he's probably richer than you and your grandfather who came over on the boat and worked his fingers to the bone!

i know the grass is always greener blah blah blah but i am extremely hesitant to raise a child in a country that encourages such nonsense and accepts such aesthetics. i hope my generation does a little bit better.

no real content here, just lily wearing pretty dresses.

lily might have more pomp;but i have more circumstance.

february was a really crappy month. it started out ok, at least ok enough that i don't remember it sucking the way the end did- but it sure took a dive from there.

so march is better, so far, and that's the damn attitude i'm going to have about it. it's better because i have new hardwood floors in my house. this is important because i hate carpet ever since i read that 90 percent of dust is human dead skin flakes. can you imagine all those skin flakes collecting in your carpet? sitting there all night while you sleep, only to be stirred up in the morning, floating around in the air that you're going to breathe in? now that i have no carpet i'm not so concerned about other people's skin flakes in my lungs. i'm seriously sleeping way better at night because of it.

let's see, other news...

• urban outfitters sucks. what a terrible store.
• the blacker the beer, the better the beer. guess who fell off the wagon?
• this past week lily learned to say mama, give hugs and kisses.
• her kisses are really wet and gross but cute.
• this week is french cooking week at palazzo garcia. stay tuned for successes/disasters!

xoxoS

list no. 1: the best.

in my busy life, the only thing that matters is the superlatives so i've always been fond of making lists. here is the first of many. you know, i am pretty inconsistent when it comes to likin' things. i like my petrus wine alright; but there's no finer filet than a chick-fil-a. my taste is called into question all the time by bitches and frankly there's just no explaining it. so here, for the information of the internet, is the finest selections from several categories:

animals:

the fennec fox takes the cake here. look how cute he is! he is by far the world's best animal. you can have them as pets too but they dig like motherfuckers so i can't have one. i have wanted one since my friend brought them to my attenton and perhaps this is why i got my papillon dog, because, story of my life, phillip, he was the next best thing.

apparently they sit on your shoulder like a parrot while you walk around the house.

look at his nose! he is so sweet.

city:

new orleans, but only in the french quarter and only at night and only when it's wet and only when there are lights on, like in this picture here. i haven't been too many places because usually when it came to vacation time my brother and i would demand disneyworld, year after year, often multiple times a year. but i know alot about places and i know i'm always right and new orleans, night, wet, and lights, is the best.

food:

oh no! this is the worst. probably the best food, with all considerations considered, is french onion soup, when it's slightly burned. i make this about once a month and the best recipe is les halles's version, http://www.chow.com/recipes/10006, minus the bacon and 'bouquet garni' whatever the f that is and simmered for a minimum of 4 hours. i've had better things, but none that i am capable of cooking (fuck you and the horse you rode in on, thomas keller.) so this wins.

clothings:

i can't pull this off anymore but i used to be able to. maison martin margiela wasn't something i was aware of when it was a possibility but maybe one day it will be again. i'd definitely be the raddest mom at the preschool, showing up like this with a nat sherman black and gold hanging out of my mouth. i would spit at the other moms who suggest things to me like 'enroll lily in a gymboree class'.

conversely, i also am very fond of old 50's housewife a-line dresses and wore them while i was an apartment wife. my wedding dress was a dior dress of this manner.

currently: i am not digging this year's fashion shows (save MMM, but just for the aesthetic value), nor have i for a while. i am not down with the skinny jeans unless you do them really, REALLy skinny. but it's probably just because i have really big calves.

alcohol:

there are better beers but none for this price or widespread availibility. and wine just isn't as good. if it were socially acceptable and didn't make me chunky, i would have one of these in my hand all the time. if i were an action figure, this would be one of my accessories, along with turkey leg and sombrero.

car:

everyday i wake up wondering if today will be the day that i buy one of these things and then i realize it's not becasue i can't afford an old 280 se like this one. but if i could, today would be that day. i actually prefer the rolls royce cornice 2, but i can't bring myself to lust after anything british.

i would write more but formatting these stupid pictures is giving me a headache, man.

j.l.g.

when i was little, i was always the fat kid, which i'm grateful for now. i hated it at the time but because of it, i always had to make up for it, i always had to be smarter or funnier or have a better trapper keeper than the other kids. eventually i lost the weight but it never went away. i still think about it all the time, whenever i eat or cook i can't not think about how this food will affect me. but then i realized it's the same with skinny kids, they probably feel the same way. i've known people who can't keep on weight and i can't understand it for the life of me.

and THEN i realized this is just weight, can you imagine all the spectrums of other things in the world like this? i've known kids with big noses or big chins and that's always the first thing they look at on me, i can tell it preoccupies them the way i think about being a tubby. and it goes beyond that too, probably, even if i can't undertand it. people probably worry about things that actually matter.

once i knew a girl who was perfect, who didn't care if you were a few pounds heavy or light or if you had a snaggle tooth. she didn't see any of that. i never got to know her well enough to know how she managed to do that. she died in a freak accident years ago and so i never will. it's one of those things, like the kids who can't gain weight, that i'll probably never understand.

right now i'd rather never know. but i'm glad i knew her, it gives me hope that maybe i'm not just overcompensating for my faults.

2012.

rad website: http://www.december212012.com/

les dogs.

...long ago when i was a society girl i would tell people that i'm a humanitarian when they asked me what i did for a living. i didn't want to say 'house wife' because at the time i had not a house and 'apartment wife' sounds disgusting. but i never did anything good for anyone because for the most part i am not fond of humanity; the people who i like and would want to help don't need it. but i'm not a total a-hole, just mostly. i like dogs, but not all dogs. some dogs just have a really look about them and you can tell they're good dogs.

a shelter in a small town out east uses gas chamber euthanasia. i have mixed feelings about this, carbon monoxide is a pretty painless way to die but the method of doing it is quite cruel. they shove several dogs at a time in a small metal box and gas 'em. the noise the gas makes scares them. it takes several minutes to work and it only works well on healthy adult dogs. on puppies, old dogs and pregnant dogs it takes much longer.

for the past few months i've been making internet postings about many of the dogs in the shelter, the ones who have have that good look to them. and until today they've all been adopted. but today one didn't make it. it's really discouraging and it makes me feel like i should stop paying attention to this shelter because eventually this is going to happen again and again and again. but then i feel even worse ignoring the problem.

i don't know why i'm writing about this, maybe because i feel like this poor dog deserves some sort of acknowledgement.

he was a good one. i can tell.

THE WEEWEES

we have been pretty busy lately, trying to get back to a normal life. i've been trying to cook again but it's hard because this guy wants to help with absolutely everything. despite her lack of culinary expertise she insists that she knows better than i when it comes to fixin's!

i am exhausted but i go to sleep happy and quickly, which is a sign that all is right in the world. ALAS. here is what we have been up to as of late:

lily went to the aquarium today. she was afraid of the gar fishes but loved the eels and the sting rays. her favorite animals are sharks and bats. i'm surprised she has so much of a personality already: i am terrified for the future.

i touched a trout and i think i got the ick or whatever that gross thing is that fish get. i have rashes all over my arms and i had to take a benadryl. don't touch trouts! they are unpleasantly firm anyway.

lately i've been dressing like the royal tenenbaums because i'm too fat for slut jeans and not fat enough for mom jeans. so the obvious medium is to dress like ben stiller.

lily liked the tamaya. we took her there for the first time and were going to show her where mama and daddy got married but that's a long, long walk. she got to see it from afar. it's a filthy shame you can't see the business end of my hair in these pictures. i now wear out, not up. it's about 6 inches off the back of my head.

my ma entered lily in the pimp my baby regis and kathy lee contest. she's pretty convinced she's going to win. if she does we're going to probaby have to spend the prize money to battle this trout disease. i never should have touched that thing.

we also went to santa fe this week. supposedly there is an excellent restaurant up there called torinos at home but it apparently closes on weekends! a la verga. i didn't get to take any pictures becasue lily was sleeping. ALAS.