Thursday, January 18, 2007

Police Car Fun

There was somebody playing with a police car behind my house last night. Allow me to elaborate: My house abuts the train tracks. The Somerville Ice Rink is on the other side of the tracks. There is a long driveway that goes around the rink that they use as an exit road for people leaving the parking lot. But at night it seems like a private place to have a car. However everybody on this side of the tracks can see what's going on over there.

One time last summer, there were a bunch of kids back there ramming a stolen car into the side of the rink. Last night, we looked out and saw a police car with its lights flashing. No big deal. Then the lights went out and we heard a bunch of different sirens coming from the Patrol Car. It sounded like there was a 10 year old boy in there pushing buttons. Then all the different lights started coming on at random, the blue lights, the headlights, the spotlight. Somebody was clearly playing around in there.

We were contemplated calling it in, but the Somerville Police are so mean and petty that I really didn't want to talk to them. Whatever was going on in that car would be covered up and summarily ignored so we let it go.

But then the car drove off.
The wrong way down the exit road.

With no headlights.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Watching Football with the Boys

I am not much of a sports person. I am the only one in my family who feels this way. My mom, my dad, my sister and my husband will happily spend hours yelling at the TV when given the chance. When Rich and I first got married I was violently opposed to all sports on the TV. After Eric was born, I relented. Rich wanted to watch football with his son. I want my son to have lots of stuff to do with his dad. I want my kid to like team sports and to get lots of exercise. I hope that someday he'll decide he wants to do sports like he sees on the TV. I think it's really healthy, both mentally and physically.

So, there have been a lot of Patriots on our television lately. This leads me to ponder, what I'm sure every New Englander has pondered at one point or other: Is Tom Brady really a robot?

I mean seriously. The guy looks like the quarterback from Central Casting. "Uh.. We need a really clean cut guy with a square jaw, a dimple in his chin. Yeah.. Real tall and good looking. NO, not a Pimple, a DIMPLE with a D! Yeah a dimple. And he has to look like he's been playing football since he was nine. OK? And he needs to be kind of humble. Like he's honored to be there. Know what I mean? You've got some guy named Brady? Send me a head shot."

I mean how can this guy be real? He's just too perfect. His seemingly straight biographer was gushing about him on NPR a few weeks back, like Tom had just asked him to homecoming and he was a fifteen-year-old girl. I mean how many biographers get giddy talking about their subjects?

Like any red blooded American woman I am not completely immune to his charms. I do enjoy watching him play. But when I enjoy to too much, I just remind myself that he is a Republican. Then I shudder and equilibrium returns.

It's really that simple.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Check out Kaylee hearing C&C Music Factory for the first time!

Monday, January 15, 2007

From the It Takes So Little to Make me Ecstatic Department

Jennifer Weiner quoted me on her blog today. How totally cool is that? She had referred to her mother's partner as her "Special Lady Friend," and thus offended 65% of the lesbian hemisphere. She decided to put the question of what to call her mother's partner out to the Internet. I sent her the following exchange I had with my uncle over 10 years ago:

I have a gay uncle who introduced me to a [fill in the blank here] friend. He said this is "Dave, my uh.. uh..."
"Little Friend?" I said hopefully.
He said "YES! My little friend!"
And that's what we've called his boyfriends ever since.

She wrote me the next day and asked if she could use it and proceeded to, of course (journalist that she is/was) quote me by name.

Jennifer Weiner is one of my favorite authors. She blew me away with her first novel "Good and Bed." I finished it and immediately picked it up and read it again. It was like spending time with a really good friend. After that, I've kind of grown up with her characters as they went through their 20's and through marriage and motherhood. She's the same age as me and we got married to our respective husbands and had our first babies the same years. I've never met her, other than at a book signing.

But you think I'd be quoting her on MY blog and not the other way around.

Just a little psyched.