i may have seen a lot of things in my life but i've never seen this

Today I was going up the subway stairs behind this gigantic lady. A little 7-year old boy was trying to go down the stairs and he politely said "excuse me" as he tried to fit btwn her and the wall.

She body checked him. Luckily he fell against the wall instead of the floor. She walked on, looking totally satisfied with herself.

Body-checked. Purposeful, not even the kind where the soccer players are kind of after the ball and kind of after blood. Just the blood kind.

sign

We've been having some trouble with our toilet's flusher. I'm going to make a sign like this:

"To flush, hold down handle. No really, keep holding. Think you're done? You're not. See that slight tremor in the water? That's a good sign. You're on the right track. But don't stop holding. You've got a long way to go. Once you hear a slight rumbling, way down below, that means you're about halfway there. Don't let go! Don't get excited by the noises and think the toilet will "take over from here," because thats not going to happen.

Still holding? I know. You're doing a great job! Just keep doing that.

Get a book. Maybe hum a tune. You're gonna be here for awhile.

What was that? a gurgle? No. Just a trick. Keep holding."

ok

I haven't posted in a while. I've been apartment searching and I don't want to talk about that. Its hell in a handbag. Its like having a canker sore at the back of your throat and the only way to relieve the pain is to get back there with your dirty subway finger and push on it, and then people look at you because there are strings of saliva coming off your finger. Like a baby.

Oh, look. I'm talking about it.

Speaking of babies, one "apartment" we looked at had a sign outside that said:

Please take your shoes off.
Please wash your hands before touching Amir.
If you are sick, do not go near Amir.

Amir was their son. First-born I presume. And heir to the entire kingdom. I was hoping Amir would have been like the cult leader though. Regardless, when you see a sign like that, you really don't know what you're getting into, and to be honest, you want to have your shoes on so you can EXEUNT ASAP if necessary.

I only have only one other issue to address today:

1) If you have made the personal choice to hover above the toilet seat, then it is your job to wipe the spray. Because if you don't, then now YOU are the problem.

bedizen \bih-DYE-zen\ verb

: to dress or adorn gaudily

Last night on the train we noticed a lady wearing a little denim baseball cap with some serious bedazzlement on the brim. We weren't sure bedazzle was the perfect verb form...

now we have found it!

BEDIZEN

Example sentence:
"Adorned by minarets and spires and bedizened by more than a million lights,
Coney Island embodied what has been called the 'architecture of
exhilaration.'" (Blaine Harden, New York Times, August 28, 1999)

Did you know?
"Bedizen" doesn't have the flashy history you might expect — its roots lie
in the rather quiet art of spinning thread. In times past, the spinning
process began with the placement of fibers (such as flax) on an implement
called a "distaff"; the fibers were then drawn out from the distaff and
twisted into thread. "Bedizen" descends from the verb "disen," which meant
"to dress a distaff with flax" and which came to English by way of Middle
Dutch. The spelling of "disen" eventually became "dizen," and its meaning
expanded to cover the "dressing up" of things other than distaffs. In the
mid-17th century, English speakers began using "bedizen" with the same
meaning.

Today would be a good day to pretend to be the devil incarnate

I saw a guy sitting at Starbucks, who was kind of reclined and smirking, listening intently to his business partner like he was about to smote him. I decided I'm gonna start acting a little bit like that today, just to freak people out.

Like if somebody pushes me on the train (which they will), I'll just growl some latin.

Or if the lady at "Hale and Hearty Soup Co." tells me that, unlike every other store in Manhattan, they don't take credit cards, I'll just stare at her.

I'm gonna use some hissing, some "tongues" and just evil stares.

I might also just go into speaking in tongues, like i'm being overtaken.

You know what I'm really excited for? All the preachers on the trains. Its gonna be a big one for them.

What if I took it in another direction (like a "party store" direction) and wore a sexy red dress and red horns and a tail, and like winked at men? I bet I could get a few believers to run.

It's not called gym-nice-tics

I need to learn that when I do something that is embarrassing to me, I don't have to tell everybody about it. I'll just save it for the blog.

Cases in point:

1. Cried at "Stick it," the gymnastics movie. When the pressure of her parents' divorce mounted, and she mounted the beam, and then droplets of...sweat? no-tears, fell to the beam, I turned to my friend Kat and said "hit me. hit me hard." And she said 'why?' and I said "because I'm crying."

2. Despite HATING "The Break-up" I cried.

3. I have a mole underneath my nose. Its a small pink dot. I have known people for six years who have not noticed it. But when I walked around with a cup of watermelon punch all night, everybody thought it was watermelon punch. I had 3 strangers take a swipe at my nose with their index fingers.