bratz

young girls seem to be sexualized at so much of a younger age nowadays. case in point: bratz dolls. who the eff thought up these masochistic hyper-sexed images?

one of my coworkers was telling me about how she buys her daughter "everything bratz." bratz clothes, dolls, bedsheets.

um... i used to have my little pony bedsheets. what happened? what's wrong with strawberry shortcake or rainbow brite?

so much of what we feed our children mentally is insidiously teaching them the wrong ideals, the wrong stereotypes. my niece tiffany will go through children's books pointing out everything she likes. i like: that chair, that girl, that flower, that cat, that girl, that girl, that girl. always the girl is blonde haired. she will inevitably choose blondes, never the brunettes. i asked her, "don't you like dark hair?" she held up her own jet black asian hair, inspecting it critically. "no," she replied, shaking her head and making a scrunched up face of disgust.

who the fuck told my niece that only blondes are beautiful? that her hair color doesn't fall in the realm of the desirable?

sure, you can make the point that bratz girls are "ethnic." they are "diverse." even though barbies have been made more diverse (dark african american dolls, black haired korean dolls), the immediate image that comes to mind is a busty, heeled blonde with blue eyes and a plasticine smile to match her brain. but bratz are also sexed up with huge DSLs and proportions to rival their blonde counterpoint. (note that popped in my head: barbie looks older. she's the ideal that you want to be when you grow up. bratz dolls LOOK like freaking 9 year olds. like some urban child models. this is what kids want to be now.)

i want my children to see beauty in everyone. not just based on hair color, waist size, bust, or how much makeup someone wears. how do you do this? how the eff do you raise a child teaching them that practically everything that society and television and magazines and advertisements show them is wrong?

packrat

how the hell do normal people get rid of all their stuff? i love a minimalist style, but have yet to come close to reaching it.

i have no idea how to let go of my belongings. i have had 2 large bags of CRAP sitting in my room waiting to be thrown out, but each time i attempt to do so, i end up sitting on the floor surrounded by even MORE crap, endeavoring to file it all away in some semblance of order. about 2 weeks later it will all end up back in the bags, waiting to be "thrown out." and thus the cycle continues.

picnic park

early evening being the lovely day it was, anthony had a wonderful idea to go have a picnic dinner. off to the fresh market where we bought bread and cheese, hot wings (to sate my inscrutable cravings), bourbon marinated salmon and cheese tortellini salad. ah yes, and orangina.

our first picnic spot was invaded by red ants - a veritable village had become squatters in my shoes and we quickly deposed of their corpses and ran off to a picnic bench whereupon i sat on the very top. i read 'naked' by david sedaris while anthony perused an egm magazine, peppering my grey matter with xbox 360 information. very cute.


overblown and washed out sunset


reading mr sedaris


anthony all super-cute


praying to the gods for a high definition tv

[note: as you can see, i am trying to get a better handle on this picture blogging thing. we'll see how it goes. i definitely want to use this little digital camera more.]

never ever shake a baby

ah, bliss. 20 hours of driving can really wear one out! ... well, ok, 5 hours of driving and 15 hours of sitting in the passenger seat can really wear one out. let's be honest, eh? anthony did all of the driving to new orleans. we left thursday at 11:00 at night and got there at around 7 am (their time). the most exciting part of the drive was going through mobile, alabama, seeing the battleship lit up at night and going through the tunnel. the second most exciting part of the drive was counting garbage bags lying on the side of the road in mississippi to keep anthony awake (his 48 ounces of coffee finally wore off).

[funny billboard we passed on the way back to florida: dirty dick's crabshack]

impressions of new orleans: dirty and tacky (in that hooters and girls gone wild kind-of-way). there were large piles of trash on the sidewalks and the drifting sewage smell was reminiscent of chinese bathrooms. the beautiful architecture was offset by figurines of T and A. though i will concede that the food was quite quite good and their aquarium was superb! i love sea horses and sea dragons and jellyfishies - anthony and i took many many photographs. me with my nikon slr and anthony with our wee 2 megapixel digital camera. i now have a yearning for a digital slr. their convenience has finally won me over, methinks. *sigh* that $8,000 sticker price will go down one day (i tell myself).

oh yea! some guy tried to scam us! the "i bet you i know where you got your shoes" scam. we kept on walking - anthony & saad had no idea what he was talking about, but me being the sharp shooter i am, caught on as we walked away. ramon had told us about it previously (that same night he scared us about new orleans crime and how death lurked around every corner and down every alley). they bet you a certain dollar amount that they know where you got your shoes. if you take the bait, they reply with "on yo' feet!" and if you don't pay up they beat you up (or something equally bad, like a sicilian necktie). saad thought it would have been funny to get into semantics: "no, i HAVE them on my feet. i GOT them at a store. let's learn some grammar, shall we?"

all these images were taken with the digital by anthony before the battery conked out on him:




























jesus penguin!

ramon & alexis had quite the beautiful wedding. his groom's cake had star wars figurines on it! little darth vader, little anakin and little yoda! it matched his "i do," which seemed deep and much like the vocal qualities of mr darth. open bar, we danced the afternoon away. getting tipsy and sobering up before it gets completely dark is draining and we ended up calling it an early night yet again (the night before we went to bed early after the rehersal dinner at margaritaville).




thank you photoshop!


my poor 2 megapixel camera can't
handle these dark shots...

it's so strange that ramon is gone! their honeymoon is a cruise to mexico, he's back in june (or is it july?) for a brief spell and then off to albuquerque and new mexico to start off his newly married life.

crazy.

married.




cookies that alexis' dad ordered with their picture on it!


good god

good god it's been forever since i've written anything. this sickness has taken a lot out of me and finally i'm feeling better. i've been thinking that blogs are boring unless there are pictures. is this true? do i need more pictures? really, i think i need more content. most bloggers write about what they believe, news items of import. this blogger writes about little blips and tangets of her life. i would like to pepper it with more pictures, though. oohh... ahh... pretty colors....

anyways, this weekend anthony and i are heading out to n'awlins for ramon's wedding. i will be hefting along my cameras in the hopes of being artsy. we've never been there and i'm intrigued. also, slightly unnerved. i've heard it's pretty dirty there and ramon scared us with stories of crime and shoe shinings. apparently there is a grid/square of streets out of which you are not to wander.

*coughcough*

can i say that there is nothing worse than calling out from work when you really are legitimately sick? BLEAH!

two people think i'm not really sick - i'm pregnant. sonia, one of my co-workers & michie, my friend since 9th grade. apparently michie's friend was "sick" with flu for two weeks before finding out she was carrying a little one.

does one's body react like this because a little fetus is foreign to the body at first? que strano. i hope not. if this is what being pregnant is like, heeeellll no.

i called out on monday, relaxed and movie hopped with anthony. we watched kingdom of heaven & hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. then the ale house for some wings and then sleep. blissful, medicated sleep.

this morning i felt pretty good. a little thick headed, but i attributed that to the medicine still in my system. i went to the podiatrist and then to work, where i went to a meeting and then almost passed out. i felt horrible. nauseated and cold sweats, retching. not pretty. and quite embarrassing in front of supervisors. they ended up calling the paramedics. i was feeling ok by the time the firefighters arrived and fairly normal once the paramedics questioned me and took blood to test my sugar level. i called anthony, who was at home yet again, thank goodness and he came and picked me up.

so yea. let's all hope i'm just sick. i only bake brownies in this oven.

new year's resolution ::CHECK::

tonight i made not one, but two, lemon meringue pies.
let's hope that they are not runny like my last attempt. this one contains cornstarch, so it thickened up *quite* nicely - very fast and sudden after much whisking on medium high heat.

the crust was a little different from what i was used to. much more loose and wet than normal. the recipe that i was going to use at first called for all purpose flour and "cake flour." what the heck is cake flour? is that the same as self-rising flour? i was a little confused in the baking section this evening. note to self: look up cake flour.

i was going to use the cia (culinary institute of america) cookbook compendium for pie crusts, but their recipe was immense and made 4 double crusts. again - what the heck are double crusts? oh wait... is that when there's a crust on top *and* on bottom?

hm. sounds kinky.

goals for the week

** get oil change for the car
**schedule podiatrist appointment
**put up 15 pictures on the website