Painting Chef - Cheaper Than Therapy

While I am an absolute whore to pop culture and US Weekly is my bible, I try and refrain from letting it leak onto this site as often as it pops into my head. You may not know it but you are quite grateful for this. Otherwise you would frequently read things like “Good god, Britney has gone and flashed her business again, in-depth story on page 12” and “Oh look! Tara Reid is drunk, homeless and unemployed! Again!” Undoubtedly you would also bear witness to the drooling mess of unintelligible stammers that overtake me the second I am confronted with anything concerning Ryan Reynolds.

(And just a note to the Sundance Channel…I camped out on my damn couch for HOURS watching the Dailies and you NEVER, NOT ONCE mentioned “The Nines”. You just kept going on and on about that movie with the girl and her hoo-ha with teeth. Thanks.)

But I’m breaking that pattern. Because I have an actual, honest to goodness question about this whole “Grey’s Anatomy” ongoing soap opera. So. Isaiah Washington said something awful and bigoted and and is an ignorant asshole for using a word that should NEVER see the light of day. I get that. In my eyes his stock has taken a nose dive and my mother says he should be ashamed of himself. But is rehab really the answer? It seems to me the man just needs one of those sensitivity seminars and a little therapy. Maybe a few whacks to the head with a really heavy book. I don’t recall ever reading that he was on the tail end of a three day bender and had just arrived from Chateau Marmont where he’d left six hookers and a circus midget passed out in his room. Or how, mere moments before letting that particular word fly, he’d hoovered up enough cocaine to put down an elephant, did I miss that? Do we just send everyone to rehab now? Is Betty Ford quietly assembling her own personal movie studio during group sharing time? Are we about to be treated to the silver screen debut of Lindsay Lohan, Mary Kate Olsen and Isaiah Washington in “Drunk, Skinny and Stupid: The Return of the Three Amigos” with music by Keith Urban?

Because I would absolutely Netflix that one…

I’m in the very throes of a disturbing college flashback slash existential crisis. (Yawn) But not necessarily the college experience I had. More like the one that I probably should have had if I had been prone to those pesky details nobody mentioned. Details like going to class, studying, and actually being able to find my way to the library.

I’m sitting here on the couch next to my husband who is studying the book of MAT practice exams I so kindly tracked down for him at, ironically enough, the library. Patrick is about to start classes for his MBA and while he’s sliding easily back into that whole educational realm, I’m watching a movie that aligns a little more with how I fuzzily remember college… Dead Man on Campus. No, I never tried to drive a roommate to suicide but I was more than a little familiar with the desperation and panic that set in around midterms and finals. Or, as I called it, “Why isn’t anyone having any good parties this week and why is that old guy working at the liquor store?”

Over the past couple of years, I’ve thought about how I might actually enjoy going back to school. Because I kind of fucked it all up the first time. So I wonder if I cheated myself out of something. Don’t get me wrong, somehow I managed to turn out… relatively alright in spite of it. But I’m curious. And I might be a little jealous of what Patrick is getting ready to do. I love my life, being a wife and keeping Patrick on his toes what with the moodiness and the flying plates; my proud, self-given title of the Accidental Domestic Goddess. I enjoy puttering around the house and today? At about 2:00? I was curled up on the couch watching a Sex and the City rerun like I didn’t have a care in the world. And then I made soup.

But I’ve taken an IQ test. I’m not a dummy. All evidence to the contrary, I’m actually a card carrying genius. So is it alright that I’m quite happy making soup on Mondays? Am I doing myself a disservice by wanting to be a stay at home mom to this fictional and unconceived baby? Despite my claim to be a liberal, a progressive person who encourages people to fulfill their potential and live their lives to the fullest, to never sell themselves short, am I doing just that? I am not unhappy in my life, quite the opposite, I find myself today, this instant, wrapped up in the warm and coziness of what I do. It occurs to me that I’ve probably never been happier. (Please lose your lunch to the right side of the vehicle…thank you.)

I do not want to change my life, what I’m doing, where I am. I’m just not 100% sure that its alright to be so content on keeping things just as they are. So I’ve decided to do something. Actually, I decided on this a long time ago and I’ve been puttering with it for some time, I’ve just made up my mind to share it with you. I’m writing a book. So there. I’ve actually said it out loud and I can’t take it back. Its become real. Because until I share it with you, dear internet, it just isn’t real.

Patrick has recently changed positions within his company enough to warrant having a new boss. Much like any new relationship, this one began with a discussion of where he saw himself in the future. Unlike the aftermath of a similar discussion that took place between Patrick and I roughly seven years ago, this one did not end in nakedness. I think that’s a good thing for all involved parties. Well. Except for his new boss… She’s really missing out.

I was asking him about his new boss over dinner and in doing so asked him if he thought she was thirty yet. This question, in my head, meant the same thing it always has… “Is she older than us.” It was met by some silence and a funny look. It was then that I realized I need a new perspective on just what constitutes older than me. Because I will be thirty this year. I will be the age that I always used to determine…adulthood. And maturity. And I assure you that I possess neither of those qualities.

“But Patrick.” I heard myself saying. “Don’t you remember that show ‘Thirtysomething’? I do and I always thought those people were so old! They had adult problems and relationships. They had kids and mortgages. Kind of like I used to think the people on ‘The Real World’ were so grown up and old. And now those people are all just silly little bitches. Except they are all the same age that they used to be. And I’m getting older. DON’T YOU SEE THAT THIS IS A PROBLEM!?

Then Patrick, proving that he is wise beyond his years, looked away, stuffed his mouth with chicken and salad and didn’t speak again until he was able to point out something shiny to me. And then he asked me out on a date. To a movie. We’re going to see Smokin’ Aces this weekend because anything that has both Ryan Reynolds AND Jeremy Piven in it with a side of Jason Bateman covers my holy trinity of hot, childhood crush, and Jeremy Piven and is sure to cure whatever ails me. So I’ll probably forget all about being old.

And again…

A reminder to sign up for the Senior Year Soundtrack!!

I was talking to a co-worker this morning when his cell phone rang. He looked at it, rolled his eyes like a 13 year old girl in a fit of bershon, heaved a world-weary sigh as though he just might be on his last legs and informed me that he had to answer it. I was then witness to the strangest thing I might have ever heard said over the telephone (and bear in mind…I’ve done a LOT of drugs in my time.)

“You cannot buy Nubian Goats at this number.”

Apparently, in the time honored tradition of guys pulling pranks on each other, one of his friends had listed this guy’s phone number in a classified ad for “$10 Nubian Goats.” Now I, personally, have NEVER heard of a Nubian Goat but according to GoatWeb.com, they are “A relatively large, proud, and graceful goat of Oriental origin” so I imagine if he DID have them, he could get more than ten dollars for them. Proud, Oriental goats are probably few and far between here in Georgia. If I were a betting person, I would put my money on most of our goats being inbred, ill-tempered, and somewhat malodorous. Perhaps with a penchant for watching NASCAR in their camouflage underwear while snacking on a Slim Jim.

Naturally, the characteristics of the Nubian Goat are not the point. This (brilliant, in my opinion) prank was apparently pulled in retaliation for my co-worker listing all his friend’s brand new fishing equipment for sale in the newspaper just a few weeks ago. Boys? They have much more a sense of humor about these things than girls do. Had this sort of “prank war” erupted between two girls I have no doubt that my old standby of putting Nair in a shampoo bottle would have been on the menu. I have come to admire creativity far more than outright meanness. And girls? We fight dirty with each other. Rumors, lies, once the battle lines are drawn there is rarely a truce.

We are also brutal when it comes to breakups. There is a certain reader of this website who will probably recall a late-night trip to the grocery store for Q-tips and bleach following a particularly insensitive relationship rift. (Yes…it SOUNDS lame but can YOU imagine picking up ten thousand Q-tips from your front yard? And who wants the words “Small Penis” and “Cheating Bastard” spelled out in dead grass on their front lawn?) We were evil geniuses…qualities which, come to find out, have NO practical life applications whatsoever until, I imagine, you are a parent.

Are you a prankster? What deed is in your hall of fame? And are you interested in purchasing a Nubian goat? I happen to know a guy…

(Also please remember to sign up for the Senior Year Soundtrack Project!!)

(This is going to stay up top here for a few days in the hopes that more people will sign up so if its old news and you’re looking for new news and you think the chances are good that I might have something interesting to say then first of all…you are probably wrong…and secondly, you should probably scroll down.)

There are certain songs that, as soon as I hear them, I’m instantly taken back to a very specific time and place. Driving with the windows down, age 16, never knowing what freedom and independence felt like until I was able to just get my damn self somewhere all own my own, thank you very much. Sitting with friends in a basement or a living room, sipping the beer we’d persuaded someone’s older brother to buy and trading gossip. Riding home in the middle of the night after a post-concert Vic & Bill’s run spent scarfing cheese fries and swapping hair and makeup tips with the drag queens from the club next door.

Somehow, while I was getting ready this morning, five or six of these songs played in a row on my iPod and I started wondering what songs did this same little time travel number on other people. My accidental playlist happened to place me squarely in the middle of my senior year in high school. 1994-95. So from this and a few conversations with Zube Girl sprang forth the idea for “Senior Year Soundtrack.” What are your senior year songs? Are they from high school or college? What are the stories behind them? And most of all…could you be persuaded to share them with the internet?

Here are the rules…

1. Pick a senior year.
2. Comment here or email me (paintingchef at gmail dot com) and let me know you’d like to participate. This is going to be a CD swapping situation…
3. Choose your songs (they don’t strictly have to be from that year only, just something that you listened to that year), burn an as yet to be determined number of copies.
4. Send them, along with the address where you would like your set of CDs sent, to me.
5. I will make everyone a set of CDs and send them back out. If you’re really sweet you can send me a few bucks to go towards postage… I tend to send sweet people cookies and puppies and rainbows and unicorns.
6. Put this little graphic on your blog if you want. But save it and post it your damn self. Don’t link to it here. That’s just mean. And mean people suck. So don’t suck.

Questions? Ideas? Suggestions on making it even better? Let us know!