Chemo perm for Jeffe, the beloved

Dearest El Jeffe, I have neglected you lo this many weeks; I forgot to mention that I have CURLY HAIR now.

Now, I think it might be my natural color/s. Gawd knows what THAT color used to be! But anyway, it's all curly and, after a period of shock, I'm begininng to sort of maybe like it. But it IS an adjustment!

I mean really! What product to use? Do I need to change brushes? hairspray? hello?? Hair is urgent business. Well, now that I have some, anyway! But, thanks to my new hairdresser (my oncologist) it is thicker and softer. A whole different texture. Tough way to go for a new hairdo, though.

Oh, yeah, and...

Oh, right. Forgot to mention. That was the summer that, after all the clubs the night before, I'd get up bright and early (verrrry early), get on the Metro, and queue up to get into House Ways and Means or Senate Finance Committee hearings. (I took notes.)

I understand I've been seen on CSPAN nodding off.

Personal archeology

While cleaning out boxes in the garage, I found a datebook from when I was in college. It covered the second summer while I was interning in D.C. also. Big fun!

Browsing through, I found that I spent a lot of time at a bar called Cagney's in Dupont Circle. I googled it. It came up under "Clubs of the 80s:"

Cagney's Washington Dc
Early 80's. Right off Dupont Circle, this club's line would stretch blocks. The music was 80's amazing (The The, The Cure, New Order, etc.) Great scene too. Lots of cool people. One big party night after night.

Here's another club I went to. I think it was by Ford's theater:

9:30 Club Washington DC
80s. OMG! Hands down the best club I ever went to. It was at 930 F St. It was an apartment transformed into a club. You sat on wooden boxes covered with carpet. Some of them were built up like bleachers, but you couldn't move them. When you walked through the club you could visualize where a living room was, a bedroom etc. It was small in there. They had TVs mounted all over the place and showed "videos" which could be old movies to actual videos set to music. The basement was where the restrooms were and the club store. I bought a "Reagan Hates Me" shirt there. The cover was about $3. I saw The March Violets there. I also saw Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds there. A friend who lives in DC says that there is a 9:30 Club which is big and recently Good Charlotte has played there. But I am talking about the club where if you sat at the side window, you could see bums sleeping in the alley and drunks peeing in the alley.

I LOVED this club. It was in the WORST neighborhood and there were the strangest-looking, awe-inspiring club kids there. But the description is accurate: there were boxes piled up everywhere and you just sat on them with your cocktail and watched the video and listened to the FAB-U-LOUS music. I recall sitting on top of a really tall pile of boxes a good 2 feet above the heads of the passers-by, sipping a vodka collins. That was "my" drink that summer. Did you know it glows it black light? Part of its allure.

Apparently I lived on happy hour food. We seem to have eaten a lot of $.10 oysters.

Ah. The good old days.

Awesome day, week, possibly month

So...today I made a new friend. That in itself should make it a banner day, and it is. But our kids get along great, too-- they're in the same class at kindergarten. We spent the afternoon in the park-- it was a blast. We're talking about taking a Zumba class together!

Then, to top it all off, some friends got their 171 from Homeland Security this afternoon-- one step closer to adoption! I swear I'm almost as excited as they are. Then one of my breast cancer buddies got a CLEAN bill of health!! Wheeee!

Tuesday I did "roadrunners" (laps) at Liv's school and taught power aquacize, tomorrow morning I teach abs class. Saturday? The last home Cardinals game with Tony and Tracy!

Again, my cup runneth over. Wish I'd taken some pictures. I hope to get some last shots of My Boys on Saturday. *sigh*

My daughter is the next Kurt Cobain?

This is an excerpt from one of El Freddo's emails to a buddy.
Liv has been DYING to play. So we set her up on the mic, Stacey on drums, and me on guitar to play "In Bloom", by Nirvana. I figured I'd save my 'star power' (or whatever it's called in RB) to rescue her when she failed out. Well, it turns out she DIDN'T fail out at all. In fact, when we finished, I had 93%, Stacey had 96%, and Liv, who has probably heard the song less than a dozen times in her life, got 79% with an 8 phrase streak. Stacey dropped out to work on dinner, I did drums and Liv sang it again, and got 83% with a TEN phrase streak. I'm not sure if this says more about my daughter's AWESOME ability, or something about Kurt's vocal talent... fbr

Another class and fav tunes

Gawd help me, I agreed to teach another class.

This next one is one half-hour of pure, uninterrupted abdominal workout. It's called "Abmazing." Right up my alley. But that means I take a class Monday and Wednesday and teach a class Tuesday night and Thursday morning.

And, yes, Cap'n Canuck, I do have favorite songs on Rock Band. Thanks for asking!! Gimme Shelter (the Stones) and Green Grass and High Tides (Outlaws) are awesome on the Wii. Also Say It Ain't So (Weezer) is, I think, the song on which I broke the drum stick. BIG fun. You'll have to come over and try it out. You'll LOVE it!

I am a rock'n'roll goddess

Yeah. We bought Rock Band for the Wii. Here's the set list.

I'm the drummer. In fact I may never let anyone else be the drummer. Ever. This is the most fun game in the history of games.

I broke a drum stick on the first song.

(Image courtesy of wikipedia.org)

Hair

I actually need a haircut. Can you believe it? And, indeed, my hair is getting curly-- thus the haircut. I will need to keep it way short until the curl grows out. Trust me when I tell you I don't look great in curly hair. I have photos from the 80's to prove it. And NO I'm NOT posting them.

More Greentree photos

I bought a Backstoppers hat which immediately became my absolute favorite. Got an Obama sign and button, and we all stuffed ourselves with carny food. I had a brat and half Liv's burger. El Freddo had a couple hot dogs and we all had roasted corn. Yum!

Tiger face-painting at Greentree Festival

Every year in early September K'wood has the Greentree festival. This is the first year where Liv was old enough to really enjoy it. And, after living here seven years, this is the first year where I've known a lot of people there. It was awesome.

Anyway, one group of dear, misguided souls decided that they would do face painting for children for free. Yes, without charge. For hot, fidgety, children on a sugar high. Misguided, I'm telling you.

Long story short, Liv did NOT want a small painted flower on her face, she wanted her entire face painted. It turned out to be adorable, but I felt so bad for the lady who had to do it.

It also bears mentioning that this morning, after much cussing and sweating, we got the training wheels on Liv's big girl bike tightened up and properly aligned and went for a mama-assisted ride. She's doing really well. As soon as she can reliably ride without major incident, I'm going to start taking her on the Busch trails near our home. The County converted an old railroad track into a bike trail. The trail is interspersed with playgrounds: utter heaven.

The NEW quintessential STL question

Those of you who have ever resided in this fair city are doubtless aware that, when meeting other St. Louisans for the first time, the question of high school invariably comes up.

"So..." one of us will ask with a meaningful glint in his/her eye, "where did you go to high school?"

The answer, we think, gives us loads of information about our new acquaintance. Pinpoints them geographically and possibly gives some insight into their character. Or so we, as a culture, believe.

At the PTO meeting this week, someone mentioned that Liv's old preschool is selling the tshirt shown below. To say that El Freddo and I sprinted to the KECC office to buy some gives too much dignity to the term "sprint." I know I, personally, was slavering to purchase at least two-- one for myself and one for Liv. El F elected to forgo the pleasure. But he's posted the joke all over the internet amongst his friends.

Ahhh...the life of a St. Louisan is one sweet, silly in-joke.

Suddenly I see (apologies to KT Tunstall)

Suddenly I see my daughter differently.

She absorbs everything. Every day she is talking about something with which she was entirely unfamiliar just a week ago. And asking intelligent questions. (This is a definite change, as you who have been around her know. It is a distinct characteristic of pre-schoolers in my experience to ask questions for the sake of hearing themselves talk.) But now that she's in school, that's all changing.

The sweetest question, though, was last night when she asked "why does the moon follow me?"

I thought my heart would melt right out of my chest.

doppelgangland

We had a spectacular dinner at Massa's with Robert and Julie who, clearly, are clones of our own sweet selves. Julie and I could be, attitudinally-speaking, twins, as could El Freddo and Robert. El F and Robert, actually, could be related as they look so much alike.

A very jolly dinner was had by all, followed by the obligatory and highly scenic stroll to the custard station to sit in the park at twilight and eat ice cream and watch the trains go by.

My life is often as close to heaven as mortal woman could ask these days.

A tasty morsel of geekiness or two

First off, if you haven't seen the YouTube video about our imminent demise, you should. Note the credits where it lists the background dancers.

Second, I've found a comic that perfectly encapsulates the sort of thing El Freddo and I argue about. If ever there were to be a cataclysmic fight in our house, it would be over something like this:

A day of firsts

Today was a day of firsts.

1) Liv had her first day of swim team. She is definitely the youngest member of the team.

2) I taught my first power aquacize class today; if the grimaces of the class members are to be believed, it was a tough class. It turns out, by the way, that the Aquatics Director told me my class was in Webster when it's actually in Kirkwood. Apparently it takes 30 minutes to cross Webster in rush hour traffic.

3) El Freddo and I went to our first PTO meeting; I found something else to volunteer for.

I also made donation board for the school book fair this morning while Liv was at school. I feel like such a mom.

The Chlorine Family Rosenblogger

Not only have I been subbing water aerobics classes for other teachers, but I now have a class of my very own! Yes, I have a HIGH INTENSITY class, too. (Eeesh.) It's called Power Aquacize. It's everything I teach now, just faster and harder. No prob, right?

My class today was giving me crap for turning up the intensity on them in preparation for my debut on Tuesday night with the "Power" class. Bottom line? I'm subbing for bunches of people AND have a class of my own.

As a result, as a preventative measure, my knees are bathed in tiger balm and wrapped in butchered pairs of El Freddo's old tube socks. Dara Torres has her Team Torres masseurs and trainers. Me, I got tiger balm and grubby socks.

Additionally, Liv starts swim team tomorrow at roughly the same time I'm teaching. I'm not sure how they're going to swing that, pool-space wise, but I guess I'll find out when I get there.

Bottom line? Liv and I are going to smell like chlorine A LOT from now on. Consider yourself warned.

Sign language

We have reinstituted the family dinner in our house-- before I got sick, we all ate at the table together and talked about our day. This generally didn't work while I was in chemo since I had a distinct habit of...well...you know.

Anyway, today Liv was telling us about learning some sign language at school. Fred and I know a few signs so we were messing around with it when Livi decided we needed to play a game.

Okay, she said, close your eyes then see if you can guess what sign I'm making.

El Freddo and I closed our eyes.

Okay, guess! she says.

Can we open our eyes?

No.

How 'bout now?

No. Just guess!

Fortunately, after a few fruitless guesses, El Freddo remembered he'd seen her make the sign for a turtle before and guessed correctly. Yep. Blindfolded guessing games. It's all the rage in the kindergarten set.

This is what $313k will buy you?

Okay this is not, for the most part, a political blog. And I am partial to the frivolity of the fashion columns. But when the two intersect? Uh-oh.

What the hell is Cindy McCain doing wearing over $300,000 worth of outfit when citizens of this great nation are, by and large, running on empty economically-speaking; and the outfit is just butt-ugly?

Photo and narrative courtesy of CBS news online. The ire and indignation is all my own.

Continuing Ed Sucks

Hooo-boy. Thank gawd for technology. I spent all day in a CLE today: 7:40 a.m. til 5:20 p.m. So if you got nonsense emails from me today, I was killing time during the boring parts. Also reading blogs, IM'ing, and whatever other electornic diversion I could devise.

I also brought some episodes of The Wire on a flash drive. At least the class was a video replay. No speakers were offended in the taking of this CLE.