Stuart just asked, what are you posting about and all I could say was, as you’ll see, “stuff”

Last night, we made a dinner for Beth (of aforementioned awesomeness) and Josh, and it was astounding. We made pizza from scratch, Josh twirling out the dough and laying it expertly on the pizza stone that spends 99.99% of its life on the floor of our oven. We brushed pesto on the pizza and then tossed the sliced roma tomatoes and fresh mozzarella on top, putting it in the oven for about twelve minutes until Josh declared it “done, perfect, baby”. You can tell, Josh was the maestro of the pizza.

But I was the maestro of the salad. It was baby spinach leaves tossed with gala apple chunks and crispy bacon, with an apple vinegar dressing that twanged with ground ginger. Stuart brought home the avocados that were meant to be the final touch in the salad but neither of us were raised eating the things so they were hopelessly overripe. So much for me asking Biscuit exactly how to BUY an avocado.

We talked about child-rearing and how all four of us were terrified of teenagerdom and we decided we’d have to move to the same city so we could dump the rascals in a basement and put our heads together for wine when the teenagers threatened to take the lead in the hostage negotiation that is adolesence. We talked about making a foursome trip up to Montreal because I don’t know, Canada calls, man.
Tomorrow night, Stuart’s taking me on a Shana-encouraged trip to Artisanal for their Sunday night fondue which, if you’d known it was farmhouse cheddar with pickled apples, you already knew I’d find a way to get there. The price is surprisingly right and we’ve been angelically good about taking packed lunches to work for weeks now, so I have less guilt than I should about hitting such a decadent place for dinner. $25 for fondue for two? Oui, please.
And on Monday, a gaggle of us are going to MoMI in the middle of the day (O, useless presidential holidays, how I love thee) to indulge in the Wallace and Gromit short-film matinee! We’re members of the museum in a fit of Astoria-loyalty, and we have yet to really take advantage of their film festivals. Also, they have a partnership with UA theatres and sell batches of tickets for $6.75. Hello, saving pennies all over the damn place.
Throughout all this, I’m sick. I’m sicker than I seem, because there’s just nothing I can do but dope myself with Advil and Robitussin, but I have some sort of monster cold/throat infection/cough/stiffness. It ruined our Valentine’s Day fondue-at-home plans (which you can see we’re making up for) and it kept me home from work on Wednesday. Beth is convinced it’s bacterial, not viral, since my lymph-nodes-the-size-of-golf-balls effect just won’t go away. It gets bad at night and in the morning, when the Advil is wearing off. Don’t you think that in 2006, there should be an over-the-counter at-home test you can do just to see if you have a bacterial or a viral infection? I’m stubbornly averse to going to the doctor just to determine if its the common cold or an infection. Averse, I say! So here I sit, sniffling and coughing up my yummy post-nasal drip. (UPDATE: I just downed some benadryl so that my sinuses will dry up and I can sleep. What’s up, prescription drugs? How’s it going?)
On a final note that interests no one but other women who know who they are, I have some news. Without naming any names, you know those two precious gems we spend our adult lifetimes carrying around? Well, some of us are lucky enough to have a small amount of these gems and this really doesn’t concern them because much as they complain, they can wear the lacy numbers from a certain gem-encasing pink store with the initials VS. Well, ladies of a more gem-laden persuation, I’m here to tell you, screw VS. I’ve been fighting those pink-clad bastards for years now, finding their gem-carriers to work great for exactly the first week. And then I spend a year feeling sorry for myself and my gems as I push them around in bathrooms trying to get the $60 contraption I just bought to do its job.
I say, free yourselves from the Gisele-hypnosis of VS. My mother, sick of hearing me complain, offered to finally take me to “a REAL store, not VS” and we hit the mall (O, the mall) to shop at department stores. And man, did I find what I needed. Did I find some serious, minimizing, shoulder-weight distributing, still-pretty-sexy-and-lacy gem carriers that’ll carry these gems the way these gems deserve to be carried. One of them is this one and I am here to say, HELLO and thank you, Mom. I think maybe also Stuart thanks you too, mainly because I’ve finally stopped complaining about the situation. Also because it looks, well, hot.
People of delicate consistencies who think women’s bodies are just born this perfect, you can look back now. On a final note, my hair! It grows long! I am just as surprised as anyone to notice that it’s finally really growing. I took this as a comparison point and also, yes, I’m vain. You’re not?