. a repeat blogumn by Amy Robinson Amy Says: This is the blog I think of when I think back on my FaN career. It’s mainly fierce with just a little, jelly baby, of nerdy. This blog reminds me to push past my excuses and fears (and hills) so I can enjoy the beauty on the other side. From February 9, 2009 Sometimes, it seems like every experience I have is a huge, neon metaphor from the universe about my life. This past Sunday, one such metaphor threw itself at me in the form of the Chinatown Firecracker 5k. There is one thing you should know before we continue into this life lessony type story; I am not athletic. I’m moderately active for my heart and mental health. If I could be happy and healthy sleeping in and eating cheese-fries, I’d do it. But then all of the gyms would be out of business because most of us feel the same way. So as the story starts, we find Amy signed up for a 5k run as part of a New Years Resolution to “Run two 5k’s this year”. My husband, Seen, and I love Chinatown + proceeds for this run benefit Chinatown + we’ve been talking about this run for 3 years = Firecracker 5k is the first 5k Seen and I attempt in ‘09. So, I started running at the gym, getting my time down, wrecking my knee. To insure that I’ll actually go through with this, and not wuss out, I tell everyone around me that I’m running this thing. On a Friday, only 9 days to race-time, a co-worker of mine gives me a frightened look when I tell her how jazzed I am about the upcoming run. It seems she was...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Warriors, Come Out to Play!
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson If Amy cannot go to Mount Midoriyama, then Mount Midoriyama will come to Amy, or Venice Beach, which is close to Amy. G4tv brought Ninja Warrior to SoCal this weekend, to test American Ninja Warrior wannabes. That made the super-fan nerd in me squee with delight. Even though the pinky toe on my right foot is broken, swollen and barking at me to sit still, I wanted, no needed, to go meet Makoto Nagano, the coolest Warrior of all times. Lurching through the fancy decorated, temporary gates, I caught Warrior fever. Pain is temporary, now my only goal was to achieve the total victory of having fun despite a lame injury. Quick background on NW; it airs in Japan under the name Sasuke, consists of 100 “warriors” running an obstacle course on Mount Midoriyama that looks absolutely impossible to conquer, with 90 seconds on a clock. If a warrior clears the first level, 3 more levels follow that would challenge the personal trainer of Captain America. In the 25 times that the contest has occurred, only 3 (THREE) people have completed all levels (aka Total Victory). So you know these guys have mad skillz. Two years ago, G4 began running reruns of the show and it became one of their biggest hits. The best part about NW is that in addition to being mesmerizing and addictive TV, the athletes inspire me to get off my hiney and work out. Perhaps someday even big-ole lanky me could dream of achieving Total Victory! I must not be the only one who dreams of Midoriyama, as this is the second year that G4 has held auditions on our own soil for the next American Ninja Warrior. So Ninja Warrior is visiting...
Tall Drink of Nerd: The Funk Lifter
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Truth be told, even with all the Zen stuff I spout and do my best to follow, I get in a funk sometimes. Usually it’s related to being a lady and monthly timing and stuff. My recent funkiness is starting to lift and one little girl at Target today illustrated funk-lifting beautifully. I queued up in the checkout line with a young woman unloading her cart. In the back of the cart, with the paper-towels and fruit snacks, was a happy 3 yr old boy. Seated in the front of the cart was a 2 yr old girl. That girl was distraught, massive shiny wet tears rolled down her red cheeks. An elongated cry of misery wailed from her soul. Her mouth was open so wide in sadness that I could see little white teeth and baby tonsils. Being no help to the mother, I was laughing. Clearly the girl was just mad, the mother didn’t seem too terribly distressed by it. She seemed rather calm for a mother of two with a yowling child. The mother turned to her baby and said, “Somebody is cranky!” I stuck my tongue out at the girl and smiled, she just stared and continued to wail away. Then a Target cashier came over from an adjacent register, with a red balloon floating on the end a white nylon string. She tied it to the handle of the cart in front of the baby and the little girl looked around, looked up at the balloon and her crying slowly turned to shoulder shrugging sighs. Then she smiled. My husband, Seen, who was waiting for me about 10 ft away, witnessed the entire scene. He was smiling too. I pointed at the balloon...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Mind the Gap
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Recently, I found the secret to being really happy. It’s fairly simple and I didn’t even need to read a self-help book or watch a movie on The Secret. All I had to do was be honest and follow my to-do list. Really. If you’re like me, a born procrastinator, your daily list of 15 things to-do normally has only 7 things crossed off when you crawl into bed at night. Good intentions start me moving on that list, but bad habits creep in and steal time and productivity from me (I’m looking at you, Doctor Who, Season 3 on Netflix Instant Download). So between the best laid plans and half-assed action, lies the gap. This is where the crummy feelings start. Let’s say you plan to start the day with a workout, but sleep late and don’t get to the gym. By missing that goal, you’ve created a gap. Or you plan on writing 20 minutes that night, but get home late, watch the news on TV and get sucked into Facebook. That writing goal sits on your list, undone. So after a few goals aren’t reached, guilt sets in and you aren’t living life the way you want to. You’ve fallen into The Gap, but there aren’t any 100% cotton khakis here, kiddo. Because I’m lucky, I have also received a nice dose of the “worrier gene”, so my mind spins silk around things undone, half-done or unachieved. The worrier gene absolutely loves the gap. I mentally race around the things I wish I had done and that takes up more energy, so fewer things get crossed off. Queue the whirlpool of happiness swirling down the drain. So if you want to stop the worrier gene...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Playing Favorites [BOOK WEEK]
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson When Ernessa announced BOOK WEEK on Fierce and Nerdy, I pondered for days over which book I should write about. I love so many books and suffer from a genetically inherited inability to make a decision, so I went zen and accepted my limitations. I’ll simply write about my top 8 absolute, must-read favorite books for all time. These are the books I get so excited about that I often give away my own copy just to share great writing. My list might match yours or give you some new ideas for your summer reads. As not to play favorites among my favorites, I’ll list these in the order I read them. (If you’d like to order one of them, just click on the title.) 1. Go Dog Go: Even though there aren’t kids in my house, I recently purchased this book just because it’s awesome. Go Dog Go is simple enough for young readers, but so cleverly written it still cracks me up 30 years after my Mom first read it to me. Written by P.D. Eastman (He also wrote the genius Are You My Mother), it was published under the Dr. Seuss “I Can Read All By Myself” label. As a cool-meter, I still ask people if they like my hat. On occasion somebody will understand I’m not crazy and respond “No, I do not like your hat.” 2. Serendipity by Stephen Cosgrove: My first real memory is of the day my Mom took me to get my first library card. The librarian was chuckling because, at all of 5 yrs old, I was so excited but I could barely see over the counter. Serendipity was one of the books that I checked out over and...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Once Bitten
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Volunteering has always been something I knew I wanted to do. On the handful of occasions when I have had the opportunity to donate my time, an elated feeling of helping others followed me for days. In particular, volunteering at an animal shelter has been on my to-do list for years. I kept putting it off for a few reasons. I thought I didn’t have the time, but mostly I was terrified of bringing home every sad-faced, sweet-hearted critter who would steal my heart. I could see an Animal Planet special in my future, featuring my face as a crazy hoarder, surrounded by a puff of furry cast-offs. In December, our 18 yr old tabby cat, Munchy, passed on after a prolonged battle with, many, progressively more expensive, medical issues. That loss, and the loss of her sister, Weasel, the previous year, caloused my heart. Loving and then losing a friend who had been with me nearly all of adult life was too hard. I was determined to not feel that pain again. No more new pets. We decided to donate Munchy’s left-over medical supplies to a shelter that our vet suggested, The Lange Foundation. It’s a no-kill shelter. They rescue death-row animals (dogs, cats, horses, etc…) from City & County facilities, and then gives those pets shelter as long as it takes to find them a forever home. When I dropped off the medical goods, I was drawn to the large, well-equipped cat pens near the front desk. Like furry orphans trying to get a visiting couple to take them home, several felines skipped toward the fencing and yelled for me to stick my fingers through the wire. They yelled and rubbed and gazed needily at me. ...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Tips For Touching
posted by amy
Listen, I’m a good tipper. I nearly always tip 20% wherever I go. At restaurants and bars, figuring out the tip is easy. Good service – 20%, adequate service – 15%, crappy service – 10%. I can’t go without tipping, it feels wrong and I’d rather err on the side of being to too nice than too cheap. When it comes to massages and haircuts, standard tipping gets iffy. Do I tip more because they are touching me? To gin up more confusion, my local massage office (it’s an office, not a spa, because it is just small rooms off a hallway with no other amenities) posted a note in the treatment room that made my eyebrows go roller-coastering. This past Saturday, I set up a much-needed 60 minute Swedish massage. In the massage room, as I was stripping all my clothes off, down to my skivvies, I noticed a sign on the door just below the clothes hangers. It said (I’m paraphrasing, because I don’t have photographic memory): ‘Because we offer high quality for such value, if you appreciate your massage today, please tip your therapist. Your tip will ensure they can earn enough to continue working here.’ Then the sign had bolded, large font amounts you should tip – 60 min massage (which is $47) – Tip $15 – $25 90 min massage – I didn’t look at this sign because I was only getting a 60 min massage. Is it fair, or even ethical, to request a 32% – 53% tip? Most people are going to this store because they can’t afford anything more. Add 53% to that price and it decreases the ‘value’ of the massage and stops folks from getting a treatment. I felt especially vulnerable to be reading...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Focusing on the Moon
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson I have too many things running about in my cranium. I know you guys have this problem too; So many ideas, some good, some that seem really good until they get out of your head and into the daylight. It takes serious effort to focus on one thing at a time. Brilliant ideas pop up, all shiny and new, seducing me for a few hours, days or weeks. Then another idea rings the doorbell and distracts me from the scheme that’s already been cooking. I fall for the whole seduction again, setting aside the previous genius thought to tend to the new one. Swear to god, I don’t have ADD. Focus has taken hold of me in the past, so I know it’s possible, it just requires some discipline. Outside of hiring a really good organizational therapist, the best helper for someone who is easily distracted is (hold on I have to read an article about building a better writing practice…Okay, what were we talking about? Oh yeah…) a deadline. Having a deadline helps me get my FaN column in every other week. It’s helped me produce kick-ass plays in a timely manner and, most recently, helped get one of my more persistent ideas off the ground. A unique project has been jumping around the ole cabeza over the past 3+ years. I call it Moons Over Monuments. The idea was to head out with my husband, or one or two very close friends, to take pictures of scenic landscapes or those plentiful historical markers that dot the highways around America, while I would be mooning the camera. The shots would be PG and tastefully done, as tasteful as mooning history and nature could be. In addition, I...
Tall Drink of Nerd – Has Gone Bananas
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson As I type this, I’m shamelessly stuffing my face with chocolate chip banana bread cookies. Given my proclamation to go wheat free on a previous FaN blog, chocolate chip banana bread cookies seem dangerous, contradictory, hypocritical even. Nope! That blog got much love and support from friends and from peeps suffering from Celiac Disease, thank you very much! At the time, I also admitted to being thrifty. I promised you that if I found any cheapish Gluten Free (GF) recipes/solutions that I would share them here on FaN. Well I have found some! I humbly apologize to Fierce Foodie, who is the true FaN recipe guru. She is responsible for any drool damage I have to my laptop. (BTW, try her rice pudding recipe; it’s gluten free and so addictive, I just go ahead and leave the spoon in the dish in the fridge for easy snacking access…) Just to be difficult, I also have a serious sugar jones and love to bake. I think I have written 4 blogumns about pastries here on FaN. A few weeks ago I decided to make traditional chocolate chip cookies. They were meant to be a pre-emptive apology to our downstairs neighbor for our recent Wii Fit Plus purchase and activity. We get bouncy on the Wii. You know that all of the cookies didn’t make the trip downstairs. After savoring 1/2 a cookie, I had a horrific headache, tummy troubles and a tremendously bitchy personality change. But the 20 minutes they took to bake, and 1 minute of tasting, were happy making. I only wanted to bake cookies that wouldn’t make me miserable. Luckily, the very next morning, one of my favorite food porn sites, 101cookbooks.com, posted a natural chocolate...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Shrinkage
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” – Anais Nin. That quote sometimes plays over and over in my brain like an annoyingly catchy Smashmouth song. As a perfect test subject, my life proves the theory of this quote to be true. At the present moment, my life is quiet and simple and as shrunken as a lamb’s wool sweater that has spent 3 hours on high in your clothes dryer. A Barbie-sized life. The past year I retracted my various curiosity tentacles, internalized meditation on the meaning of life and focused on healing my psyche. Visiting friends, going to parties, meeting people or being creative seemed mildly terrifying. Invitations were ignored or responded to with a clean “No.” One of the problems of continually saying “No” is that eventually people stop asking. Being social may not seem all that courageous, unless you find it scary, which I do. Unfortunately, a big bite of this tendency to fold-up into myself is genetic. Agoraphobia is known, in my family, as Grandma Berg disease, or “acting like Agnes”. My Mom’s mom, Agnes Berg, was terrified of going places. She lived on the wide-open Colorado Northern Plains, with 7 kids, on a farm, with no electricity or plumbing for most of her life. That’s crazy brave to me, but she absolutely hated getting in a car, traveling to weddings or other family events. Her panic vexed her children and grandchildren. They still tell stories about how limiting and annoying it was. I always knew I had a bit of ‘The Agnes’ in me. When the world scared me, I retreated inward, writing stories about imaginary pals who would never judge or let me down. God forbid I let people...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Donuts Make Me Go Nuts
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson I keep having dreams about donuts. I’ll just wait here a moment while you get all the Freud jokes out of your system. Donuts in my dreams are copious, specific and there is not a hot dog or cigar in sight. One night I dreamt about mysteriously being sent a case full of Hostess Donut Gems, the crumbly kind that are a bit like coconut, but not really. Then I dreamt about eating fresh and warm, unfrosted cake donuts straight out of a machine I had in my kitchen. A few nights later, the star of my dream was a mixed dozen box of Krispy Kremes. My dream self dove, elbow deep, into the box and began downing plain glazed, raised with sprinkles and cream filled maple long johns. We all know that a dream is a way for your subconscious to deal with things you aren’t dealing with in the real world. My interpretation here is literal. I want a donut. Recurring dreams are not unfamiliar to me. I rarely have a dream once and let it float away. Most of my sleepy-time picture shows revolve around trying to befriend the girls in High School who laughed at me, or I get stuck in increasingly smaller caves as I try to get to work/school/awards ceremonies. These are pretty much straight-up literal interpretations too. Since the rise of Facebook, High School chicks have befriended me, but there is still that anticipation of blocking, or mocking even if it’s just left over, cruel-kid juju. As for the caves, that’s just perceived obstacles. I usually end up just flying over the problems, which makes a spectacular entrance, btw. I highly recommend flying into your next award ceremony. But here come...
Tall Drink of Nerd – Love, the Hype
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Valentine’s Day is 6 days away, do you have any plans? My plans are about as solid as warm jell-o at this point. This is because I have two divergent thoughts on the holiday of Valentine. The pragmatic angel on my right shoulder knows that this is just a holiday that retail companies market like crazy to increase their sales between Christmas and Easter. I defy corporations to tell me what day to spread my love around! On the other shoulder sits a sappy tween girl who wants the roses and chocolates. She has the fantasy of the prince who gathers her onto his handsome steed so they can ride off into a pastel sunset whilst the angelic choir sings its rapture. So the logical side wants facts: Based on my understanding (and a smidge of Wikipedia reading to make sure I’m not full of it) St. Valentine was a martyr, or an amalgam of martyrs who died of various causes. I guess there is something to the “dying for love” thing, but aren’t martyrs dying for religious, not romantic, love? The other thing that confuses me is how the pagan god, Cupid, got stuck there in his baby form. He’s the god of love, so that makes sense, but still he is a pagan god, representing a holiday based on Christians who were martyred by pagans…odd. To be honest, cherub’s weird me out, even the cherub’s who can’t shoot. According to Wiki, the baby form of Cupid is a Putto. On most cards now, he’s that toddler, wearing a diaper and carrying a bow and arrow? Would you give your baby a weapon? That doesn’t seem romantic, it just seems dangerous. IMHO, if you can’t control your...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Delayed Cookiefication
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Christmas cookies, that’s just sugar and flour and frosting to some people. To me Christmas cookies are more sentiment than sugar. Every year, while I was growing up, we’d gather in a ritual of rolling chilly dough onto a flour dusted kitchen table, sprinkling sugar on the 2 dimensional holiday characters and sneaking so many bites of uncooked dough that I got a tummy ache. No, I never learned my lesson. Every year after I moved away from home, I would either have cookie-making parties or bake a big batch for co-workers. Even then, I would sneak bits of dough and yup, good ole tummy ache. At the very least, 5 or 6 cookies would arrive in the mail from Mom. She’d send them with presents from home when we can’t make it in person. This year, the cookies did not arrive. These cookies are conjured from a recipe out of an ancient issue of Farm Journal magazine that Mom keeps tucked away in a cupboard corner of her kitchen. There is a secret ingredient in these cookies that makes them more magical than any other pastry. One taste and that slightly bitter bite of nutmeg pops open my personal Way Back Machine and suddenly I am 8 years old again. I become the yellow haired girl, singing along to Alvin and the Chipmunks with my sisters and falling asleep on Christmas Eve with sugarplums in my head and blinking tree lights dancing on my bedroom wall. I didn’t make any cookies in 2009 because I’m avoiding wheat. We were headed home for my family’s Christmas celebration, so I figured I could have 1 or 2 cookies over the weekend without too much pain. Unfortunately, as we were...
Tall Drink of Nerd: A Little Change
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson I know I’m a little late in my greeting, but Happy New Year FaN readers! So I guess I’m already blowing my resolution to not procrastinate (except, of course, on Friday afternoons when the Procrastinate on This blogumn appears.). I had a head start on all ya’ll. My resolutions started last September. Since a lot of big changes had happened with slight effort on my part, I chose to make a few little adjustments. Those little things fixed me right up. Happily, the interwebs are chock full of free tools, that helped me with my September resolutions. Here is the ‘before’ picture of me: In 2009 I left my job, my husband got laid off the day after my 40th birthday, my Mom had skin Cancer Surgery, we were robbed, we moved, my 18 yr old cat – who needed constant home medical treatment – died, my Dad was diagnosed with Leukemia and then passed away. Late last August, when I came back from my Dad’s funeral, the stress of 2009 took me down. People who misuse the word ‘literally’ is one of my grammar pet peeves, so believe me when I say that I was literally knocked over by stress. I had vertigo, the world swam when I tried to stand, or simply turn over in bed. I had a fever for around 3 months. Life consisted of pushing myself through the day at my temp job and sleeping. Driving was impossible with my frazzled nerves, so my hub would cart my carcass to work and an express bus would ship me home. After blood tests and x-rays and other doctor-y type investigations, we discovered the most obvious cause of my dysfunction was stress. Well, duh. Normally,...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Bye Bye Wheat
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson I’ve attempted to quit a lot of things: TV, sugar, that love I found on Brokeback Mountain. The TV, sugar and love remain, in healthy moderation. Now I’m giving up wheat. This is not to be cool, because believe me, it’s much cooler to be able to join in the cupcake party than to sit it out. I quit wheat gluten because it was making me sick. I haven’t been diagnosed with Celiac Disease. I just know that cutting out the wheat makes my joints move more smoothly, my sinuses clear up and keeps the farty bloat down to a minimum. Celiac sufferers can’t process wheat or barley or rye. It messes with your small intestine & immune system. That is all the detail I’m going into here, because I’ve already given you more info than you needed on my intestines. Wikipedia and/or the Mayo Clinic can break it down for you better than I can. I’m not saying I have CD, just saying I’m sensitive. Wheat hasn’t been in our house, or my tummy for about 3 months now and I’m feeling fine. It hasn’t been easy because I love beers, breads and baking. The main problem with a GF diet (that’s Gluten Free folks) is that my wallet is suffering now. Trying to replace breads and beers with GF products is pricey, especially during this experimental “what’s good and what’s lame” phase. So far I’m only attached to 1 beer and 1 hydrox-type cookie. Look, I’m a cheap, er, frugal shopper. A trip to any store results in long pauses of peering at labels for ingredients, then bargains. I’m proud of my skill at buying quality, healthy foods on a budget. But with all these GF...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Bonding over the Board
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson The Holidays are seriously here, seriously. Thanksgiving is only 10 days away and I can already smell the roasting turkey, hear the happy babble of a house full of relatives and taste the spicy squish of pumpkin pie. Which reminds me, I should get to the grocery store soon. After the eating part, my favorite thing about holidays is playing board games. Board games are like a big ole ice pick, cracking past the regular chatter and getting right to the warm and steamy competition that makes friends like family and brings family closer. That rectangle of colored cardboard brings everybody to the same level. Before my boyfriend became my husband, Mom suggested we play Monopoly. He held his own as a clever smart ass with a bad sense of humor. He fit right in. On Thanksgiving we’ll drag out Monopoly, Clue or Pass the Pigs and ramp up the smack talk until we have each other chuckling and my Mom giggling herself teary eyed and red faced. Christmas at my house always meant a new board game from “Santa” for the family. Not exactly patient kids, we would tear into the plastic shrink-wrap around the box and set up the monies, pieces, etc… while my Dad would insist on reading the entire instructions, out loud. More often than not, we would start the game before Dad would finish his elocution, anxious to start kicking each other around. Dad would tell us to hold on and, since we didn’t listen, of course we’d have to refer back to the little rules pamphlet ½ way though the round. There is something about a board game, or cards if that’s how your crew rolls, that warms up the room. I...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Where do you live? I’m not asking so I can inundate you with campaign mailers or just pop by and drink all your beers. It’s come to my attention recently that geography can have a significant effect on a person. I suppose my real question is: Where should you live? I’ve lived in a lot of places. I grew up in a town of 900ish folks. We didn’t have a 7-11 or a movie theater or even a stoplight. There is a town whistle that sounds at 7 am, Noon, 1 and 6 pm. There are benefits to living in a small town. Those benefits weren’t as clear to me as an out-of-place teenager. The positives came into crystal focus when my Dad got sick and the town was there to support my parents. That was pretty awesome. My whole adult life I’ve bounced around a lot of different places: College-town Kansas, Suburban and Urban Chicago, Suburban and Urban Los Angeles and finally The Beach. I was always more at home in urban situations that matched conditions to where I grew up. Seems contradictory right? Well, I like to walk everywhere and would rather shop small, local businesses than load up at the Wal*Mart. Chicago was perfect for most of this, but it was frickin cold! My life and soul are totally affected by my locale. In the ‘burbs my colors dim. I rarely venture forth or experiment with anything creative. I do fit in a lot of sleeping though. It’s the mix of convenience and opportunity that urban areas offer that lights my fire. When we moved to Santa Monica in April, after a dozen years in the valley, it was like we moved home. It’s not...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Family Order
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson In the spirit of Ernessa’s Month of Minefields, I would like to toss in my own sparkly firecracker. This isn’t going to be as controversial as her blogumns on inter-racial marriage, (honestly, I was surprised that inter racial marriage/relationships are still controversial, but I am living in my naïve world where love trumps race or gender.). My tender spot hits close to home. How do you fit in the family? Me, I’m the black(ish) sheep. My family is populated with incredibly nice people. We get along well. Experiencing our recent family traumas has brought us closer together, but still… I’m different. I am the weirdo, oddball in my family. How did I get this distinction? As the fifth child, my role in our house was to be the spoiled baby girl. It’s a part I embraced in an embarrassing way as a snotty teenage girl. After I moved thousands of miles away, they were left with that residual image of me. That was the start. Now, everything I think or believe is pretty much contrary to the rest of the brood, and it is all the biggies: politics, religion and breeding. I avoid talking about those subjects when I am home. My family has a very High conflict avoidance gene. If it isn’t necessary to disagree, then why do it, is the Henry motto. The religion and family creation are the smaller pieces of our disconnection. While every one in the family has their own religious belief, I respect their viewpoint and their faith, even if it isn’t mine. I know that they love me as I am, even if they think I’ll be Left Behind. I’ve come more into the fold after I married my main man...
Tall Drink of Nerd: There is No Amateur-crastination
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson My house is much cleaner today, thanks to a deadline to get my FaN blogumn to you. After all the stress of the past year: double unemployment, pet illnesses, parental illnesses and lengthy hospital stays and finally the passing of my Father, I went into a funk. Not the George Clinton kind, more like the Virginia Woolf kind (only no river or pockets or rocks.) I didn’t eat, I caught some version of the stress flu, I slept a LOT and my house turned messy. Also, no writing was done during this time. Words seemed an extravagant luxury of self-indulgence. I think my brain went into the human version of the spinning beach ball of no return that happens when your computer freezes. But now, after sleeping for a month, or what I refer to as “convalescing”, and receiving much family and friendly support, I feel re-booted. I figured it was time for a new FaN column. Only now my apartment needs a serious tidying. It’s amazing how sparkly clean my place gets when I’m trying to write. The plants get watered, the laundry is finished, the groceries are re-stocked, and the animals get brushed. Clothes get buttons sewn back onto them. I have even resorted to ironing shirts when trying to write. I am a professional procrastinator. You might assume that I find writing difficult/painful/tedious, yes? No. I love to write. The actual moment of writing, the editing and the way I feel after creating words on a page, I get high on it all. Writing makes me feel like “I am what I am” to crib a phrase from Popeye. But, procrastination is my version of Sirens singing me to my doom on the rocky shores. ...
Tall Drink of Nerd – Looking For Love in All the Wrong Places
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson After 5.5 months of job-searching and unemployment, I found it ironic to start my 12 week temp job on the Friday before Labor Day. All Hail the Three Day Weekend! During recent walks and talks with my husband, I’ve come to realize that my search for the perfect job is very similar to the modern day search for true love. I sign up with agencies to find the right place for me, I scour the internet for keywords that fit my ideal work vocabulary and then I arrange short meetings to see if their employment ring fits on my unemployed finger. Because I honestly and truly want to find a work home, somewhere to stay for the rest of my work-life. After a recent failed job interview, garnered from CareerBuilder.com, I thought “I can’t believe I shaved my legs for that interview.” This job seemed perfect, like a commercial for eHarmony. Their job post matched my 26 points of compatibility. The pre-interview, phone call was wonderful. Then, while meeting face-to-face, the job was entirely different than what I had expected. It was as if the job had posted a picture of itself from 15 years ago, but had since lost all it’s hair, gained 155 lbs and had moved back in with it’s Mom. Most often, I’ve taken jobs that seemed fun and challenging because they’ve been readily there for me. The company offers a job and work home and I would be so ready for the opportunity that I say ‘Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!” And I mean it, I look forward to getting to know them, learning their quirks, showing them mine, but then the honeymoon period wears off. My perfect job shows it’s true...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Bad Cook
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson I start thinking of dinner around 3 in the afternoon. Then I eat an apple and don’t think of it again until I get in the car for my drive home. By 6, as the commute starts, I am so hungry I could eat my key chain. I put my earpiece into my ear, plug the other end into the phone and relay my hunger to my husband. Seen is at home, standing in front of an open fridge and listing out contents, usually starting with what we don’t have. “We didn’t remember to thaw the ground turkey, but we have chicken breasts and red peppers. I can grill…?” He offers, my wonderful chef of a husband. “OMG…that sounds divine” I moan, “I am so hungry, I could eat a skunks tail.” “Gross.” he always knows the perfect response. “Just pick up some beer on your way home.” That is how I contribute. I am a mildly awful and tremendously lazy cook. It really is fortunate that he gets home before I do. I inherited the bad-cooking gene from my mother. Mom was a phenom at baking. Her pies and cookies and cinnamon buns and angel food cakes were heaven sent and disappeared quickly from the reunion buffet table. It’s a mystery how such a talented baker could be such a bad cook. Once, while in the 3rd grade, after a friend had spent the night at my house, I found a note tucked into my coat pocket. “Your Mom’s cooking made me sick.” it read. The note was anonymous, but I didn’t need Nancy Drew to help me figure out who wrote the thing. That note of cruel, childish honesty bobs around in my memory to this...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Recession Recess
posted by amy
One of the perks of being “funemployed” is that you have all the time in the world to work out and be healthy. Now that my husband has joined me in funemployment, I have a workout partner. Because neither my workout partner nor I have an income, we have cut our expenses down to the necessities; food, Internet, beer and shelter. That means we’ve opted out of our gym membership. There are dangers to unemployment, including ennui, feeling disconnected, boredom and depression. Working out can fight these. Even if you are still employed, but with more pressure, less pay and more responsibilities because the guy next to you got cut, working out will keep you sane. Getting your sweat on, in these crazy times, is vital. Seen and I have become creative in our fitness pursuits and I thought I’d take the opportunity to share some of our free/cheap ways to keep your mind centered and your butt from couch potato-ing. Try the park! Every town has a park with fresh air and ample workout opportunities. We’ve taken advantage of local jogging paths in the last 3 places we’ve lived. I tend to jog until my lungs cave in, about 3 minutes, and then walk at a healthy pace. If your park is just grassy lawn stuff, try wind sprints in those areas. That should get your heart rate up, your lungs burning, and it’ll transport you back in time to 10th grade PE, when you thought the coach was just a sadistic jerk who liked to see teenagers hyperventilate. My sister from Kansas showed me the best tool to use in a park workout. It’s called FitDeck. It’s basically a deck of cards with loads of exercises for every inch of your jiggly...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Father Time
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson This week I wanted to write something fun, kicky, summeresque for my FaN blogumn. I wanted to talk about the resurgence of mobile food coaches like Cool Haus, the handmade ice cream sandwich truck here in LA. I pondered on writing about my love of Vuze.com, a new peer-to-peer file bit torrent app where I downloaded the entire 2006 season of Doctor Who in HD for free! I wanted to talk to you about a gazillion different cool things that the nerd in me loves/is excited about, but I can’t focus on anything other than my current reality. My Dad has Leukemia. That sentence just keeps rolling around in my brain like a mean-ass pinball. It’s amazing how much space a 4-word sentence can occupy. As I write today, I’m sitting at the cluttered kitchen table in the house where I spent my formative years. Lappy and I are in a little burgh named Haxtun, a tiny town of 900 brave souls on the Colorado prairie. Before Dad’s illness began, I would travel to Haxtun every other year or so, usually catching up with family news on the phone. I was an awkward, artsy, odd child who packed up and moved to a bigger town as soon as my 18th birthday hit. Haxtun is worlds, planets and galaxies, away from the fierce life in LA. There are no stoplights, no ice-cream trucks and the only grocery store in town doesn’t sell beer and closes at 10pm. You have to walk across the highway to the liquor store for that. There is a town whistle that blows at 7am, Noon, 1pm and 6pm. My parents have lived in Haxtun for 36 years, 32 spent in this house. Today, Mom...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Ghost Writer
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson My husband thinks I am a secret emo-girl. He is basing this label on my fascination with cemeteries. Big or small it doesn’t matter, any cemetery we drive past makes me tug on his arm and ask him to stop so we can shoot some pictures of the Dirt Nap Motel. Honestly, cemeteries just get my imagination going. The hallowed ground could be in a big city or rural back-road, I will want to hop out and examine the histories, the abbreviated life stories. In today’s terms, the headstone quote is like your final micro-blog on Twitter or Facebook status update: “Mother to Harvey and Edith”, “Angel in Heaven”, or the one I thought was odd as a farewell “No More Pain.” It could be your last thought or what your family thinks your last thought would (or should) be. It’s no mystery to me why I’m relaxed in the cemetery. My paternal Grandma died when I was 8. Her resting place is just off the narrow park road that borders the wheat field to the west of our tiny town. I visited her grave a lot when I was a miserable teenager, talking my troubles out to her and the deep purple marble that bore her name. I got comfortable in the Haxtun burial ground, spending a lot of time reading headstones and imagining relatives, friends, loved ones who were lost. There were lots of folks who’d lived full, long lives. There were also plots that radiated sadness; many teens who had died in car crashes on our country dirt roads; rows of babies lost to the flu epidemic in 1918; so many stories, so many ordinary tales waiting to be told. When I left town for...
Tall Drink of Nerd: The Hole of Wishing
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson The time at the tone is Zen O’Clock. Time to be. I just realized, I’ve been wishing my life away; wishing the weekend was here, wishing it were the end of the day, wishing it was time for dessert, basically wishing my life away. I’m gonna stop that nonsense now. My plan is to try and live my life in real time and not constantly in fast forward. To steal a line from The Peaceful Warrior, I’m going to live like ‘there are no ordinary moments’. With any luck, and a little teeny bit of focus, I’ll stop pushing and worrying and wishing for the next thing to happen and I’ll enjoy where and when I am. Here are the 3 big reasons for my decision to chill-the f-out and stop pushing time: 1. Aging parents – I just spent 6 days with my folks in CO. Mom was having surgery to find out if the rare, and aggressive, cancer had spread, from the teeny bump on her arm, into her lymph glands. (It didn’t! YAY! She is cancer free with only 24 stitches on her bicep to show for it.) Dad was diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS), an incurable blood disease, last June. He was given 10 mos to live at that time. He has beat that prognosis by 2 months already and his doctors say he’s stable now. He’s a tough old bird and has always been the picture of strength. Now, some days are good days, some days suck, but he’s living every day, in that day. So, I went home to help out with the gardening, yard mowing, dog walking (and the icky clean-up involved with that), Dad shoulder massaging, suture-antibiotic goop applying and...
Tall Drink of Nerd: I’ve Got the Music in Me
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Music. It’s everywhere. Every day music is all around you; morning alarm, drive to work, soundtrack under your fav TV show. Heck, Ernessa even does a daily blog about guessing song lyrics. Sorry cotton, music is the real fabric of our lives. Photo by Epiclectic Today I’m wondering who your musical influences are. That’s a standard question usually reserved for rock stars when they make the cover of the Rolling Stone. They answer with timeless, occasionally obscure, musicians in history but what I’m wondering is who, in your life, has influenced your musical taste? Who introduced you to Opera or Punk or Reggae? Who took you to your first concert or gave you your first Parliament CD? My Dad was my first influence. He wanted to be a crooner, like Eddy Arnold, but life didn’t work out that way. Though Dad’s job was construction, and being a father to 5 ornery Henrys, he had an overwhelming compulsion to croon. From the time my little pink ears could determine noise, I remember him constantly warbling snippets of old cowboy tunes or spirituals. He has yet to sing a full song, of anything, all the way through. He wanders around the house intoning the first verse of Peace in the Valley, and then hums a little before moving into El Paso. Because of him, I know half of the cowboy songs ever written. Or I should say, I know half of the lyrics to half of the cowboy songs ever written. My siblings contributed to the play list in my brain too. My brothers brought in the 70’s roots rock, Sister #1 added Barry Manilow and Bob Seger then Sister #2 piled Styx and Journey on top of the list....
Tall Drink of Nerd: The Hustler
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Did I ever tell you about the time I was a model for Hustler? Have you ever said “YES!” to something you wouldn’t normally do. because it sounds like a fun and unique experience only to realize that at some point during the experience, you should have known better? That’s pretty much what happened here. (Don’t worry, this is still the family friendly FaN that you know and love.) My wonderful friend Raquel called me on a cloudy Sunday afternoon. She had been hired to art direct a photo shoot for the Hustler clothing catalog. As a friend, I was jazzed that she had landed a nicely paying gig. Then came the unexpected. She popped the question; “I need 2 models for the day, would you like to be one of them?” I would be fully dressed the entire shoot. (Even fully clothed though, it is something I have yet to mention to my Mother.) Let me tell you this before I proceed further. I was 35 at the time, about 20-25 pounds overweight and working a nice, desk-y day job in a creative placement agency. Maybe I was a candidate for the “Dove real women” ad campaign and in hindsight, maybe I should have seen my own limitations and said “Wow, thanks Roxy, I’m flattered, but I’m gonna pass this on to the younger generation.” Nope, I said “HELL YES!” and prepped for the shoot in 10 days. The day of the shoot dawned and I was still, as expected, 35 years young and carrying around 20-25 extra ell-bees. But I was ready for the adventure. I packed my car with what I assumed you’d take to a Hustler shoot: gum, fun polka-dotted bras, slutty heels, a...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Lappy Come Home
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson With a sigh of relief, I’m writing to you this week from my new-to-me Mac Laptop. My legs are warming nicely and I’m slumping into my couch while Stephanopoulos grills Boehner. It’s amazing how addicted I am to technology. If you had asked me at the beginning of the year, what would you grab if your house were on fire and you had to get out in 2 minutes? I would have responded immediately with, Lappy, the Mac Titanium laptop. After my cats and my hubby, the laptop would have been the first non-living thing on top of the list. Ole Lappy contained decades of pictures, scanned and stored. It held all types and manner of drafts of writing I’ve done, an iTunes Library built up over the last 5 years and passwords, spreadsheets and assorted necessities that we’re tracked since Lappy came into our lives in August of ’04. Then some jerks broke into my home and stole the laptop. It was Friday, February 13th, the day before Valentines Day, not cool. Some punk kids (we think) broke in and took the new Wii and iPod Nano I had given Seen for his birthday 2 weeks before. They stole some video games, the PS3 that had been our Christmas present to each other and then the idiots went into my office and took my friggin laptop. Now, Lappy was old and didn’t quite work right. I’d dropped her on the floor one too many times so the case was cracked, the DVD drive didn’t work anymore and the power source needed serious finagling just to plug in. I’m sure they didn’t get much money for her. I kept wishing they would just say ‘oh this is broken’...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Drew Barrymore Ending
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson A civics geek, I am thrilled to be working for the 2010 census. As a writer, I was excited to take on this unique experience. My plan was to take copious notes of my census experiences and within the year, publish a Pulitzer Prize winning novel about the crazy exploits of a census taker. But my dreams of success were dashed during training, all the census taker types were sworn in with an oath. Basically, everything we see or discuss is confidential. The records we are compiling will be released for public consumption in 72 years. Fudge. So, maybe my novel will bring me fame when I’m deep into my Hundies. Though the confidentiality rule prevents me from telling you anything I see or discuss, it doesn’t prevent my imagination from whirling while I’m walking around the LA Suburban Valley for 7 hours a day. Today I was dreaming up a hit-movie about a kooky census canvasser (that would be me). She would meet Mr. Right through some wacky set of circumstances (dog bite, plumbing mishap, fender-bender, libertarian debate) and a beautiful romantic comedy type situation would ensue. Okay, I already have a Mr. Right, but I was in RomComland, so lets set that aside in this fictional story. It occurred to me, while I was spinning this yarn in my noggin, that I always cast the same person in the role of Amy in my mental movies. I am always Drew Barrymore. I think Drew got stuck in rotation after she was in Wedding Singer. I’m not a huge Drew Barrymore fan, I like her in some stuff and steer clear of other stuff. Our lives couldn’t be much more different, I had a stable family, don’t...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Legal Love
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson This weekend, I’ve been catching up on the dating exploits of FaN bloggers. Laughing vicariously at the exploits of the single folk and remembering, through a Scooby-Doo wavy memory wipe, back to my own dating days. George H.W. Bush was President the last time I had a “date”. I was a horrible dater. I was hella shy and when I tried to impress a boy I liked, my killer move was trying to be funny but really just coming off as weird. Basically, I acted a fool and floundered in a beer-soaked sea of Chicago boys. Clearly, I was a different kind of crazy than the guys I was meeting. No connection worked, every attempt I made seemed awkward and mismatched, like eating caviar on Doritos. Then I met Seen. Eighteen years ago, this Saturday, is when I, a precocious, free-spirited 20-something in a hippie dress and a straw hat, shook hands with the oddly named fellow and found my match. Seen was my friend first, for all of 6 hours until we started macking. He was the guitar player for a pick-up band and I was recruited by a mutual friend to be the back-up girl singer. After the first rehearsal, we went out for drinks. My roommate hooked up with the drummer and I got my Seen. The first time I saw Seen, there wasn’t a chorus of angels or a halo of light surrounding him, but he was so clever and so nice. I didn’t act weird and he thought I was funny. We were bent on each other right away. His kind of crazy matched mine. Eleven years after we met, we made it all legal by marrying on a Malibu beach at sunset. ...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Don’t Tell!
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson I can see by the box-office numbers that many of you saw Watchmen this weekend. Heck, Clark Perry even wrote his blogumn about it for Friday’s FaN. I haven’t seen it yet. Please, I’m begging you, don’t tell me about it! Here’s a little quirk of mine: I hate knowing anything about a movie when I go into the theatre. Okay, maybe not anything, but keep the details, key plot points, character developments, those types of things far away from me. I enjoy being surprised and delight in weird, random turns movies take along the way to get to the point. After I see the movie, I’m all up for breaking it into parts/pieces and talking about it with you, but before I see it, don’t tell me! I’m a very impressionable youngish gal who might pick up your bias, good or bad, and let that color the movie slightly for me. What makes me mental is when the studio releases previews that include a slice of a scene that seems pivotal. My suspension of disbelief drops until we get to that scene. I end up not buying the moment when Jack Nicholson is going to die early on, because he obviously has to pee on James Spader’s shoes later in the movie. When really big movies open, I avoid all media about them. I change the subject if a friend starts to talk about their opinion. There have been times where I even avert my eyes from billboards that seem to reveal a major plot point. I like to keep the ice of my brain nice and clean. I cannot zamboni away a Gene Shalit review, even if it’s ridiculous and all I really remember is his...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Zen and the Art of Wardrobe Maintenance
posted by amy
a blogumn by Amy Robinson Today commemorates my one-year anniversary of working again at an officey-type day job. While it’s great to keep this job in this dung-beetle fodder of an economy, I do miss my freedom. For a year and a half prior to that monumental “first day”, I had the opportunity to work on my own home business. I did miss the day-to-day socializations of a structured corporation, but I started becoming the person I had always tried to be. That lady was fun and mindful, healthy and creative. I was open to any prospect the universe threw at me and I prospered as a human, if not as a business owner. About a month after I put the golden shackles back on, I realized my life was slowly changing. The small detail that alerted me to the change was simple. I had put my shirt on backwards and wore it that way all day long. It was a plain white cami that I wore under a sparkly blue button up, so no one else noticed that I had a shirt on backwards. Early in the day, I glanced down and noticed a tag sticking out of my cleavage. That little white flag of surrender, with laundry instructions, signaled much bigger things than just my backwards attire. Wearing backward clothes meant I was losing it, unaccustomed to daily working life of; waking, exercising, showering, dressing, driving, sitting, socializing, eating, typing, chatting, etc… This was a world for suckers, the world for everyone I knew and now for me again. After that teeny wardrobe malfunction, I made it my goal to still live mindfully. I try to only let thoughtful and attentive words slip from my mouth, to only eat healthy...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Running Up That Hill
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Sometimes, it seems like every experience I have is a huge, neon metaphor from the universe about my life. This past Sunday, one such metaphor threw itself at me in the form of the Chinatown Firecracker 5k. There is one thing you should know before we continue into this life lessony type story; I am not athletic. I’m moderately active for my heart and mental health. If I could be happy and healthy sleeping in and eating cheese-fries, I’d do it. But then all of the gyms would be out of business because most of us feel the same way. So as the story starts, we find Amy signed up for a 5k run as part of a New Years Resolution to “Run two 5k’s this year”. My husband, Seen, and I love Chinatown + proceeds for this run benefit Chinatown + we’ve been talking about this run for 3 years = Firecracker 5k is the first 5k Seen and I attempt in ‘09. So, I started running at the gym, getting my time down, wrecking my knee. To insure that I’ll actually go through with this, and not wuss out, I tell everyone around me that I’m running this thing. On a Friday, only 9 days to race-time, a co-worker of mine gives me a frightened look when I tell her how jazzed I am about the upcoming run. It seems she was thinking about running that race, until she saw the course. It’s uphill to Dodgers Stadium. Sunday, one week left to train, we drive the Firecracker 5k course and holy mackerel: It’s 3 sizable uphill runs. I start to worry, building those hills up in my mind. I’ve only been training on flat tracks. I...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Pondering the Unthinkable
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson What I’m about to say might sound like sacrilege to some FaN readers, and I know that it definitely will to some blogumnists; I’m seriously thinking of getting rid of our TV. I’m thinking this scandalous thought not because we never watch TV, and it’s not a resolution. I’m pondering the unthinkable because, well, I have a problem. My name is Amy and I am a television addict. This all started years ago. Even as a child, with only 3 major networks and PBS to choose from, the glowing box held me tight in dulling chains, invading every memory of my girlhood. At Grandma’s house, my cousins and I would watch Godzilla movies in the basement on an old TV that needed 10 minutes to warm up. Outside playtime was usually based on Little House on the Prairie (of course, we really did live on the prairie, so it wasn’t much of a stretch). At sleepovers, terrifying scenes from Night Gallery would run over and over in my imagination, making sleep impossible. Even my first kiss was just a reenactment of a scene from Guiding Light. As a friendless teenager, empty weekend nights were wasted on Fame and The Love Boat. I shared Cheerios on Sunday morning with my TV best buddy, Doctor Who. On the Sunday morning when Adrick, the Doctor’s faithful sidekick died, I was devastated. To say that I was hooked is an embarrassing understatement. There have been a few times in my life when I was sans TV. I gained more friends, produced theatre, sang in cabarets and was prosaic in my writing. Museums were frequented, adventures undertaken and life stories built. But now, nearly at the middle of my ages, I look back...
Tall Drink of Nerd: The Sweet Spot
posted by amy
. a blogumn by Amy Robinson Where do you find your muse? My muse is waiting in the car. She rides shotgun and spritzes magical fairy dust at me every few miles. If I could write and drive at the same time, I would have been as prolific as Stephen King by now. I think my muse likes the car because I’m not distracted in there by work, TV or chores (just by that whole driving thing). It’s either that, or my muse has a cruel sense of humor and takes pleasure in filling my head with ideas that I can’t write down while my hands rest at 10 and 2. Most likely the latter. Did I mention that the muse doesn’t visit the car when I am the passenger? Nope, that would be too easy. When, and if, she decides to come into the house, she steers clear of my home office. Do you have a space set aside just for being creative? Just for being crafty? Just to clear your head? I am lucky enough to have a room just for creating. Does your creative space welcome the muse? I think mine does, it’s painted a light lilac, has candles and soft music (and a litter box, which has been an occasional source of odd inspiration.) But when I sit at my new desk, all the brilliant ideas I’d had only two minutes earlier, have left me. Somehow, those clever ideas have thrown a rope ladder out of my ear and have scrambled down to freedom, leaving my skull good only for widening hats and holding down my neck. My muse is finicky, but I, too, can be sneaky. I know of the sweet spot in the house and if I jump...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Cold Day at the Beach and Other Christmas Traditions...
posted by amy
. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Traditional Girl Last Thursday, known to most of you as Christmas Day, I braved Santa Monica pier with my handsome husband Seen. It was freezing. Many of you are thinking, “Hey, lady who lives in Los Angeles… It was blizzarding here in [insert Northern/Eastern/Mountain town name here] You don’t know cold.” Oh, I know cold. Colorado is where I was born and raised. I remember days when it was too cold to snow. Then I spent my 20’s in Chicago. I know that if you get stuck waiting for the 151 bus to take you downtown in January, the wind rises off Lake Michigan to whistle through all 3 layers of your coat, scarf, and clothes then bites into your flesh, your viscera and settles in your bones. It’s a bitter and painful cold. On Christmas Day of 2008, the Santa Monica Pier was cold. The rain was not so much falling on us as slicing at my face in a horizontal pattern. On any other rainy day I would have tucked my hiney under a blanket and vegged out to the flicker of A Christmas Story on TBS. But we have a Christmas tradition, hubby and I, we go to the beach at Christmas. I grew up with tradition. We always went to my maternal Grandmother’s on Christmas Eve. We always listened to the same three Christmas albums on the record player while we baked cookies, made candies and wrapped presents. We always used the same decorations on the tree and each kid in my family had their set of ornaments to decorate with. My favorite Christmas tradition was waking up between 3:00 and 4:00 AM on Christmas morning and sneaking into the living room with my...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Christmas Cookies
posted by amy
. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Christmas tastes like a sugar cookie made from my Mother’s special Christmas Cookie recipe. Every year since 1963, the Henry’s have made Christmas cookies from a recipe Mom found in a December issue of Farm Wife Magazine. She keeps the yellowing magazine zipped safely into a gallon Ziploc bag hidden behind the Ball Jars in her pantry. As a kid, I would slip the Chipmunks Christmas album out its cardboard sleeve and onto the record player. Then, with Alvin & his brothers in the background, we would get to the business of making cookies. Mom would form the dough and manage the oven. My older, better sister Janet and I would press angel and bell and reindeer cookie cutters into the dough. Dad would help us decorate the shapes with red and green sugars and chocolate sprinkles. Our small rural kitchen warmed with baking cookies, but winter peeked in through the windows, keeping the glass panes chilled and iced with frost. No office sugar cookie or shared holiday treat has ever tasted like those cookies. The secret ingredient is nutmeg. It’s such a simple little spice, but it changes these cookies from regular sugar cookies to Christmas cookies. I have had cookie-making parties with friends and shared with non-family. It just doesn’t taste the same to them as it does to me. All my Christmas’s past are wrapped up in that little bit of nutmeg. One bite defines Christmas. It transports me to my Grandparents house, with all my Aunts and Uncles and cousins singing by candlelight every Christmas Eve. The Henry’s were tasked to bring the cookies. Our whole family would sing carols before we opened presents. The caroling would end with Silent Night as my Grandpa...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Give It!
posted by amy
. A blogumn by Amy Robinson The consumerist push of BUY! BUY! BUY! at Christmas has always cheesed me a little. Every year, some dufus is interviewed, camping out in front of Best Buy on Thanksgiving night saying he “doesn’t know what he wants, he just wants to SHOP tomorrow morning.” Ah, the true meaning of Christmas “Spend Mindlessly!” That mentality has brought us Wal-Mart stampedes for at least the past 3 years. People are getting KILLED for a $10 DVD player. Ick. I try to avoid that nonsense and aside from a few presents for my husband, I usually donate to charities for my family members. In years past we’ve donated to Heifer.org, which sends livestock or trees to needy people around the world. Even for a very good cause, the responsibility of sending adorable bunnies or goats to their ultimate doom makes me a little squidgy, so I usually send the bees or the trees. Last year, the Humane Society received a gift in my parents name to help kittens and puppies. Maybe this year we’ll donate to the Clean Water Project, which was posted on FaN over Thanksgiving. These are just a few of the places I know of. There are a TON of charities, most are hurting in our crappy economy. Feel free to add the charity that is closest to your heart in comments! A charity donation may not be the most firework-inducing, breath-stopping, jig-dancing present to open on Christmas Day, but it’s hella better than a stuffed, singing, ninja hamster that was made overseas. (okay, not as funny, but the universe will be happier with you.) Still, there are times when presents are necessary and I’m not saying that all presents are a hum-bug. My family does a...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Thanksgiving Pie Edition
posted by amy
. A blogumn by Amy Robinson I can’t bake a pumpkin pie like my Mom’s. I asked her for the recipe once, many years ago, hoping she’d share the family secret. She said, “It’s on the label of the canned pumpkin.” My Mother – the gourmet. All the variations I’ve attempted from this little orange paper scrap of a recipe don’t measure up to anything I grew up with. Maybe it’s the difference in altitude, she’s Rocky Mountain high and I’m at sea level; maybe it’s a difference between my brand new oven and her 25 yr old oven; maybe pies taste better when you’re surrounded by 30 noisy family members. I can’t make a piecrust like my Mom’s. Once, many years ago, I made a kick-ass piecrust, lovingly spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg, but couldn’t repeat it. After years of failed attempts at a crust, all of them crumbly and puzzled-pieced into the pie tin, I asked my Mom what I was doing wrong. “I haven’t made a crust in 20 years.” She told me. “Go buy the Pillsbury crust. They’re just as good as homemade” She’s right about the crusts, but they still don’t taste like they used to. I can’t make an apple pie like my Mom’s. She uses pie filling she’d canned earlier in the year. Every fall, Mom heats up a big black kettle on her stove, tosses in a few bushels of cored apples from the apple tree, a few dozen cups of sugar and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Her kitchen smells like apple pie. The teen me hated helping her can, all that coring and peeling of apples wrinkled my fingers, but I would love coming home from school to that cinnamon smell warming the kitchen. Mom...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Crazy Cat Lady
posted by amy
. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Last time you heard from me, I shared the reasons I’m no mommy. Today, I figured I’d share my story of kid replacements. Here is where I am at my nerdiest. I am a crazy cat lady. Crazy, to me means that you own more than 2 of any kind of animal. For two years we had 4 cats, but we lost our Weasel in May. Currently, we are spoiling 3 cats very rotten. Reading FaN posts about animals (felines and doggies) I know that many of the readers/contributors here love their animals too. Where does that love come from? My parents always had dogs and cats around our house. We had a mutt-wiener dog named Puddles who was 2 yrs old when I was born. There was no shortage of cats/kittens, because it was pre-neuter/spay campaigns and the cats were allowed to run loose in my rural town. But those animals weren’t spoiled like the ones who control my house now. I think my folks taught me to respect animals and treat them like living creatures. But where did I get this desire to cater to their every whim? How do we spoil them, let me count the ways: the only vet I trust is the vet who ONLY makes house-calls, not exactly a bargain, because I don’t want them to have respiratory problems I buy them “Worlds Best Cat Litter” which is made of corn (but priced like it’s diamonds and platinum), in order to get Munchy to take her Pepcid without trauma, (yup, we give the cat Pepcid for her nervous stomach issues) we’ve invested in Pill Pockets which are around $6 for a bag…of treats…they are so worth every penny. I could go on,...
Tall Drink of Nerd: I Believe That Children Are The Future…Just Not Mine...
posted by amy
. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Everybody is having babies. So many woman around me are new mommies, have the baby bump or in serious talks to get knocked up. An originally rural gal, most of my friends started having children right out of high school. A few girls from my class actually have kids in college at this point. And as the youngest of 5 in my family, I’ve had nieces and nephews since I was 10, and nearly all my nieces and nephews have gone on to creating more and more family members. Me, I’ve never had the baby jones. My first memory of a “we’re having a baby” announcement could be the reason. My oldest sister was 17, she was about to graduate from high school and was suddenly with child. Our folks were anything but thrilled. They were pretty much out of contact with thrilled and making a close acquaintance with extremely upset. Mom had us praying the rosary every night for a few months. Then my brother knocked up his 16yo girlfriend. More rosaries. I’m thinking that the psychic energy of that reaction to out-of-wedlock, teen-mothered babies clung to me. (Just to clarify, both those babies, now in their late 20’s are PHENOMENAL people. We’re all very glad they exist.) Most of my 20’s, when I heard “We’re pregnant” my first thought would be “OH NO!!” Now though, having named and shaken the source of the “oh no’s”, I am sincerely thrilled for people when they announce gleefully that they’re cooking a bun in the oven. There are a bunch of other reasons to keep me out of the family business; free-time, uncertainty about the future of the world, disposable income, mini-van ownership, total life-change, over-population, massive laziness. Those...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Candy Ass
posted by amy
. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Sugar and I have a deeply unhealthy relationship. I love it but have tried to kick it out of my life many, many times. For a few months last year, while working from home, I was successful. No more sugar, wheat or dairy in my diet. I was happier, smarter, had glowing skin, luxurious hair and I swear I smelled like peaches. Then I went back to the office. I tried to maintain my uber healthy lifestyle for the first few weeks of employment, but I wanted everyone to know how cool I am! I’m low maintenance, really. I’m not the girl who can’t get pizza with everyone because of wheat allergies. I’ll go to lunch at the Chinese place and share the custard sticky buns or take a slice of your home-baked pie while exclaiming what a good cook you are. Then it hit me, right in the middle of buying Girl Scout cookies from my bosses daughter, it hit me. Food is overwhelmingly social. All the cool kids in the office are in the sugar clique. It’s more fun to join in the ice cream run and get a single dip cone of Peanut Butter Cup Swirl than it is to stay at your desk and finish the FY2008 Q1 analytics spreadsheet. Staying behind is the equivalent of being a junior high kid in headgear. It is possible to join the gang for lunch and get the healthiest thing on the menu, or order the thin-crust, no-cheese, veggie pizza when you’re all working late. It’s possible to get a Green Machine on the Starbucks run. But even then, being part of the inner sugar circle with the Blended Chai Vanilla Late seems much more fun, everybody...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Airport Harlequin
posted by amy
. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Shopping for a Book at the Airport – Denver style I wouldn’t recommend buying a book at the airport. I would highly recommend buying a book that you really like beforehand and bringing it with you. But, if you’re like me and go visit your parents and end up finishing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, because your parents’ house is haunted, so you stay up late reading to give your lame adult ass a reason to leave the light on, then you are forced to shop for a book at the airport. So when, like me, you’re tired and all jittery, walking into the WH Smith Newsstand to buy a Time or Newsweek or just a People, something to keep you entertained for a 2-hour flight. AND you are just out of the 1 hour airport security line behind British folks who get stopped for having powder in their suitcase, which turns our to be lemonade powder. (Apparently you just can’t buy lemonade powder in the UK. Hilarious!) Unfortunately, every single scrap of Printed Media is splashed with the visage of Pit-Bull Be-Lipsticked Hockey Mom Sarah Palin. Can’t. Buy. That. At Denver International Airport the books are tucked back in the corner next to the storage entrance like porn at a video store (the actual porn at this newsstand is kept just over the Times and Newsweek’s. Who buys Juggs or Barely Legal to take onto a plane?) Now you’re faced with the choice of the New York Times Top 10, the collection of Harlequin romances, and the complete collection of Chicken Soup for the Fill In The Blank. So the choices are down to 10 books. After about 15 minutes of back of the book reading and disappointed pondering,...
Tall Drink of Nerd: Still Madly in Love With…
posted by amy
. A blogumn by Amy Robinson The Public Library – Home Sweet Home I am madly in love with the Public Library. Our affair began when I was just a wee lass of five years. My mother led me into the small Library of our teeny hometown and told me to pick out any book I wanted. How could I focus on picking just one in this ridiculous wealth of books!? My first choice was Yertle the Turtle. Then I stood on tip-toe, my little blue eyes barely peeping over the librarian’s desk as she made my first library card, which she handed over to me with Yertle and a clear, lime green sucker. I get to read Doctor Seuss for free and you add sugar to the mix? I was hooked. Since that time, oh so very long ago, I’ve always found a home-away-from-home in the public library. No matter where I’ve roamed; Kansas, Colorado, Chicago or Los Angeles, the public library is there. It trusts everyone enough to lend books, music, movies and art, even when you don’t have a job. There have been days, underemployed and in need of inspiration, where I would head to the Central Library (both in Chicago and Los Angeles, impressive structures by themselves.) As storms of rain, snow or economic madness raged outside, I could tuck into a big leather armchair, safe and warm amid the mountains of ideas wrapped in jewel colored book bindings. Encouragement can be found in the brilliance of great writers like Mark Twain, Sherman Alexie or Willa Cather. Books you couldn’t believe had found a publisher is also good inspiration. I’ll admit that I neglected the library for a while with the advent of Amazon and a good paying “regular” job. ...
Tall Drink of Nerd: I Love Poop Bags
posted by amy
. A blogumn by Amy Robinson Advice and observations from a somewhat tall nerd If you share your home with an animal that poops, you’ll love Poop Bags too. I’m here to tell ya, cat poop has consequences! One of my lesser of the “living green” New Years resolutions, was to stop flushing cat crap down the toilet. Did you know that the immense amount of cat poop flushed into our water supplies leading to the ocean leads to a rise in encephalitis in the Sea Otter population? Apparently the toxic bacteria in cat turds gets into the ocean water then enlarges the hearts of the little sea creatures, eventually killing them. I currently share my home with 3 cats, so I face a lot of poop challenges. I definitely don’t want to be responsible for killing sea otters. They’re cute and entertaining and not for human consumption. With the lives of little Whisker-faced ocean critters weighing on my very soul, I swore, no more lazy flushing for me! I started using old grocery bags to carry the crap out to the dumpster, but that didn’t seem too friendly to the environment either. I turned to our old friend Google for a solution and up popped PoopBags.com — biodegradable bags for dog owners to carry on walks for poop disposal, but they work just as well for the scoop and dump of daily kitty clean up. So now every one is happy, the cats are happy, the earth is happy, I’ve kept my resolution and scores of happy sea otters can frolic in the sunset with disease free hearts. . Amy Robinson’s children’s book “Too Many Monkeys” is now onsale at Lulu.com. 10% of all profits go to local animal...