Because I'd worked an especially long week, I was able to take off work a little early Friday. You can imagine the temptation to spend a close, sweltering afternoon in the soothing cave-like coolness of a few mall dressing rooms was strong, very strong...nearly irresistible. I've been trying to wean myself off this particular addiction for a while (you may recall). My current budget is less than tolerant, not to mention, I have not one but two jam-packed closets up in here.
And, alas, nothing at all to wear to a one hundred degree wedding.
(Apologies on the quality of this photo...no time to do better!)
And then there was episode 2: the 100th episode. This episode found J&K actually home at the same time in the same house celebrating the milestone. With Emeril Lagasse. Yah...BAM!...that guy. The New Orleans chef who burst on the scene some time in the nineties, landed a cooking show, used a lot of garlic, exchanged his starter wife for a trophy wife, and was last seen doing a toothpaste commercial, just sort of randomly showed up in the Gosselin kitchen. There was a flimsy backstory told about how Lagasse was once on an elevator with the Gosselins and, ever since, has harbored a burning desire to cook them dinner (and then eat said dinner with them). And, wow, what do you know, it's a dream come true, the day has finally come! Jon and Kate were actually both in the kitchen at the same time ostensibly helping with the cooking--some sort of stew--cajun, I'm guessing. The whole thing was...uncomfortable. Kate whacked Emeril two good smacks on two separate occasions (on the arm and hand) with a spatula. Emeril didn't take to kindly to the smacking. Jon doesn't like Kate. Jon peeled garlic for the majority of the episode. The kids stirred food sometimes. The gaiety was noticeably forced.
Is it just me or does that rabbit look a little swollen? Either he's--or more like she's--been eating REALLY well or we're about to get another little surprise of the newborn kind.
My piece on a great Asian themed fundraising event to be held June 18 at Etcetera Coffeehouse for Healing Hannah Ministries is up at iList Paducah. Read it here. Keep up with all that's going on with Healing Hannah by checking out founder (pictured above), Dawn Greer Choate's Healing Hannah Blog. Scroll through just a few of the items that will be available at the event:
I can't believe it's already Sunday night. This week has flown. Here's all the excitement that's going on with me.
This is my Geography book. Exciting, no? It arrived yesterday from the Amazon Marketplace just in the nick of time for class which starts on Tuesday (I saved fifty percent ordering from Amazon as opposed to buying at the school bookstore). Geography. I can't say I'm looking forward to it, but I doubt it will be tribulation that Astronomy was. Geography will be my only June class then Sociology in July. I've decided to put off Chemistry until the spring, so my fall schedule remains at least partially undecided. August will mark the first anniversary of a solid year of school. I'm a little tired, I'll admit.
I was already pretty much gone on Malkovich when I learned that the object of so much of my cinematic affection actually sprang (if you can imagine) from the cornfields of southern Illinois, in a little town called Benton, a mere forty-five minutes up the road from our little berg. The great Malkovich strode the same high school hallways as my own father, albeit twelve years later. That would mean that, during those summer weeks I spent at Grandma's as a kid, I very likey came close to rubbing elbows with the man himself. Stranger still? Malkovich later attended Illinois State University in the town I also grew up in. During the same years I was growing up there. Saints preserve us.
They really blend well with their surroundings, don't they? Strangely, it actually made for a worse shot when they both looked into the lens:
I replaced the verbena as quickly as I could after snapping these shots (only five in all). Good luck, babies.
At some point, Nikki became my cruise director for the weekend. This is a very good thing since apparently being Nikki means waltzing around every night from house to house eating delicious food and drinking wine. Occasionally? She doodles on her car. Also? As of a few hours ago, sports the fabulous new flaming 'do pictured at left courtesy of Karson Kelley. I'm taking partial credit for the hair since I told her to do something bold and red. You should totally see a larger version of that photo, but something is wrong with my skillz, and I can only make it work at that inadequate size. Sorry. 
Chloe and friend show off their henna tattoos by Rachel Biel Taibi.
A close-up (such as is possible w/the Blackberry).
Monica's WASPy Henna Lite. 
So, to save you from reading “Here’s the Story” by Maureen McCormick (because, trust me, you don't want to) here are the (relatively) fast facts about Marcia, Marcia, Marcia:- Hung out at Florence Henderson’s pool at which Florence went around topless. Marcia says Carol Brady had fabulous (real) boobs. (I’m sayin', Go Florence!)
- Regularly wished she was Susan Dey (Partridge Family).
- Had a bad home life...blah, blah, boo-hoo blah, etc.
- Reports Bob Reed who played Mike Brady regularly argued with producers about the show's "unrealistic" content. (Earth to Mike Brady: "Brady" and "realistic", by nature, are not words often [if ever] found in the same sentence, that was kinda the point.)
- Reports Eve Plumb, aka Jan Brady, liked to romp around the dressing room stark naked and fart (apologies to all you Jan lovers for that mental picture).
- Had crushes on the following: Greg Brady, Mike Brady (she was the last to learn Mike was gay), Jack Klugman, Tony Randall, Davy Jones, Peter Tork.
- Got her first period whole shooting a Brady Bunch scene wearing white pants.
- ALMOST fell pray to the casting couch (but didn’t).
- Terminated several pregnancies in her younger days (but well after the Brady Bunch stint).
- Got hooked on cocaine. Bad hooked. Traded sex for cocaine sometimes.
- Had a serious relationship with actor Gregory Harrison (of Trapper John, M.D. fame) that ended because of her drug habit.
- Had a date with Steve Martin. They kissed, she was high, that was it. (By the way, Steve Martin is apparently obsessed with ethereal blondes: Bernadette Peters, Victoria Tenent, etc.)
- Deflected the romantic advances of her “Brady Brides” co-star Jerry Houser, but ultimately accompanied him to the new-age church he attended, found The Lord there, then strength to begin to kick the coke habit, then met her husband at this same church.
- She relapsed on the coke many times.
- Her husband (above) is hunky. Marcia didn’t sleep with said hunky hubby until after the wedding ceremony (?!). They have one daughter, Natalie, born in 1985.- She does not have more children because her husband thought she was basically too unstable. Which leads me to…
- Marcia's kinda nutty. Drama queen, control freak, given to hysterics. The usual.
So, there you go. I hope you guys are satisfied. I can't keep reading and cherry-picking fun facts from these crappy books for you people. Honestly, I should be doing Quality Reading while I'm not in school (for three whole weeks) rather than feeding your insatiable need for behind-the-scenes Hollywood dish.
Divorce can be a terrible thing, especially at times like these. If you still have any affection for the ex (and wanting to slowly, painfully choke the life out of them doesn't necessarily mean you don't care about them, let's be clear) it's difficult because you can't really be there for them. Not in the way you used to be. At the same time, one still feels the phantom responsibility and obligation and desire to do it anyway.
Same goes for natural disasters. I never wrote about it here, but during the dark days of the ice storm, the ex-man was hugely concerned about me. I received text messages that somehow got through that long first night when cracking, falling branches sounded like gunshots and cell service was spotty at best. His acute, long distance concern finally culminated in him purchasing me a generator, the Husky that provided life-giving light, warmth, and television during the almost two weeks of darkness we endured (I was not working at the time). At a family gathering that happened soon after, each cousin, uncle, and aunt, would greet me and the next sentence out of their mouths would be, "We heard Tom bought you a generator." It was a refrain repeated an incredible number of times (I have a big family). I know the Husky was expensive, but honestly, as I told the ex-man later, the PR alone would have been well worth it at twice the price.
It is for this reason and others, that I've come to think of the ex-man little less like Satan and a little more like Joe DiMaggio. This because while Joe's marriage to Marilyn Monroe didn't work out, that didn't stop him from rescuing her from various precarious life situations that followed their divorce, most notably that time he busted her out of the insane asylum after she was committed. Joe also stepped in and made all of Marilyn's funeral arrangements after her untimely death and, thereafter, made sure roses were delivered to her grave 3 times a week for the next twenty years.
While I don't expect to be committed, or to die an untimely death that would require such post-mortem lengths, I do nonetheless want to do something special for my own Joe when his mother dies. I thought about it for a while, and ultimately sent him something meaningful.
Of course, because it's us you're talking about, the situation would have to turn a little strange. The conversation went like this:
