This Chick's Perspective…

Meanwhile, at the Residence Inn…

Help, there’s a naked Sasquatch in my room – he’s foaming at the mouth!

Oh no wait, that’s just Hecubus brushing his teeth.

Our quest for the day: Brown Rice; Hec and I are desperate for it. Is there no establishment in Portland that serves brown rice? One would think that a town so known for its culinary efforts and all-around earthy crunchiness would be scattering brown rice upon the sidewalks in handfuls. But alas, no. Where or where shall we find brown rice?

We crack us up.

So we arrive in Portland at 2:00 on an absolutely gorgeous summer day, and by 4:30 we are hunkered down in our room with four bottles of wine listening to the Flight of the Concords channel on Pandora. Thus far this morning, we’ve spent two hours lying in bed drinking coffee and watching Ethel Merman take on disco.

Hec likes to call this our “Life Less Ordinary.” I haven’t come up with a name for “Our Lifestyle” yet, but when I do, I’m going to have t-shirts made up.

I think I run the risk of being turned into Zombie Jerky.

The good news:  Cricket & Bell’s Official Gansett Gear has arrived, so stay tuned for photos.  We think we have a fairly good chance of Gansett Girl acceptance, especially considering our competition.  Here’s a sample:

This Gansett Girl and Mensa candidate enjoys “loud, fast music, fast cars, bacon, and Tobasco sauce (her spelling),” but dislikes “skunked beer, running out of coffee, traffic, animal cruelty, and people who don’t think for themselves.”

While I’ll admit that she could take us in a street fight (if I’m not wielding my shotgun), I’m fairly sure that Cricket and I can kick her ass in a beauty contest.

Things I’m currently obsessing about:

1. The inevitability of change
2. The inevitability that the day will come when I lose the ability to snap-out of my bi-weekly morose state and thus spend the remainder of my life composing melodramatic poetry about the inevitability of change
3. Items I can clean with my steam cleaner
4. What to dress-up as on my next play-date with Cricket.

I remember grocery shopping in the early years of adulthood; skipping along the aisles in my aproned dress; daisies in my hair, blue-birds fluttering about my head singing, “You can eat Pop-Tarts for every meal now!”  Why hadn’t I noticed being trapped behind those two women in tennis dresses toting their DKNY cloth bags, obliviously blocking the whole aisle so that they may continue their conversation about how Mrs. Smith had embarrassed herself and the entire community at the recent Boy Scout jamboree by wearing those tacky shoes?

Seriously, last week this bent-over old woman in the wine aisle was taking the instant coupons off of each bottle of wine, but purchasing none.  My first reaction, “Well, that’s kind of pathetic.”  My second, “Well, that will probably be me in 20 years.”

When does wonder end and cynicism begin?  For me, I think it began that first day that I actually enjoyed a cup of coffee.  One day, “Coffee, Blech; Life, Hurray!”  The next, “Umm, Coffee; Life, let me tell you about my sciatica.”

Luckily for the few readers who have stuck with this one, I have deleted an extremely histrionic paragraph about the Pre-Coffee vs. Post-Coffee years.  It was making me gag.  After all, “It is What It Is”… although I’ve never really liked that expression.

I think I should stick to playing dress-up and posting pictures of meat.

Next Up:  Meat…

Episode 2; Part 2

I suppose The Faux Gansett Girls should give some props to our seedy photographer, Hecubus… Thanks for not making us actually drink the beer, despite Cricket’s obvious enthusiasm!

Episode 2: Cricket & Bellamy Play Dress-up

Just another Saturday in the ‘burbs, doing a proof-of-concept Gansett Girl photo shoot… Stay tuned for future developments.

Seriously, my life is pretty sweet…

Life begins at 35… or perhaps it’s just reconfigured.

Episode 1: Meet Connecticut Cult Chick Angela (see Yeah, I Don\’t Think That I Can Make it There), a housewife with a secret:

Give me an “O,” give me a “B,” give me an “E,” give me a couple of “S’s,” give me an “ion,”  what do you get:  A middle-aged chick with a life-sized cardboard cutout of Robert Pattinson.

Combining her amazing vegetarian cooking skills with a disquieting interest in a teenage heartthrob, Angela transforms the banal task of cooking for her family into every Cougar’s licentious fantasy.

Here’s a taste:

You can follow Angela & Robert’s culinary adventures at twilightdiet.com.

For those of you overwhelmed by the sophistication of canned ham:

I guess I’ll have to add a few of these to the TEOTWAWKI stash… Not only will the amniotic fluid the chicken is suspended in make for a scrumptious gravy, it will also serve as an effective moisturizer after the world’s supply of lotion and pig fat are depleted.  (The end of the world is no reason to let ourselves go, Girls.)

Thank you, Sweet Sue!

… The Desmonds in NYC.

I think repeated exposure to lectures about TEOTWAWKI should be classified as abuse.  At the very least, they should be a justification for chronic apathy and public drunkenness.

I’m opening a sanctuary for victims of TEOTWAWKI Sermon Overdose.  All food in the LFTYMMFP (Live For Today, You’re Making Me Fucking Paranoid) shelter will have a two-day shelf life and residents will be encouraged to learn impractical skills such as how to make whimsical knick-knacks out of band-aids and using your ferrocerium rod to spark-up your bong.