Right Right

Okay, so Back Fence PDX is in a week. The lineup couldn’t be any better. On the serious. Check it out. And get your tickets.

And is $45 for three hours of writing instruction from ME too much to pay? I think not. So do that here. And you get free lunch.

Here’s my post at PDX Pipeline about Belladonna. Here’s my video interview with Belladonna. I love her.

Welcome to my new blog readers. I have no idea where you came from, but you’re stuck with me now. Get comfortable, let your hair down. This is a safe place for the mostly inappropriate.

Ken was wondering about my brother, as in why do I always say I’m an only child and suddenly I have a brother. It was news to me too! I kid. My brother is my half brother and he’s fifteen years younger than I am so any only child psychosis qualities I have, were set in stone long before my little brother showed up.

Finally, have you had sex today? If not, please do.

XOML

Love It.

Le Slouch knit in Malbrigo. Glazed Carrot. Size 9 needles, addis, magic loop.

I stretched it on a pie dish.

I want to make sweet love to this hat.

On a scale of one to ten, ten being curled up in a ball from guilt over keeping it and not using that knitting time for Christmas presents: six. But how could I give this hat away? How could I?

Never Fear, Internet

Oh, you guys are so sweet. I’ve edited that previous post because my blog is a pretty place. We’ll let others corner the market on ugly.

You fan club, are pretty. You’re great and funny and all of you are exceptionally attractive. Have I mentioned lately that I want to tongue kiss each and every one of you! I haven’t. And I do.

Let’s talk about us, shall we. Or ME! Because it’s my blog.

My ciabatta well…see for yourself.

That one on the left was my first attempt before realizing that my oven is, in fact, hot. But we ate the whole damn loaf. It was so good. It’s the first time I’ve made bread that I actually loved. The one on the right is waiting for us today.

For you bread makers — I used the ciabatta recipe from Baking Illustrated. Easy peasy.

Here’s the orange yarn so far.

Have I mentioned that I have an abnormally large head? I DO. It’s gigantic.

This is Le Slouch and I’m knitting it on larger needles than it calls for and it’s still not slouchy.

It’s only half-finished, so we’ll see how it goes.

And, no seriously, I really do have a huge butt. Here’s proof.

Win Lose or Draw

Yesterday the Internet was like a mine field. Seriously. I was called fat. This, I thought was peculiar because I am many things, Internet, but fat is not one of them. I’m not particularly skinny either. Ask Kiala about the time we went to Forever 21 and I couldn’t zip up the size 28 jeans. What?!? I bike everywhere and I have a big butt.

And then AND THEN I went on Facebook to book the intermission act for Back Fence (Katie Jean Arnold singing pop Christmas carols!) and lo and behold were two friend requests — one from my 18 year old brother and one from my best friend from high school. Is it odd to me that my little brother is writing on my wall on Facebook? YES! Is it totally awesome that a friend who could tell storieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez about me in high school and college is now in touch and moving to Portland? YES!

Andy — remember when we’d drive around singing Erasure? So. Fun. And remember how we were heartbroken like 98% of our lives and also Roger? And La Jolla Denny’s? And when we were Laverne and Shirley and Squiggy for Halloween?

I love that so many of my California friends are coming up here. It’s terribly reassuring to develop a safety net.

Andy has always been an amazing friend and though he’s very gay, he allows me to flirt with him when I’m lonely and touch his hands potentially inappropriately. He’s good that way.

And I’m starting to knit up that orange yarn. So beautiful.

My Domestic Bliss

I’m sorry I’ve been ignoring you, Internet. I was doing homey things. Like making Thanksgiving dinner from scratch.

Look at me, Internet. I made a turkey. I made pies too. From scratch but there will be no pictures of those because apparently I’m not all checked out on parbaking pie crust. I swear, I make the ugliest damn pies. They taste excellent, but gah.

I also finished knitting a pair of socks. These socks are called, “The Sock Store Is Closed.” I’m officially only doing hats and fingerless gloves for the rest of the Christmas gifts. I sort of hate socks right now.

Aren’t they so cute? The yarn was dyed by a small hand dyer. I love the colors, but the yarn itself was not quite as firm as I like.

Stever’s mom bought me a Thanksgiving gift. It made me pee in my pants a little bit.

That’s a NEW Kitchen Aid mixer in Empire Red. Yum. My last Kitchen Aid gave up the ghost after a particularly vigorous wheat bread session.

What’s that in my new Kitchen Aid mixer? Oh, it’s the sponge for tomorrow’s ciabatta bread that I’ll be baking.

I cheated a little bit with the ciabatta — I’m using yeast. I know!

I’ve made sour dough bread from scratch a few times, but I’m opting not to spend three weeks and five pounds of flour on a single loaf. Call me lazy!

And because I had the type of day today where I thought that if someone were to make that computer program that will allow me to take out my aggression on websites and people who frequent those websites with the equivalent satisfaction of taking a baseball bat to someone’s car windows, then I would give that person *not a blow job* but a big coke and a smile because damn, that person deserves the Nobel, I bought yarn.

Oh Malbrigo, how you do me so right. What will this lurvely ball of yarn turn into?

Mom Tired

When I was in college, I had a friend whose name was Michael Sean Patrick or Patrick Micheal Sean or Micheal Matthew Paul or something. I can’t remember. He had three first names and that’s all you need to know. Anyway, after a hard night of drinking followed by a lengthy day of classes (SFSU — home of the functioning alcoholic) he’d say he was Mom Tired. And I would laugh. I’D LAUGH, INTERNET. I’d laugh and then, every year or so I’d go to the lady doctor and lie back and stare at the waterfall/tropical beach/ three wee puppies in a basket picture tacked to the ceiling and you know what I would not say? I would not say, uhhh doctor, would it be possible to, while you’re scraping my cervix, to just lob off my ovaries because I know that one day I will be PUNISHED by the fires of hell for laughing when Dylan Brandon David said Mom Tired.

Internet, I have to tell you, I am Mom Tired. To the max. My measles-rubella-scarlet-fever-cancer-monkey-plague is still harshing my mellow (does anyone remember Paulie Shore? I wish I didn’t, but I’m from Southern California and it’s one of many crosses I bear) and AND I was a true journalist and stayed up past my bedtime on Saturday night to interview Belladonna, star of hundreds of adult films, including The Greatest Asswhores Ever! (Please, Internet Search Gods, go easy on me. And yes, that exclamation point is part of the title) and The ConAssuer. I can never correctly spell that word either.

My interview will be up on PDX Pipeline and I’ll link to it here. But in my interview, I asked Belladonna how she balances a full-time acting and directing career while having a small child. Yes, she is a mom. And she said something, but all I could think was, oh my god, you’re wearing clothes and I’ve seen right up your bottom and you’re just talking to me like I haven’t seen up your bottom. She was very sweet and charming. She gave me two hugs. Anyway, I don’t know what she said about balancing family and work, but I should have paid closer attention because maybe I wouldn’t be so damn Mom Tired today.

Ken, Stoogie — comments are open if you want to explain to my readers about Belladonna and the baseball bat.

Do Ya Think I’m Sexy

For the last 24 hours, I’ve been a mouth-breather. You know why? Because I have a cold. It’s the kind of cold where your voice is hoarse and not sexy hoarse, and you need to keep wadded up toilet paper in your pockets for you faucet-nose.

Two nights ago, Steve rolled over to me in bed and tried to cop a feel and I said, “Ibe siiiiiick.” It was so hot, I tell you.

It’s a little like I was flaunting my non-sickiness what with my vowed avoidance of flu shots (they only make you sicker!) and when in the comments on Chris’s post about how you don’t catch cold from washing your hair, I wrote this: “True dat. My throat is sore and I never wash my hair…” It’s true, I don’t wash my hair very often because it’s curly and color-treated as the shampoo bottles always so delicately put it.

But here I am, mouth breathing and swiping at my face with toilet paper. Today I removed Archie’s cloth diapers from his room and now they are called rags and I thought for a long moment about abducting one to use as my faucet-nose wiper. But that’s wrong, right Internet? It’s wrong to use diapers to wipe my nose.

I think. I mean it’s clean. And smells fine. And my son poops roses and gold, just so you know.

I also realize that paragraph number three makes no sense, but whatever. My nose is running and my diaper toilet tissue has reached its maximum density.

I’ve met Rod Stewart. He’s a ponce.

I’m Trying to Protect You

Hello Fan Club,

Two days ago, I received an email from an cellular telephone company saying that they would send me, MELISSA LION, a cell phone if I would blog about it and tweet about it. And because I’m a greedy, greedy person, I hit reply and started typing out my answer, which was YES! But, Fan Club, I’m all about the self-improvement and self-reflection and when I have this reaction to things, I’m trying to sit tight a moment and improve and reflect and not just jump up and wave my hand around. So I let it rest and I went about my day abusing orphans and eating fast food reviewing books.

And in the afternoon, I opened a new email to a friend who is wise in all things giveaway and I began typing this email, “[blank] wants to send me a phone so I’ll blog about it and the thought of doing this makes me feel like a whore, and not in a good way.” I didn’t even hit send, because I had my answer, which was no for those of you who don’t believe I could feel bad about feeling like a whore (you know me too well).

So I sent the nice woman at this company an email saying I am a professional writer and my blog is for my personal writing, and while my personal writing might be done for free, it’s led to paying work and so if there was a project that they needed professional writers for, this is my hourly rate and my dollar per word rate.

She’s not emailed me back.

Here’s my point, Fan Club, I did it for you, I don’t want my blog being a playground for corporate America, I only want to shill for things I like and care about and can you imagine me suddenly lurving a cell phone? Like I love my four-inch heels that Zappos.com gave me a phatty discount on?

So with that in mind, I’m reading this book right and loving it.

Here’s the Greatest Poetry Book OF ALL TIME.

Register for my class here.

Back Fence tickets here.

And, LG if you want to send me this washer and dryer, I will film myself tongue kissing them and, I don’t care if my clothes smell and look like 3 day old barf after being washed in these things, I will change my blog’s title to LG Makes My Panties Wet *get it?* for ONE WHOLE WEEK.

Love,

Melissa

Back Fence PDX Day!

I totally relate to today’s Back Fence PDX post. It’s by Geoff Kleinman author of On PDX, which is a great Portland blog. The writing is clean and tight and the stories are always news to me — love it!. His story is about not being a holiday person. I am not a holiday person, Internet. If Christmas never happened again, I wouldn’t even notice. Thanksgiving I like, because I like cooking, but I’m always confused about the whole “we can’t eat until the big dinner, which happens at 2:14pm, because uhhh, I don’t know why.” You should know, Fan Club, that I eat a lot. A lot. And when I eat at 2:14 and am expected to then not eat until the next day, well, I think that’s lame. Really lame and it makes me grouchy.

Where was I? Oh yes, clean writing. On PDX is totally awesome. And I’m a big fan of Geoff’s writing. Especially when he compliments me. So go check out his story at Back Fence PDX.

We’re selling tickets to the next show here.

And, please register for my class on 12.13. If you liked my Ignite presentation, this is the extended remix, with free lunch thanks to Rick Turoczy.

The Pantry is Bare

Steve and I have this thing where we go as long as humanly possible without going to the market and we have to eat every last thing in the house and by the last day we’re staring at each other a lot like Bugs Bunny stares at Elmer Fudd (is that even right, I’m not a fan of cartoons. Don’t even get me started on my pure, white hot hatred of Tom and Jerry) in the life raft. (Like a big old ham bone, for those of you who did not grow up in So Cal on a steady diet of Saturday morning KTLA.)

(And while I’m on the topic of Southern California, let me just say that I was on a friend’s blog looking at her comments and someone is talking about boycotting In-n-Out because of the Prop 8 lameness. Now I’m not even sure In-n-Out supported Prop 8 or what, but give me a mother fucking break. PLEASE. Boycotting In-n-Out? They pay their managers 80 grand a year, all of their food is fresh, not a single freezer or microwave in the place, the food is cheap cheap cheap and they often have the only clean restrooms on very long car trips. I think we need to choose our battles, people. Boycott actual shitty establishments that do actually commit grave human rights abuses, contribute to poverty, obesity, and illiteracy and not places that may or may not have contributed to a political campaign, but for the most part, have one of the few decent business in a landscape that is now COVERED by multi-national chains. Boycotting In-n-Out is lame.)

Anyway, we did the thing where we didn’t shop for many moons. And we haven’t had any bread in the house for days. And so, gentle reader, I looked in my pantry and I had everything I needed to make wheat bread. FROM SCRATCH.

IN YOUR FACE IN-N-OUT BOYCOTTERS. AND PROP 8 SUPPORTERS.

Isn’t it pretty? I’m going to put some of my homemade peach jam on it too. Because I’m rustic. And down home. And main street-y. And a lot like a pitbull in lipstick (see above rant).