Belated Chicken Dinner Update

From your friend the worst blogger ever, I am here to update the riveted reader on a few things. Remember this post Meet Chicken Dinner ?  Well, if I could have a a moment of silence please, that would be great.  After settling back into the Banjos Trail home last summer, our little water babies were swimming around as if they owned the place. True happiness.  Well...#winteriscoming as they say....oh and it came. And brought strange goldfish diseases that made their scales paler and their eyeballs stop working.  Yes most of these poor dudes were eating their own poop at the very end, but this story does have a really moving detail.

We were down to just Loofa, a blind Tony Stark and Beefy Chicken Dinner (the clear leader of the freaks) and then, with no warning, Chicken Dinner was gone.  And here is the thing...you know those touching stories of the elderly couple -where one dies and then even though they are totally healthy, shortly after the other also dies (of heartbreak, of course)? Well....sure enough that is true in nature as well.  Within only days of Chicken Dinner departing that funky tank, his brothers did too. That is true love.

The ground was frozen...too frozen to even dig a shallow grave. So we left them all in paper towels on our patio, which is pretty unforgivable, I know.  (Remind me not to add any more things that are alive to my household).  So take a moment...lets remember them as they were....fair ground fishies that withstood fire, ice, near starvation and a whole lot of tank funk. Pour a splash of Old E on the ground for these brave homies.

#chickendinner

Live From Banjo's Trail: #Lovingrightnow

Live From Banjo's Trail: #Lovingrightnow: With all this negativity in the world.....people constantly complaining, overpaying for parking, not being able to eat like I did in my 20...

#Lovingrightnow

With all this negativity in the world.....people constantly complaining, overpaying for parking, not being able to eat like I did in my 20s, and don't even get me started (again) on Ebola.  I have been noodling with this post in my head - a happy post.  A post about the things I am loving right now. Lets start with today.

I am loving that today I was woken up by my son at 6am, like always, and realized it was only 5am and I could tell him without it being a lie that it was actually 5am and clearly not a civilized time to be getting up.  Then after 2 K-cups and half of a Philadelphia Magazine digested, I was actually awake enough to head to a hot yoga class.  Normally a 7:30am class is not a possibility because I am a monster in the morning, but since it was really feeling like the 8:30 I used to know, it was totally do-able! Boom - great yoga class in a new spot I had never tried (Empowered Yoga in Glenn Mills, PA). While I don't like HOT yoga (hot yoga + me=puke), I did like how clean the place was, and how they were all anal about where you put your mat and when/where you take off your shoes, etc.....ironically not Zen, which I appreciate.  Next stop - Whole Foods, which I could literally eat every meal from if I had a corporate sponsor or something.

OK here comes the best part...I got to NAP!!!  Yep #joy.  Well rested and ready for the next indulgence, I headed with my hormonal pre-teen lady to one of my favorite places on the planet: Terrain  If there is a Heaven for me it is there. So for you-three happy hints - order a pie from them for Thanksgiving, Get a Honey Tea au lait in the Cafe and if you lunch there, never miss the Mushroom Soup.  Being so close to the Mushroom capital of the World, I have tried it all and this here soup is the bestest.  Best time of year to go there is now when the are just starting with their holiday ridiculousness.  Get after it.

OK some other things I am loving right now:

• Quirky I am just thrilled with the whole idea that the power is truly shifting for reals.  From Etsy to ebay, Kickstarter to Indigogo....Power to the people! #ChuckD
• OpenSky OK so this deal based shopping site is likely not much different than the zillions of others you likely subscribe to, but for whatever reason this one sticks with me. I have ordered at least 5 times and have loved and used each item happily
• While searching online for some original art for my office, I came across this "Sunny Leo' and fell in love (see opening pic).  Cut to me like 3 hours later and I am still sniffing around the site. Check it out: society6  And while I'm on art, check out this really great Art Blog: Vandalog 
• Again, likely old news to you forward thinkers, but aside from Amazon Pantry, I am finding FreshDirect pretty freakin convenient.  Pssst - Don't tell them, but I would pay more if they charged it. And if you use Fresh Direct (some cannot, I get it,..) then install Pop It as a browser extension...then you can just drop whole recipe ingredients in your cart! (she says as if she ever actually cooked something that calls for a recipe...)
• Foo Fighters Sonic Highways Ever the musical genius,  DaveGrohl leads the way to a thoughtful album release so clearly not born in self serving marketing. Its refreshing to hear great music presented such a way that its storytelling, history lesson and entertainment all rolled into one.  As always #BravoFoo.  

OK....so this post is a happy one...cool stuff that makes me happy. And they say happiness can be contagious, and that the cool girl no longer props herself up by pushing others down but by influencing, leading, being a good friend, and sharing a good thing.  So these are a few of my good things. 

#officiallyscared

There are so many reasons being "connected" is the pretty much the best thing ever, but do you want to know what is NOT the best thing ever? Its Ebola.  Thing is, Ebola, and a ton of other frightening things that make me never want to leave my house have been around forever, but because we have access to so much information I know way to much about scary things.  If you put "Ebola" in Google you get 28,300,000 results.  Right. And do yourself a favor and do NOT Google it and click on Images. You literally might quarantine your family until the end of time. I wont even waste my time putting an image of Ebola under a microscope here because if you are a human living in the world right now you know exactly what that looks like.

So all this connectedness has seriously provided me with too much information.....all of it freakin' scary.  Sometimes I hear folks blaming the media for scaring us....After all, they do amplify the worst parts of being on this planet for the purpose of ratings, but I dare say we are worse.  The incessant posts from freaked out parents on Facebook, the tweets about cancer......by the way did you know that the death rate for the Flu (yes, the Flu) has hovered on average around 32k people per year for the last decade. The FLU!

My latest freakout is of course the Enterovirus D68.  My son has Asthma and so now I am that mom forcing him to carry hand sanitizer everywhere he goes,  likely planting some sort of OCD seed in his impressionable brain.  I have to tell you, I much preferred living in ignorance. So I do this thing where I try to distract myself.  Lets try it now.

So in other news. I have been excited since MAY about the Thug Kitchen cookbook...the weirdest part about that being the fact that I do not cook.  But anyway, I pre-ordered that puppy months ago and got very excited that it shipped. Well...turns out my BFFs at Amazon shipped it inside a box with our mattress pad and needless to say I'm pretty sure we recycled the whole thing.  Nice. So back on Amazon I just went to order again.  I highly suggest the Thug Kitchen Blog while you anxiously await my review of the actual book.

And We're Back!...Top ten reasons I love home.

Remember that SNL Skit with Jimmy Fallon as the all too familiar cheezed-out local radio DJ?  That soundbite keeps playing in my head...."and we're back!"

Don't waste your time trying to find any of those funny ass video clips on the inter-webs because Lorne Michaels has that shiz on lock down.... otherwise I would have grabbed it and plopped it here for your enjoyment. I digress...

We actually ARE back--in our home sweet home.  To recap....Jan:lots of snow, lots of power loss. Feb:more of the same....no power, lots of fires in the fireplace and next thing you know our roof is on fire.  Damn.   Cue quick move with nothing but the clothes on our back to a furnished apt.  I'm sure I will work up the courage to describe the 5 months in that apartment at some point because it will make for some hilarious posts but for now its all about celebrating being HOME.  

Here are my top 10 reasons I #lovemyhome.  Please feel free to comment on yours!

1. My big ass, upgraded, pillow topped, soft sheet having sleigh bed!! I wish I could enter a sleeping contest because I have been waiting to train for something like that my whole adult life. 
2. The pantry.  How lame that this is second on my list?  There is something satisfying about knowing I have a shelf space carved out for massive amounts of dill pickles, crackers, pasta, skittles and paper products.  Why is that a luxury?  Maybe I need to rethink what is actually exciting in this life. 
3. Dare I say the garage?  It took 16 years of street parking for this to inch  into my top three. but it has a solid place there. 
4. The mud room.  How was a mud room never a thing when I was growing up.  We all so desperately needed it...or maybe we didn't but how didn' t we??  Is it wrong that I look for pics of cool mud rooms on pinterest?  
5. Space.  I knew I liked to be alone; truly by myself sometimes. But it took living in a very small apartment to realize just how much I need to have alone time to maintain my sanity.  I didn't care for people in the kitchen looking at my boobies while I was getting dressed in the bedroom, those two areas being only about 4 feet apart. Yes, I know this is a FWP, first world problem.
6. My kitchen counter tops. Because they are sparkly and sparkles make me very happy.  And everything in that kitchen is gray....my favorite color. Gray is Perfection, PS can someone tell me whether its gray or grey officially?
   
7. My "gym."  Yep I have gym in quotes. I do workout .....I try for 6 days a week and I get in 3-4 (sometimes 5..sorry Tracy Anderson) I call this a gym loosely because its a room in the house that is unfinished...no ceiling or drywall...just some kid art to cheer things up. But its my space , which per above, I tend to love. 
   
8. My shower.  Who needs a tub?  Not this girl. One of my favorite hotels, in Boulder, CO (the St. Julian) has these great bathrooms where the showers feature beautiful river rock. That was my inspiration.  And bonus, it feels great on your feet.
9. My closet. Its huge. 3 Indian families could live in this space, which some days fills my cup with guilt.  But not enough guilt to sell our house and give India the money.   See above reference to FWP.
10. It's our home.  We worked hard to buy the raw land, we designed and built our home.  We watched it burn down and we built it again.  We live in the quiet pasture of a horse long gone called Banjo, and we love it.  

Meet Chicken Dinner

Chicken Dinner is our big ass goldfish.  His actions seem to indicate he is the tank ambassador.  He is an impressive guy, and I am considering elevating his role to apartment ambassador. I'll keep you posted.  

While Chicken Dinner often provides the most entertainment value, his tank-mates are also an impressive bunch.  Fellow fishies Tony Stark, Killer Shark and Loofa have proven their resilience time and time again.  Not only did they outlive all reasonable predictions for fish procured at a fairground game, they also survived a week of no heat in a snowy PA home, as well as a major house fire in said PA home!  

So here's to you Chicken Dinner.  You da man. #ChickenDinner

First Gay Hug (A Homophobic Experiment) | First Kiss Video

Figured after a long hiatus, a controversial blog post might kickstart an effort to get this blog thing going as a means to an end.

Saturday Night Live - What Up With That? - Video - NBC.com

A dream came true for me this weekend....I was there live at SNL and they not only did Garth and Kat, a personal favorite, they did "What up with that?" Enjoy

Saturday Night Live - What Up With That? - Video - NBC.com

Banjo the Fence Sitting Horse

Well, after years of city living, my husband finally convinced me to move into the country.  Granted, for anyone west of the Mississippi, being a mile from a major highway hardly constitutes country living, but for me it's going to feel like living in a foreign land! 

Anyway, meet Banjo. We never knew Banjo but evidently he was a very famous horse in these parts.  As I understand it, Banjo was a very sweet old boy who suffered from arthritis in his later years.  Ever resourceful, Banjo found relief by 'backin it up' against his fence.  So now, in his honor they renamed our future residence "Banjo's Trail", which I find completely endearing if not amusing.  Maybe the country ain't so bad after all. 

In other bizarre news, yesterday I went running in one of those "over 55" neighborhoods that are popping up for our aging boomers about every quarter mile, and I had to do a double take.  There was a man in his garage, sitting on a folding chair, surrounded by oversized framed art.  OK sort of weird but get this, next to him, in another folding chair was a woman. Oh, wait, um, it totally wasn't a woman it was a mannequin positioned the same way he was in his chair!  What goes on in those over 55 neighborhoods????  

About the Photo

Digital Photo by Seth Fox, Chadds Ford, PA
Kodak DX3500
© 2001 Photo by S. Fox. All rights reserved.

Spring Cleansing

I'm struggling to down a little blue and orange bottle of  "premium" coconut water.  
Who decided this was the new cool thing, because unless you are on Survivor, this has to be considered prison food. Monday mornings are always like this for me.  A pathetic attempt to erase the toxic weekend (donuts, beer, sweet potato fries, chocolate covered frozen bananas, you get the idea) with a few healthy choices.  So breakfast this morning has been two hard boiled eggs, this weird coconut water and a smoothie.

For months now I have been considering trying a cleanse.  It is spring cleaning time after all.  But I have two issues with it.  One, I'll be so hungry that I will be miserable and unable to focus.  But that's just a theory.  Two, the price.  I mean, really??  I cant seem to find one that  that is less than $200.  Why should three days of not eating cost more than three days of eating??

So while I haven't decided I will actually do this yet, here's what I'm considering.  The first cleanse was recommended on GOOP ....so you have to figure if Gwyneth is a fan....It's the Clean Program.  It seems to come with the fixings for both the drink/shakes and the supplements.  It kind of sort of feels like a bargain since its a 21 day cleanse and its only $250 plus shipping.  The problem is there is NO WAY I can do this for more than  few days, let alone 21!

The next one I thought I might try was the Blue Print Cleanse because I read about it in some magazine.  Evidently some celebs do cleanses like this pre-Oscars so they can squeeze into their gowns.  While I have no gowns whatsoever, I do like the cool packaging and the drinks actually look tasty.  But I think everything is looking tasty to me right now because I'm choking down this weird coconut water.

The next is the Organic Avenue Love Cleanse.  I am keen on their packaging and overall presentation, and also, the place was recommended by Tracy Anderson, owner of the perfectly toned trainer body I crave, but it's almost $300 with shipping.  I'm NYC bound this weekend and so am considering visiting one of their locations, but dont want to have to lug it around the city with me.   Finally, I did come across something that Selma Hayak is promoting that was in Oprah's favorite things recently. It's Cooler Cleanse.  Are all of these starting to seem the same to you too??

So, I decided maybe I could "create my own cleanse" by just sort of throwing a few of these juices together. How about a handful of  Naked Juice  throughout the day, plus a few complementary  foods like raw almonds, egg whites and some plain, raw tuna?   I mean,  I already drink green one just about every day, in order to get a full serving of dark green veggies. I'm considering doing it this week, so I report back next week with results!!

What the Stuff?

Do I dare do a product review?  I think I can I think I can.  I don't even leave comments or reviews on websites like Amazon or Zappos, but me thinks I'm more comfy in my own space.  Also, I have to say something about these products because I really am a huge fan.

Just in time for wrinkles, dark patches and sunspots....I found the perfect skincare combination and it's ALL affordable and widely available.  First....face wash.  I found this at Target and gave it a whirl because it boasted 'dermatologist recommended' in a very understated, matter of fact way. It's  Purpose Gentle Cleansing Wash 6 fl oz (180 ml)  My dermatologist told me ages ago that face wash is gentle enough for your skin if it doesn't sting your eyes.  This is the first face wash I have found that really feels like it cleans, gets every last drop of my makeup off, and doesn't sting my eyes.  Plus I love the sweet, barely there scent.

Second: PRIMER. Specifically L'Oreal Paris Studio Secrets Professional Color Correcting Anti-Redness Primer, 0.68-Fluid Ounce. This stuff is the bomb.  Now that I am starting to see laugh lines and other offensive age revealers, primer is just what the doctor ordered. It "fills in" the ridges, so your makeup and powder doesnt draw even more attention to your lines.  But this primer is particularly great because a) it's cheap!  Most primers a la Sephora are $40 or more.  and b) it completely evens skin tone.  Apply moisturizer, then this great primer, followed by foundation and powder.

Finally, I give you  Kiehl's 'Midnight Recovery' Concentrate.
I am a big fan of Kiehl's and its something I splurge on.  The smell alone lures you in with this serum.  I know it's important for your skin to "recover" from your day, and most serums are difficult to justify, price wise.  While this isn't what I'd categorize as "cheap, " one drop goes a long way.  Grab a sample of it next time you visit a Kiehl's boutique or a Nordstrom.

Being rich and Famous in the age of Snookie

I have been thinking a lot lately about the people of the world who are rich and famous.  When I was a kid, in order to be rich and famous, you had to either look REALLY special (Farrah Fawcett) or you had to have some serious talent.  Now and again there were the sons and daughters of the rich and famous who slipped through the cracks...by association, if you will.   But I'm fascinated by the fact that today, it seems, you need no associations, no remarkable talent or even good looks to become rich and famous (however fleeting the fame may be).  Some days this makes me angry.  Others, it's exciting! Opportunity awaits!

A few weeks ago I read that Snookie got paid $32,000 to speak at Rutgers. What!? She got paid more than Nobel-winning novelist Toni Morrison!!  Suddenly my master's degree seems like money not well invested.  But I don't get angry that someone with no exceptional talent or good looks can make 75% of the National average household income for one speaking engagement.....I get angry that I'm not making that much! Thoughts?

To work or not to work....the daily mom dilemma.

I mostly read in sound-bites….RSS headlines, emails, friend’s status updates, etc. But I read enough to know that there are millions of mothers who make quite possibly the biggest decision of their lives, every day: to work or to stay home.  The blog coverage alone on this topic could fill an encyclopedia.  It’s a highly emotional topic, and often the decision is being made in the midst of a hormone surge. But the thing is, the decision doesn’t end once you make it.  What I now realize is that it’s not a popular topic because it’s such a difficult decision, (and because it creates a great divide socially between mothers, another topic altogether) but rather because it’s a decision that a mother faces every single day.  

I recently saw a post from a woman who was blogging from her mobile device while commuting on the train home.  Her words were riddled with guilt and anger as she clicked away on her keyboard, all while watching the minutes tick closer to her child’s bedtime. She was trapped in the clutches of the daily grind, missing out on her only special moments with her children that day.  She had already made her choice….to work full time, yet here she was, still talking about the decision years later. 

A few weeks ago I spent time with a girlfriend of mine, a stay at home mother of three. She met me for lunch in my swank office building, looking around with starry eyes at the whole sophisticated scene.  She turned to me at one point and said, "wow, you must be so proud of what you have accomplished." She went on complain about her sweatpant clad days of time-outs and potty training, adding that she was going back to teaching at some point.

I suppose the old adage applies, the grass is always greener.....The problem of course, is that there is no right answer for someone making that choice.  So, as I sit here saddened by the holiday concerts I will miss and the classroom volunteer opportunities I cannot raise my hand for, regretting the energy I am giving to a boss who is never satisfied, I too am struggling with the choice I made so many years ago.   The only comfort I take is in the fact that I had the choice to make at all. 

Why I like Friday, Friday, Friday

No, I'm not referring to the curiously popular Rebecca Black song. For some reason I woke up today completely unmotivated to do anything that resembles work.  While I would always rather sleep in, spend time with the family and swan about my day very casually, tackling today is proving particularly painful.   In order to stomach another day at work I decided to skip the regular lunch time workout and order my FAVORITE lunch (seen here) - tuna sandwich and sweet potato fries.   I'm also getting through the grind by daydreaming about about this day only one week ago, which was decidedly better.

Friday March 25th I woke up with a spring in my step.  I knew it would be a great day.  Not only was I only working a half day, but shortly after work I was joining my girlies for a short drive to Atlantic City to see Janet Jackson at the Borgata. For someone who now spends weekends schlepping kids around to moonbounce parties and swimming lessons, this was a real treat.  In this venue Jackson shined....I felt like she was my girl.  I bonded with everyone around me, singing along to back-in-the-day-hits, doing as much as of the choreography from her videos as we could manage in our seats.

But the real surprise came after the concert (spoiler alert, no we did not meet Janet).  Our Janet ticket stubs got us into mur.mur (the club) where Samantha Ronson was set to spin.  Four great things happened: 1) Janet's backup dancers showed up and we met them, 2) Samantha Ronson rocked it and allowed us a post party pic 3) Joe Fatone showed up and invited us into his VIP section (my fuzzy and lame picture of him here via a smudged blackberry at 3am) and 4) I managed to dance for 4 hours straight.

So cheers to Fridays.....raise your glass to those with only sweet potato fries to look forward to and those where you're a rock star for the night.

Preschool Musical

This is a hilarious Sesame Street Parody of High School Musical. The mom in me compelled me to share.

Twitastic

So what would a blog be without a post about Twitter? This video captures everything I thought about twitter the day I heard about it and for quite some time after. Now, I see some real business value in it, but still laughed out loud about how real to life this video feels. Enjoy

I heart Nike.....this actually makes me want to run! (more)

Onwards from AKQA on Vimeo.

Information overload

I want to know it all.  I want all of the information of interest to me, but I also want to know what is interesting to others.  I am not alone ...which is why the web 2.0 age is growing so quickly...because rather than the push of information to people, its all about people pulling information that is relevant to themselves.  

In that spirit, I am loving the beta launch of
Tinker.  I also love the word tinker, which is irelevant.  Here you will basically see a snapshot of 'what people are talking about' in the world of microblogging, specifically on the information avalanche Twitter.  and there you have it. 

I luv dis

priceless