Jealous of Lindsay Lohan

As a person who prides herself as having healthy self-insight and acceptance, I've recently suffered a shock to my love-myself universe. After scanning a magazine cover in the breakroom, I have realized something: I am jealous of Lindsay Lohan. I don't even have a track record of being jealous of teenage stars when I was a teenager. I loved Molly Ringwald, another popular redhead of the past. In fact, we're friends - so what if she doesn't know it. All my best to Hilary Duff, even though parents of 10 yr-old girls often think they're funny when they call me by her name. I'm frustrated by Britney and Christina's hook in impressionable young girls. I'd like to drop kick them, but I'm not jealous. Why Lohan, why now?

Where Sanitation and Courtesy Prevail

Why is anonymous nudity so much easier than familiar nudity? I mean, having played on sports teams since middle school, I really feel much like the Emperor in New Clothes strutting my stuff in locker rooms. If there's a social norm that makes it okay to slam your sweaty body up against a stranger on the basketball court, then why not create a norm of stark-necked conversations in locker rooms? Recently, a co-worker announced to my boss and I on her way out of the office that she was on her way to Lake Steam Baths' Ladies Night...(www.lakesteam.com). We of course held her back so she could explain the grin on her face. Not only does the place have the best motto in the universe - "Where Sanitation and Courtesy Prevail" - but Gurdie, the German matriarch, has also designed a place where women can get an array of interesting spa-like services. Like naked salt scrub massages from large naked German women and seaweed rope whippings followed by a bucket of ice water dousing. Or you can just enjoy terraced steam room after steam room. She suggested we all go together sometime. She was joking. But I think I might check it out...just don't ask me which day.

Those kind of people

"I remember the blizzard of '49. I dern near lost my mare," said my suited-up board member as we chatted over coffee in my break room. It was quite possibly the best thing I've heard in the last month, reminding me to resist getting too citified. I treasure these wise people that I get to know through my job. This man was the chaplain for years at one of the largest hospitals in Denver, he's on every ethics committee across the city that I've heard of, he speaks up in committee meetings to say things like "kick 'em in their cans," he's lost one wife to cancer and cherishes the other, he spends every other weekend alone in the wilderness fly-fishing and he has eccentric children he raised on his own - one of which is a 30 yr-old gay multi-millionaire living in Barcelona. He's been doing a lot of hunting this fall. With relatives in Kansas. They are real people - "the kind of people whose values were probably really great in the '50s. The kind of people who make that great jello with fruit floating in it. And sometimes even little marshmallows." Those kind of people.

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niner...niner...come in blogfriends, come in!

Here I am, giving it a shot. This day has been so full of nostalgia that I can hardly stand to insert this bit of newness. But, I am also one to invite new tradition. In fact, I'm starting to get sentimental about HillSity already.

I'm home, in my home in SD (my parents' home), in my home in the woods, in my home in the woods under the starriest sky I've ever seen. Where I'm now old enough that I actually smile when I'm awakened far too early on a vaction day by the banging downstairs in the kitchen. My parents, a couple of friends (suckers) and I hunted down an exceptional Christmas tree today. (A 14er. Not the mountain, but a 14-footer) In our silly hats. When I say 'hunted' I mean stomp through the forest with a saw until someone falls in the creek and cries, then cut the tree down. Back at home, Dad - all 6'10" of him - splayed belly down on the floor to turn the screws on the stand. Then Mom and I hung greens on the balcony, cursing the fishing line as we always do. We put out the Nativity scene. Mom unwrapped the angel from newspaper circa 1993 and Nina got Jesus. They are lucky for the next year. Leave it to this family to make a competition out of everything. Actually, I think it's game time on the carpet in front of the fire.

Game on.