My favorite drink, at the moment, is a concoction I came up with, 2 parts Hendrick’s gin to 1 part Thatcher’s Cucumber Liquor. It tastes like smelling your lawn on a summer day.

I give you this as background.

Last weekend, I was prepping dinner and Jim wandered into the kitchen to see what I was up to. He was holding a beer and this reminded me that I wanted an apperitif as well.

I said, “Hey! Cucumber me!”

He froze, looking absolutely panicked.

I handed him a slice of cucumber to use as garnish and nudged him in the direction of the liquor cabinet.

“Oh!” he said, relieved. “I thought that was a euphemism.”

I am still in the dark as to what, exactly, he thinks I was asking him to do that would have warranted that expression on his face.

***

For Valentine’s Day, Jim gave me a chocolate bar.

The other night, peckish for an after-dinner snack, I went looking for it and could not find it.

Jim looked guilty.

“I, uh, ate it while you were gone,” he confessed. “I was going to replace it. It would have been the perfect crime.”

“Yes,” I said. “Except that you forgot that last part.”

***

Today, we went to Michael’s  so I could buy some yarn for a crochet project I am doing, and at the checkout counter, they had a selection of candy.

“Hey!” Jim said, waving his hand in the direction of display, which included the Ghirardelli chocolate bars, “I can buy you a replacement for your Valentine’s Day chocolate!”

“Ooh!” I said, spotting a bag of Good Plenty licorice candy, “Can you get me these?”

“But… I don’t like those,” he said.

“That’s kind of the point,” I answered.

“Just don’t be there” is something my sensei used to say a lot in karate.

It applies on a macro and micro level. It means you should trust your intuition and awareness and leave if a situation or location seems hinky, before the you-know-what hits the fan. But if the aforementioned does hit the fan and an attack comes your way, there are any number of ways to deflect the attack so that a fist or a kick coming at you whooshes past you instead.

He said it once in Zen, too, and the same macro/micro dynamic applied, although my understanding of always Zen kind of revolved around the micro. Not being there is a lot about controlling your reaction to a situation, i.e. not going “there” in your head, “there” being whatever negative, angry reaction you might have to the given situation. Still, macro applies, because if you can do something about it, why would you put yourself in a situation that triggers all the negative stuff?

Ahhh, I wish I could remember that before the fact, because I did it again last night — I lost my mind in the automatic checkout line. I don’t know why those things reduce me to gurgling, furious idiocy, but it never fails that the simplest transaction becomes a rage-inducing, age-of-machines symbolic clusterf^&*k of inefficiency. Still, you’d think I would remember that by now and just cut my losses and wait for a check-out line with a real person.

But no. I wanted to check out, all the other lines were swamped. How bad could it be, really, to scan 6 items and go?

Cut to 5 minutes later, when, after trying, repeatedly, to scan a bunch of cilantro, I slammed the cilantro bunch down on the scanner repeatedly, yelling, “Scan it, BITCH!” at the machine.

I didn’t start feeling stupid until a kind 20-something man who was in line behind me helped me scan the cilantro in soothing tones.

I thanked him and scurried away.

I did not stop to introduce myself because he knew who I was: That Asshole Who Needs to Chill the F&*^ Out Already.

***

On a funnier note…

Jim and 2 of his long-time friends have this tradition they’ve followed since before I knew them to celebrate the Oscars, although I don’t know if celebrate is the right word here.

They look at the nominees, and then select a terrible movie by one of those nominees, which they watch at an agreed-upon time, after which they call each other to bitch about how awful it was.

In this manner, they have taken in Perfect (John Travolta), Endless Love (Tom Cruise), Sliver (Sharon Stone), and quite a few I can’t even remember because they were so terrible.

Their yardstick of awful is the film critic Leonard Maltin. If he gives it a BOMB rating, they are good to go. This year, they wanted to watch All About Steve (Sandra Bullock), but they could not find it anywhere in Maltin’s collected works.

Off goes LM and dashes off an email to Maltin, explaining their dilemma and asking him how he would rate said film.

Maltin, bless his heart, replied promptly to the effect that he did in fact see the movie and thought it was so awful it wasn’t worth reviewing. Which is not technically a BOMB rating, but suits our 3 heroes just fine. So, you know, if you hear horrified screaming coming from western Massachusetts this weekend, you’ll know what we’re watching.

She wore the above to school today. (Minus the glasses)

1. It snowed. It is pretty:

2. When you have a 4 1/2-year-old who is beside herself with excitement about the fact that today is the day she finally (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) starts ballet lessons, it can be difficult to get said loony-bird to stand still long enough for you to get a decent picture of her in her finery.

That teacher, by the way, deserves a Congressional Medal. I feel like I white-knuckle it through my Monday karate class sometimes, which is all 6-10-year-olds, some of whom have the attention span of a gnat, and all of whom seem to have the uncanny ability to wander into their classmate’s kicking range at inopportune times. Handling ten 3 and 4-year-old girls who want to grow up to be ballerinas, though: Oh. My. God.

For those of you who do not follow me on facebook or twitter, Eliza and I have been away, in Texas, hence the no-comment-y (Jim does not have any spare vacation time yet, so he sat this one out at home). I am not even going to attempt to catch up with my commenting, but know that I was reading and thinking of you, whether your news was happy or sad. Know also that my mom and I gossip about you like we have met you in real life. Summary of said chats: we think you’re the bee’s knees. My mom even made one of Marie’s recipes and we agreed she is way too glamorous for a pregnant lady. Also, Dina’s kids are gorgeous. (And Mama D, you will be pleased to know we think the Olympics are awesome, watched faithfully every night and rooted for Canaders when possible. We like that nice Alex Bilodeau.)

I learned that small people are not deterred in their ocean-going by such a small thing as low water temperatures. Even though the surf was cold enough to give us ice cream headache of the foot when we stepped in it, Eliza played in it with abandon and ended up mostly wet.

I was dismissed from my parenting duties long enough to go see Avatar. I loved it. I really wanted to hate it (I have a knee-jerk reaction to things that get hyped that I really need to get over). Yes, the villains are very mustache-twirly, and yes Cameron stitched the story together from a compendium of sources that include, near as I can figure, Ender’s Game, Dragonriders of Pern, Aliens, Lord of the Rings and possibly a wee smattering of An Inconvenient Truth, but, but so help me god, I LOVED it. I totally forgot I was watching CGI, and in 3-D no less, which is why I was nearly out the door before I noticed I still had my 3D glasses on. I am Dork, hear me roar.

I went running a few times, and man, Texans are total temperature weenies. I’m out there in a tank and knee pants, and everyone I meet is in sweats, gloves, hats, etc. Oh yeah, I wear gloves too. To wipe my SWEAT. It was 60 degrees Fahrenheit, not Kelvin, ya big wussies.

Also, to share with you what kind of heathen I am, on my first run, on Wednesday, I was trotting along briskly when an old dude came barreling in my direction with dirt on his face. I was all, “Oh no! Crazy person!” And then I remembered it was Ash Wednesday. Clearly, those years of Catholic school did not take.

Plane travel continues to be my nemesis. We actually got there in one piece, albeit a piece whose stomach was somewhat churned up by the small planes, but getting back was another matter.

I have to say, the kiddo is a master traveler. She insouciantly whips out the handle on her suitcase and pulls it smartly up to the counter and hefts it on the scale and brings it to the TSA people, all business-efficient with a disarming amount of pink cherub-ness. Then she neatly strips off shoes, jackets, etc., sorts everything into bins, shoves them through the X-ray machine, and prances through the metal detector. She startles the bejesus out of people while we’re sitting at the gate with her sudden shrieks of “LOOK! A PLANE! IT’S TAKING OFF!” She can also ID several airlines by color. She must have a window seat at all times so she can comment on the passing landscape and/or clouds, can ID by sound the wheels and the flaps coming out, and likes to do countdowns to touchdown. If you are a nervous flyer (raises hand) she is an excellent distraction.

Anyway, to the WOE part of our tale: On our return trip we were supposed to fly (Mom’s city) to Houston to Chicago to (near my city) on Sunday. However, some sort of Snowpocalypse was anticipated in Chicago that prevented us from leaving Houston in time. But it was actually more of a Fauxpocalypse by evening, so the plane in Chicago was NOT delayed. (Yeah, it makes no sense to me either.) We had the distinct pleasure of seeing it taxi away as we ran up to the gate. Dudes, you made my kid cry! Fie on you! Fie!

We rebooked to finish our journey the next morning with flights from Chicago to Philly to (airport somewhat farther away from where we live), and slept at our gate because they were apparently not handing out free hotel vouchers. Or, I should say, the kiddo slept on some chairs while I lay there and imagined horrific scenarios of someone sneaking up behind me and slitting my throat. In case you are wondering about my overactive imagination re crazy people, I read Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News while I was on vacation. An EXCELLENT read, but not a relaxing one.

We made it home, but not before another sprint when the Philly connection got all jacked up and a 40-minute layover turned into a 15-minute one. By the way, if you are a business dude standing in the middle of the terminal thumbing your Blackberry with your carry-ons arrayed around you and some woman and her kid are racing straight at you saying loud hint-type things like, “Keep running honey, our gate is STRAIGHT AHEAD!”, it would behoove you to move out of their way. As it was, I finally got to put to use all my Friday Night Lights-watching, lowered my shoulder and pushed the dude out of our way. This definitely makes me an @$$hole, but at least I was an @$$hole who caught her plane. I do not kid; the jetway doors slammed shut so close behind us they just about hit us in the rear. Don’t worry, god paid me back my stealing my suitcase for 24 hours and giving my a crick in the neck for going on 48 hours.

So yesterday I powernapped in the car home (Jim drove), taught a karate class I do not fully remember, then slept for 10 hours and now I am WIDE awake which is really a problem.