Toilet Seat Replacement: Update

Okay, we have replaced the broken toilet seat with a brand spankin’ new black wooden one. It was $9.99 at the ninety-nine cent store. (Hey, it was either black or marbelized pink. There was really no contest.) So, now the thing is: the toilet seat is all wiggly. We’re pretty sure that it isn’t supposed to be all wiggly. Argh.

In other news, La Gringa has just noticed that Stinkyboy has horked up a mess of green grassy puke on the freshly-laundered futon cover. Le sigh. Guess La Gringa is going back to the laundromat.

It’s Spring Cleaning Day atCasa de La Gringa!

Dust bunnies of the world, watch out! But first, La Gringa is going to arm herself with a gigantic iced coffee. And after that, she will need to climb up on the rickety wooden ladder to replace nearly every light bulb in the apartment, light bulbs that are well over ten feet off the ground. (La Gringa may have failed to mention that she is somewhat terrified of heights. Thus the procrastination over replacing said light bulbs in the first place. Oy. We pray that the cats won’t eat our rotund self should we – regretfully – fall to our death later this afternoon.)

PS: Can anyone tell me why the bells of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on the corner are playing "Oh Come All Ye Faithful", a Christmas song?  I know the two Christian calendars are out of sync a tad bit, but surely…not by eight whole months?

==========

UPDATE: Light bulbs replaced successfully! And, wow, is this place ever filthy. Hmmm…

Speed Dating 102: Advanced Same-Sex Interpersonal Awkwardness (With Golf)

Astute readers will have been wondering "When will La Gringa share the details of that last speed dating adventure?" Well, we’ve been putting it off primarily because we have had Actual Paying Work To Do ™ at Big-Ass Publishing Company (albeit work of the freelance variety). It has also been rather sunshine-y and lovely outside, which means what little time La Gringa did have was spent sitting on our front stoop wearing shades, looking way cool, sipping a gigantic Dunkin’ Donuts Turbo Iced Coffee, and wading merrily through Dan Simmon’s enormous historical thriller, The Terror (a book that is simply too gigantic to be portable, by the way).

But we digress.

Now, after La Gringa’s last tragic foray into speed dating, we knew better than to go expecting anything crazyfreakywild like, oh, an actual date. But for sheer entertainment value, speed dating is pretty hard to beat.

This particular event was run by a different organization, and seemed less haphazardly slapped together. Like the previous event, the women were split up into several smaller circles and given a series of topics to discuss for one minute per person. The moderator, a psychologist, had prepared a series of mostly intriguing questions that kept the conversation lively and more or less interesting and she was good about making sure people moved into their new groups quickly.

The theme of this event was Core Values. It was speed dating for the Touchy Feely Over-Analyzed Very Very Earnest Set. (Most of whom liked to play golf, incidentally. And sail. And wear pastel polo shirts. Really, La Gringa has never seen such a large and effusive gathering of Dinah Shore Dykes all in one place in Manhattan.)

The problem with a theme like this, of course, lies in one’s definition of the words "core values". To La Gringa, God is a core value. But so is dark chocolate. The ability to laugh at one’s self is a core value. Integrity is a core value. But so is not being allergic to cats.

Overall, however, it seemed to be a good group of women who would nevertheless *never in a million bazillion years* ever have any single thing in common with one another (except for the Dinah Shore Dykes) much less be interested in dating one another. Oh, well.

The very best thing about the event, however, was this:

The moderator’s water bottle carrier, a crystal-beaded purple and blue and fuschia thing of wonder. La Gringa became ridiculously obsessed with this water bottle thingie, to the point of distraction. It was just so…Liberace! We tried and tried to snap a picture of it without Lady Moderator seeing us, but we were never devious enough. Finally, seeing La Gringa’s desperation, OkieExpat (who was also in attendance at this shindig) volunteered to go up to the moderator and use sheer chutzpah to get a photo for La Gringa. (Note: You have now seen the word "chutzpah" used twice in one week on Band Camp, surely a record for this blog.)

And the best part? Lady Moderator has THREE more of these water bottle carrier holder thing-a-ma-bobs, all in different stunning Liberace color palettes.

The verdict? Worth every penny just to see that damned water bottle thingie! (Oh, and, La gringa did get one phone number from a woman who owned her own house-cleaning business. She’d been listening to La Gringa talk about her hairball-prone cats at one point, and said "Girl, you got two cats. I KNOW you need a good cleaning lady!" Indeed.)

I’m afraid I’m not personally qualified to confuse a cat… *

…tickling rats, however, is well within range.

* Bonus points to anyone who knows the origin of the headline. Kgaard, I know you know, you’re disqualified.

Book Stud’s Rules For Impressing Girls

Your friendly neighborhood Book Stud learned a great deal last night. Not at the marvelous book party for the lovely and talented Felicia Luna Lemus, who read from her new novel LIKE SON; but  at bars, and about the ever-elusive, ever-perplexing matter of girls. Here is what I have learned, gentle readers.

1. Margaritas = evil.
2. No, really. Evil.
3. When you go into a gay-boy bar, the girls talking to the boys are fag hags. (An ancient and ennobled clan.) The girls talking to each other are queer, and therefore your targets.
4. (Or, I suppose, fag hags who haven’t quite gotten the hang of it yet.)
5. There are any number of ways to approach said girls. Not a one of them, you will note, involves standing bashfully on the other side of the room, nursing your beer and watching them stealthily.
6. Yes, girls playing pool are hot. Generally, they are sexy competitive butch girls who can do the lean-over-pool-table-and-make- it-look-easy-while-wearing- a-wifebeater thing. If you are wearing a pink sweater, it is harder to pull this off.
7. Actually, just don’t wear a pink sweater in the first place. This was a Bad Idea. What are you, an ex-sorority girl? Kappa Kappa Dyke?
8. Looking up suggestively over the pool table is a tricky business, especially when your attempts to look casually sexy have gone horribly awry in the past.
9. When your hot ex tried to teach you to play pool, you should have spent more time listening and less peeking down her shirt when she leaned over. Your gay boyfriend, who has just informed you that he can’t play pool either? Is hustling you.
10. Shooting the cue ball itself so far across the room that it nearly goes out the door and lands with an enormous pistol-shot crack is, indeed, one way to get the girls’ attention; perhaps not quite the one you were going for, though.
11. While starting over and going to another bar may sound like a good idea in theory, you may be thwarted by melicitlu’s Theory of Population; there are actually only 10,000 people in New York, and the rest are CGI. You will now run into someone with whom you broke up less than 24 hours ago. Liz Scheier
12. If she hasn’t seen you yet, cutting and running like a little girl is probably the best way to go; after this many margaritas, you are unlikely to say anything to improve the situation.

More lessons to come, as I continue to make an ass of myself in public places.

Baby be mine; or, Why Book Stud Is Clearly Too Jumpy And Caffeinated To Deal With Certain Things Just Yet

Sven is one of my very dearest friends. We met as seniors in college, and were more or less inseparable the whole year. (Including the several days I spent more or less living on her couch in a huddled, weeping mess, during the [thankfully false] Pregnancy Scare of Doom; this will become important later.) After graduation, we went our separate ways; I went home to New York, stopped dating men, started dating women, and got an office gig; she went home to the Bay Area, stopped dating women, started dating men, and soon thereafter married one of said men and traveled around the world with him.

Now she is settled happily in Providence, working as a nurse and expecting her first yowen. Despite my usual mixed feelings in re children (which run the wide gamut from "OhGodOhGodOhGod it’s looking at me – why is it looking at me? What does it want?" to "RUN! GAH! HELP!"), I am already crazy about said child (known to all and sundry, thus far, as Bun, as in "in the oven"), and am very excited for it to make its appearance. And I thought I was OK with this whole “pregnant” concept. Really I did.

Famous last words.

So when Sven came in this weekend, we did our usual round of Girly Stuff; cooking, baking, watching movies, yammering, and shopping. In deference to her delicate condition, we did not go out to girl bars and flirt with the ladies, which used to be high on the agenda for visits.

No, this time we found ourselves in a place I never expected to be: the maternity section of the Gap. They treat those pregnant ladies nice– huge chairs, throw pillows (throw pillows! I kept looking around for a minibar and valet!) and about four square kilometers of space. They also provided a handy Pregnantizer (note: I am reasonably certain this is not what it’s actually called) which is basically a strap-on belly you can put on under the clothes so you see what you’ll look like by the time you get big enough for them.

I was trying on a series of fluttery little summer shirts, as one does on the first nice weekend of the year, and was bemoaning the unfortunate trend this year which causes shirts to fit normally from neckline to just under the breasts, at which point they leap aggressively away from the body in a fit of rebellion, causing the wearer to look either like a carefree painterly type, or like, well, like one is seven months pregnant. “Ha ha!” thought I to myself. “Wouldn’t it be funny if…”

(Note: thoughts that begin this way should be automatically discarded. Always.)

So when Sven was looking the other way, I picked up the Pregnantizer and strapped it to my midsection, fluffed the shirt back over it, and struck a pose in the mirror.

And The Fear struck.

Those of you other asthma babies out there will know what I’m talking about; there’s that rush of adrenaline and total terror because all of a sudden, out of the clear blue sky, you cannot breathe.

Sven turned around just in time to see the pose and burst out laughing, digging for her camera, and then suddenly looked at me concernedly. “Are you OK? You look… weird.”

At which point, I lost it. I screamed – no cutesy little saw-a-mouse yelp, either, but a full-fledged belly-out shriek that I’m sure everyone in the store, nay, the city heard – and started hopping up and down, tugging at the hateful Pregnantizer. “Get it off!”

“Oh my God, you are scarlet!”

“Get it off! Get it off! Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff!”

Somehow, Sven managed to get me out of the miserable contraption without ripping anything. I sat on the floor huffing until my heart returned to its normal rhythm, and then sulked on the chair, Pregnantizer shoved pointedly under a pile of clothes, until we could go.

Clearly, it is a very good thing that she is the one who is pregnant, n’est ce pas?

Devil, thy name is Chimay Bleue

Note to self: Six bottles of one of the world’s strongest Belgian ales is perhaps five too many on an empty stomach. Also, deep-fried mozzarella sticks and baked bananas wrapped in sugar dough, ice cream and whipped cream are perhaps NOT the dishes to eat afterward in order to soak up the afore mentioned ale. Lastly, following up all of this with leftover Christmas party beer of dubious origin is ALWAYS a bad idea.

However, we take some small solace in the fact that we were not alone in our debauchery last night, and therefore we were most likely not alone in our hangover this fine morning.

Thank You, and Yes It’s True

So yes, I haven’t been posting much because I’ve had quite a bit on my mind, but the stories are accurate, Madame Toner and I are expecting a child [looks at watch], and will keep everyone informed as to preparations, doctor’s visits, those birthing classes that look like so much fun in the movies, and so forth. So far, the mom-to-be says she’s doing well and hasn’t had any morning sickness. Having just read that eating fish improves a baby’s intelligence, I am practically force-feeding live sea bass to my life partner in the hopes of creating offspring who can help me with my taxes. More to come, promise–

And baby makes three..!

We here at La Gringa & Co. have a Very Important Announcement to make: One of us is having a baby! No, it is not La Gringa, and it is not Book Stud.

Rather it is the lone XY member of this here collective, the elusive Toner Low, who is soon to be a Daddy!!! Mrs. Toner Low is expecting, and soon there will be a little Toner Low, Jr. running around. (And we should point out to Toner Low that even though Book Stud claims she does NOT like children, she secretly yearns to be a professional babysitter. Just ask Baby Crumpet!)

We were waiting for Toner Low to actually make this announcement himself, but he hasn’t gotten his ass in gear yet so we felt compelled to share this news with our readers on our own. (In fact, we here at La Gringa & Co. had to find out about the delightful spawning of Toner Low through a third party, our mutual friend the esteemed Miss Fuck Puddle, who drunken-dialed La Gringa from a burlesque show last week to break the happy news.)

Congratulations,
Toner Low!!!

Walking and chewing gum at the same time…

Clearly the terrorist threat to New York City has been resolved!

The newest threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of free capital in the Big Apple? iPods. Our beloved city would now like to begin banning the use of iPods…while crossing the street.

Apparently several folks in Brooklyn have been killed because they were walking against traffic while listening to iPods. Pay attention, now! The key words here are "walking against traffic."

Clearly, gentle readers, this is Darwinism in action. Do we really have the right to stand in the way of evolution?

Speed Dating 101

Yes, yes, yes, we know – we have been negligent in our blogging duties. Tsk tsk! Bad La Gringa! No cookie for you! To try to atone for the relative lameness of La Gringa’s last few posts, we have decided to share with you the shameful tale of our recent La Gringa Speed Dating Adventure.

Last Saturday evening, La Gringa and Female Person Who Wishes To Remain Anonymous (hereafter to be referred to as FPWWTRA) embarked on that most desperate and ill-advised of mating rituals: Speed Dating. (Yes, there is no end to the stupid things La Gringa will try in the name of homo-science!)

Preened, polished and poly-unsaturated, we arrived at the Gay Center precisely at 8:00 PM, ready to take on all of our fellow socially-inept dateless queer chicks. How bad could it be, we pondered?

Stupider words were never spoken.

There were about fifty-five or so women total crammed into a room that really would have seated forty-five comfortably. The event organizer – we’ll call him Nancy Boy Steve – arranged all us chicks into small circles and gave each circle a question. Each person in the circle was supposed to answer the question, talk for one minute and then pass the floor to the next woman in the circle. Then, Nancy Boy Steve would randomly select a handful of women to move into a different circle. We would get four minutes of free "mingling time" in which we were supposed to approach the babe of our dreams (who might not yet have been assigned to our little circle) and make scintillating small-talk of some sort. Then another question. And so on and so on and so on. At the end of the two hours, we were instructed to write down the numbers of women we wanted to date; if any of those women had written our numbers down, it was a date.

Two painful hours later, FPWWTRA and La Gringa walked out, changed women. We had learned valuable life lessons about Successful Speed Dating. And now we are going to share them with you:

1. Make Sure the Moderator Gives You Really Stupid Questions to Ask the Women in Your Group:  Yes, Nancy Boy Steve actually made us ask each other that most dreaded and pointless of questions: "If you were an animal, what animal would you be?" Oy.
2. Come Without a Sense of Humor: Never has La Gringa seen a more humorless group of women in one room. It was like the worst night of a stand-up open mic. Occasionally FPWWTRA or La Gringa would attempt to inject levity into the proceedings, only to be met with blank stares.
3. Be a Stereotype: If a homophobic sitcom writer had written a teleplay of this event, he/she could not have peopled the room with more representatives of bad lesbian/feminist stereotypes. There was the Be-Birkenstocked Granola Eater with Braids & Moustache. There was The Middle Aged Professional w/ Mullet. (For example of this stereotype, see any bad lesbian movie from the mid-1980s.) There was the I Joined A Convent At Nineteen And Finally Got Out After Fifty Years And Have No Frame Of Reference For Anything You Say That Is Pop-Culture Related. (La Gringa is fully aware that she is going to hell, yes.) There was the Really Angry Feminist Who Only Wants To Discuss Social Justice. There was Thuggish Under-Educated Baby Dyke Who Speaks Only In Text Messages, Yo. (This is a stereotype frequently seen on feel-good television shows like Judging Amy.) There was Middle Aged Surfer Chick. There was Bi-Racial Hot Androgynous Chick w/ Unspecified Exotic Accent. (This stereotype often appears in bad vampire flicks.)
4. Be Wholly Unoriginal: One of the questions that the moderator threw out was "What would your perfect daytime date be?" Of the fifty-six women there, fifty of them replied with some variation of "Brunch followed by a romantic walk in Central Park." La Gringa would just like fair warning, so that she can be anywhere BUT Central Park on that day. (In the meantime, La Gringa’s perfect daytime date would more along the lines of breakfast in bed, sex until we chafe, followed by a ride on the Staten Island Ferry, where sex would again occur in the bathroom just as we pass the Statue of Liberty. A patriotic act!)
5. Find Your Personal Philosophy in Bad TV Theme Songs: At one point, poor FPWWTRA had the bad luck to be in a group where one woman, answering a question having vaguely to do with personal values, began to extoll "Well, you take the good, you take the bad, and you mix them both…" At this, FPWWTRA clapped her hand over her own mouth, jumped out her her chair and ran to La Gringa (rather more purple in the face than one should be), whereupon she then proceeded to burst out in song "The facts of life, the facts of life!!!" And thusly, we were both reduced to giggles. (Unfortunately, we also had that damned song stuck in our heads the rest of the evening.)
6. Lower Your Standards: The most important lesson of all. All throughout the evening, Nancy Boy Steve kept shouting at all the women to "Write down more numbers, write down more numbers! Remember, the more numbers you write down, the more likely you will find a match!" He may just as well have shouted "We know you’re desperate; YOU know you’re desperate – you’re going to die alone anyway!"

Finally, it was over. We escaped, having been deprived of $20 and our dignity. We then proceeded to Doma where we stuffed our faces with coconut cream cake. (So you see, the evening was not a total loss.)

Open the floodgates

Book Stud’s lesson of the day:

Some things are wholly and deservedly a matter of personal experience, and should always be attempted by one’s own sorry self. F’rinstance: balancing a checkbook; making decent coffee; falling in love.

Not mentioned on this list: plumbing.

Amateur plumbing = a bad idea.

You know you are about to attempt amateur plumbing if you are employing any or all of the following tools:

1. Paper clips
2. Chopsticks
3. The pointy end of a rat-tailed comb
4. Extraordinary profanity

Should this be the case, back away slowly, brush your teeth in the kitchen, and call a damn plumber.

We interrupt this blog to squeal very loudly: CUUUUUTE!!!!!

There is nothing more important in your life right this very minute than this:

BABY PANDA ACTION!!!

(You may return to your regular and very dull non-baby panda lives now.)

Cinnamon HIGHLY disapproves of this post.

Just as I frequently think Miss Mona has a permanent guilty expression of "British schoolboy who has short-sheeted the headmaster’s sheets and is about to be caned", this lady’s rabbit has a permanent nose-upturned look of disapproval. Luckily, I highly approve of lapine anthropomorphism.

Thanks, Cute Overload!

Chalk it up to the usual category: Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

Tips For Embarking On A 50-Mile Bike Ride

            

1) As with most brilliant ideas: Sit down with a nice cup of hot tea, and it will most likely go away.

2) If your riding partner has a cute ass, by all means make him or her go on ahead. You will need the encouragement. No shame in being a donkey chasing a carrot.

3) Good planning is essential. It is far better to plan for a 50-mile bike trip than a 40-mile with ten free bonus miles of getting lost at the bottom of the Biggest Hill in Christendom (TM).

4) If you find yourself at the bottom of said hill, don’t be a hero. Who are you, Lance Armstrong? Walk the damn bike.

5) Collapsing in a heap after ten miles and proclaiming your absolute inability to go another mile is bad form. It also lessens your credibility when your girlfriend does the same thing five miles later, and you are standing over her shouting abuse drill-sergeant style.

6) Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: non-padded bike shorts.

7) Consider deeply whether it would be in terrible taste to make a joke to the effect that riding fifty miles makes your bum so sore that you might as well be a Congressional page. Decide it would be.

 Whoops.

9) Do not, under any circumstances, make the assumption that just because you are skinny and the few muscles you have actually show, in any way means you actually have muscles. It just means that when you collapse by the side of the road, the buzzards will finish you off first.

10) There is no such thing as a bad excuse for a break. Snacks, drinks, restrooms, tag sales, the Virgin Mary appearing etched in asphalt, anything.

11) Until, that is, you’re still ten miles from the bridge, it’s getting dark, you’re on a random Jersey highway, and your back reflector has mysteriously vanished.

12) That is less fun.

13) Riding over the George Washington Bridge at night is the most beautiful sight on earth. Take a look. Try not to crash.

14) Upon finally reaching the girlfriend’s house, do NOT take a scalding shower and then promptly fall asleep. Upon awakening, you will realize that you have given away the secret you have been successfully hiding for the entire span of the relationship, with the help of your trusty accomplice, Senor El BlowDryer: your hair is not soft and sleek and siren-straight. It is a curly mess. Not cute-curly, but Muppet-gets-a-sheep-trashed- at-a-kegger- and-va-va-va-voom curly. This is not attractive.

15) When girlfriend has stopped laughing, borrow clothing. Pat self on the back for one’s clever homosexuality; it makes it easier to borrow one’s lover’s clean undies and socks to go home in, and have them fit.

16) Wait. Girlfriend wears mens’ underwear. Scratch the gloating.

17) But they fit, which makes them seem awfully small. Dig through brain-archives for far-off-distant-past intimate memories of men; you are sure there was more involved than would fit in here.

18) Having these thoughts on the subway is a Bad Idea. Now you are looking appraisingly at men standing nearby. And you have gotten caught.

19) Man is now smiling meaningfully at you. Crap.

20) Subway doors open. Use bike to make swift getaway. Note: wait till the bottom of the stairs to do this.

21) Take Alleve to ensure non-sociopathic personality the next day and fall into bed. The cat hates you for being away the whole day. Tell her that if she doesn’t lose the attitude you just might train her as a sled dog and then NO one will have to bike EVER AGAIN.

21) You are scolding a cat. This is not a good sign. Put your sorry ass to bed and sleep like the blissful dead.