Sign I may watch too much television: it only took me 3 or 4 minutes to figure out that the reason the girl getting a makeover on How Do I Look? looked familiar was that she was on an episode of True Life (the one where the girls want to get breast reductions).

Speaking of How Do I Look?, there is also an episode where one of the friends of the makeoveree was a cheerleader at my high school.

It turns out that if you liked Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time-Traveler’s Wife, you will not necessarily like Her Fearful Symmetry. I didn’t like the title, first off: it’s awkward and hard to say. Every time I said it, I added a question mark at the end to imply that I didn’t understand it either. I’m reading Her Fearful Symmetry? I also hated the spindly font on the cover.

Edited to add: ohhhh, it’s a reference to Blake’s “The Tyger.” Whatevs.

There are ghosts in it, but Niffenegger handles the ghosty elements pretty rationally: they do NOT SEND EMAIL or throw buckets of water on people or try to make out with their nephews with one rotting eyeball hanging out of their skulls like in some books.

However, if you like rationally ghosty books involving characters you don’t really like because there’s nothing to like about them, go read this book!

In related reading news, have you read Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard? Holy balls, these poems are fantastic.

In closing, here are two vanity tags I saw recently that totally fail:
PEECE
MYBABBE

I’m watching an episode of Neat (another in a series of shows where people throw away their stuff and get organized; in other words, heaven on tv) where a lady just got bullied into throwing away her portion of a towel that she and her friends acquired at a Duran Duran concert and which holds the sweat of Simon LeBon. Hello. I am all for throwing out, but there is room in any house for a two inch square of sweaty Duran Duran towel.

I watch these shows because I enjoy watching people be forced to get rid of their ugly, broken items, NOT PRECIOUS ARTIFACTS. I may not be able to watch this show anymore.

Three Names I Came Across Recently in Looking at Land Patent Records from the 1860s, Or, Alternately, the Name of the Villains in My New Western:

Hermogene LeBlanc
Magness Teague
Roling Suggs

Monday afternoon, Spike and I were in the yard playing. He’s got a car and a lawn mower he likes to play with outside and we were busy going up and down the driveway nine million times with them. Spike is an even-tempered fellow most of the time, but the one thing that inspires his wrath is having to come inside from playing. If we go out in the stroller, there is no spitting or rage or the tearing of hair when we return, but dragging him inside when he is busy mowing the yard is ugly. Ugly.

So I was getting tired of being made to push a tiny lawn mower around the perimeter of my house, and thought, hey, if we go for a walk now, maybe he won’t scream when we have to go in. And so I said let’s go for a walk in the stroller! and Spike said no and I said oh come on it’ll be fun! and he said no and finally I just caught him and started jamming him into the stroller. It was an ugly battle; there was writhing and kicking and I might’ve had my knee on his chest holding him down as I attempted to buckle him in.

And that is when I saw it: dog shit, all over my pants, Spike’s pants, and the bottom of the stroller. And oh, the shit on his shoe. It was no mere “aw man, I stepped in dog poop”; it was more “look how I magically managed to have an entire turd dangling off my shoe.” I had some antibacterial wipes in the stroller and knocked the big chunks off, and then, friends, Spike and I went for a leisurely walk through beautiful historic Belhaven, accompanied by the dog shit on our pants and a song in our hearts.

One of my all-time favorite sounds, up there with the sound of a train in the distance late at night, is the little “oomph” sound a cat makes when it jumps down from something and lands on the floor.

I have become a strange, foreign creature. This morning I made meatballs (as I was eating my Toaster Strudel) so that after work, dinner can get on the table quicker. Yesterday morning? I peeled shrimp. Who am I? Whoever I am, I am getting stuff DONE.

Knitting update: after several nights of failed attempts, I think I successfully cast on correctly. My main problem is not knowing which side the yarn is supposed to be on. Does it switch when you start actually knitting? Who made up knitting, anyway? I’d like to have a chat with them. If I did have a chat, and it was a video chat, I would hide the fact that I was using $2.99 Vanna White yarn. Vanna White: letter turner, yarn enthusiast, enigma.

Yesterday at the grocery store I was reading all the magazine covers while waiting in line, and people: the Cosmopolitan cover-writers have officially gone too far. This is the teaser:

YOUR HOO-HA HANDBOOK
Get a Healthy, Sexy Vagina

It probably says a lot about me that I am more comfortable with the word “hoo-ha” on a magazine cover than the word “vagina.” Or maybe it’s the context: sexy vagina. I took a picture with my (brand-new, surprise after-Christmas gift from Larry!) iPhone, and then harrassed every girl I know with a wordless text message. So, if you received a disturbing photo with the words “sexy vagina” in it, that was me. Sorry.

Speaking of the iPhone, it’s been cold here and I have discovered that you can’t answer the phone with gloves on (it has a slidey thing on the screen that doesn’t respond to gloved hands). So this morning, I answered with my nose. Hung up that way, too. I subscribe firmly to the belief that no one is studying me, and thus, I managed not to feel dumb.

In unrelated news, I am beyond excited about American Idol starting back up next week. No Paula!

I am always excited by the prospect of the New Year’s resolutions — not adhering to them, exactly, but making the list. I love making a list! This year I am sticking close to the obsolete definition of “resolution” that means to satisfy one’s desire (thanks, OED), and not the traditional New Year’s Resolutiony resolutions. Sure, I should eat better, probably exercise too, but I have no desire to do so. I do have a desire to do the following:

learn to knit
be able to make basic sauces without having to drag out a giant cookbook
paint the bathroom
get an orchid

I would write “massively clean out closet” but I’ve already done that. I also insanely organized my stuff by type of garment. Then I went nuts and did Larry’s side, too. What? He has rediscovered a pair of pants he’d forgotten! I have discovered that I own 17 cardigans. (I’d done all the laundry and picked up the dry cleaning when I counted, so that number is accurate. Oy.)

As for knitting, look: I’m old, I have cats, I have 17 cardigans to choose from: I might as well knit. I do not exactly predict that I’m going to be super good at it, as I tried once before and made a lumpy, misshapen circular thing that was supposed to be a hat but I never finished it and thus it was just “hey look I made this lumpy, misshapen circular thing, which I will now wear on my head around the house sometimes, even though it has a skein of yarn dangling behind it because I don’t know how to finish this.” I just want to make a scarf. And, if we’re being honest, I want to knit lumps of coal for Christmas next year. That is my official goal.

I also have reading goals, as usual, and this year I am ramping it up to 100 books. (Will I make it? Probably not, but as Joy Behar says, so what? who kez?) I’ve already read two: the Kathy Griffin book (which I loved) and The English American by Alison Larkin (which was good in that I read it in two days, but perhaps not the most literary book in the world; still, a good story that sucked me in enough that I read it in two days).