As Willem Defoe said in "Last Temptation of Christ," it is accomplished

Okay, it only seems worthy of a quasi-biblical reference (Does a quote from a quasi-biblical movie constitute a quasi-biblical reference? Discuss). I'm talking about The RIng. We speak of the Ring in measured, hushed tones. After weeks of waiting, the Ring that LK herself designed was finally ready for the unveiling. We spent the week prior working to get me finally moved out of my apartment, and both earned a nice night out. Reservations at Alma de Cuba, an exquisite Cuban restuarant. Perhaps the best meal I've ever had. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The original plan was to double the "every muscle aches and you deserve a break today!" meal with a "surprise I got the Ring" evening, where no one would suspect a thing.

That was the original plan. And then I saw It. You'd think I bought it for myself. I picked it up on Monday, and spent all day Tuesday taking it out and looking at it in the light. The jeweler-craftsman gave me some sage Yoda-like instruction before I left with it. (Actually, it was more like the advice that Grandpa Simpson gave Homer about traveling back in time, on his wedding day): Don't let any other woman look at it, or (godforbid) put it on, don't take it out of the box except to put it on her finger, etc. So I was appropriately cautioned. But mostly I just couldn't sit still while waiting for the moment to arrive. So a plan revision was in order. It was actually precipitated by a moment of panic over a suit that I'd purchased about a month before at Boyds. Figured they might return it to the stacks or something since I hadn't stopped in to get it. I get like that. I haven't had many dealings with your more high end stores. So LK knew of my panic, knew I would stop down that day to pick it up, and we would see each other after her gig that night.

So you have to understand that ordinarily something like this would be a little more planful. But the Ring (to bind them all) bound me to a different course, and I had to think fast. Rabbit fast. Suit, check. RING, check. Strawberries and chocolate, check. Flowers, check. (Found some lovely purple roses, her favorite color). Check, check, check. But of course in my haste, I forgot (or more accurately never knew) that it was election day. The one day you really need a drink, none of the state stores are open. Must have champagne or the whole thing is a wash. Or at least sub-optimal, to wedge a sterile business term in there...So, we can revise Plan A (actually the Plan formerly known as Plan B) and hold off (and I was bouncing like a kid on Christmas eve, so that wasn't going to happen) or we think fast. Rabbit fast. After a quick mental survey of restaurants in the area, I dashed over to Montomery ave, to a local place that I halfway figured would have some sparkly wine, at least.

And that's when the fates really started smiling on me. Outside the Fire Station, just coming from Rocking the Vote with his 10-year-old son is SH! The very SH (along with LK's lifelong friend GH) who is hosting our wedding in the backyard! Hey, no time to chat, have to find a bottle of champagne. No problem, grasshopper, we have one. And that was that. Followed them home, he gave me this fantastic bottle of bubbly, and I told them of my anxious plans and ran, in rabbit fashion, back to the house.

Preparation is not my strong suit. My attention deficit tendencies take charge. The cat must have thought me insane. I spent four hours engaged in the following (seemingly random) multitasking frenzy: cleaning and slicing the strawberries, making chocolate dipping sauce (first batch, added cognac and turned it into a lovely chocolate paste, suitable for laying brick; second batch, not bad at all), arranging the flowers, making little signs to redirect the unsuspecting fiance all over the house ("Come inside", and then, when inside, "Take your wine glass and some chocolate and go upstairs") while I hovered like a barn owl upstairs (do barn owls pounce? I know they hang out in the dark a lot), ironing shirt to go with the new suit, actually dipping the strawberries, moving this thing over here and then back again, etc.

Zero hour, sat upstairs with about forty candles lit, sweating like a linebacker in my new Italian wool suit, waiting for LK to come home. Finally decided to focus myself by taking some candle-light photos of the scene. Of course as I finally get it set up I see the headlights in the driveway. Ack! (I may have actually said this). This won't work if I'm downstairs. Have to grab the champagne and dash (more bunny activity) before she sees me. Sweating, you ask? Oh yes.

And then everything just slowed down. Deep cleansing breaths and the surprise was surprising and it went just perfectly. On bended knee and everything. A spectacular moment. It was your last chance to back out, sweetie. I love you.

Now there's just a wedding to plan...Luckily LK is handling most of it. Needless to say, she is much more organized than I am. Apparently we need forty servers or something. She's working the details. I contribute by staying out of the way...

posted by MT at 8:25 AM |

Say it, sistah.

I meant to post this a few days ago. Actual quote from Britney. Via Entertainment Weekly. Sort of brings a tear to your eye.

"Anyone can sit down and write some boring artistic song," says Britney Spears. "Pop music is the hardest shit to write." [regarding her new album, BS says]: "The subjects are really out there. It's about general things that teanagers go through that are real that nobody talks about. I really don't think that many people from my core audience will get it. But I would rather somebody either really love it or really hate it. I don't want anything in between."

Don't worry dear. I'm sure very many people will really hate it. And since you're losing your core audience (ten-year-olds who are disgusted by the plastic surgery allegations) you will have to rely more heavily on the vastly more populous (but less financially supportive) secondary audience, 38-45-year-old single men, still living with mom, in the basement, downloading your candid beach photographs from the tabloid sites. I bet you can secure their dollars if you include a poster with the next release...


posted by MT at 12:15 PM |

Q: "Don't you know the Queen's English?"
A: "I'm sure he is."
Benny Hill


How can you tell the person typing the spam email is not a native speaker? I'll leave it to you to judge.

Hey, ClothMother.
Possibly you are waiting for this innovative mail, is it spot on?
Hope yes!
My Sugar pal I have Good news for you.
Now you can Look at this website and do your sexual things.

I must go Look! Hey Sugar pal! Spot on indeed! Innovative doesn't begin to cover it...





posted by MT at 10:35 AM |

If a pop-up ad fails to materialize, does that lead to a pervasive sense of loss and foreboding?

Do you worry that maybe you aren't the millionth visitor to this site? That you've lost out on some exciting news? And what about your casino gambling opportunities--At Home! And what if you need a new webcam, and suddenly nobody is there offering one right up for you?

All of these things are no doubt swirling in your brain as you jumped over here today, wondering where all the annoying advertising has gone. I finally bit the bullet and registered the domain name, clothmother.org. So no more pop-ups, and the little ad above the monkey is gone as well. That alone has been worth it. But more importantly, the site is much easier to find now. The URL will be, From This Time Forward...clothmother.org/clothmother.html. That's not a link, just some boldface, but feel free to update your favorites, your links, and be sure to tell all your friends...or people that you really hate and want them to bother me instead of you. The old address will still work, but this should make it easier for linking behavior to occur. I'll be updating the rest of the site, the format, etc., plus some changes to the email address as well.

Change is good. More news later. Work now.


posted by MT at 10:04 AM |

"Honey, I'm on my way. I have the hand cart, ibuprofen, antacids, and chocolate!"

Is it any wonder why I love this woman?

This was the scene on Friday night (Friday nights with yours truly! Cleaning! Packing! Sweating! A bowl of generic ibuprofen and calcium carbonate to round out the evening! FUN!) It's never the big things, the big moves. It's the final mop-up. The floor strewn with piles of this and that, as far as the eye can see. A testament to my inability to part with anything, no matter how mundane or insignificant. Boxes of reprints from graduate school that I can't seem to toss (and isn't it strange that I still find a Psychological Bulletin article from 1988 current??) And so on. LK came by after her own grueling day of rehearsals and performances, and brought an amazing dinner with her of beef brisket and grilled veggies. Much better than the Moo-Shoo and Kung Pao that was still in the fridge from Monday. Naturally, I could only eat a bit of it because I'd been refluxing since the early morning. And I was remarkably headache free, considering -- the pain pills were for my knee, which began acting up after all the trips up and down the stairs (a holdover 'blade injury from my visit to Providence last year..)

But it's officially official, as of about two hours ago -- we are fully co-habitating, and I'm out of my old apartment (except for the little bits of kitty litter still ground into the carpet in the hall closet, where we kept the box...so don't tell anyone). Amazing that 98% of my crap is in a 10x5 storage facility down the road a ways and I've missed almost none of it. Shows you what you can get rid of and still be happy. Of course it helps if you have LK (or someone like her, back off she's mine) waiting for you at home with some pan-fried steak and smashed (Hulk SMASH!) potatoes with goat cheese and some sauteed spinach and garlic on the side. And we were both up at 7:15 this morning after unpacking at about 12:30 last night. She did all this to get us back to normal again. And then went off to work...again...Are you getting how spectacular this all is, my lemurs? Boy. Howdy.

So tonight, it's a little blogging, no revisions to the page tonight (have succumbed to the Heineken in a can, and can manage no further creativity after I sign off here), and a couple of hours in front of the tube with this morning's MST3K to relax with...and dangle prepositions in front of. Ha! And then some snuggling when LK comes home from her gig. If I haven't crashed by then.


Okay, one more bit...

Mimi S.. always does this to me. Observe:

1. It's time for the Perfect Math-Related Cheer!


Tangent, secant, cosine, sine! 3.14159!


There is more but I forget. I love the nerdy chants. At the one football game I ever attended in college (my school, at least the way I remember it through the mists of time, was much more friendly to artsy types than jocks---we were like Division Z or something), my clearest memory is of the nerdy chants. My personal favorite was "IMPEDE! THEIR! PROGRESS!" instead of merely calling for "defense."

Which reminds me of my favorite geeky cheer from high school marching band days (have I mentioned I was a marching band nerd as well? Wasn't it already sort of obvious? In case any of you were wondering why I've been single all this time...Found my old saxophone in the move, BTW...and yes I kept it Because It [probably] Still Works even though I haven't played it in 20 years...it's in storage as we speak). And that favorite chant went:

Repel them! Repel them! Coerce them to relinquish the oblong spheroid!

Fun times...




posted by MT at 7:43 PM |

I Am Not Spam!

Hoofa. Been away. Back, for a time. Taking pains to keep it all together.

Moving day has extended into moving week. I am trying to remember why I didn't hire the college boys who moved me from south Jersey to PA four years ago. Decided, inexplicably, to doitmyself. Bad idea, always. It has always seemed like a better bargain to just sell everything and buy new stuff in the new location. And, since 98% of my gear is in storage now, since LK has much better taste, furniture, everything than me, the desire to keep any of it is remarkably diminished.

But here's something funny. Grandma Rose, who is 101 this year, just recently got caller ID. Seems that she gets too many telemarketer calls for her liking. As do we all. And when you're that age, and it takes you five minutes to amble over to the phone only to discover a computer on the other end, well, I appreciate the aggravation. So she has caller ID. Problem is, calling her while on the road means that she doesn't recognize the phone numbers, and so doesn't know it's me. So when I called the other day from the Sofitel (great hotel, and the French need our help now, you know) the phone rang five, ten, fifteen, twenty times, and then...*click*. And then silence. Called back, and the phone was off the hook. Pick up the cell phone a few minutes later. Dial again. Ten rings. *click*. 40 minutes later, I get a call on the cell. "Did you try to call me? I found your card and realized it was your cell phone." She has to consult my card to get in touch with me. Sweet.

Okay, so it's not as funny as I thought it was. Just kind of ironic, maybe, the last remaining Luddite of her generation, finally comes screaming into the late 20th century with Caller ID, and who does she block? Me.

*Ca-LICK*

Love you Grandma.

Happy Blogiversary

I just realized the other day that my one year anniversary came and went without any notice from anyone, especially me! How odd! But, in honor of me, I'm going to be doing two things to update this space. One: redesign. Now that I have Office 2000, adding fancy things like frames and so on is a snap. So I'm snapping away. Should look much more festive. Two: investigate a more permanent address, like clothmother.org or something similar. Because now there are at least two pop-ups from Tripod on this damned thing, and it's hardly worth that aggravation. Oh, and Three: Like, post once in a while. Which will of necessity involve less self-censorship and just putting stuff out there. So watch out world! It could get rowdy around here!



posted by MT at 9:22 PM |