The Daily Tannenbaum

I’ve always been a fan of deer. Deer hunters piss me off. How can you shoot such a majestic creature? The way they hop through the woods, so graceful. Sure, it’s a little scary when they dart across the road at dusk, but seriously, that’s our fault for building roads through their land.

That’s how I thought until last night, when I came home, high from how great the swim went.

These used to be my tomatoes:

And my lush beets and spinach: (Not pictured: plastic fence that has been trampled.)

Gone. Every last one. Gone. Eaten. Left untouched: radishes and Brussels Sprouts, vegetables I’m not interested in eating but planted just because I was told they were easy. I’m so pissed. I actually had trouble sleeping last night because I was so upset. My next door neighbor, who fed Micki for me over the weekend, talked to me this morning and told me she was sad because her cat died on Saturday. I empathized for a minute, and then I was all, “I know how you feel, because I lost my beets!”

If I see a deer anywhere near me for the rest of the summer, I’m going to shoot it between the eyes. I no longer have any sympathy for those jerks. All the respect I paid them over the years, and this is how they repay me. So I guess after work today, I’m going to have to bend over my sore back and shoulders and pick up the pieces. Anyone have any suggestions? Is it too late to plant anew?

One thing that helps is that I’m currently listening to “The Worst Hard Time” in my car. It gives me a little perspective. Compared to what the homesteaders lost in the dust bowl of the 1930’s, a few eaten greens is not going to kill me. Back then, families lost their entire gardens when they were burned by the static electricity in the dust storms. And that was all they had to eat. I’m still in the position where I can pick up some pre-washed spinach at Stop & Shop. But still, if I see those doe eyes looking at me, my face is going to be the last thing those doe eyes ever see.

I won’t be around the internet today or this weekend, because I’m on my way to Vermont for my second ever swim meet! Hooray! Finally, a way to quantify all my hard swimming work!

At my first meet in March, I swam in 3 whole races. This time, I’m swimming in five, and, as I’ve mentioned previously, in a long-course 50 meter pool.

These are the events I’ve signed up to do, and the seed times I made up for myself:

• 100 meter breast stroke, 2:10.95
• 400 meter freestyle, 7:51.09
• 200 meter freestyle, 3:25.61
• 100 meter backstroke, 1:52.74
• 100 meter freestyle, 1:31.25

Since I’ve never swam in a long-course race before, my seed times are made up based on the times of the slowest swimmer in my coach’s high school swim team.

Because there are only 8 lanes in a pool, only 8 swimmers can go at once. Hence, you have heats that usually go from slowest swimmers to fastest. Making a good seed time is important, because you want to be in a competitive heat, otherwise the timing of the meet gets all off. Although, having a slow seed time and beating the pants two sizes too small swimsuits off everyone in your heat does feel good.

(Many coaches encourage their swimmers to get suits that are two sizes too small, because it sucks in all that jiggly fat which can slow you down. But that doesn’t solve the problem of the excess fat squeezing out the sides. No wonder the host team of this meet call themselves “The Muffintops.”)

Recently, Mickey asked the burning question, “if freestyle is the fastest stroke, why would you swim anything else?” Good question, Mickey.

The answer is… Oh my God, what in the world is that on your ceiling?

Moving on.

Just kidding. Personally, I swim backstroke so I can understand what it feels like to be waterboarded, and I swim breast stroke because that whip kick feels so good on my bum knees. I’m not swimming butterfly yet, but when I do, it will be… Uh, actually, I don’t know why I would do that.

If you’re still with me here, and you’re dying to know how I do on my races on Saturday and Sunday, I’m going to update my results to Twitter. (You don’t need an account to view my site.) Or, if you’re really hard core or my mother, let me know, and I can send you text messages directly! Woo hoo. Ta!

Back in August of 2003, I got a job as an unpaid production assistant on an independent feature that was so bad, it will never see the light of day. A few weeks into pre-production, I met Birmingham, who was hired to be the film’s art director. During the month of production, he spent most of his time trying to get in the pants of the flighty 18-year-old production assistant until she left, and he started spending more time with me, even though I was repulsed by his egregious attempts on the barely legal girl.

But eventually he broke me down with free massages on the back of the art truck, and constant encouragement to just take a break and eat a twinkie. The day after the production wrapped, we went on a date at a restaurant and I learned he didn’t actually live in New York City, he was just staying with a friend for the sake of the production. The Hudson Valley was the place he called home. Despite that, and despite the fact that he put his arm around me on the walk back from the restaurant (which I thought was rather forward), we kept going on dates. Eventually, we were dating.

FUN FACT: Birmingham is not really his name. A year into our relationship, he bought an army jacket at a thrift store with the name “Birmingham” sewn into it. When you’re mad at him, you can shake your fist and yell “BIRMINGHAAAAAMMM” as if you are his drill sergeant.

By sheer coincidence, I got a great job opportunity in the Hudson Valley in 2005, and that’s when I moved to the farm. I didn’t move up here for him, but it helped that he was here, and I already knew my way around. Then, he got a job in the middle-of-nowhere town, and moved and hour away. That distance issue, among other things, is the reason that we broke up last December. But we missed talking, and we got back in touch a few months ago. We’re not officially together, but we do go out on occasional friend-dates, including last night, when we celebrated his 33rd birthday, which is today.

I told him we could go wherever he wanted, and he chose Thai Spice, MY favorite new restaurant. That’s the kind of guy he is. Thoughtful. Indecisive. Over dinner, I told him I wanted to write a post today about him for his birthday, partially to honor him and partially because I have nothing else to write about. He said, “cool,” so here it is. He also gave me permission to post pictures because he forgot that I have shots of him sleeping, one wearing a bathrobe in the Waldorf Astoria, one wearing a cape and standing like Superman, one standing around with a cantaloupe on his head, some of extreme close-ups of his nose hairs, and this one, where he stuck a mustard packet on his forehead:

I mean, other than the fact that he likes to clean surfaces until he sees his face shining in them, you can see why I like this guy, right? Some other things about Birmingham:

He’s a good art-guy. He went to college for art, but nowadays you might just find him working really hard with crayons (preferred medium) on trying to solve the maze! Also, he likes to make art while making art, hence the sculpture in the foreground.

Both his parents came here from Ireland in the 60’s. Hence, he knows his way around a beer, especially a really gigantic one. Sadly, he cannot perform an Irish accent on queue, like my next boyfriend will be able to do. (Or Scottish, I’m not that picky.)  EDITED TO ADD: He’s actually not that big of a drinker, which is nice.  I just think that photo is funny.

Dude looks good in a suit. This was from our summer of a million weddings.

But if I were asked to sum up our entire relationship in one photo, that’s easy, it’s this:

I’ll let you form your own opinions from this point forward, but I want to you know that I didn’t know he was doing that until after I saw the photo on the camera. Even with this obvious harassment, I like the dude, and I’m sad that it’s not working out happily ever after. But I do hope that we stay in touch, and I hope that If I have kids, he gets to know time. And for everything he’s done to annoy me in my life, my sincerest hope is that he has kids of his own. And that those kids are extremely attractive teenage girls.

Last March, when I had my first swim meet the same weekend as the great blogger meet-up, NPW, Stefanie and Lara came to watch me compete not drown, quickly.  After my race, one of them (I think it was Lara?) asked me what I think about while I swim.  I didn’t have an answer to that question at the ready.  Now, I do.  I think about Lara asking me what I think about while I swim.  But sometimes I think it was Stefanie who asked the question, and sometimes I think it was NPW.  As I go, I scour the back of my brain for the original memory, but it’s gone.  Maybe ya’ll can clear it up in the comments.

There are other things I think about when I swim, such as:

• Elbows up!
• What shall I make for breakfast today?
• All of the perfect traits I would want in a boyfriend, as if knowing exactly what I want will make him appear out of thin air.  Then I usually create the perfect man from an amalgam of all of the guys I know, discarding all the less palatable qualities.
• How many strokes I have taken until getting to the wall.  (See the title.)
• And sometimes there’s just that empty buzzing sound.

When I bike to work, it’s the same thing, except I do a little more math.  Take this kind of inner monologue from yesterday’s ride:

You don’t even realize how much this seat hurts your butt until you sit on it again for the second day.  So this ride is 3 miles there, and three miles back, that’s 6 miles.  Man, for the first time in his life, Obama looked dorky when they got that picture of him on his bike.  I can’t even imagine what I look like, because I’m pretty dorky every day.  And my car gets about 32 miles to the gallon since I started driving like an 80 year old.  Oh man, that is one weird shadow I’m casting.  Better suck in that gut!  So how many trips do I have to take to equal a gallon of gas?  Easy.  32 divided by 6.  Which is…  You know who doesn’t give you any damn room on the road when passing?  School buses, that’s who.  What is the deal with that?  Oh wait, I was trying to divide 32 by 6 when I was so rudely interrupted by almost dying.  That number does not go evenly.  What is the closest integer to 32 that’s divisible by 6?  I haven’t thought the word “integer” since graduating high school.  Cool.  I know!  30.  Okay, so let’s say I get 30 miles to the gallon.  That’s 5 trips!  Five days of biking to save one gallon of gas, which is currently $4.29 at the station I go to.  So if I bike for a week, I save $4.29.  Dude, that is not a lot of cash, in the grand scheme of things.  You don’t notice how bad roadkill really smells until you start biking to work.  Yuck!  So if I owe the credit card company $39 for paying a day late, it would take me how long to save that money by biking?  I’m in way over my head with this math here.  Let’s round the fee up to $40, and round the gas down to $4.  (I wish.)  That’s 10 gallons.  And 5 trips is one gallon.  Do I want to times 5 by 10?  Or divide?  I’m tired, but man, my arms are looking hot!  No, I got it, it would take me 50 trips to save that money.  That means (roughly) biking to work every day this summer, rain, shine or heat wave.

I should probably just get a second job.

Ever since the heat wave of last week, things have been super quiet in my life. I’m in a bit of a rut, or a routine if you will. Wake up, go swimming, go to work, go home, watch a DVD. Sometimes I’ll throw a little gardening, yard sale, or a trip to New Jersey for Father’s Day and laundry into the mix.  Otherwise, it’s boring around here.

Yesterday I thought about going to see “The Happening” just so I could make another dollar store re-enactment out of it. But I’m not that willing to go through that much suffering for my art.

I’m planning on doing more Hudson Valley activities to shine a light on this corner of the world.  But I’m going to pepper them in through the summer, because there are some interesting things coming up, and with gas prices as they are, I don’t want to drive all the way to Woodstock just for the sake of one farmer’s market.  But I will go there for the new hippie museum that just opened.  There’s one in Bethel, too.  Sounds like a trip for a future weekend…

Speaking of future weekends, I’m participating in my second ever swim meet this weekend.  It’s in Vermont, in an Olympic size (50 meter) pool.  Normally, I swim in a 25 yard pool, so this should be weird.  When it feels like it’s time to flip turn, boom!  More pool.  I’m swimming 5 events, and if you’re interested, I’ll probably update my times via Twitter, so sign up to follow me now!  During the last meet, my big accomplishment was coming in 14th out of 14 on the 50 yard backstroke, earning a fat 3 points for our team.  I also swam as part of a relay team that came in 7th place, which earned me a pretty green ribbon.  This time, my goal is 6 points for the team and 2 ribbons!  Barring that, I just want to look good in my new blue Speedo.

So that’s the long and the short of it.  Perhaps when I get home tonight, I’ll try and injure myself in some funny or ironic way so I have a great story to tell!  Either way, I’m certain whatever I do with my evening will be more entertaining than “The Happening.”

Since I was yard sailing all day Friday, I completely ignored the internet.  Nothing personal, of course, it’s just good to get away every once and a while.  If anyone spent the day wringing their hands, wondering the fate of my stuff, I’ve got one thing to say to you: get a life.  But even if you weren’t, here’s what happened:

The Shower Stool went for $10.  I marked it at $25, but a woman wanted it for her 95 year old father, which meant that my naked butt meant nothing as far as increasing the price.  I also noticed that most people, when bargaining down more than a dollar or two, liked to include a sob story of why they needed the item at an extreme discount.  For instance, my air conditioner was also marked at $25, but a woman offered $10 with the explanation that it was for her divorced friend whose kids were currently dying of heat.  Whatever, dude.  Just don’t make me put it into your car for you.

The Ansel Adams calendar went for 50 cents, along with my 2001 Brian Froud Fairies calendar, which I marked down to 25 cents.

Mookie Wilson did not sell, because I adamantly priced him at $10 and refused to sell him to anyone who would not admit he was the greatest Met of all time.  Perhaps it will be Ebay for him, or maybe my dashboard.  Who knows?

Sorry, Sister Alyson, the nail art sold for $3.  It was the last thing to go before the skies opened up and ended our sale three and a half hours early on Saturday afternoon.  But the man who bought it was really happy, and we didn’t tell him that hours earlier Birmingham had come to visit and used it to make faces with his tongue sticking out.

Wilson Philips and Shari Lewis are still in my possession, even though I priced the tapes at 5 for $1 and 8 for $1.50 (no one fell for the shady 8 tape deal).  But, I did sell the “No Son Of Mine” single to a dude who was really excited about it.  For his dollar, he also got Tesla, Warrant, Poison and Ozzy Ozborne.  Then, as he and his wild hair got back into his pickup, he told me he was “jazzed to go to work because now he had his favorite music to listen to!”

But my biggest success of all was the cookies.  Knowing that I wasn’t selling many big ticket items, I decided to have a little bake sale on the side.  I made these: Citrus-Drizzled Cranberry-Oatmeal Cookies.

I wrapped them up in cling wrap and a ribbon, and sold them in packages of two for 50 cents.  These cookies are madly easy to make, and they’ve garnered me some serious compliments.  Sometimes I make extras to give to my neighbor in exchange for the wifi he lets me bum. (I don’t know what I’m going to do when he moves in July.)  They sold pretty well over the course of Friday, one guy bought two at once.  Then, a few hours later, he returned and bought everything I had left!  Lacking the ingredients for more cookies, I made Jenna Fischer’s 88 calorie brownies for Saturday.  They were delish, but not as popular.  So the extras went down to New Jersey with me on Sunday and became instant father’s day brownies.

All in all, I earned about a third of a stimulus check for my efforts.  Nice work if you can get it.

My next door neighbors (the ones who live in the John Lennon slept here farmhouse) are moving out at the end of the month. I’m saddened to the point of grieved about this. They are exceptionally great neighbors, and I’m not hopeful that someone as cool will take their place.

Because they want to purge their stuff before they go, we are having a moving sale on Friday and Saturday. Even though I’m staying put for another year, I think it’s a good idea to jettison some of the stuff that I never want to move to a new home. Last night, I went to pricing some of my personal treasures, and I got stuck on a few items, unsure of their value in a free market.

So you, blog reader, are the next contestant on “The Price is ????”!!!! What in the world would you pay for the following…

Shower stool. Good for the elderly who have trouble standing in showers or the 30-somethings who have broken their ankles. I paid $35 for it at the pharmacy and got a few week’s worth of use out of it before I was able to stand on my own two feet. So the question is: is it worth less because my bare ass has been on it, or is it worth more because my bare ass has been on it?

Okay, so this is a 2005 calendar. That does not help anyone. I’ll give you that. But it’s super glossy and huge, and the pictures are quite beautiful. Would anyone pay for 12 black and white photos, suitable for framing? (if you get the frame your damn self?)

Mookie Wilson bobblehead doll. I will never have a more favorite baseball player than the Mets’ own 1st baseman, #1, Mookie Wilson. Even though the glory days of ‘86 are long over, he had a brief stint as the 1st base coach for the Brooklyn Cyclones. And to celebrate, the Cyclones held bobblehead giveaway day. I can’t remember who I dragged to the game with me (probably Birmingham) but I made sure to get to that game an hour before the start so I could be one of the first 2,500 fans to get the doll. But you know what? It’s been sitting in that styrofoam case ever since. Time to go, Mooks. Thanks for the memories. But at what price?

UPDATE: He’s currently $10.50 on Ebay

This nail art thing was fun for a while, but it weighs more than most 3rd graders, and I don’t want to move it again. I gave it a little Michelle Obama fist-bump to make it look more friendly. At what cost, freedom?

Wilson Phillips. On Tape. Yeah, so here’s the thing. I’m 30. That means I came of age in the late 80’s and early 90’s, right before CD’s became the preferred conveyor of music and right after records got abandoned. Most of my bad album purchases were actually bad CD Cassette purchases, and you better believe that I was willing to hit “stop” and “rewind” and “play” over and over just to hear “Hold On” one more time and remember the night that Ryan MacGregor slow danced with me at summer camp.

But is that worth anything to anyone? Not pictured: “Genisis’s “No Son of MIne” on cassette single, EMF’s “Unbelievable” on cassette single, and a whole lot of mix tapes that took a whole lot of hours away from my high school and college education.

Speaking of tapes. Seriously, why do I have this? When I was old enough for this kind of stuff, they were still putting things out on record. Oh wait. Look closer. It’s autographed. By Shari Lewis!

Forget it. There’s just some stuff you can’t sell.