My birthday.
To celebrate the event, Jeff has presented me with the challenge of maintaining Fluid Pudding Dot Com for a year.

Visit if you want. Right now it feels like moving into a new apartment. Things are not yet in their place, and I can't seem to find my underpants...

Five Lessons I Learned During the Weekend

1. If you catch a fish, but are afraid to grab it and remove the hook from its sad little bleeding lip, you should bang the fish (still attached to the fishing pole) against the side of the boat. If the fish hits the boat "just right", it removes itself from the hook, and no one gets messy or catches fish cooties.

2. Although chocolate waffles seem like a nice breakfast, they are actually quite bossy.

3. Washers is a game at which I don't completely suck. I will add it to my list: Badminton, Pillow Polo, Washers.

4. ATVs are somehow able to awaken muscles that have been stagnant since birth. My ass hurts in a place I cannot find, and I've been wiggling and rolling around for two days straight...

5. If you correctly spell the word "amphetamine", everyone in the room will think you are sexy.

The Weekend with the Lovelies is upon us.

As a sign of protest, I have been pulling an Oskar and Tin Drumming myself down the stairs all morning in hope that everyone will assume I am delayed and drop their guards around me.

The large bump on my head is unsightly, and will serve as insurance that all Lovelies maintain their distance and avoid the suggestion that we braid each others hair.

I can hold my breath until I pass out. This skill may come in handy.

Also, I'm making dark chocolate raspberry brownies.
Because I'm in high school again.
Because I'm in the math club and they are cheerleaders.
Because I want to fatten them up...

This morning Jeff approached me in the kitchen and said "Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes? Dead."
Of course, I heard his comment as "Lisa left Ilopez dead."
I love how dialogue has no punctuation! Such funny, funny misunderstandings! Who is Lisa? Where is Ilopes?

A few Haikus for Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes
She don't want no scrubs.
She'll burn your F-ing house down!
Crazy...Sexy...Cool?

What's up with that patch?
You've been chasing waterfalls?!
Rest in peace, "Left Eye"...

My Bs have been stolen!!!

Yesterday afternoon, Jeff and I decided to walk to the Compton Hill Water Tower. It was open to visitors, and only 198 steps to the top!

Before the trip to the tower, I decided to stop by my car to grab my superstar sunglasses and my athletic tennis shoes. (Sure, the huge clunky tennis shoes I was wearing make me the queen of style, but will they help me to the top of the tower? Also, no one but me seems to care that the footprints I leave behind while wearing them says "Nose." Does no one else see the coolness in that?!) Anyway, Jeff retrieved the glasses while I rummaged through the trunk for the non-Nose shoes.

Found shoes. Put them on. Closed trunk. Noticed something peculiar...

"AAAUUUUGGGHHHHHH!"

Jeff: What happened?!

Me: Someone stole my B!!!

My license plate (like most others) holds three numbers and three letters. The final letter is B. Someone had approached my vulnerable little Nissan during the night and bent the license plate back and forth until the B came off in their hand. I walked to the front of the car to check out the front plate.

Me: Someone stole my front B, too! Why did they steal my Bs?! No one else got their plates busted up! AND, no one else has Bs! Was it a scavenger hunt? Or, better yet, do you think someone on our street is named Bobby? Maybe just Bob! Maybe it's a "spell your name with license plate letters" scavenger hunt thing! If there is a Bob, I bet he broke off my Bs! Bastard!

Jeff: Settle down. I bet whoever did this wanted your April 2004 expiration sticker--not your Bs.

Me: Oh. Yeah. Ok.

So, in order to get free replacement plates, I had to file a police report. The police woman seemed to be more interested in what I do for a living than finding the scoundrel who bent off my Bs.

Policewoman: You work from home? I bet you have little babies!

Me: No. No babies. Just missing Bs. They're blue. Blue Bs. And, that sticker thing, too!

Policewoman: Yeah, but working from home will be nice when you have some little babies!

Me: Find my Bs and drop the babies...

Deep down, I know my Bs will never be found. First of all, there are no witnesses. (I'm still working on my Bob theory, but I won't mention it to the police until I have found the guilty Bob...) Secondly, St. Louis has been known to have the highest crime rate in the nation. I'm sure the police have more things to worry about than a few blasted Bs...

My Watercolors 101 class begins tonight at 7:00. I've been spending the last few days buying things like masonite and salt and little expensive tubes of paint. I love going to art supply stores. They make me feel, well, artsy. I can only imagine that art class will stir up the same feeling.

Now that I have my supplies, the only thing left to do is choose something to wear to class... Something that says "Hey! I might be very good at this watercolors thing!" without being overly "Please bow down to the Queen of Watercolors." In other words, no denim shirt that already has paint splotched on it. Also, none of those off-white carpenter coverall things.

I wish I looked like Amelie. I think I would do very well at a watercolors class if I wore vintage-looking flowered skirts and boots. I know it's too late to grow out my hair. Is it too late to work on my French accent?

There are certain things I want to accomplish in the class.

When my Watercolors 101 class is complete, I hope the following statements are true:

Because of Watercolors 101...

...my painting skills have improved.

...I can appreciate Georgia O'Keefe even more.

...I have been nominated for a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award.

...I am much prettier.

...I can suddenly fit into that tiny, tiny dress.

I spent the day yesterday in Historic St. Charles with my mom and Jeff's mom. We walked down Main Street with the intention of hitting only the stores that interested us. In other words, we chose not to waste our time strolling around in places that specialize in Americana Quilted Vests or Beanie Babies.

My favorite store in St. Charles is the Olde Town Spice Shoppe. They have hundreds of crazy, stupid (in a good way) kinds of teas! I was in tea heaven! Amaretto tea! Cherry Vanilla tea! Chocolate Raspberry tea! Blueberry tea with real blueberries (I bought some of it for Jeff—he thinks blueberries are the king of the bush-borne fruit world!)! Lapsang Souchong tea (what the hell would THAT taste like?!)! Snowmonkey Plum tea (are you getting the idea?!)! Lemon Pepper Mustard Seed tea (I just made that one up!)! It was Tea-riffic! Get it?! Tea-riffic, I said!!!

Sadly enough, I got entirely too amped out in the tea store. I can't have expensive tea. I'm afraid I'll get all hooked on it (like crack) and soon find myself living on the streets of St. Charles with a baby on my hip (because all effective streetwomen have a baby on their hip), wearing an Americana quilted vest and begging the St. Charles townies for some change so I can get my Lapsang Souchong fix.

"Shoeshine for a Souchong!" I'll cry.

"Hey Mister! Lapdance for a Lapsang?!"

We all know that no one wants a lapdance from a short-haired girl wearing an Americana quilted vest…

When we lived in Nashville, Jeff became active in the Tennessee Green Party. He attended meetings. He built and posted signs. He handed out "Nader 2000" bumper stickers. He met Jonathan Farley.

Jonathan Farley is an amazing guy. He is a Green Party candidate running for Congress in Nashville. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in Mathematics. He received his doctorate in Mathematics from Oxford. He received a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award to the UK, and is currently on sabbatical in London. Wait. Did I mention he's only 32 years old? The guy is incredible.

Jonathan Farley was in town on Saturday (between speaking engagements in Madison and Nashville). Jeff entertained him during the day, and I hooked up with them for dinner.

Jonathan Farley met John Nash last week at an unadvertised mathematics seminar at Vanderbilt.

Next week he is going to record some of his essays onto CD, as CDs are easier to make than books.

He is spending his sabbatical solving theorems and writing articles.

I'm sure he will someday bring peace to the Middle East.

The one thing Jonathan Farley and I have in common is that neither of us is athletic. Like me, he will never sign up for a co-ed sand volleyball team. Unlike me, he can probably predict the winner of every sand volleyball game simply by using his theory of ordered sets (and spikes, perhaps), and by studying the lattice theory of the net.

I surrendered my Calvino "Cosmicomics" to him and sent him on his genius way.

(He has no idea that I'm keeping the coffee cup from which he drank in a sealed container under the bed. Perhaps I can somehow incorporate his DNA into the child Jeff and I will bring into the world...)

Last night I picked up a message from one of Jeff's friends...

"Yo, JD! Keep May 4th open, because we're all going to spend the weekend at my cabin!"

An entire weekend with The Lovelies? This job is much larger than the superstar sunglasses.

I have constructed a list.
I will only attend Weekend Gorgeous if the following demands are met:

1. There will be no swimsuit competitions.

2. There will be no "Let's see who looks the prettiest without make-up" games.

3. No one will yell, "Let's see who can run the fastest!!!"

4. No switching partners.

5. No contests to see who can guess my weight.

6. No filming of amateur porn. No filming of any other type of porn.

7. No challenges to see how many of the girls can concurrently fit into my shorts.

8. No blow-job simulation with pickles. No blow-job simulation at all, in fact.

9. No asking me why I'm wearing my sunglasses after dark.

10. No asking me why I'm drinking so much.

Later days, Dawson! Goodbye, Gilmore Girls! Toodle-oo, Ed! Sayonara, Seventh Heaven! Tomorrow I will be embarking on another adventure. I am going to attempt to survive one week (or more) without any television. I'm already quite pissed about it.

A woman I met in Nashville told me about a book titled The Artist's Way. The book consists of a twelve-week program that re-sparks hidden creative talents. Sounds hokey, right? Right. Wrong! This book is changing my life! In the past three weeks I have written over 80 pages in a journal. I have written letters to old friends. I have shopped for art supplies!

My challenge for the next week is to give up television and reading. Supposedly, eliminating these two forms of media will shock my system into doing things like painting shelves odd shades of turquoise and baking foods that require more than four ingredients.

My biggest fear is that the only thing I will learn from this is just how much I love to take naps...