They make your fingers all sticky and they’re really hard to eat at your desk when you’re busy working your way through your lunch break.*
Also, if you’re going to cut them in half before cooking, clear out all those little hairs. Otherwise they get all over all the leaves and in your mouth and it’s a lot like licking a cat.**
Lastly, I’ve had artichokes with melted butter, I’ve had them with mayo. But my favorite dipping sauce remains mayo mixed with a bit of curry. What’s yours? Continue Reading
Poor Smitty is a clean guy, like me. He likes his house clean and his sink empty of dirty dishes.
Back when he was just discovering that about himself, he lived with a number of men who didn’t feel the same way.
No, they liked to leave food all over the place to rot and piled the sink to high heaven with dishes.
Smitty tried to get them to clean up after themselves. Or so he said, anyway.
And then one day, he wanted to make an egg. Such a simple desire! But there was not a clean plate or pan to be found.
He flew off the handle. He grabbed a few dirty dishes from the sink and started pelting their doors with them. It felt pretty good, so he continued until there was not a whole plate to be found.
Though he didn’t ever get his egg, he made sure that those roommates wouldn’t be leaving any more dirty dishes around the house. Continue Reading
Friend of the blog Lauren recounts her worst roommate situation.
A Cat with 50% Accuracy Meets His Match
“I had to move out of the house I loved because my roommate decided to move in his girlfriend and her cat. The problem was we already had a cat with 50% litterbox accuracy.
“My roommate who owned the cat (the same one who decided to move in his gf) decided that instead of cleaning litter boxes more frequently he would just buy more litter boxes. When he did get around to cleaning these boxes he would often leave bags of cat shit sitting in the house. During the summer things really reeked. The thought of having another cat was too much to handle.
“When I raised my concerns, he pointed it out he was the primary lease holder. Dick. Then the girlfriend moves in, she puts all her shit in the living room, not just suit cases but mannequins and sewing machines. It was particularly creepy when I would go downstairs half asleep to see a bunch of mannequins in the living room.
“The first few days I didn’t say anything about the piles of shit in the living room. When I finally moved all her shit to one spot in the living room she said “thank you”. Not “thank you I’ll really need to clean this up right?”.
“After a week I wrote a nice email saying we needed to find a place to store all her shit, offering suggestions and how to get rid of stuff in the common downstairs closet. Her boyfriend and I spent about two hours putting her shit away as she sat there.
“Then the unholy messes left in the kitchen began. The cats were constantly fighting and hair rolled through the house like so many tumbleweeds.
Until today (coincidentally a Friday), I’d never heard Rebecca Black’s inane song, Friday.
That did not keep me from learning all the awesome tid bits …
“Front seat? Back seat?? WHICH ONE SHOULD I TAKE??”
“Gotta have my bowl…gotta have my cereal!”
And incorporating them into my life. Not a Friday goes by without a joke about our absent cereal bowls or our indecision around where to sit.
Well today seemed as good as any to finally hear her song. Alex and I just listened to it, and man, what a song. Here it is so you can experience it too:
I have to say…If I were a young person learning the days of the week from Rebecca Black, I would know that yesterday was Thursday, and tomorrow is Saturday…and even that after that we will have a Sunday. But what’s after that??!
You’re letting down young people everywhere, Rebecca. Everywhere.
Suggestion: Release a song called “Monday, Monday.” Here, we’ll even start writing it for you:
“Monday, Monday.
Back to school on Monday.
Yesterday was Sunday. Sunday.
Did I do my homework? Homework?
School, School, School, School.
Everybody’s looking forward to lunchtime, lunchtime!
Tater tots! Tater tots!
Chocolate milk up my nose!
It’s Monday…Monday…
Spitball in my hair.
Tomorrow is Tuesday. Tuesday!
Gotta do my homework! Homework.
We’ve been sharing awful roommate stories here on jenniferheller.com as I recover from my last living situation in which Will and I inadvertantly offered a bedroom in our apartment to who was to become known as our Roommate From Hell.
The truth is that he and I were each other’s Roommates From Hell.
You see, I like a clean house. I like clean dishes. I like people who clean up after themselves, and who replace the toilet paper roll when it runs out.
I would have thought that that sort of behavior would be generally expected, but it was foreign to my Roommate From Hell.
After he had neglected to replace the toilet paper multiple times, I texted him thusly…
“Please change the toilet paper for gods sake! From now on my charge is $25 to pick up your slack. Understand?”
Yep, I’m not proud of it, and it was pretty much downhill from there. Continue Reading
I am driven to to blog. Oh goodness, do I ever want to work on you, jenniferheller.com.
New vision: front page newspaper style layout…slider…and the shop that has been in the works for EVER. Various authors!! Avatars for Alex, tales of Tom Petty from g., ridiculous forwards from Dad, dating adventures from Julia, Readers Like You. And dividing these 700-some posts into some awesome sub-personalities: Drunk Jen / 12-year-old Jen / Single Jen / Jen of Jenfest / Introspective Jen (that’s me)…
My lesson in this year is definitely patience. I’ve avoided it for decades. But no, no…you, Jennifer Heller, are going to be patient.
(That’s the Universe talking.)
And my insides growl. How can dreams so big not effect the enjoyment of the present?! Why does everything have to take so damn long? Why are there only 24 hours in a day??
I have a very silly boyfriend who makes every weekend awesome. Here he is hiding from the world because he had something in his teeth. A fate that each of us will succumb to at some time in our lives…*
*the stuff in our teeth…not the bag on our head…but if you are prone to putting a bag on your head, make it a paper one. It’s harder to suffocate. Continue Reading
I fell in love with Pulp as an impressionable youth. The song Underwear appealed to my pubescent fantasies…and my flair for the dramatic. From there, the love affair only got stronger, as I explored the ins and outs of Jarvis’ clever lyrics, sex-obsessed dance songs, and melo-dramatic ballads. I’ve been in love ever since. The show last week was the realization of a long-time dream…to be in the same room…to dance as they played…to sing along on the top of my lungs…
The month before this show, I was frantic. Every Pulp album was on repeat. I sang Disco 2000 a cappella in the shower each morning. I contemplated marrying someone whose last name began with a “C” so I too could sing truthfully, “I’m not Jesus, but I have the same initials.”
Even as the concert approached, I couldn’t believe it was happening. To finally — after all these years — have Pulp reunite and tour!! And for my most awesome friend Jesse to throw me a ticket even after I couldn’t get one the day they went on sale!! Oooh, if I’m not the luckiest girl in the world.
Last Tuesday evening will be an evening I relive over and over. To ease this, I’m embedding videos for the songs they played in the correct order. Oh and here’s my best photo of Jarvis…a man I probably would despise getting involved with, but would anyway.
