The Buying, The Switch and The Wardrobe

Twice a year I clean out of my closets—shuffling seasonal clothing between my apartment and storage lockers in my building’s basement—and twice a year I have a mini-meltdown. I dread these times of the year. When the weather starts to barely change and most people aren’t even thinking about switching out their wardrobes, I’m busily looking at my calendar, blocking out an entire weekend in red ink for the old presto-chango. I can’t go out on the town the night beforehand, as going through my closet with a hangover, forcing myself to throw out clothing I haven’t worn in ages, always results in tears. I’ve learned the hard way: I still pine for that ‘70’s shearling coat I got from a consignment shop in Pittsburgh which I donated to the Salvation Army during a past cleanse. My head was throbbing from the happy hour the night before, and the coat’s fur was making me nauseated just by looking at it--it was, after all, taking up a lot of room in my closet. But still….

I am the product of my mother. She would approach our closets in our family’s home like an auditor. Each closet had its own set of numbered giant boxes (some plastic, some cardboard), beginning at “1.” Spiral notebooks were then dedicated for each closet with detailed descriptions for each of the boxes: “Craig’s Closet/Box 3/Spring Wardrobe/Shorts” or “Basement Hallway Closet/Box 10/Christmas/Living Room/Mantle.” We acted like librarians, archiving our own possessions so when we had to switch out clothes, it was as painless as possible.

Although I don’t have the luxury of multiple closets in my apartment here in New York, I am lucky enough to have those storage lockers where I stow away my own collections of clothing, books, and Christmas ornaments. My partner Geoff is like my mother as he also uses thick oversized clear plastic bins for storage: my extensive clothing and books sit alongside his 20+ years of collecting comic books, gathering brown dust over time. Geoff usually wipes off boxes’ dust while we’re in the storage room and cracks jokes about cage fighting before pulling the boxes from these lockers. When we move these boxes to and from our apartment, we use one of our building’s carts that look like one of those old-fashioned hotel luggage carriers. Somehow we always pick the one with the bum wheel which causes the tower of boxes to sway—our own version of Jenga, and we bit our lower lips until we make the trip from the basement to the seventh floor to our apartment without any accidents.

Before I start to reorganize the closets, I go through my clothing to pull out things that I didn’t wear the past season or are out of style. These bags of clothing (usually totaling about four to six per season) are donated to the Salvation Army on Atlantic Avenue by my building in Brooklyn. The Goodwill in downtown Brooklyn is closer to me, but my father did some work years ago as an architect for the Army back home, and while I don’t agree with their conservative views, I donate there exclusively out of habit. Besides, there is a great ice cream parlor beside it, and I usually reward myself with a butter pecan cone afterward.

Going through the motions of pulling clothing from my closet is, however, shattering for me. Donating is easy, but deciding what to donate is painful. I look at my blue jeans and wonder if I should keep the dark ones with the narrow legs that I bought twenty pounds ago. Yes, yes I should. I don’t wear them, but I may someday. I end up putting five pairs of old jeans on a pile of swimsuits and shorts that I’ve either outgrown (read: gained weight) or got tired of (read: gained a lot of weight). Geoff reiterates our mission to make the closets as accessible and streamlined as possible. He holds up a pair of Dolce & Gabanna green patent leather oxfords in one hand, a pair of red pointy shoes with tassels I got at a Prada sample sale in the other and forces me to make a choice. I can’t—I feel like I’m in a gay version of “Sophie’s Choice” so instead of choosing just one, I let both of them fall into the donation pile. I turn away from Geoff for a second because I can’t bear the cold reality.

After a few hours of this--and a few raised eyebrows from Geoff when I tried to reason why I needed to keep a pair of 31-inch waist Helmut Lang pants I had in college (they may be a collector’s item and are a shimmery plum-color which is, let’s face it, just cool)--I throw a bunch of sweaters on top of the bag and assess the situation with him. We decide that we’ve done a great job, that we’ve successfully cleaned out the closets and are prepared and ready for fall—or, in other words, I’m ready to purchase more stuff to replace what I’m giving away.

We walk to the Salvation Army, each of us holding a swollen black garbage bag, filled with my rejects. I walk in relative silence, not answering his inquiries on where to eat dinner that night, but instead questioning myself—the candy-striped cashmere sweater on the top of my bag is giving me major second-thoughts, and I wonder if I can possibly slip it out and hide it on the way back. I don’t really like how the sweater looks on me, but I enjoy how the striped sweater looks folded on my shelf.

Before I can concrete my plan, a homeless woman plants herself in front of me, her eyes like saucers, asking for a sweater. I know this woman. She’s tiny and Asian and wears a green parka, even in the summer. She hangs out on the sidewalk on Dean Street and Atlantic Avenue, right beside a deli underneath the apartment the singer Joan Osborne lives in. I used to live around the corner from this intersection, and she would often ask me for a bite of my toasted poppy seed bagel that I got Saturday mornings from the deli. I never did give her a bite, and I never did give her any spare change that I might have had in my pockets.

What I did give her last year, however, was a very expensive brown sweater that I was on my way to donate. The scene played the same this year as last: Geoff and I walking with bags of donations down Atlantic Avenue, me having second thoughts on the sweater on the top of the bag, and she asking for said sweater. Only last year, Geoff didn’t flinch and instinctively grabbed the sweater in my bag and gave it to her. She didn’t thank me (not that I was expecting one) and put on the sweater and walked away. I stood there, my mouth open because I never saw $300 of my money literally turn the corner and go out of sight.

When the woman recognized me this year (or at least I bragged to Geoff later that evening that she did, claiming that her eyes lit up at the sight of me), I had to chuckle because she was holding half of a messy hoagie in her hand, and she asked me for a sweater with a mouth full of, I assume, bologna and mustard. I looked at Geoff who didn’t say anything, but the wink in his eye said volumes.

I nodded and grabbed the candy-colored sweater, placing it in the non-hoagie hand of the woman. She grunted (which I assume meant she liked it) and threw the rest of her sandwich in the trash bin—I don’t blame her as deli meats always give me the creeps for some reason. Like the previous year, she immediately put it on, only this year she didn’t bother to put her coat back on when she was done. She walked away towards Dean Street, and I looked at Geoff who smiled and asked me if I felt good. I admitted that I did feel good about helping her out for the second year in a row—a little charity tradition of my own, right here in Brooklyn. As she turned the corner, a smile grew on my face--partly because I think the bright sweater cheered her up a bit in the cold autumn air, but mainly because I’m thrilled that I’m not the only person on the block that can’t pull off horizontal stripes, no matter how expensive the sweater.

Pureed Broccoli

I made pureed broccoli for the first time yesterday.  Who knew it could be so delicious and so easy??  Don't let the photograph scare you.

Recipe follows from The Silver Palate Cookbook:

2 bunches of broccoli (about 5 pounds), trimmed and chopped, including peeled stems
Salt, to taste
1 cup Crème Fraîche
1/4 cup sour cream
2/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butler

1. Chop the broccoli, leaving 8 small florets whole, and drop the chopped broccoli and whole florets into 4 quarts of boiling salted water. Cook until just tender, about 8 minutes.
2. Transfer the broccoli, reserving 8 florets, to a food processor. Add the crème fraîche and puree thoroughly.
3. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
4. Scrape the puree into a bowl and stir in the sour cream, Parmigiano-Reggiano, nutmeg, pepper, and salt. Mix well.
5. Mound in an ovenproof serving dish, dot with the butter. and bake until the purée is steaming hot, 25 minutes.
6. Garnish with the reserved florets and serve immediately.

Trick r Treat

The movie "Trick r Treat" has been floating around for a few years...it was supposed to be released in theaters, got pushed back, and is now freshly released on DVD.

Rent this.

I love spooky movies.  Not horror movies--spooky movies, and "Trick r Treat" lives up to every expectation for fans of "The Twilight Zone" and pulp horror comic books of the past.  If you want to rent such a movie for the Halloween season, well then, you've found your golden ticket here.  There are four stories that wind together and around each other, characters from one popping up in another. 

This is EXACTLY the type of movie that would have been made years ago--it's spooky, funny, suspenseful--but never gory.  Bryan Singer produced it and here's hoping that there will be more of them....it's a shame that it wasn't released in theaters when it seems like we're being forced fed shit like the "Saw" franchise.  Audiences would have eaten it up because "Trick r Treat" goes down like a refreshing pint of cider.

Lizzy's Alive

Oh man....Elizabeth Taylor survived her experimental heart surgery.

Woman's got the strength of an airplane black box. 

Reunion Weekend

This past weekend I went to Chicago with Geoff for his 20 year high school reunion, and it was actually very, very fun.

Some of you know that I have an adversion to midgets and there was a very drunk girl at the reunion.  While not technically a midget, she was knocking on its door.

Oh, this picture is not the woman in question.  This one was blonde and asked me to open up her evening bag for her.  Apparently she was too drunk to do so on her own, so I was happy to oblige.

Cigarettes and mushed up dollar bills came out.  Guess I found her pot of gold, afterall.

Yowsers.

Is it me or should Lizzy Taylor NOT be Twittering about her heart surgery??  And WTF is that on her wrist??  It makes my crotch get all lightheaded and woozy when I look at it....ACK.

This makes me sad.  I have a feeling the Summer of Death is going to be extended into Fall.

"Dear Friends, I would like to let you know before it gets in the papers that I am going into the hospital to have a procedure on my heart," Taylor wrote.

"It's very new and involves repairing my leaky valve using a clip device, without open heart surgery, so that my heart will function better. Any prayers you happen to have lying around I would dearly appreciate. I'll let you know when it's all over. Love you, Elizabeth," she said.

Mom?

Working for the Clown

The summer before my freshman year at college, I had very specific plans. I went away in June, participating in a month-long workshop at my college designed for students thinking of going into medicine. I can’t say that the workshop cemented the deal for me—I spent lectures wondering about taco night in the cafeteria (I was concerned about the government cheese they were serving me) and if the cashier at the bookshop had a Siamese thumb or if it was the result of a bad shotgun incident. I came back home looking for an additional two months of relaxation before school properly started, hopefully by my parents’ pool.


By the second day of my sunbathing, my mother put her foot down and insisted that I get a job until I shipped off to school for good. She used scary words like “responsibility” and “self-worth” and “pride” and she laid out workplace options like local clothing stores and book shops, none of which interested me or were in the market to hire someone for two months of work. You can imagine the look of disbelief on her face when I came downstairs the next morning and defiantly said “I’m going to get a job at McDonald’s.”

The sound of my mother choking on her toast said it all.

At 8:00 AM that following Thursday I reported for duty and walked into the restaurant. Although I hadn’t been inside many McDonald’s up to that point—and was by no means an authority on them—I was certain, however, that this one was trapped in some sort of time warp. The tables were dirty brown with yellow plastic seats that attached to the tables by an under bar. Against the wall where I entered there was a mural of an alternate universe in which trees fruited hamburgers and a milkshake stream flowed. Parading across a bridge was Ronald McDonald himself, holding a staff while fries poured out of his stuffed pockets. I took a look at my surroundings and mentally pumped myself up. “They’ll like me, they’ll like me, they’ll like me.”

My manager didn’t like me. That was apparent from my first minute together with Megan. I knew her slightly from high school, and while we didn’t exactly run in the same circles, I was aware of her social status. She was a “vo-techer” which means that she spent her day going to vocational classes like plumbing and restaurant management. She was a tough girl in school, or at least that’s what I assumed. At 13 Megan began dying her hair a flat jet-black—where it lacked in shine, it made up in being badass. It was down to her back and she teased the bangs up off of her forehead, which was powdered a constant shade of Goth-white. But when I saw her that morning, her hair was tied back in a ponytail, poking out of the back end of a purple baseball hat with golden arches embroidered in its center.

“Well, well, well...you know, when I saw your name on the roster this morning, I didn’t believe it,” Megan said to me, while looking me up and down. “I thought you were off to become a doctor or something, right?” she continued while handing me my own purple shirt and hat that, with the black pants and shoes I was told to wear on my first day, completed my own uniform in hell.

I decided against any comebacks and just nodded my head and chuckled with her. “I have some time before school, so I thought, why not, right?” I replied. Megan squinted her black-lined eyes—some make-up habits were hard to break, apparently—and immediately began her new employee tour with me. We walked behind the main counter as the breakfast crowd began to come in. She stopped in front of a large clear plastic bank that was in the shape of a house. The chimney had a slit in the top of it that people were supposed to drop spare change in, the bottom a pile of copper.

“Now this here, this is so customers can donate to the Ronald McDonald House,” Megan explained while smiling to the elderly couple silently waiting at the counter with their order.

I turned from Megan to the elderly couple and asked, “Just how elaborate of house does this stinking clown need?” The couple silently stood there—or rather, they didn’t have a chance to respond to me as Megan drew me into the back kitchen. She led me to the double grill, stopped and looked at me.

“Jesus,” she said.

“Jesus,” I said.

For the next four hours Megan stood behind me instructing me on how to properly grill frozen beef patties. When I asked when I would be briefed on the special sauce, she wordlessly pointed to the grill with her finger and I threw more beef circles on the heat. After four hours I was dizzy, dehydrated and my ears rang from Megan’s constant play-by-play yelling in my ear, Deer Hunter-style. I went home smelling of grease and despair. Two shampoos later, I passed out in bed.

My second day began with the morning lesson of the assembly of a Big Mac, and I finally learned about the special sauce (it comes in a tube gun). When I was asked to retrieve more hamburgers from the walk-in freezer, I left the door open for about half and hour and my co-worker flashed me queasy eyes and I retreated in the back. My manager asked if I could throw out the trash, which was easy enough until I set off the fire alarm throughout the place—not a good look for a room full of senior citizens eating pancakes from white Styrofoam containers. Megan told me to follow her outside for a break and offered me a cigarette.

“Marlboro Red? No thanks, I’m not a rapist,” I offered in return. Megan shrugged and between puffs told me that I could go home early and report at 11:00 AM the next day.

My third day I woke up to dark skies outside and drove into work. All in all, the day started out quietly, and I was stationed in the back. Around lunch time a school bus pulled up and kids started to pour in the doors, on their way to a summer field trip. Megan ran to the kitchen and screamed, “We have a McNugget emergency!” She barked out orders for me to fry up a batch—a task I wasn’t properly briefed on.

I ran in the freezer and tried to find the right bag in the chaos (what kind of degenerate would leave a bag of shredded lettuce in a freezer?) and grabbed a giant paper bag with “MCNUGGETS” in a large black font on the front. I ran to the fryer and looked around, hoping for help on how to work this vat of grease. I could hear the kids, by now inside the place, and I truly panicked.

“Um….Megan? Can you come here?” I yelled, the co-workers too busy in their own chores to help.

Megan came up to me in a huff and looked at me holding the bag in my hands. “What are you, slow?” she said with a sneer. “For god’s sake, Mr. Doctor can’t cook a kid’s meal!”

I ripped open the top of the bag and poured the contents into the fryer, never breaking my stare with Megan. What was once a dark sea of oil--so hot that the surface appeared calm and hypnotic--turned into a raging pit of boiling poultry. The oil rose and pulsed into the overflow tray and my jaw dropped at the instant storm. Megan looked at me with wild eyes and yelled, “What are you doing?”

I looked at her, I looked at the fryer and I closed my eyes for second. When I opened them up I said, “What I’m doing is trying to be a good sport. So. I’m going to go now. And I’m not coming back. Ever.”

I laid my hat down by Megan’s station in the back and as she yelled “You quitter! What about your paycheck?”

“Keep it,” I said, walking to my car. “I don’t really deserve it.”

I started the engine, not moving as the storm rolled in. And so I sat for a few seconds, hating to admit to myself that I couldn’t hack it at a simple summer job and anxious to reinvent myself at college. Eventually I shifted the car into drive and went home in the direction of the storm, blissfully unaware of the long line of Megans that were waiting for me, and smiled.

One Day at a Time

Yikes.  Father's Day was aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwkkkkkkkkkward.

Last Night

I gotta be honest with you, I have some messed up, Whitney Houst-on-smack dreams all the time.

Last night I was battling these gigantic aliens that came to my parents' house--they were in the shape of a modernistic, gleaming white dinosaur skeleton with red laser beam eyes.  Another alien was a gigantic tutle that was green and orange and kept on laying demonic babies while I kept on yelling at my friend who said "They're just here to be friendly."

I have to stop inhaling paint before bed.

RIP PS

How I'll Remember Pat

I'm a Little Schoolboy

I started a writing class last night.  It's a course to develop personal essays and for our first assignment, we were asked to write something about our childhood.  The class was pretty encouraging and I'm going to be posting the writings as I go along...

THE CHRISTMAS JACKET

Looking back, my parents really should have known better. I didn’t want to go to the Christmas party and had they taken previous incidents into consideration such as when they forced me to attend one of my co-student’s birthday party and I responded by crashing her new go-cart on purpose, I would have stayed home with my toys in my playroom. I would have avoided the suspect looks from my father on the ride home. But listening to an eight-year-old whining about such things was not in the cards, and I had no other choice other than to just surrender and go.


My parents have belonged to a country club for over thirty years near their home in Pittsburgh. Giving into my father’s wishes, my mother agreed to join and over the years developed a go-to answer on why they were still members: “It’s a nice place where they serve nice food on nice white tablecloths.” Nice food, that is, if you enjoy gray prime rib in a pool of dull, beefy water or side dishes of soupy pasta. When I visit my parents now, I have to admit that I do enjoy this WASPY food—there’s that definite kitsch factor to the club’s baked Alaska, but when I was a kid, I hated it. I hated the way the servers placed the food in front of me on the table with a loud thud, and I especially hated having to wear a starched oxford shirt with a clip-on tie and a sport coat.

For normal dinners at the club, my mother dressed me in a dark blue blazer with brass buttons, but for the children’s Christmas party, she brought out the antichrist of boy’s clothing: the red blazer. This one was my archenemy—it was fire engine red wool and the smell of moth balls wafted out from it when I moved my arms. She paired it with a cream colored turtleneck with an American Institute of Architects pin of my father’s on the neck—the silver AIA standing out like a beacon.

“Perfect,” she said, as she admired me in my bedroom.

I stood there perfectly still—I was nervous that if I made any sudden movements, the turtleneck would inch up and choke me further and I would build up more internal heat under the sweltering blazer. As I walked downstairs, I stiffened up my back and limbs, and I’m sure if a stranger saw me moving like this from afar, they would have mistaken me for a midget salesman with severe body burns. My mother picked up speed and passed me up, holding my London Fog raincoat, the cherry on this hellish sundae. She folded my arms into the coat and attempted to tie the look together with a scarf.

“I’m hot,” I whispered.

“It’s snowing outside, honey,” my mother tried to reason with me, “plus it’s only for the car ride over,” as if my father and I were about to make the trek over in a topless Model T with snow blowing in our faces.

As I neared the gigantic Lincoln—already with its engine running and my father peering with impatient eyes behind the steering wheel—I pivoted on my feet and made one final plea: “Don’t make me go,” I calmly and matter-of-factly said to my mother. I learned from an early age that crying just didn’t solve things, so I adopted a steady determined way of speaking to adults, which fascinated and disturbed them in equal parts.

“Oh honey, it’s going to be fine, you’ll going to have a nice time with the other kids there. Plus you’ll get a gift from Santa, who came all the way from the North Pole.”

Here’s another skill I developed when I was a kid—I learned how to differentiate between knockoffs and the real McCoy. You name it—handbags, clothing, accents, I can spot a fake a mile away. Santas were my earliest specialty and I didn’t want what these Santas were selling, free gift or not.

I awkwardly entered the passenger seat of the car and sank into the cushioned seat. While the outside of the car was a sea of white metallic angles, the inside was dark and cave-like. The seats, ceiling, and floor were navy blue, and the leather released a steady wave of heavy fumes. As we traveled in silence to the club, my mouth started to water and my palms got swampy. There was no turning back and decided to play the joker in my hand—the one thing that I thought could turn the car back to home. So I vomited all over my raincoat and the car seat.

My father looked at me with shocked eyes and because of his own weak stomach, began to dry heave, still silently driving down the road, never breaking stride, determined for us to make an appearance and thus ruining my escape plan.

The car lumbered up to the building and the parking attendant opened my door, staring at my sweaty face and vomit stains on my coat. I swung my legs out and slid down the seat onto the curbside when my father guided me to the men’s room. He wiped me down and muttered “You don’t look so bad. I mean, compared to the other children.”

Compared to the other Stepford children, I was the most lifelike, my own filth aside. The girls had mistletoe bows in their hair and stood in their patent leather Mary Janes, the boys clinging to their parents like barnacles. I knew my participation in the festivities would have to be catch and release—I needed to grab my gift from Santa and run.

As I walked toward the front of the ballroom where a Santa and a pride of elves stood guarding a pile of wrapped presents, I stopped to look at a plate of garlic toast and platter of crudités on a nest of crushed ice and wondered what one of the giant black olives that glistened under the lights tasted like. I grabbed one and bit into the flesh and was pleasantly surprised by their basic taste. I spit the pit out on a napkin and immediately ate another one. And then I had another one. I shoved a piece of the garlic toast in my mouth as I stared silently at Santa and then shoved another olive in my mouth and decided to seal the deal.

Santa looked at me as I chewed my olive and said in a deep voice, “I have a gift for you,” as he simultaneously put his arm out for an elf to put a long rectangular box in his hand. I was relieved it wasn’t a wrapped basketball or football, which were wrapped without any imagination, proudly showing their shapes in the gift pile. Since no one was behind me, I took the gift and unwrapped it, only to find a cheap knockoff version of Candyland called Sugar and Spice.

“I don’t want this. It’s not real,” I told Santa and tried to hand it back to him.

My father, sensing that I was up to my fussiness, came up as I said “He’s trying to give me a fake Candyland. I’d like to go home now.” My father laughed nervously to the Santa and suggested that I take the game and participate in the round of carols that were going on the next room. I stood, looking at my father who couldn’t take a hint, at the counterfeit Santa sitting in a gold throne in front of me, and because I couldn’t say what I wanted to say, because I was a little kid who was getting ushered around town in a red coat, I did the only thing I knew that would end this afternoon. I held the game in my hands, stared down at it, and promptly threw up on both it and my red coat. When I was finished, I placed the game down on the floor and my father sighed, gave up and took me home, promising me Candyland and the disposal of the red jacket and, in return, I promised that I wouldn’t eat garlic toast and black olives again.

Labor Day is around the corner and I'm escaping the city to visit my parents in Pittsburgh---you know what's odd?  It just dawned on me that I'm writing these posts and no one is reading them.  So basically, what I'm going here is writing a public diary, only no one cares.  SO...I'm just putting my plans down on a website just in case I have a stroke and can't remember what I'll be doing or have done recently.

Just so I'm clear.  Glad I'm not crazy.

Anyway, I gotta be honest with you (and by "you" I mean "me")...I'm getting nervous about visiting the amusement park on Sunday--the park I visited all throughout my childhood.  The fear of throwing up on a ride that goes round and round and round is very tangible right now.  Must drink lots of club soda there.

Day three of me not eating any chicken or beef or pork.  Or tongue.  Definitely not tongue.

Last night I started a writing course to "explore my personal history."  I've said it before and I'll say it again:  as long as I don't need a hand mirror, I'll do it.

Sigh....need dog.  Worried that I don't have enough time for dog.  Cats are out of the question--I'm not into animals with more issues than I have.

I gotta be honest with you, I'm wondering why there aren't key parties here in NYC.  No one drives here, so the one person who does end up driving to the party would seem to have good odds for an orgy.  Just saying.

Kicking It Off with Chicken Marbella

A couple years ago I hopped on the blogging train and started one.  I can't remember what it was called or what I even wrote about. 

I guess I didn't have anything important to say at that time.  And maybe I still don't.  We'll see.

I gotta be honest with you--I didn't know what to write about in my first posting until today.  I'm so bummed out about the death of Sheila Lukins who was a co-founder of The Silver Palate here in NYC and wrote the cookbook by the same name that--literally--changed American cooking in the '80s.

Listen, you gotta understand this--I was this little kid in Pittsburgh, hiding behind my glasses, and I treated that cookbook like a novel.  I used to read my mother's copy page by page, looking at the illustrations and wondering what the hell basalmic vinegar and chutney was. 

In essence, it gave us hope that we could aspire to be good at-home cooks if we wanted.  There was more to American cooking that pot roast and Sheila was our guide in the grocery aisles, pointing out goat cheese, fresh figs, and capers.  Stuff that nowadays wouldn't make you bat an eye.  But back then, it was something else.  It was educational, delicious, and guess what--fun.

So thanks Sheila.  Hope the heavens like your Chicken Marbella as much as the rest of us.

Oh, and this blog won't be gushy like today.  I'm just in a mushy mood.