Carmen Electra has officially done for Cosmo readers what virtually no one in the past decade has been able to do:

Provided them with NEW, horribly fucking inane tips by which they're supposed to believe they can nab a man. Readers have had to use the recycled, horribly inane OLD shit for YEARS now.

A "sexiness kit?" And in this kit she says we should stash perfume, lip gloss and a pair of heels. I can assure you that if I'm not wearing an outfit that doesn't already necessitate heels, I'm not about to pair up something like my yoga pants and hoodie with purple stiletto pumps. Scott would laugh so hard he'd never regain composure.

Ugh.

posted by Erin at 12:49 PM | | filed under: Random Stupidity

This is my nephew, Chase. Scott and I stopped by my parents' house Saturday night, and Chase was staying with them for the night.

We walked in the door and he ran up to me screaming and wrapped his little arms around my legs. Later on, he insisted on sitting next to me on the couch, pillow tucked on our laps, shovel at our side, Halloween book being read. This little guy loves books more than anything. I couldn't believe how he cuddled up next to me. I only see him a couple of times every month; living an hour and a half away is just far enough that I don't get to see him, or his cousin, Aidan, my other nephew, nearly as much as I'd like.

My heart melted all over the place. Scott said he could hear my uterus thumping. Mostly I just liked getting to know Chase a bit better that day.

He's so sweet.

posted by Erin at 09:49 PM | | filed under: Odds and ends

Scott asked me to do this and I hate saying no to him:

"As these endings were lost, it was necessary for the language to rely upon other means of showing relationship between sentence parts such as adjective and noun, subject and verb, verb and object, etc. The means which developed was, of course, that of Modern English. The subject cane to be indicated primarily by the verb; nouns began to be identified less by their endings and more often by the noun-marking or signaling words that preceded them, such as the, a, some, his, et.c; prepositions increased in importance and took over more of the task of signaling relationships that formerly had been shown also by the cases of nouns."

For a grammar book, those are some shitty sentences. I am probably the only person from JCA's Class of '94 who kept, and regularly reads, her English book.

posted by Erin at 12:14 PM | | filed under: Blog move

April has not been the most prolific of months for me. I just checked this blog and realized there were just a handful of posts, none of them particularly revealing or interesting, save for the one about Omar and his daughter.

I am so envious of women like my friend Carissa, and her friend Amy, who take pictures and write gracefully, lyrically, as though being a creative person is an honor and a gift and the act of creation is reverent and holy. As opposed to how I tend to view my own brand of creativity, which seems to possess all of the grace of a monster truck rally. Each, I know, has it's place. One isn't necessarily better than the other. Both are necessary in the grand scheme. I just wish I could be prettier about it sometimes.

I turned 32 last week to much fanfare with my boyfriend. It was the sort of fun-filled, jam-packed day that I could have only been provided by someone who knows me well. There was Jesus, booze, burgers and full-frontal nudity. Plus an hour-long massage at a spa and a cheese plate. It was not a bad way to usher in a new year especially if you like gratuitous penis shots in your movies, which I do.

I have been trying to be nicer to myself. All of this discontent I feel needs a new home, preferably one several blocks away. I am always nervous and dissatisfied, mostly manifesting itself in the state of my body. Which is silly. This winter, in an effort to combat the cold and to avoid sloth completely since I'd lost total interest in running indoors, I began lifting weights. As it stands, my body is stronger than its ever been, with real muscles everywhere. But you get a photo in front of me, wherein I'm caught at an unflattering angle, and I spazz out completely, for days on end. One of these days it will have to be OK that I am not perfect. Maybe when I'm 42?

I really need to go back to yoga.

Work continues to be amazing and lovely and challenging and filled with kind people who do things like make me margaritas for my birthday and volunteer to help me pick out shoes for soon-to-be dress purchases. I like these people, these new friends. I like working with them and creating with them and they've helped me to navigate through this new world where words like "engagement" and "agency" are relatively new to me, but make me feel pretty grown up. Newsrooms, it's probably not surprising to you, were pretty juvenile in every way you can think of. Agency life has its moments, to be sure, but it doesn't make me want to run in the bathroom and hide like Lynn Sweet once did to me when she didn't get her way.

But mostly my days have been the same, Glinny starts whining when the sun comes up, not to go out, but so that I'll wake up and cuddle up with her. She plops her entire body down onto mine and rests her head in the crook of my arm. Afterwards we start our routine, we part ways, I return later and ask her how her day was. It's usually pretty restful, to be honest. If it's not pouring rain or stupidly cold, we go for walks in the neighborhood. Sometimes I leave to go out - actually I do this more often than not, as I never feel like I'm ever caught up with seeing friends - but other times we just sit on the couch and yell at Tyra Banks or Top Chef or some other Bravo show.

Things feel rather suspended at the moment, which is not a bad thing. I'm waiting for the tide to turn, for things to change again, just after I'd gotten so used to taking up so much space.

posted by Erin at 04:51 PM | | filed under: Odds and ends

"So, I did something even stupider: I knocked on the door.

I don't know why. Maybe a ghost with real-world abilities could help a brother out? Maybe I believed that my child is such a genius that she could somehow unstrap herself, hop off the table and somehow push a chair to prop herself up and open the locked door. My imagination, sometimes it is too active."

My friend Omar is hysterical. And I think we can all safely assume an excellent father.

posted by Erin at 03:38 PM | | filed under: Blog move