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The Smoothie that Rhodas Built

vitamix

This week I pulled the proverbial trigger and bought a Vitamix Blender.  $449 worth of Cleveland made, American ingenuity and horse power.  $449 is crazy.  Capital C Crazy.  The economy is in the tanker, so what was I thinking crazy.  C-R-A-Z-Y.

Thing is, I love it.  Capital L Love it.  Brought it home yesterday and have already made strawberry ice cream and a peach-spinach smoothie for breakfast this morning.  Stocked the fridge with kale and greens and fruit this weekend, so my Vitamix possibilities are endless.  I’m a little excited.  So excited that I named this beauty — she is my VitaMinx.

I owe it all to you.  Thank you!  Capital T, capital Y Thank You.  Remember when I was a nominee in the GM Our Town, Our Heroes contest a few weeks ago?  Well, you Rhodas put me over the top.  Big time.  They tell me it wasn’t even close.  The prize was the use of a GM car for a week (I chose a Cadillac — how awesome is a middle-aged mommy blogger rollin’ in a Cadillac Escalade?  I got a Buick instead, which was still pretty damn cool.)  The other prize was a $500 Visa card.

I told myself I needed an iPad upgrade.  That my original iPad no number was crashing every five minutes (damn you, Apple!) and I am in a serious love affair with my iPad, to the extent that we call Mary Tyler Dad an iPad widow in this household.  Yeah, it was settled.  In the end, I couldn’t pull that trigger.  Too selfish for a Hero gift card.

Around the same time, a co-worker started sharing her obsession with the Vitamix.  I wasn’t even curious, honestly.  I am not, by my nature, a foodie.  Spending $500 of found money on a kitchen appliance?  Not my cup o’ tea.

But, clearly, I am impressionable.  My co-worker kept talking and I started listening.  I would Google “Vitamix” late at night (on that aforementioned frequently crashing iPad).  Yeah, I was curious.  Last week I spent a few days at a medical conference where Vitamix had a demo booth set up.  They were offering a discount to conference attendees.  I sidled over the first day of the conference.  Tasted me some of that strawberry ice cream.  And peach cobbler sorbet.  And chicken tortilla soup.  All were equally yum.  All were made before my eyes and took not more than five minutes each.

This non-foodie was pretty damn interested.

Spending the “hero money,” as I had started calling it seemed like a possibility.  This purchase, while huge and not necessary, seemed like a good thing for my family.  Eating healthier is always good.  Buying something Mary Tyler Dad could use and enjoy, that is a bonus, too.  The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.  SOLD.

And I have you to thank.

There are so many intangibles I get for writing this here blog.  I love the connection I feel with readers.  I love the relationships I have developed with folks across the globe.  The globe, man.  That is crazy amazing to me.  Capital A Amazing.  You all give me more than I could ever articulate with words.  Connection, support, laughter, insight, wit, charm — these are things I get from you all daily.  All those things contribute to my health and well being,  but they are still intangible.

Yesterday was the first tangible evidence of all those lovely things, in the form of a Vitamix, now sitting on my kitchen counter, spiffing up the place.  Mary Tyler Dad is using it this minute, blending a yellow tomato sauce for tonight’s dinner.

You did that.  THANK YOU.  Now you contribute to my health and well being, tangibly and intangibly.  I am grateful to you, for reading, keeping me company, listening to me, teaching me.  Thank you.

Smoothies for everyone!

 

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My Gwynnie Epiphany

Gwyneth Paltrow and I have a history together on this here Internet. Basically, I’m not a fan, as I’ve detailed publicly on two very well-received occasions. Her acting is inoffensive, often pleasant.  It’s the other stuff — the cookbooks and GOOP and her singing and hanging with Beyonce and Jay-Z that get to me.  If she stuck to the acting, she would get a great big whatever from me. But she doesn’t stick to the acting, does she?

Like me and most women I know, Gwynnie (what I would call her if we were BFFs) is multi-faceted.  I mean, of course she is.  She is married to a rock star and Steven Spielberg is her godfather.  Gal’s got an Oscar, an Emmy and a Golden Globe.  She’s got it going on, clearly.

So why does she annoy me so much?

The answer to that question is immaterial and inconsequential.  Who cares why she annoys me?  I’ve detailed the whys in my previous two Gwynnie posts, that honestly, I have benefited from.  They are funny and passionate and great writing and clearly struck a nerve with a lot of youse.  But truth be told, the things I said with my keyboard are things I would never have said to Gwyneth’s face.

That is cowardly.

I am a lot of things I am not so proud of, but I am not a coward.

The posts were published in February and May, 2011.  I have not dedicated a post to Gwynnie since then.  There’s a reason for that.  It doesn’t feel good.  While the moments of typing on the keyboard felt good, like a rant that just needed to come out, the mirroring of hate and intense dislike for Gwyneth that I saw in the comment threads they generated never felt good. Full disclosure, I was ashamed that my words resulted in other words of hate and dislike.  I was the catalyst of a lot of yuck and I didn’t like it.

In February of this year, I got a taste of Internet hate and it was bitter.  And scary.  A group of strangers targeted me on Facebook for something I had posted in complete innocence.  What I had posted was twisted and manipulated, then circulated on several other Facebook pages to demonstrate what a horrible person I was.  It didn’t feel good.  Not one bit.

That experience was sort of a wake up call for me about the power of the Internet and social media.  It’s all fun and games until you see your kid’s photo, his innocent face, sweet and vulnerable, splashed on a bunch of pages with hateful things attached to it.  Yeah, that was no fun at all.

That experience taught me what cyber-bullying was all about.  It only lasted a day, really, my being on the receiving end of some mean girls’ hate, and then like most things in social media — POOF — it was gone.  The mean girls had moved on and found another target.  But there I was, shaken and sad and not quite so innocent.  Hadn’t I done the same thing to Gwyneth?

Gwyneth ecard
e-card I created in February 2012.

And then there was the dream I had last week (cue swirly camera work here).

Gwyneth had invited me over to her home.  It was a NYC apartment, big, but not garish.  It was interesting, with lots of books and art (a lot like a fancier version of my own home).  I got there early and was left alone to explore.  After a while other people started arriving — 5, 10, 20, 30 people. Hey!  There was Chris Martin!  And, OMG, is that Gwynnie?  It was.  We were in the living room and her kids were getting ready for bed just down the hall.

I was in Gwyneth Paltrow’s home and she was holding a salon.  A salon, people.

Gwyneth was lounged on a sofa, listening intently, and contributing sometimes.  At one point, she asked me what I thought about a topic.  I gladly jumped in to the conversational fray.  It was about working mothers, so you know I had some thoughts to share.  

A few minutes later, I got up to stretch my legs and ran into Chris Martin.  I started gushing about how one of his songs — I was embarrassed to realize I don’t know the names to any of them — was something I would listen to over and over when I was sad about my daughter dying of cancer. He seemed moved.  I was dream mortified that I didn’t know the name of his work.

Then I walked into the kitchen, and there she was:  Gwyneth.  My Internet nemesis in the dream flesh.  Except in my dream, she was just a lady in her kitchen, not so evil, and looking kind of fabulous.  My brain was going a mile a minute.  I was scared out of my skivvies that she might have read my rants about her.  Should I bring it up?  Should I play dumb?  In the end, this is what I said:

MTM:  Hi, I kind of can’t believe I am in your home.  

GP:  Here you are.

MTM:  Well, people are probably always wanting something from you, and I am no different.  I want you to know I am very sorry and ashamed that I have written about you in my blog.  And I want to know if you would let me tape you saying, “What’s your Good Thing?” for my charity.  

Cut to black when I woke up.  

Wow.  You know you are grappling with Catholic guilt when you dream about guilt.

So I think my Gwynnie days are over.  Truth is, she will probably continue to annoy me, just as I annoy some of you.  And as much as I like to rant and rave about how she is so out of touch with the average working mom, Gwyneth and I probably have more in common then I am comfortable admitting.  Two privileged white girls living the dream.

Forgive me, Gwyneth.  Mea culpa.  Truly.  I am sorry to have targeted you with my snark.  I am sorry to have made fun of your lifestyle, your children’s names, your right to live your life the way you see fit.  That was wrong.  And mean.  And it won’t happen again.

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It’s Hammer(pants) Time: My MC Debut

On May 27th, Imma be doing my very first MC engagement.

For a gal like me, who is essentially a wallflower that blooms on the Internet, this is kind of a big deal.  When I was first asked, I nearly spit out my Coca Cola, as it was phrased along the lines of, “would you ever consider being the celebrity MC at this fundraising event?” The closest I get to celebrity is my snarking about it on the high holy days trifecta of the Emmys, Golden Globes, and Oscars.  Or in line at the grocery store when I peruse the rags while I wait to pay for my Cheerios.

In my head, I will always and forever be that awkward junior high girl with braces who looked at the cool kids having fun, but absolutely, positively was not one of them.

Then I learned more about the fundraiser, who it was for, why it was being held.  And I thought of Donna.  And I thought about doing Good Things.  And I thought about Lori.  And it became quite easy to say yes.

Lori Urban is a gal I’ve never met.  She lives in Colorado.  She is a single mom.  She has cancer.  Relapsed ovarian cancer, which is its own kind of hell.  She is responsible for the care and upbringing of three beautiful kids who count on her for everything.  She works more than one job to make ends meet.  And she does this alone, while in treatment.  I am her neighbor in Cancerville, but from a very different subdivision.

I want to help.  I want to pay forward some of the immense kindness that was shown to us from friends, family, and strangers during Donna’s illness.  MCing this fundraiser for Lori is a way for me to do that.  So I said yes.  I will swallow my awkwardness and find the MC within.  I know she’s in there somewhere.

And it’s not too often you get asked to be an MC, assuming your name is not Billy Chrystal.  So why not embrace what makes you uncomfortable?  In that spirit, I proposed to wear MC Hammer pants at the event.  For a price.  Yes, always the hook.  For a price.  With your help and financial support of the Urban Family, I will wear gold lame MC Hammer pants to MC the fundraiser.  I had originally suggested black Hammer pants, but my facebook community didn’t think that was good enough.  Gold lame for the dough is what they told me, so gold lame is what it’s gonna be.  Behold:

Hammer Pants Note: I will have better shoes and worse deltoids.

So, pony it up, folks.  Help a gal out — a single mom with three kids and relapsed ovarian cancer.  I figure that if Lori can manage treatment and mothering, I can manage gold lame hammer pants and you can manage a few bucks to make it happen.  I’ll do it for $500 for Lori and her kids, but honest truth, I think we can do better.  I think it’s worth upwards of 1K to see me in lame.

1K for lame.  Let’s do this.  Click on this paypal link and make it happen.  If donations total more than $500 for THIS WEEK, May 14 – May 20, we are on like Donkey Kong.  And there will be photo evidence to prove it.

For all you local yokels like me, here is the event information:

Flyer

WHAT:  Lori Urban Fight Like a Girl! Fundraiser

WHERE:  Dolce Amore Restaurant, 2112 Winding River Drive, Naperville, Illinois

WHEN:  Saturday, May 27, 2012 between 2-5 PM.

There will be food and drinks (10% of the house will go to Lori), shopping (20% of all vendors’ profits will go to Lori), a silent auction/raffle (100% of all profits will go to Lori), and a head shaving, because what’s a cancer fundraiser without a head shaving (100% of all profits will go to Lori).

Good food, good shopping, good fun, good cause.  And gold MC Hammer pants.  Let’s do this.