Off to Chicago in the morning…love that town! Heading up with a friend to visit my sister and hang out for my birthday weekend!

Nothing like celebrating one’s natal day with Poi Dog Pondering, the world’s most beautiful female impersonators, those potato things from Reza’s (can you say “lemon pomegranate sauce?”), an oily bag of Garrett’s Popcorn (Chicago style, of course!), a cuppa foamy espesso deliciousness from Lavazzo, a full night’s sleep without my (beautiful but early rising) toddler, and my new Brain, Child magazine which I have yet to dip into. BLISS.

Was that enough links for you? Not for me! (want to join us for dinner Saturday night?)

Enjoy your weekend, kittens. Stories of Mad Mom on Miracle Mile to come.

Frank Sinatra, My Kind of Town

As promised, the inimitable Fitch Heiges (just in time for Love Thursday)!

Two days old and he was already charming the tops off all the ladies in the room. Just like his Daddy.

I wish you love today.

Talking Heads, Stay Up Late

This post over at Foodmomiac got me all misty this morning. Great memories — about food, travel and an important relationship — written just beautifully.

Then I smiled when I saw the list of song titles included with the one I chose a lyric from this morning. My favorite? “If I’m Not Number One in Your Life, then Number Two On You.”

Harold Barlow, Tears in My Ears

So I met Fitch Heiges this morning and am overwhelmed with joy for this family. Not unlike the joy I felt when I met Justin Kershes a week or so ago, who was born into a family who wished for him for more than ten years.

Then I read this entry from Leah and I remember how fragile this whole ride is.

How about I wish you some more love from yesterday? And a big hug to Leah over the waves…

Joni Mitchell, Circle Game

It’s Love Thursday again. I like the routine of consciously thinking about love every week, and showing a way that I feel it. I do a lot of it, but most of it is without thinking.

For instance, I continue not to think about how many of these I ate:

Take a bag of mini-sweet peppers from Costco, stuff ‘em with Alouette cheese, roast ‘em for 10 minutes or so, and you’ve actually made love. At least it feels that way if you are me. Of course, I might actually eat a fish head stuffed with Alouette and feel the same, such is the love.

Easier to identify is this kind of love:

I made the peppers for Ruby’s godfathers, who came over to see her after our summer away. Click, Clack, Moo, Cows That Type, a big green stuffed animal, and Hollis and Foster? That’s love too.

I wanted to introduce you to Fitch Heiges !!! who was born at 1:30 this afternoon. I didn’t get up to the hospital yet, so I don’t have a pic. He’s the brand-new son of these folks, two of my favorites. Wendy was wiped out but I hope to see her in the morning and meet the little soldier. Heck, it’s all about Love this Thursday!

I wish you love today.

Barbra Streisand, Evergreen

I’ve got Mass, people.

This is what Shaun and I have lovingly named my Mom-ass, otherwise known as The Thing That Grew Exponentially This Summer and is starting to piss me off. God knows I have done my time as a fat person, so I do know that Now is the moment to take care of this. We belong to a gym that is right behind Ruby’s preschool, so the plan is that we will start going every day after we drop her off.

We were set to implement said plan this morning. Any stabs at when you think we will show up shoed and ready for the elliptical machine? I’m giving us until Thursday, I think. Until then I will continue to rummage through all the clothes in the house, cursing, and try to find pants that don’t make me want to stab someone when I put them on.

I am not buying new fall clothes. I am not buying new fall clothes. I am not buying new fall clothes. (Maybe I should just shoot the pooch and get a pair of these.)

Have I mentioned that I want plastic surgery? Not the scary kind where I would look like a woodland creature, but the kind that would make me more comfortable. Body contouring is what it’s called. Makes it sound much less brutal than I am sure it is, doesn’t it?

I did put on about six pounds over the summer, and that’s gotta come off. I could also lose another 15 above that. In the end, though (ha! I said “in the end”), there’s still leftover skin (baaaaarf) that I just want someone to hack off and throw into a red bio-hazard dumpster. OK, that just made me a little sick.

That said, I seem to be getting more traffic on fannfare since the lovely Angela (those eyebrows! that skin!) linked to me (I’ll be she doesn’t have Mass). If you are reading this, and you have any experience with plastic surgery after gastric bypass, will you chat me up? I am sincerely interested in your journey.

My journey today is going to consist of a Pria bar, lots of water, a brisk run around the reflecting pool couple up-and-down-the-stairs to do laundry, and a handful of resentment.

You know, I always thought I would have been a great fellow passenger on the ill-fated Uruguayan Air Force flight that went down in the Andes. The survivors resorted to cannibalism to stay “Alive,” which also ended up being the name of the book and movie based on the events. My ass, sticking out of the snow, would actually be the big score. Whoever cut into it first would shriek, “My God, Men, it’s Brie!”

Sir Mix-A-Lot, Baby’s Got Back

Just so you can make it through the next couple days, here’s our first video on Fannfare. You know of our love affair with Starbucks — we go there for whipped cream and to people-watch. This day, Aunt Carrie was with us and we reviewed our animals, letters and numbers.

Note: A camel spits, and a giraffe eats leaves. They don’t, in our house, say anything.

We’re off to The Big Apple to see a Broadway show for Shaun’s birthday. Ruby will stay with my cousins while we go out on the town. Not bad, eh? Have a great weekend.

Edie Brickell and New Bohemians, Little Miss S.

Note 2: This is an instance where a lyric just popped into my head, instead of the theme of the entire song. Little Miss S. is actually about Edie Sedgewick, a 60s top model who got addicted to heroin, hung out with Andy Warhol, and died really really early. And, Ruby….well, she’s just a kid. At Starbucks that day, it really was the thing just to be by her side. Lalalaaaaalaaa!

Don’t you just want to squish them both? My goddaughter, with her goddaughter, my daughter (squeeze her too hard, she makes water).

I wish you love today.

Cat Stevens, Can’t Keep It In

I really need the DC Kinko’s people to step up. Seriously.

When I first saw this this training video by Dave Chappelle, I had yet to really experience the customer service he was talking about. My father worked at a Kinko’s when he was laid off from a job years ago, and I knew of people who would come in specifically when they knew he was working. I just thought this was because Kinko’s rocked — it couldn’t possibly be because my Dad rocked, right?

In hindsight, Dad rocked because Kinko’s is a nightmare. Every now and then you’ll run into a fairly pleasant person — but even in those circumstances, said rep is severely limited by Kinko’s (“The Man”) as to what they can do to help you. Case in point, last weekend I was the co-hostess of a baby shower. I needed some labels to stick on goodie bags. Simple enough, yes? But, the Kinko’s near me (and the next closest was in…Atlanta?) didn’t have the label paper, and even if they did, they don’t print labels in color. Something about the ink having to go through a roller? The paper? Something. I just remember thinking “This is a copy shop. Perhaps they should get machines that can Overcome. Copy. Challenges.”

My sister ended up running the labels for me on her dinky inkjet at home. On paper we bought, oh I dunno, at CVS!?

Should I talk about how great the people at the Kinko’s in Colorado were when I went there? Or are y’all sick of my midwestern love affair? What. Ever. All I can say is that the project I took in there (weeks earlier, when the invitations to said shower needed to be printed) was done, perfectly, while I waited.

Sweet Lord. I promise to pick this up a bit on Love Thursday tomorrow.

REM, Finest Worksong

For some reason, this song resonates with me today as we all remember those who lost their lives at the World Trade Center five years ago.

I signed up to memorialize one of the victims of 9/11, and tell you what I know about him. William A. Mathesen of Morristown, New Jersey is on my mind today, and I am sure the minds of all of his family and friends. He is survived by his wife Kathy, and his daughters, Emily and Jessica. I have read posts in various places from his sisters, Deborah Moloney and Patricia Sarrantonio. I reached out to those family members that I could, via email, over the summer, and have yet to hear back from them. Like Bill’s family, though, I won’t forget him and will post more as I learn it, and hear back from those who loved him.

Bill’s company, Euro Brokers, remembered him this way:

Life was full of music for William Mathesen, known as Bill.

Bill taught himself to play the guitar and piano and had begun to tackle the harmonica. He loved to write songs and often recorded them. Over the years he wrote music and lyrics for his family using his emotions for life as his inspiration. He frequently joked about starting a family band, with his daughters playing piano and violin and his less-musically-inclined wife flipping the pages.

Bill, 40, first worked with Euro Brokers on the Interest Rate Options desk in the early 1990s. He left for a while, but returned in August 2001 to work on the Repo desk.

Bill was a successful broker, but his real love was entertaining people. As a student at Center Moriches High School on Long Island, he was known for his funny jokes and antics. And as an adult, he told witty stories that evoked roars of laughter. At one of his annual Halloween parties at home in Morristown, New Jersey, the six-foot-tall Bill came dressed as Napoleon and made the other partygoers feed him, saying that taking his hand out of his jacket would spoil the effect. His parties inevitably would end with everyone gathered around Bill’s baby grand piano, singing with him.

I can’t believe, still, that Bill and 2,995 other victims are gone today. Just think of the people who are in particular pain this morning as they re-live the shocking moments of 9/11, and the loss of those they loved.

Instead of the pain, I am focused on my vision of one of Bill’s parties! Perhaps, around the piano, he and his friends would sing this or this.

And, I know that instead of Five Hundred Miles, the loss of Bill and the other victims of 9/11 is felt from much further away. They are all remembered…worldwide.

Peter, Paul and Mary, Five Hundred Miles