Gilda

Blazers by Coldwater Creek
Hats at Tilly's

First, how cute is Gilda Radner in this picture? I want to bite her style, except for maybe the hat. I'm terrible at hats. I have a very flat head around the back. My whole family does. I can't even wear headbands because I've got almost negative skull curvature and can't keep them up. Like Britney, I discovered my malformed head during an angsty period where I wanted to look as bad as I felt. Let's forget 1996 so freaking hard, okay?

Second, I'm in a band now? [I really wanted to follow those words with a question mark because it sounded right in my head.] It's a bunch of girls and we're having fun. I finally have an outlet for my pro attitude and pro gear!

Monday sentiments

None of the Levys wanted to go to our jobs or school today, but we are responsible folks, so here we are toiling away in our usual Monday places.

Ira slyly passed me this note as I was putting together breakfast for him. It says "scooL HoM ✓," as in "no school today, let's stay home." He thinks a written note carries more weight. It does for some things, I suppose, but not today and not for this. When I was a kid, I played sick a lot. I don't know why my parents went along with it, but they did. I can't exactly remember why I never wanted to go to school, but I remember being very shy and easily embarrassed. Luckily, Ira didn't inherit my early social anxieties (I overcame them, I think). He was just really tired this morning. We all were.

To catch a leprechaun

This was Ira's leprechaun trap. He had planned a much more complicated trap, but lacking in his requested materials (bombs, spikey things and ninjas) I helped him come up with this simpler trap. Just seal the bottom of a cardboard sleeve with painter's tape (sticky side up), add some lucky pennies at the bottom, provide a ladder for access and then...LEPRECHAUN! But it didn't work.


The sneaky green guy left a treat bag instead:




On Sunday we had a bit of hail. Ira really wanted to eat it.



We dedicated much of this rainy, hailing, gray weekend to sweeping the little bits of our life up into some kind of order. It took me an hour to untangle about 18 necklaces from an intricate starburst brooch. Leon built a shelf and now we have order where there was a potential mouse nest. Mice are gross.


I made some St. Patrick's day food and it was awesome. I didn't take a picture of the food because it was so delicious that I inhaled it. I also had my first Irish Car Bomb. And second. And third? I can't remember. All I know is that I saw a picture of myself recently and I was so embarrassed. Come Monday I ramped up my fitness program to everyday instead of every other day, which I really did only twice a week. Oh well. It's the season for fitness I guess. It seems like I come to this "bad picture-fitness motivation" point often. I now resign myself to insanely early workouts and sore muscles. I will try not to complain about it too much.

Kind hippie food

It was a dark and stormy night...and then I made some vegan comfort food. I don't normally cook something with the express intent of veganess. I love butter. I love cheese! Oh, brother. Do I love cheese. I love pepperoni pizza. [Editor's note: dear family, when I leave this mortal coil, please carve the bold text above onto a tree somewhere beautiful, beneath an artist's rendering of my likeness. A cypress overlooking the coast in Big Sur would be nice and I don't care if it kills the tree. I won't go alone.] Anyway, anyways, many ways! I tried this vegan recipe I found on Pinterest, where I'm still trying to eke out a hoarder's trove of Internet whimsy. I forgot who pinned it, but I was drawn to it because I can never get enough mushroom gravy in my life. It came out nicely. It had a deeply earthy taste that was made extra earthy by the nutritional yeast, and brightened by the kale and garlic.


I had a lot of mushrooms and kale leftover, so I made these sandwiches the next night:


This is inspired by the sandwich they sell at Magpie. It has crusty bread, lemony-garlic white bean spread, garlic-sauteed kale, mushrooms and more garlic. While it was so, so good, it was a total gout trigger for the old man. Sorry, babe. Blame the mushrooms.

I didn't mention the Halloween show yet. We played first, so many of our friends missed us. The organizers weren't kidding when they said it would start on time! I think it went well. I was being a total baby about playing bass, but that's what you get when you take me out of my comfort zone. I didn't do terrible, but I won't be picking that bass up again for a while. All of the other bands were great. Every single one. I had a couple too many brews and thought I was being really funny, which is a sure sign of me not being very funny. I definitely earned the next morning's greasy breakfast.

Today's post is brought to you by extremely shady, pork-barrelling kale and mushroom lobbyists.