Man hands! She had man hands!

You know you've worked at a celebrity weekly for a while when you have a dream that you go to New Zealand with the Jolie-Pitts because you're the kids' nanny and the eight of you (Angelina, Brad, you, Maddox, Zahara, Pax, Shiloh, giant bodyguard) pile into a Ford Focus to drive to a massive chain restaurant in a mostly empty mall on the outskirts of some industrial complex and the giant bodyguard somehow falls asleep with the car door open and Pax, who is sitting on his lap, kind of hangs out the door to taste the winds of freedom and once the car is parked you have to chase Shiloh around the parking lot and she runs FAST and once you catch up with her and hold her hand you realize she has giant giant GIANT hands. Not wide, like a catcher's mitt, but big, like the catcher's hands themselves. Yooge.

Also? Once you get to the restaurant, you watch Brad Pitt eat his dinner on his white paper placemat (the kind with the scalloped edges), and you can't help thinking, Chicken nuggets. He's gone from eating in the finest restaurants to scarfing down chicken nuggets with ketchup. Things change. You don't think this in a bad or sad way, you're just observing.

Also? You make the whole family late while you're looking for the right pair of shoes to wear to dinner. Angelina gets a bit testy and says you have to be more organized because you're making the children wait while you look for your shoes. You glance around your hotel room and it's a disaster. Since when have you had such a comprehensive wardrobe?

Also? When you all fall out of the Ford Focus in the mall parking lot, there are three people walking to their cars, and when they realize they're walking past Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and the kids, they stand there with their camera phones at the ready and you lean over to Angelina and say, "It's just amazing to see the looks on their faces the moment they realize it's you." She kind of chuckles knowingly, but it's a tired half-laugh.

What does this all mean? Have I revealed too much about myself? And more important, what shoes should I have worn?

Oh, no. Now we're gonna have to have a talk and everything.

At the grocery store today, Josh told me that he doesn't like watermelon. He said he thinks it's "too grainy."

I think there might be something seriously wrong with him.

My question to you is this:

Is Pete Doherty ever dry?

I don't mean dry as in not drunk. We know the answer to that one. But I mean dry as in not soaking wet, from cottage-cheese head down to stank, reptilian feet.

Just wondering.

Quote of the Day

Courtesy of my boss, whom we call Q:

I just copyedited some text that cites Etta James's song "At Last." Our fact-checking department had added an exclamation point, so we would print it as "At Last!" I questioned it and handed it back to Q. A few minutes later ...

Q: Yeah, research added that exclamation point.
Me: Weird.
Q: Yeah. It doesn't seem right.
Me: It's not an exclamation-pointy song.
Q: I know.
Me: And Etta James doesn't seem exclamation-pointy.
Q: Yeah, she doesn't strike me as someone who is in the business of shouting things.

Now, I admit I don't know much about Etta James. But this impression isn't unreasonable solely based on the song, right? Wouldn't it be a totally different song if she'd screamed it? Engaged couples the world over would have to settle on their Plan B song (which always seems to be "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" by Aerosmith) for their first dance at their weddings. And we can't have that happen, can we?

If you have a problem discussing mucus and poop, don't read this.

All right, people. This is getting ridiculous. The Phlegm is back. I never get sick twice in a summer.

It's barreling through my system all freight-trainey, though, so five days into it, I'm already where I would normally be (tiptoeing through the coughing-fit stage) during Week 2. So that's good. It was pretty much brought on by a fabulous but frantic run through the Pacific Northwest, in which I saw two cities I've always wanted to visit (Portland and Seattle) and saw a dear friend marry a great guy in a seriously picturesque Willamette Valley vineyard, but then there was the scant sleeping and the delayed flying and the two-and-a-half-hour taxi odyssey home in the remnants of the Freak Rainstorm 2007 that shut down nearly all of the city's freeways. And then there were two nights of Crowded House shows that followed (which, please, I'd drag my fangirl self to if I had some gaping head wound or a tail or something), and my body just said, "That's it. I'm going to liquify now." So here we are.

This all leaves me feeling weary but contemplative, mostly because I'm making noises and all-around imploding from the face in public. It makes me think of all the most disgusting things I hate doing in public but can't seem to avoid right now:

1. Blowing my nose
2. Coughing (if it's more than three coughs and there are innards involved)
3. Throwing up (that would be Friday, in the bathroom at work — not at my desk, thank god for large favors)

Fine, this might seem gross to you. You might wonder why I'm talking about this on The Internets. But be honest: You have a method for picking your nose undetected in public. At some moment in time, something more substantial than just spit has shot out of your mouth during a conversation with someone you had a crush on. You move your shopping bags/purse/backpack/other stuff-carrying device around your body so you can pick a wedgie in a crowded department store. You quicken your pace as you walk away from your farts on the sidewalk. You pull a hair out of your head to floss a poppy seed from between your two front teeth before going back to your table in a restaurant. You sniff your pits in the car. I know you do this. Stop hiding. Stop pretending that smell isn't your stank foot odor wafting from under your chair. We all have grossness that we all, at some point or another, have to take outside the safe fart zones of our homes.

At work, there are very few private offices with doors. Most of us sit in cubicles with half-walls that come up just above the waist. I thought I'd hate it, it certainly limits personal phone calls, but perhaps for that reason I secretly love it. My coworkers are very cool and the open format comes in handy during hectic closes, when communication is essential.

But on days like today, everyone can hear me coughing up my lungs. Everyone who walks past looks straight at my nose and makes mental notes that it's crusting off my face. I've stopped ducking under my desk to blow my nose, but the bathroom is SO far away that I'm just out in the open with my snot. Today, I am the Gross Girl In The Office. I know I'm not contagious, and I'm finally at the point where I can hold a thought and be productive so it's not obscene for me to be at work. But it's obscene what's crawling up my esophagus when I cough.

When I hit 30, I turned a corner in many avenues in my life. Family neuroses didn't get to me so much. I accepted my body (not fully, but more than I ever had). I got better at letting things go. I weeded out the unhealthy relationships in my life. And I started pooping in public restrooms. This is something that, until that point, I avoided at all costs, only did under extreme physical duress. And then I turned 30. And I got tired of stomachaches. So maybe that's why I feel my Interoffice Coughing Fits are invasive, but they're human, and I can't feel embarrassed by them, even if the Office Douchebag comes by and says something like, "Sounds like you got yourself quite a problem there, eh?!? Hahahahahahaha!"

OK, confession: My Most Embarrassing Moment

It was at summer camp. I was about eight years old. My bunk went to the nature center to look at the frogs and snakes and turtles, and then we sat in a circle and the nature specialist showed us how to make three-legged stools. The nature specialist was accompanied by a junior counselor who was sooooooo cute. Never having been one of those girls who thought boys had cooties, I was enamored. He sat next to me, so I convinced myself he was in love with me. The circle was silent except for the calm voice of the nature supervisor. I felt the heat off the junior counselor's body. I knew he wanted me. I felt like the most desirable eight-year-old on the planet. I felt he was my future. I felt his longing. I felt his passion. So I farted.

It was silent enough where it wasn't heard around the circle, but it was loud enough where he heard it. He was the only one who heard it. He looked at me, and the only way I could save face was to cover it up. So I did what any quick-witted, sharp-minded young intellectual would do: I started making fart noises with my mouth, psuedo-raspberries, sort of in song, as if this was something logical to do during any three-legged-stool-assembling instruction.

"Pfft. Blrrrrpt. Fffffftttt."

People, I'm going to blow my nose wherever I want to, as loud or as messy as I want to. I have nowhere to go but up.

Seattle times

In Seattle right now. Beautiful city. Exceptional coffee. Clean, fresh air. There are deer on our hotel room wall.



That's all.