Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

Life is in flux BIG TIME these days. I want to keep in touch with all of my peeps. The Internet is this beautiful thing. I can move to a brand new city and still stay in easy, near-daily contact with the people I love. When I feel connected to the people in my life that matter, I am unstoppable!

Dad Says We Need Another Deep Throat

By Abby at 8:22 am on Thursday, June 2, 2005

I am pretty politic-avoidant these days, but my dad isn’t. Here’s his latest letter to the editor published in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution:

Nation needs an informant against Bush

Charles Colson’s saying that W. Mark Felt betrayed the trust of America’s leaders is remarkable. The Watergate scandal was the biggest betrayal of the trust of the American people to date.

We can only hope that a new "Deep Throat" will come forward with the truth about President Bush’s campaign to get us into the war with Iraq. The recently leaked British memo makes it clear that we have been betrayed again.

 We’re all in the paper this week!

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Dad’s Take on the Terri Schiavo Case

By Abby at 5:37 pm on Thursday, March 31, 2005

My Dad sent this. Hope he doesn’t mind if I blog it!

Terri Schiavo had a severe case of Bulemia. Maybe everyone knows this, but I sure didn’t. She had been an overweight teenager (5′-3″, 200lbs) and lost a lot of weight by becoming Bulemic and living on liquids much of the time. Not long before her ‘collapse’ 15 years ago, she went to a doctor for ammenorrhea. Her collapse followed a binge-purge episode and her heart apparently stopped from hypokalemia (low serum potassium from vomiting and or laxative abuse). In the malpractice suit, there was a $2 million malpractice payoff because the doctor didn’t diagnose her eating disorder – which she didn’t mention. Her husband didn’t know about it either. She has been in a vegetative state for 15 years with, in the most bizarre of ironies, a feeding tube. Her CAT Scan, shown above, shows massive brain damage, with cortical thinning between the extremely dilated ventricles and the skull.

What has all this been about? A parent’s wish to ‘feed’ her?

What an incredibly sad story, but it’s not the sad story that’s been all over our news…

I’m not sure why I’m forwarding this. It was just something of a shock that this has not been a part of the news stories, and it should have been. Karen Carpenter’s death in the late 70’s in similar circumstances jolted a lot of people who needed help into treatment.

Link 1, Link 2, Link 3

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It’s Official! I Am an Adult!

By Abby at 11:38 am on Saturday, March 26, 2005

Lookit what my daddy sent me today!

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The Correct Bagel (again, with feeling)

By Abby at 8:51 am on Thursday, March 24, 2005

Growing up, I would often end up in a restaurant with my dad, and he would tell me, "This is the right thing to order here." My most specific memory was on Oxford Road in Atlanta, right next to the main entrance to Emory. There was a sandwich shop there. I think it was in that building with the silly top; the one that’s been a Dominoes and a million other things. I don’t know if it’s still there or not.

Anyway, he said that I should order turkey and cole slaw with Russian Dressing on Rye. He said that was the right thing to order, and the people working there would know I knew something about sandwiches. I remember feeling like a little bit of a badass ordering that. I was probably in the range of 12 years old.

So today, on AskMetafilter (a site I adore), someone is asking about good bagels in London. And someone posted this comment:

Correct bagel types:

  • Plain
  • Sesame
  • Poppy
  • Salt
  • Onion
  • Everything
  • Cinnamon Raisin

Incorrect bagel types:

  • Sun-dried tomato
  • Blueberry
  • Jalapeno
  • Pesto
  • Anything not listed under "Correct bagel types"

Another person pointed out the obvious exclusion of Garlic, another important bagel flavor.

Does it make me a snob that I am *so* with this person on this point?

I grew up eating bagels at The Royal Bagel at Ansley Mall in Atlanta, GA. It was owned by a Jewish woman from New York named Rose and her husband. It was there my whole life, and I have never had a bagel that good since.

Over time, The Royal Bagel became a fascinating cultural institution. It was where people in my neighborhood went on weekend mornings. It was a Jewish place, and because of its location, it was a gay place (for gay men, not gay women… that was Decatur).

I remember that over the years, the employees changed from being my friend Molly’s two older sisters (kind of a family atmosphere) to a really hopping gay Mecca, with a full expansion into the next shop’s space. The guys working there at the end of its royal reign wore t-shirts that said something like "Bagels fit for a Queen." Excellent! And Rose was always still around. She probably didn’t know me, but I knew her.

The bagel flavors there were the ones mentioned in the correct list (including garlic), and the cream cheese flavors were plain and lox. It was perfect. There was no way to perfect that combination.

The Royal Bagel isn’t there anymore. Instead, there’s an Einstein’s up the hill. It’s a sad replacement, and yet, when in Atlanta, that’s kind of where we end up… trying to reclaim those wonderful bagel moments of the past.

By the way, I’m not the only one who remembers the Royal Bagel. And here’s another description from Creative Loafing, the local Atlanta rag:

Royal Bagel — Now that bagel franchises blanket the city, it’s tough to imagine loyal customers driving halfway across town to line up at this small Ansley Mall bakery that was among the first to offer the breakfast staple when it opened in 1974. Hung on until 1997.

The take-home message? Shop locally, and order the correct bagels… PLEASE! No wheat, no blueberry chocolate chip, no walnut spread, no bagel pizzas, and no bagel sandwiches with lettuce and turkey and other wrong things. Please, people. It’s not snobbery. It’s being cultured!!

Update: I’m reposting this hoping that the comments will miraculously work. If you wanted to post before but couldn’t, try again.

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Case of You

By Abby at 10:53 pm on Wednesday, February 23, 2005

I never said why “Case of You” was important to me. Joni Michell’s Blue came out when I was about 2 years old, and my dad had a copy of it. I lived in England until I was just under 5 years old, and I remember this always being my dad’s favorite (along with Cream’s Wheels of Fire, Beatles, Rubber Soul, and Don McLeans’s American Pie). Over time, I have worn through my dad’s tape copies of Blue, a few vinyl copies, a few more cassettes, and a couple of CDs (the one I have now is on its way out). Coincidentally, I was born a pretty high soprano, and if I sing without the training in my voice, it’s quite similar to Joni Mitchell (you know, before the decades of chain-smoking). I used Blue to warm up in the car on the way to voice auditions, and I’ve had relationships with each of the songs on it. “Case of You” stands out to me because of the beauty and the naiveté of the main lyric:

Oh, you are in my blood like holy wine
You taste so bitter and so sweet
Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling
And I would still be on my feet
Oh, I would still be on my feet

The first time these words meant more to me than just that album I liked to sing along to was the first time I fell in love. I fell hard, and I thought that noone had ever loved more than me… not ever. And after a few years, that relationship became less than healthy, but I guess I didn’t notice the slide down the slippery slope. Why? I was drunk on a case of him, I guess.

Now, I still love the song, because it fits right into my voice, and because it reminds me of me – at every age. It’s always been with me, and it probably always will be.


Joni Mitchell’s Blue

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