Fun in the Mountains

When the going gets tough, the tough go hiking.  At least that's what The Zadge and Babe the Builder did this weekend and it worked!  The Zadge forgot about her work woes for a few hours.


Oh yeah, the little felon trotted along too.

It was a strenuous and sweaty hike to the top of Mt. Sanitas, just outside of Boulder.  When we reached the top, Harry saw a bunch of his brethren checking out the view:


Apparently, the hike briefly stemmed his "exuberance" and the alleged "toy agression," such that he didn't push any of the dogs off the mountain.

When we were nearing the end of the hike, Harry, who had been stopping frequently to rest, suddenly took off sprinting down the trail out of sight.

Oh, no, now what! Was he chasing a deer?  Or worse, a bear?  Was he eating wild animal poop?

No, he was just chillaxin':


When I was finally able to coax the chillin' felon out of the creek, we all hit the Boulder Farmer's market.  Check out a picture of it here, where Bon Appetit magazine named Boulder the 2010 Foodiest Town in the U.S.

In addition to beautiful organic fruits and veggies, and a home baked Apple Caramel Crumble Pie, I picked up this beautiful bouquet of flowers for Old Vicky:


Mountain air, sweat, good friends, beautiful flowers and a happy dog were all The Zadge needed to banish her blues for the day!

Marley and Me

The beat down.  The bitch slap.  The blues.

The Zadge has had them all this past week.  The Top Secret Day Job is sucking the life out of our intrepid heroine.  Her sense of frivolity and creativity are in deep hiding.  She briefly lost her will to blog.

As she dropped Harry off at daycare this morning, she hoped the start of a new week would ctrl-alt-del her karma.

Yeah, right. Not only did the work smack down continue, but tonight The Zadge became that parent.  The one with the bad kid on the playground.

Harry got kicked out of Doggie Day Care.

They said he is "too exuberant" in the pool.  And shows signs of "toy aggression."  And gets so amped up that he runs around getting up in every dog's face, annoying the shit out of them, and won't "listen to commands."

Harry annoying the shit out of The Shone

Apparently, they didn't have a bottle of bleach handy.

The Zadge, on the other hand, happens to have a bottle of vodka handy, and she intends to use it.  On herself.

A Light in the Storm

When you are having one of the worst weeks ever at the Top Secret Day Job, and you seriously contemplate quitting, but instead you cry intermittently for four hours because you realize you don't have a husband at home to pay the bills if you quit, and you look all fugly with your red nose and puffy eyes and anger steam pouring out of your ears, the best thing that can happen to you is that one of your oldest and best friends who you haven't seen in three and a half years shows up on your doorstep from San Francisco.

And suddenly, the clouds go away.

Football and Food

I've mentioned in the past how much I love Sundays in the fall, when I spend all day on the couch watching pro football, while my pooches sleep in my lap. 

Well, I don't actually spend the whole day on the couch.  Because for some reason, I can't spend a Football Sunday without actually cooking up a big pot of something.

This past Sunday, I whipped up this number:

White Beans with Ham and Spinach.

I just made it up (and props to The Sista who, despite being a veggie herself, suggested the addition of the ham, which made the dish) and it's super easy.  Seriously, none of that "So Easy" Ellie Krieger stuff.  I'm talking, so easy Zadge style, which means you can make it without missing a minute of  football.

WHITE BEANS WITH HAM AND SPINACH

1.  Make a mirepoix.  
Yeah, the Zadge is a fancy french bitch.  If you're not, just dice up some carrots, celery and onion, and saute in olive oil in a big pot until all the veggies have softened.  

2.  Add some chopped fresh thyme and rosemary from the Zadge's garden.  
Or from your own garden if you don't feel like flying all the way to Denver.

3.  Add in a couple of cans of Cannellini beans and enough chicken stock to cover the beans.

4.  Throw in a handful or two of diced ham.  Maybe add a little salt along with his friend pepper.
     Pause, and take a big sip of your cocktail.

5.  Simmer with top on for about 20 minutes while you cheer on the Broncos and the Redskins.

6.  Remove the top and toss in a couple handfuls of baby spinach and stir until wilted.
     Until the spinach is wilted, not until you are wilted.  

7.  Toss in a handful of shredded parmesan reggiano, stir, and scoop into a bowl.
      Lap it up!

And the Sunday before that, I whipped up a Tomato Pie:



And by whipped up, I mean, I looked in the fridge and the pantry, saw the omnipresent summer heirloom tomatoes and fresh mozzarella and a frozen pastry crust and thought: pie!  Another super low-cal easy Sunday supper:


TOMATO PIE

1.  Saute sliced onions in olive oil until they carmelize, about 25 minutes.  Meanwhile, bake the prepared pastry crust for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

2.   Line the baked pastry crust with the carmelized onions.  Layer sliced tomatoes on top and drizzle with a little olive oil.

3.   I know this will sound gross to many of you, but just do it:  mix a little bit of mustard in with a 1/2 cup of mayo and spread over the top of the tomatoes.

4.  Sprinkle Salt n Peppa on top.  Toss chopped fresh basil over the top.  Finish off with slices of fresh mozzarella.

5.    Bake at 350 for about 30-40 minutes.  It's done when the crust is golden and everything else is nice and oozy.

6.  Slice into pieces, pour yourself a glass of wine and dig in. You might need a spoon!

Monday Musings

1.   Can't Lindsay Lohan, Lindsay's mother, Paris Hilton, all of the Kardashians, all of the Palins, and all of the TeaPartiers just get together and go live on an island where no one can see or hear them?  Ever again?

2.  You haven't heard much about my second date with The Guy Who Doesn't Drink.  Because I canceled it.  See, The Guy Who Doesn't Drink is the same Guy Who Got a few DUIs.  Not one.  Not two.  THREE.  Which explains the not drinking.  And he's also The Libertarian Guy Who Rants about Politics.  And The Zadge moved out of D.C. to get away from political ranters.  She also decided that she much prefers sitting on her couch with her pooches drinking a vodka tonic by herself to going out on dates with non-drinking ranters.  No matter how cute they are.

3.  But don't fear, because The Zadge did fall in love last week. With her new tile that was delivered for her Heinous Bathroom Remodel.  It is beautiful and she loves, loves, loves it.  She keeps pulling it out of the box and petting it.

4.  Perhaps the Zadge's preference for drinking alone with her dogs and petting her marble tile is one reason why she is still single at 46.

5.  Apropos of nothing, can someone please explain to me why it is not illegal for a grown man to wear denim shorts that hit below the knee in public?

6.  While you're at it, please explain Russell Brand and Katy Perry, both together and separately.

7.  The Zadge doesn't really go to the movies.  By "doesn't really,"  I mean once a year if I'm lucky.  But I will be beating down the doors to the movie theatre when "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" opens because my Number One fake boyfriend Daniel "Bestill my loins" Craig is starring in it!

8.  I bought some flowers yesterday and arranged them into two separate bouquets.  When I left the house this morning, they were all the same height, just as I had planned.  When I came home, I found this:

Just how high will the tulips grow?!

9.  The Zadge is starting a campaign to stop the misuse of the phrase "I couldn't care less."  Please, everyone, when you say "I could care less" it really means you care a lot!  And while The Zadge has her grammar stick out, "bruschetta" is pronounced with a hard "k" not a "sh" sound.  Clearly the waitress, who said to The Zadge when she recently ordered the "brusKETta", "oh, you mean the 'bruSHETTa'", hasn't been studying up on her Italian.

10.  The Zadge has decided to grow out the Baby Goose.  Not long, long, because, well, her hair just won't grow that long and even if it would, it would look like she was in the midst of chemo.  No, she is growing it out just to the top of her shoulders.  The Zadge misses her ponytail.

Saturday Sayin's

Look who turned 2 today!

Happy Birthday Curly-Top Finnie!

Curried Chicken Salad

The Zadge is kicking off the fall season with a renewed emphasis on healthy eating.  It's not that she's some super health nut.  It's that she is terrified of the evil Gelatinous Muffin Top.

Foremost in her arsenal of weapons to battle the evil GMT is "So Easy" by Ellie Krieger.  Ellie is a nutritionist with her own Food Network show and her cookbook has great recipes that are really healthy.  Remember The Zadge's dinner party featuring Ellie's Paella?

Last night, I whipped up this from her cookbook:

Curried Chicken Salad atop organic baby arugula.  It was both delish and deadly in the fight against the GMT!  It's super easy to make, and you can have the leftovers the next day for lunch in a pita.

"SO EASY" CURRIED CHICKEN SALAD

Ingredients

• 1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
• 1 cup water
• 1 1/4 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast halves, no more than 3/4-inch thick
• 1/4 cup sliced almonds
• 1/2 cup nonfat plain yogurt (I used Fage no-fat greek yogurt)
• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise (I only used 1 tablespoon and didn't notice the diff)
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 1 cup halved red grapes
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro leaves (BLECH! I think cilantro tastes like soap.  Left it out)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 5 ounces mixed greens (about 5 cups lightly packed)) (I used baby arugula)
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice (I left out the dressing completely - the yogurty curry sauce is enough to moisten the greens)
• I added chopped celery because I can't imagine any chicken salad without it. It adds a good crunch.
  

Directions

Bring the broth and water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add chicken to broth and simmer, covered, for 8 minutes. Turn the heat off and let chicken stand in the cooking liquid, covered, until cooked through, about 20 minutes. Remove the chicken from the broth and cool completely in the refrigerator.  (No, don't put it in the fridge.  It will cool in the air in like a hot minute.  Who has the damn time?)  Cut into 1/4-inch dice. Toast the almonds in a small dry skillet over medium-high heat until fragrant and beginning to turn golden, 2 to 3 minutes. (Bag toasting the almonds.  Too much damn work on a Tuesday night)

In a large bowl, stir together the yogurt, mayonnaise, and curry powder. Fold in the chicken, grapes and cilantro Dove Soap and season, to taste, with salt and pepper.

Then toss in some of the Zadge's chopped celery for the crunch we all need.

In a large bowl, toss the greens with the oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper, to taste. Or just don't and save those calories for your Vodka Tonic.  Arrange the greens on 4 individual plates (if you have friends.  I don't, so I dine alone), top with a scoop of the chicken salad and sprinkle with the almonds.

Per Serving (serving size: 1 cup chicken salad and 1 1/4 cups greens):

Calories 325;
Total Fat 14 g; (Sat Fat 2 g, Mono Fat 6 g, Poly Fat 5 g) ;
Protein 37 g;
Carb 13 g;
Fiber 2 g;
Cholesterol 85 mg;
Sodium 175 mg
Excellent source of: Protein, Vitamin A, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Phosphorus, Selenium
Good source of: Riboflavin, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Manganese, Potassium

Dog Days of Summer

The Zadge cried yesterday morning when she dropped off her youngest for his first day at school.

Alright, hold on, let's get a couple of things straight.

The Zadge was not dropping off her child.  Because she does not have a child.  (The Kaiser doesn't count.)

And it wasn't really a "school" but a $27/day doggy daycare.

And she wasn't really crying tears of bittersweet joy that her little one was growing up, but rather tears of "goddamn-it's-only-9a.m.-and-this-morning-is-already-so-deep-in-the-shitter-how-bad-will-the-rest-of-the-MFing-day-get?"

See, it's Monday morning and it's not yet 8 a.m. and the SHIT HAS HIT THE FAN  at Old Vicky. There's broken glass, and liquids oozing out of microwaves all over the new wood floors, and robo-politcal election telephone calls at 5 f*#king 30 in the morning, and construction workers, and dogs that won't shit, and sweat on The Zadge's brow, and basically a really crappy stressful morning.

And it is Hellion Harry's first day of day care.  Which in and of itself was causing me to stress.  I thought it would be a good way for Harry to get rid of his ya-yas.  Run around all day with other dogs, swim in the day care's pool and poop on someone else's rug for a change.  On Saturday, I took Harry for his "interview" that the day care requires before he can attend. He passed with flying colors.

But then there was the near drowning incident.

Not of Harry.  Of the 5 month old golden retriever who Harry just swam over and on top of, pushing the puppy under the water for what seemed like a whole minute.  After The Zadge screamed at the top of her lungs, the puppy popped up, apparently unharmed.  The Zadge resusitated herself, then pulled Harry out of the pool. 

So The Zadge was a little fearful that dropping Harry off at day care might not be a good idea.  But she dropped him off anyway, after warning the employees of the day care not to let any puppies in the pool with her killer, and then she and her bad mood headed to the Top Secret Day Job.

The Doggie Daycare has a "Doggie Cam" that lets you see what homicides fun your dog is doing.  So The Zadge logged on to watch her killer.  Except, of course, since it was Shitty Day, the Doggie Cam was not working.  And then Babe the Builder called and said, "Oops, no water for a while cuz the framer hit a water pipe in your bathroom renovation."

What's a Zadge to do?  It's not even noon, so really, she can't pull off the stiff Grey Goose Martini in the office that she really wants because Jon Hamm is nowhere to be seen.  It's one of the few times in her life that she is too wired to lay down and take a nap.  And then she looks at her computer screen on the Day Care site.  She sees a button that says "snapshot."  Apparently, even though the live feed on the Doggie Cam wasn't working, the option for a still shot was.

The Zadge hit it.

And suddenly the snapshot at that very minute showed her hellion, Harry, just as he did a belly flop into the  pool as the other dogs looked on:

And like that, my day turned around.

Look at that joy, that freedom, that love of life.  That dog is a hellion, but he's found the secret to life.

Love everyone you meet.

Sniff out every possibility.

Play.

Dive in!

Eat poop.

(Okay, let's just ignore that last one.)

And after he did all that, he came home to Old Vicky, got fed, and at 6:45 p.m., got up on this couch and didn't move until the next day!



Live like a dog.

Saturday Sayin's

The Start of Big Things

Big things are happening today.  Big.

First, Who Dat? It's the start of the NFL football season!  Super Bowl champs New Orleans Saints play Brett "I just can't stop un-retiring" Favre's Minnesota Vikings tonight.  The Zadge just loves to spend a crisp fall Sunday on the couch with her dogs, fire glowing in the fireplace, watching football all day long, while she simmers a batch of soup or chili on the stove.

So normally, I'd be glued to NBC tonight watching the opening season game.  But I have a conflict.

My new Spanish lover, Fernando Verdasco, is playing at the exact same time in the U.S. Open against number one ranked (and fellow Spaniard) Rafael Nadal.  He told me in my dreams on the phone last night that he really needs my support. So here I sit, blogging on the laptop, watching football on the TV, and tennis on the iPad.

All this multi-tasking may cause a dull post.

Or maybe I can chalk the dull post up to the dust that has infiltrated my brain from the demolition of 114-year old plaster walls.

See, the other big thing that happened today is The Heinous Bathroom Remodel began!  Check out my new bathroom door:

Demo continues tomorrow, but this is what The Bathroom-soon-to-be-formerly-known-as-Heinous looks like today:


Babe the Builder is on it!  And guess what?  Babe and The Zadge's new kitchen just won "Best Kitchen Remodel" by the Denver Homebuilders Association!!   For you Denver readers, if you are considering a home renovation project, you must, must hire Babe!  Check her out here.

Will The Zadge survive another disruptive, dust-filled construction project in Old Vicky?  Will her mad multi-tasking cause her to continue to pen mind-numbingly dull posts?  Will Fernando's lust for his new American lover cause him to ditch his pro tennis career to move into Old Vicky with The Zadge?

Stay tuned.

Loose Ends

1. Awoken at 2:15 a.m. Saturday night by next door "party dude" renters and all their party dude, weed-smoking, cheap canned beer drinking buddies, who apparently thought it was a good idea to party -- outside -- until 4 a.m. in a quiet older neighborhood where they are the only renters on the street.  Their neighbors were not happy.  One of them was so pissed off she called the cops on them.  Guess who.  She hates to be "that neighbor" but she hates being up for two hours in the middle of the night listening to a party she wasn't invited to more.

2. Apparently the normal time to housebreak a dog is 5 months.  Can someone please then explain why I found yet another oozy pile on the $6,000 rug poop mat from the freakin' three year old dog?

3. Blind date Sunday afternoon/evening.  The Zadge was herself briefly blinded by his handsomeness.  Three mile dog walk turned into two and a half hour dinner.  She learned that baby jesus of bethlehem he does not drink. You may be aware that The Zadge does.  Not sure this is a match made online in heaven, but there is already a second date scheduled for later in the week.  The Zadge will be bringing a hidden flask.

4. But really, Mr. Blind Date has no chance.  Because The Zadge landed a new boyfriend today.  She had the U.S. Open on while she was making dinner, and then she suddenly fell in love.  Meet Fernando Verdasco, The Zadge's new boyfriend:

He's a smoking hot Spanish tennis player:


Apparently, Calvin Klein thought he was hot too:


The Zadge has already started her Spanish lessons.  And she asked Fernando if he wanted to hit the tennis ball around a bit.  He said he would love to and showed up to her house like this:


Love-all. Of him!!!!

Re-runs are the only thing playin' at the end of the summer!

So I had planned to do a post today tying up a few loose ends.

Like the 911 call over the weekend. And the date I had yesterday.

But alas, The Zadge spent the day romping with the dogs, shopping, playing tennis and then eating and drinking with friends, so she's really too buzzed tired to tie up her shoes, let alone any loose ends on her blog.

And it's the end of summer, after all, and all that is on the tube are re-runs.  So The Zadge is copping out and posting a re-run from the nascent days of this little blog.   Afterall, I only had two readers back then, so this should be new to all of you who aren't my sister or my mother.  



Monday, August 10, 2009

My sister is responsible for this blog. My sister is an amazingly gifted artist, with an incredible, creative mind. And she's way ahead of me on the technology front. She kept saying, "You need to start a blog." I didn't even know what the hell a blog was. But she said, "With all your stories, you've got it."

By "all your stories," she meant that I find myself frequently IN SHIT. Not literally (well, actually, that's kinda true too....more on Harry's gastric issues later), but I seem to always find myself in the middle of a story. I wasn't sure about the whole thing, but I trusted her, and here I am blogging in your face. So blame her.

So this evening I'm driving home from work, on the phone with the aforementioned Sista, and I'm telling her that I was stuck - I couldn't think of anything interesting to blog about tonight. Just as I say that, I pull into the alley that leads to my garage. I immediately see a huge truck rumbling out of the alley toward me. I say to Sista, "Holy Sheeat, big truck coming. Let me call you back."

Well, let's just say that suddenly I am no longer stuck on what to blog about. See, I back up to let the truck out, the truck rumbles out, and I drive back into the alley to get to my garage, and out of the blue, I'm suddenly freakin' stuck in a huge 4 foot deep, 8 foot wide cement filled sink hole!!!! And by "I'm freakin' stuck" I mean my freakin' huge Toyota 4Runner with the huge oversized tires is nose down in a freakin' hole in the alley!!

Seriously, does this freakin' sheeat happen to anyone else?!!

Who else gets her SUV swallowed up by a giant hole of freshly-filled concrete? NO ONE! You don't know anyone else that this has happened to!!!

I didn't even know what the hell happened when I hit the hole -- all I knew was that I was about to get to my garage and suddenly there was an awful metal scraping/crash noise and my car was nose-dived into the road, like my two front tires had fallen off, and I was flung violently forward (Ok, I may be zadging a bit to use the word "violently" -- but at least it was "strongly").

I get out of the car and see that my front end is sinking in a pit of quickly solidifying cement. Holy Sheeat Mother of Gawd! Within seconds, several worker dudes come running out, screaming in Spanish:

We all stand around pointing blame, scratching our heads and watching the concrete hole solidify around my front end and tires. Someone suddenly has the bright idea (I have to say, it wasn't The Zadge ) that maybe we should argue blame later and get the car out of the hardening quicksand!!!!! That entails some major construction equipment and a heavy duty chain.

The Zadge's poor rig is just covered in quickly hardening cement! Again - who do you know that this kind of crap happens to?!

The police show up after The Zadge calls them because the guys who dug the hole that she didn't see and fell into are claiming that she was somehow negligent by trying to drive into her garage. Can you see the little police car behind the big rig that pulled The Zadge's SUV out of the sink hole?

You probably can't see the police officer inside that car who is going to rue the day he answered this call. You see, the short, snotty police officer who got out of that car really, really pissed off The Zadge more than she was already pissed off about nosediving into an unmarked cement sink hole in her own goddamned alley. Shorty Sheriff, after speaking Spanish to the guys who created the aforementioned cement sink hole, turned to The Zadge and said, "Ok, nothing here for me to do. Looks like there was a sign saying the alley was closed, so this is your fault."

Au contraire, mon fraire. See, Shorty Sheriff tried to claim that the workers had placed a sign in the alley closing it off, but I had ignored it.....Here's the view I had as I turned into the alley, MY ALLEY, only to be greeted by their rumbling truck, and then had to back up:

See that little white top of the sign just above the blue car? See that a) it's NOT in the alley, but on the sidewalk; and b) that you don't see it if some big-ass truck is pulling out of the alley, so you have to back up; and c) even IF you could see the sign, YOU CAN'T SEE THE DAMN SINKHOLE 50 FEET INTO THE ALLEY THAT WILL SWALLOW YOU UP BECAUSE THERE ARE NO ORANGE CONES, NO SIGNS, NO NUTHIN'!!!! .... So, let's just say that The Zadge schooled Shorty Sheriff on the law of gross negligence, corrected his grammar, and sent his shorty-ass back to his squad car.

After that, surprisingly, all of the cement dudes started suddenly trying to correct the situation. Power hoses came out and for almost an hour, they did everything in their power to get the quickly hardening cement off of The Zadge's rig. And then, funny thing, we all started to be friends. Amigos! Let's just say that this whole fiasco ended up with: a) The Zadge's car being relatively unharmed (other than a bent tow hitch, no visible injury) subject to review by a mechanic; b) all of the spanish workers giving me bows when they left; and c) the hole site actually being marked as it should have been in the first place:

So all in all, a nice end to a bad situation. But for the love of god, how do I get myself into this sheeat?!!! Could it all be subliminally for the blog?

Sunday Morning Musings

I'm a Twitter Quitter

Remember a few weeks ago I told you I was shamed into joining Twitter?  I even put the Tweet bird link on this blog so anyone could follow all my fascinating tweets.

Notice the cute little Tweet bird is gone from the blog.

Because I am a Twitter Quitter.  And happy as a jaybird about it.

I lasted a week before I couldn't take the inanity and narcissism of "The Twitter" for a minute longer.  Seriously, I don't understand how any one can stand it.  Take the worst of your Facebook "friends" -  you know, the ones you hide because you can't stand to read one more status update like "Dropping Bobby off at school!" and "Going to lunch now!" - and then multiply that by the hundreds!

Apparently, the "polite" thing to do on Twitter is to follow someone who has signed up to follow you.  That's how I ended up receiving - I kid you not - 50 tweets a day from some stay at home mommy blogger with young triplets.  And not a single one of them was interesting.  And often they were "retweets" upon retweets, meaning her tweets would read something like this:  RT@getalifemomy#hilariousRT@helpmommie@mommyhell#gogirl!

What the fuck does that mean?  And who is caring for your infants while you are twittering away my sanity?

In addition to the losers who overtweet boring-ass shit, there was the issue that The Zadge didn't understand a thing any of her fellow Twitterers were saying.  It's all RTs and number signs and @ symbols.  Now The Zadge is not really that dumb - she did go to a top notch college and grad school.  So the only thing she could conclude about her inability to understand anyone's tweets is that they were tweeting in Ebonics.

Then you add on just the sheer volume of collective tweets.  Even if I wanted to read the twitterers I like because they only tweet once or twice a day and say funny things not in Ebonics, I couldn't find them in the stream of drivel that flows out of the Twitter machine.  I tried TweetDeck to manage it all, setting up columns like "Friends," "Cool Bloggers," and "Twats" for the overtweeters, but it was still too much.

Who the hell has the time?  Some people are following thousands of people - SERIOUSLY?  Perhaps you should consider getting a job.

The Kaiser tried to convince me that it was a good thing to do "for your blog."  Maybe.  But it's not a good thing to do for my sanity, and I don't think they let you bring your laptops into the mental hospital once you are committed.  I read an article that 60% of people who sign up for Twitter quit within the first month.

Make that 61%! @TheZadgebye-byetwitter

The Rockstar formerly known as Zadge

You know how people sometimes say, "If you could be anything in the world, what would it be?"  And usually people say things like, "I'd run a foundation that feeds all the starving children in the world" or "I'd find a cure for cancer" or I'd be an astronaut."

Well The Zadge would be a rock star.  Lead singer.  Hands down.

And the other night, The Zadge got her chance.  She performed with her rocking band at the famous concert site, Red Rocks:

It's probably the most phenomenal place to see a band in the country.  I kid you not.  Superstars go out of their way to play here.   Like The Zadge.

Here was my view from the stage looking out:


And here I am belting out a Sheryl Crow song, with my rocking band:


Oh wait.  That's not me, that is Sheryl Crow.  I'm the one holding the camera in the third row front and center taking the picture of Sheryl Crow with her rocking band.  Sorry.

Somehow I confused her and me.  But you can see why, no?  We are the same height, give or take 10 inches.  We have the same figure, give or take 40 pounds.  We have the same hair, give or take 10 hours at the salon getting extensions.  Both of us claim Jen Aniston as our best friend.  Oh, and we both have asshole ex-boyfriends who dope and win the Tour de France.  Well, let's just say we both have asshole exes and leave it at that.

Despite my confusion, I did have a rockin' good time Tuesday night.  Babe the Builder and I enjoyed a little tailgate before the show:



We had great seats in the third row to the right of the stage:


Right in front of the two big security guards.  Who The Zadge got to meet up close and personal when they snagged her pulling her contraband camera out of her left boob and snapping shots of the opening act, Colbie Caillet:


The Zadge turned on the blonde and feigned ignorance of the "No Photos" policy.  For a change, she did not get arrested.

Then The Zadge got a text from her buddy The Gentle Vet, who had been sitting in the hinterlands, that she had snagged seats in The Zadge's row, but front and center!  The Zadge and Babe scurried down the row to join her:


It was darker by then, and The Zadge Sheryl was rocking it out, and there were different security guards in front, and The Zadge just had to throw caution to the wind and try for another shot:



After all, how often do you get to be a rockstar at Red Rocks?!  If I didn't have photographic evidence of it, no one who has heard me sing would believe it.

Unfortunately, the next day The Zadge had to trade in her rockstar voice, body and clothes and go back to reality at the little ole Top Secret Day Job.

Sigh.  A girl can dream can't she?