Our babysitter did show up on time for us to go to the concert (I had my doubts about her), and I had a great time. Much about Lady Gaga's schtick puzzled me, though. She seemed inconsistent. She was big on proclaiming that everyone should be accepted for who they are, but then went on and described everyone not at the concert as the "freaks" of the world. It just didn't strike me as congruous with the we-love-everybody tone she seemed to be trying to foster. I doubt that most of her fans are particular about her semantics.

The show was every bit the spectacle that I had heard about and wanted to see. It was awesome. Especially the monster at the Monster Ball. The piano-on-fire was a nice touch to enliven some otherwise dull ballads. The costume changes were frequent, and over-the-top, as expected. Terry and I both were especially impressed with the mechanical headdress that opened and shut its halo as she sang.

I thought she expended a bit too much effort pandering to the crowd, but understood the effort. I'd heard an interview with Lady Gaga a few months ago, and she struck me as being very shrewd and calculated with her marketing. Her target audience is anyone who feels like they "don't belong" in regular society. It makes sense to me from a business perspective, there are probably many many more people who feel like they "don't belong" in some way or another than who feel completely at ease with their life situation. I must admit, that some of her empowerment pep talks were very appealing and motivating. In many ways, I don't fit in with regular people. Terry and I have chosen a rather unusual path for ourselves (hence we are often surrounded by older people, who've taken longer to get here). But other times during her frequent pep talk interludes, I just thought, "oh, isn't it sweet how she's trying to cheer up the misfits," since I'm certainly not as way out there as what I suspect she considers her "core" fan base.

The only thing that made me feel like an old woman there was the way she referred to the attendees as "her little monsters." And some in the crowd referred to her as the "mama monster" or something to that effect. But I didn't go to the concert in order to be her little monster. I didn't buy a ticket in order to join her club, she made it seem like everyone there was a part of some larger whole (the collective little monsters, I suppose). With my ticket purchase I wasn't buying entry into some subculture group, I was paying for her to sing and dance around in outlandish costumes for my entertainment. And she should not feel maternal towards me for doing so. This was another thing that puzzled me. Does she think that the misfits of the world are going to see her concerts to gain entry to her mythical monster-club? Is that actually why people are going to her shows? I am open to the possibility that I am in the minority in going for the main purpose of being entertained. It might be an old-fashioned concept, wanting to be entertained by a performer. I don't need to be pandered to, just entertained. But she pandered so much and so often, I wondered if that's part of what her fans expect, and want?

Regardless, I was entertained, mightily so. I'm very glad I went to see her show, and highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of either shocking spectacle or pop dance music generally. There was definitely some vulgarity going on, and while I might have preferred there be less of that sort of thing, I can ignore it enough to enjoy the show. But part of her image is to be outre, so you really ought to expect her to try to shock the audience in some way, so all of that was not unexpected for me. I know one other person (besides T) who went to this particular show (although I didn't see him there, JPJ is a large venue), so I'm curious to talk to him about it. It seems that many of my friends chose to attend some ladies' night at the Melting Pot this evening over the Lady Gaga concert. That really, really baffles me, and so does make me wonder if I even "fit in" as much as I think I do, perhaps I am even more out-of-it than I realize. . .

I've been making my own tortillas for a week or two now, and I'm surprised by how easy it is. I saw somebody making them on the cooking portion of a "Victory Garden" show I'd tivo'd, and it looked easy-- all you needed was Maseca and water. I got a bag of Maseca last time I was at the grocery store, and just followed the directions on the bag.

I don't have a tortilla press (but neither did the guy on Victory Garden), so I just put the dough between two pieces of plastic and roll it out with a rolling pin. Then cook it for 50 seconds each side on a hot skillet.

Usually, I've just been making them for lunch for W and myself, to make tacos out of leftovers. Tonight I made tacos for dinner; I made the tortillas from scratch (as described above), used tomatoes from my garden to make some salsa fresca, and just used a packet of "taco seasoning" in the beef. I'm sure it's not hard to mix together whatever spices are in that packet, but I just wasn't feeling like doing it today, so I spent the $.87 on the packet. It's strange how I won't mind at all making tortillas from scratch, but I can't be bothered to mix a handful of spices to season the meat. But that's how I felt, so I just went with it. I don't question my motivations. I certainly wonder about them sometimes, but I've found it's usually not worthwhile to override them through logical thinking. I suspect one day I will want to mix my own spices, but won't be bothered to make my own tortillas, who knows?

With the fresh tortillas, it's a texture thing more than a flavor difference from the ones I usually get. I usually get flour tortillas from the grocery store, the kind that need to be refrigerated. They don't have a lot of flavor on their own, and neither do the ones I've been making. But the packaged ones have a uniform thickness and size. I make mine thinner, and they're whatever size they turn out to be, since I don't measure the dough balls as I flatten them out. The texture is similar to the purchased tortillas, but I find the slight variations in the finished item desirable. Plus, mine are softer, more tender, less durable. Which I consider a good thing since I'm not making burritos or packing them in a lunch bag, but eating them fresh with a meal.

I don't envision going back to purchased tortillas any more than I envision going back to buying bread. My own fresh homemade bread is so much better than what's available at the store, I just look at the packaged bread and when I recall the flavor, it doesn't appeal to me in a way that makes me want to buy it. Although T still insists I keep sliced white bread in the freezer, since he prefers to use that to make french toast, he says my bread doesn't absorb the egg as well. And sometimes I'll get english muffins, but that's only until I figure out where to get the metal baking rings I need to make my own. I've even gotten the hang of making sandwich rolls out of my regular dough, so they turn out the right size for hamburgers (I made them too big my first few attempts).

So now I'm self-sufficient for bread, rolls, tortillas, and pasta. Also for cinnamon buns, although I don't make them regularly. I think the next breads I'm going to try are that spongy Ethiopian bread made from teff grain (I forget what it's called), and Indian nan. I'm getting bored with whatever I'm coming up with for dinner (I need to watch more cooking shows, I'm always inspired for a week after I see one. . .), so I'm trying to work more ethnic dishes into the mix (hence the interest in tortillas. . .).

It's not William's first hat, but it's the first hat I've knit for a baby. It went really quickly, I checked my gauge last night, then knit half the hat during W's nap this afternoon. I finished up when we got home from dinner, after W went to bed.

The boucle yarn I got isn't nearly as fluffy as the one called for by the pattern, but I couldn't find that one, so I did the best I could to choose a replacement that would match the main yarn. So the hat is more reserved than I had originally envisioned, but it's still fine for a boy. Now I need to get him a coat before it gets cold out. He's got some jackets that fit, but his coat from last year is probably too small. Maybe I'll look for a pattern, baby clothes sew up pretty quickly since they are so small, and W would look really cute in a dark blue pea coat, and he's already got the hat to match. . .

It took a long time to get out to the Green Valley Book Fair last week, so when I realized I wouldn't be able to make it home in time for dinner, I decided to stop in Staunton. W and I arrived there just before 6pm, so I picked up a map of downtown from the tourist center and got a recommendation of where to get a quick dinner with a baby.

I took this photo outside the pizza place where we ate. The pizza was good (they make gourmet 'za, and sell it by the slice if you want it really fast). I ordered a beer, and the waiter carded me. When he was scrupulously examining my license, I told him, "yeah, that's a SEVEN". C'mon, I can't imagine that I look anything like underage. I know toting a baby around does shave a few years off people's estimation of my age, but not that many years!

At the neighborhood picnic today (it was for people on Brown's Gap Tpke and its side-streets, but we went anyway even though we are one more street removed), someone asked me what W was going to be for Halloween.

Yikes, I hadn't thought of that yet. Although I did notice that I had some patterns for costumes when I was organizing a box in the sewing room. I guess I'll take a look at that. I think there is a pattern for a lion, he'd probably be a cute lion. Although now that he can flap his arms like a butterfly, I'm tempted to make him a butterfly costume. Maybe I could do some kind of bird, they flap their wings, too.

But the cooler weather has made me thought of hats for W. I got some chunky alpaca yarn over the summer to make W a hat for winter, but of course I'm not keen on knitting with warm wool when it's been so hot. But now that we've had a few cool days, I'm tempted to pull out the yarn. On a practical note, he might need a hat before he needs the costume, it's entirely possible that it will get chilly enough one day before Halloween that he'll need to wear a warm hat.

Plus, I'm making very slow progress in organizing my sewing room. I've put away new fabric from one out of two bags I bought in NYC. I've also traced the slopers created from plastic wrap onto paper, so I could finally throw out the plastic wrap. But that's about it. I still can hardly get to my sewing machine. It'll be easier to get to the yarn to knit a hat, than it will be to clear a space to lay out a pattern on fabric to sew a costume.