GARLIC AND CINNAMON AND HOUSEWIVES, OH MY

Oey. I am nursing a hangover of epic proportions today.

Now before you think that I've gone round the bend and developed some form of Merlot addiction, please allow me to explain that my hangover is the result of roasted vegetables, an unfortunate choice of Yankee Candle, and Danielle Staub.

So there I was, minding my own business and trying to recover from my escapades in the garden, when I decided to make chicken and roasted veggies for dinner. Aunt Chrissy and I started making roasted veg last winter, and since I hadn't had them for a while I thought it would be a tasty break from the salads and tomato bagels I've been eating for four months.

Potatoes, shallots, and garlic. Olive oil. Salt and pepper.

Roast in a hot oven (like 425-450 or so) for about a half hour and viola! you've got yourself some tasty eats.

Unless, of course, you're me and you put about eighty cloves of garlic in amongst the other things and then you forget to spray the cookie sheet with the damn Pam and everything sticks and burns and crisps very nicely, but stinks up the house bad enough that you and the dog contemplate sleeping in the car.

And then you glue yourself to the Tee Vee to catch the first part of the Real Housewives of New Jersey debacle and feel compelled to call Aunt Chrissy every ten minutes to say "OH MY GOD! I THOUGHT THERESA WAS GOING TO THROW ANDY COHEN ACROSS THE ROOM!" and then you wonder why the hell you didn't just watch the thing together in the first darn place and the dog pees on the drapes and then hides under the bed.

Such is life here today. I am completely bobcomdistulated and wondering what I did with myself before I got wrapped up in silly (yet somehow completely compelling) TeeVee dramas. And I'm doing all of this while trying to de-stink my house by burning a "Sparkling Cinnamon" Yankee Candle that I found in the back of one of the cupboards that I've yet to clean and organize because I just can't seem to get my act together and start the Spring Cleaning once and for all despite the fact that it is now Autumn and who the heck ever heard of Autumn Cleaning anyhow?

(pause for breath)

I used to do things like read books and go to movies and think profound thoughts. Now I just stumble through the day wondering if Kim G will join the show next season or when Aunt Chrissy and I will take a trip to Italy to see Santa Cosulino and ride the gondolas in Venice. I ponder the daily menu selections at the Brownstone (do they have sangweech?), will Albie get into another law school? When will Ashley and Derrik get married? I fantasize that Theresa and I are the best of friends and that we come up with a plot to rid New Jersey of Danielle once and for all and then Caroline and Jacqueline make cookies and we all sit around and wait for Dina to come over with leopard print bathrobes while we get our nails done.

Eye yai yai, but I need to re-evaluate my evening TeeVee viewing habits. There's just too many good things out there that I'm NOT watching so that I can get myself all twisted up in knots over things that I AM watching.

I ask myself: Is it the story lines? The characters? The intricate pairing of culture and scandal that makes for suspenseful plots and back stories?

What the hell is it about these people that makes me want to know more and then spend hours and hours and hours discussing it with a little sister who now knows for sure that I am in need of some very serious psychoanalysis.

I suppose that these are questions for the ages, and that...

um....

Sorry. Got distracted there for a minute.

So as I was saying....

Oh, bloody hell. I've got to go. I just caught sight of today's line up, and I see that Jackie Warner is doing something interesting in the kitchen with her mother and her girlfriend's family. I didn't even know Jackie was back! I thought that Thintervention didn't premier until next Monday! I need to figure out if this is related to that or if....

(A little dog walks into the room, takes one look at his stupefied mo-ther sitting with rapt attention in front of the television and decides that some things in life just aren't worth getting bothered over. He peens on the drapes, emits a loud sigh, and heads for his little fort under the bed where classical music plays softly in the background and the stuffed animals gather for riveting discussions of Jonathen Franzen's latest book and the alarming trend in the political world for inflammatory rhetoric and national discord.)