Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend

Thanksgiving seasons

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I’m sitting at the kitchen table of my parents’ house sweating my lady balls off. Everyone says there aren’t any seasons in CA however there are seasons in this house. It’s nuclear winter in my old bedroom and Dante’s Inferno in the kitchen. Those are some of the seasons right? My understanding is that these are the seasons:

Spring
Summer
Fall
August
Autumn
Winter
Winter Squash
Tennis
Cricket
Racketball
Blue
Seven
Dante’s Inferno
Gary’s Inferno
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride
Nuclear Winter
Nukuler Winter
Fred Winter
Shelly Winters
Indian Summer

So last night I shivered into bed wearing sweatpants, socks, a nightgown and sweatshirt and then slept under a duvet and three blankets. I’m not even making this up. Now I’m in another room sweating. And I’d adjust the air/thermostat/air conditioning/what have you but my parents bedroom is not only another season but another time period entirely (Paris before The War, if you must) (basically the problem is that the whole house is set up so their bedroom is a toasty 70 or whatever they like it at, the rest of the house be damned) and I’m afraid I’ll broil them or flash freeze them or whatever if I adjust anything.

In other news, there is no other news.

Oh wait, well there is this. Remember when I took up biking over the summer? And then I got back to New York and borrowed Dustin’s bike and named it Ernesto and it’s currently sitting in my kitchen and I don’t ride it because it doesn’t fit me well? Well my sister’s bike which fits me better is here in CA and yesterday my mom’s handy man who is 6′5″ or maybe 6′8″ and helps put up holiday lights and remodels cabinets and removes dead rats and is like family to us told me yesterday he enjoyed watching me on TV to which I responded that I simply CANNOT live like this, having to interact with fans in my own home. Then I stormed into my room, put on a parka and began shrieking.

Anyway, he got the bike down from the hooks where it normally hangs and so perhaps I’ll ride it as a way to offset the junk I fear I’ll be smuggling in my trunk this holiday season. Tusks mostly. And those tiny turtles which are illegal but so adorable.

And thanks to everyone who joined in the live Ustream show last night. That was fun!

My mom’s mom

This is where I get my blond hair and blue eyes

This is my mom’s mom. She died when I was six. Wasn’t she pretty? Last night my mom sent my sister and me some old family photos and letters which she’d just received. It’s pretty sobering stuff. My grandmother made it to America from Vienna right as the war broke out but her brother and parents weren’t so lucky. Her attempts to bring her brother over here and the eventual discovery that her family had  been killed—just as she’d raised enough money to secure her brother’s transport—is all detailed in there. Perhaps I’ll share some of it here. I haven’t figure it out yet. What’s a little atrocity in between fart jokes? Exactly.

Dads are the next hot trend

You know what’s a hot trend right now? Dads. I am basing this on two things: 1) everyone LOVES the episodes of The Daily Alison featuring my dad. 2) some guy on twitter is totally copying me and writing down crazy shit his dad says and tweeting it under the name @shitmydadsays and everyone’s talking about it and he has a zillion followers.

Ok so perhaps he’s not copying me, but I mean, he’s not NOT copying me.

So when all the other people start writing about how dads are the next hot thing and dads are a meme and all that, please remember that you read it here first. I INVENTED dads, you guys. Before I came along it was all single parent households and moms and I was like, “Hey, I have an idea, lets get some dads all up in here,” and then fast forward to now where they are so popular they even have their own holiday. Plus, you can put many words in front the words dad and father to add shades of meaning which shows that the mere notion of male parents is infiltrating culture. Some examples?

Absentee

Deadbeat

Rad

Ducklike

Drunk

Abusive

Negligent

Funky

But wait you guys, you can also add words AFTER the words father and dad. I’m telling you, there’s no stopping dads. They are here to stay! Check it out. Apply the following words and phrases after dad or father:

of the year

of the bride

knows best

doesn’t live here anymore

left, but it’s not your fault

moved out, but it is your fault

drinks a lot

is drunk again

is so silly!

is taking a nap. shhhh.

The Daily Alison (Where my mom and I go to the beach again)

I’m not sure if I can hear you

My parents have begun speaking in a volume that I’d put somewhere between a prairie dog burp and a mouse fart. Which is to say, I can’t hear them. The exception to this is in the morning when my mom is having an argument with Tobey. “Tobey, NO!” she’ll scream, the windows rattling. “Tobey, I said NO!” she’ll thunder. Then Tobey will bark a tiny bit and then I’ll stumble into the room groggy and confused and she’ll apologize if Tobey woke me up. Other than this one time of day it’s all hushed tones. At first I thought it was me and that somehow my hearing had been compromised on the flight. “Something wrong with your ears?” my mom would say as I cupped the sides of my head. “No thanks, I don’t like beer,” I’d answer. I was upset about going deaf but getting drunk wasn’t going to solve anything.

And so it went for a few days: my parents carrying on in a way audible only to dolphins, me wondering if I should get a manicure before learning sign language, until I stepped out of the house and was commended on my incredible hearing.

Huh?

You see, all of my Costa Mesa friends used to play in bands and so their hearing is fairly terrible. “That alarm is going to drive me crazy,” I announced a couple days ago. “What alarm?” asked a friend in all seriousness. “Are you serious?” I asked, because I hadn’t read the previous sentence. He nodded and I shook my head in response. Then I clicked four times to indicate a boat on horizon. “There’s an alarm going off in the other room,” I explained. “It’s quiet but it’s been going off for about an hour.” He left to investigate. “Wow, that’s a frequency I no longer have,” he said upon returning. “That’s a shame… but you didn’t turn the alarm off,” I responded. Then I punched him. He never heard it coming.

And then I was at a party with two friends. “Wow, how can you hear that?” they asked when I said that one of the friend’s girlfriends was in the kitchen asking a question about guacamole. “I don’t know, I was convinced I was going deaf,” I said. Then they tried to claim that the reason I could hear and they couldn’t was because of angles and where I was sitting in proximity to the guacamole question versus where they were sitting. I’m not sure if they were right or not.

And… and now I can’t hear myself think because the paternal mouse farter is talking loudly on the phone. Do they just save up their volume for phone calls and yelling at Tobey? Or are they trying to gaslight me? I feel gaslit. Gaslighted? Gaslain?

The Daily Alison (Where I talk to my dad in person about my daredevil athleticism)

Don’t tell my parents but I think I’m a little sunburned!

The Daily Alison (Day 16; The TARGTKYGTKM Quiz)

Big disgusting news in Tobey-land

Apparently Tobey tried to eat a rabbit’s tobey this morning.

If you’re reading this and not sure what it means, be thankful.

Also, today is my dad’s birthday. He didn’t try to eat any rabbit tobeys.