Chapter Six, In which I am a big fat CHICKEN

So! Sunday was sunny and warm (Forty-eight degrees! Heat wave!), and I went for a nice long walk in the hills around my house. I walked holes in my socks. There was still a lot of snow on the ground, so I stuck to the roads. And I picked out one road, which circled around and came back to another road, and started walking up it. And I walked, and walked, and walked, passing fields and woods and occasionally a house, and then I headed down a hill toward a farmhouse.


And I heard a dog barking.


No big deal. Lots of people keep dogs. And dogs bark. I hear dogs barking all the time when I'm walking.


But this dog sounded like a BIG dog. And then he came out from around the side of the farmhouse, and he WAS a big dog. A great big Rottweiler. Big. With huge big muscles and a great big neck that I swear looked bigger around than his head.


And I froze. I was still up the road, about thirty yards away. I could see the dog clearly, but I couldn't see if he was on a chain, or loose. And there was a truck in the farmhouse driveway, but that doesn't mean that somebody is home.


And I really, really wanted to continue down that road, to see what I could see, but I didn't. I could not walk past that dog. I turned around and went back the way I came.


The truth? I am scared of dogs. Barking dogs frighten me in an awful, visceral way that I can barely describe. When I saw that Rottie coming around the corner of the farmhouse, barking his head off, I just wanted to rewind time to back before it happened, because I wanted to die, I was so damn scared.


And here's where somebody says, "Oh, that dog's probably a big old sweetie! You could've walked right up to that cutie-pie and he would've rolled on his back for a tummy rub! Rottweilers are great big babies!"


And maybe that's true.


But it could ALSO be true that the dog in the yard had escaped from his pen and was not friendly AT ALL and was having a BAD DAY and maybe also had rabies like that dog in Cujo and maybe he was going to charge at me and rip my damn throat out and .......


I turned around.

I am scared of barking dogs.



That's my little confession for the day.

Bloggers who drive me crazy

Okay, so I've been waffling on posting this for pretty much ever, because I'm worried that lately I've gotten a little, well .... extra-snarky. There's all kinds of bloggers out there vowing to be kinder and gentler on their blogs and ...... that's not me. So proceed with caution. But be advised that NONE OF YOU are on this list, so rest easy. And I'm specifically calling out peeps who are making good money and a degree of popularity off their blogs, not people doing it for grins and giggles in anonymity, like me. :)

Bloggers who drive me nuts:

1. Bloggers who only post once every couple of months or so, and then only to explain that they're taking a break. Honey, if you never post, you're not "taking a break". You're "no longer a blogger".

2. In similar vein to #1, bloggers who stop blogging, but then sporadically start up again, only to quit once more. You're in or you're out - make up your mind. I'm lookin' at you, Miss D*x*e.

3. Bloggers who get rich from their blog (yes I am jealous - very, very jealous) and then evidently decide that they're "too big to blog", because their post output drops precipitously. Hi, D**ce!

4. In a similar vein to #3, bloggers who exhaustively catalog their book tours/home renovations/major purchases, all of which are made possible by the people who read their blogs, or used to until the bragging got to be too damn grating. (I am jealous, okay? Don't make me read about your swag!)

5. Bloggers who do entire entries composed of nothing but dozens of photos of their basset hound, who hasn't moved an inch since the Bush administration. Holla, Pion**r W*m*n!

6. Bloggers who can't get over a bad experience. Dwelling never did anybody any good.

7. Bloggers who ask for money. I mean, if you have cancer or something, OF COURSE I will try to help you out, but if you're shilling for the two grand to fix Fido's *insert doggie medical condition here* ...... really? You don't have two grand? No offense, honey, but you're living waaaaaaay too close to the financial edge. That, or you don't want to fork over the two grand you were saving for that big-screen TV to instead save your dog's life.

8. Any blogger who uses bad clip-art. Blech. Sparkles and animation pretty much guarantee a "delete".

ha, so yeah, one of these days, an angry mob of people I've dissed on here is going to show up at my door with torches and pitchforks. And then I'll be on the local evening news.


How about you? Got any blogs that drive you crazy? (like this one?) Snark away in the comments!

It's real, in the same way that pro wrestling is "real"

Notes from a recent bout of reality-tv watching:


If I was on the current stint of Survivor, I'd be sitting in jail right now for throttling Coach to death. That dude needs to SHUT UP and SIT DOWN.


I really, really want to like Ruby, that gal on the Style network who's trying to lose a bunch of weight. She's pretty, and gracious, and she has a gorgeous smile. But my GOD, the WHINING .... and she just keeps sabotaging herself over and over and over. She's all, "Oh, boo hoo, I had a bad day NOMNOMNOMNOM." Buck up, honey. If you had just stayed on track to begin with, you would have lost the damn weight by now. Oh, but then she wouldn't have a show .....


I can't watch Kitchen Nightmares anymore. I got tired of Ramsay's temper tantrums. Watching people get bitched at and humiliated just gets old after a while. The thing that kills me, though, is that sometimes he tries to humiliate someone and they're just, like, "yeah, right back atcha, tool", which does crack me up some.


Who the hell is that weird dude on LA Ink - the one with the English accent and his own shop and the bad attitude who keeps pushing his glasses up? I can't figure out where he came from - I guess I missed some episodes. And I also somehow missed that ditzy blonde chick getting canned - I would have liked to have seen that.


I used to like Millionaire Matchmaker, but that lady is just .... grating. I have totally weird crushes on both the Dirty Jobs and the American Pickers dudes. Hoarders just gets on my nerves. Throw the shit out, already! And did you see that episode where the lady's husband just ..... disappeared? For, like, thirteen months? If I was her, I would've started to move some of that crap around to see if he was underneath it. I cannot. stop. watching the Duggars, even though I know I shouldn't. The old dude on Pawn Stars creeps me out. I want to take some of those gals on Sixteen and Pregnant and just SHAKE them. He's just not that into you, honey! I think that the American Loggers show is disgusting - there's nothing entertaining about despoiling the earth. And I can't watch Animal Cops since Rocky passed away.



Holy F*CK, I watch too much TV.

Freaky Friday!

I know, I know ...... I said I was going to call it F*cked-up Friday. That just seemed a little crude, so I decided to go with Freaky Friday, in which every Friday (or every Friday that I remember, anyway), I will post a photo of some of the weird shit around my house.

First up:

These are stuffed zombie-things. The one on the left has wings; I call the one on the right Disco Ballerina. (I don't KNOW why, okay?) I like them, although company is inclined to ask, "What the hell are those?"* Truthfully, company could say that about a lot of the shit in my house; hence, Freaky Fridays.

Coming soon: Bones!

Oh! In totally unrelated news, both the plumbing-fixture installer (my niece's boyfriend), who showed up LAST Saturday an hour late and so drunk he could barely walk**, and the furnace repair dude, who was SUPPOSED to be at the house last Saturday and never showed at all, are supposed to be working at the house tomorrow. Want to lay odds on who will actually show up and when? And we could throw in a side bet on drunk v. sober, if you'd like.


*Safest answer: Cat toys. Just about anything is acceptable as long as people think it's a cat toy.

** I sent him home. No drunkenly-installed plumbing fixtures at my house!

American Idol

They re-arranged the ENTIRE SCHEDULE so that ONE GIRL could recover from a mystery illness? Oy. Methinks they're a little worried about the talent pool this year.

And maybe I've just got a sensitive ear, but the same thing was bugging me last night as in years past: About half the gals were off-key. BADLY off-key. As in, "ow, my freaking EARS!"* off-key. The judges can call it "pitchy" all they want: Girls, you are OUT OF TUNE.

Oh, and in other news: If you received a really, really odd email from me yesterday, it wasn't me. Somebody hacked into one of my email accounts and started flinging spam around as fast as a monkey slings poo. Hopefully the problem has been fixed. I didn't even know they could do that, to be honest. Lesson learned!



*Gratuitous "Simpsons" reference.

Eleventy

First off, My Inflammatory Writ is celebrating her one-year smoke-free anniversary! Woot! You've been an inspiration to me, Writ.

Now, let's do the numbers:

Number of cigarettes I would have smoked between April 3, 2009 and today, had I not stopped smoking on that date: 9,900.

Amount of money saved: $1,765.50.

Back when I was a smoker, it seemed like NOBODY else smoked. Once I quit, I saw smokers EVERYWHERE. And it seemed to me that a lot more poor people smoked than better-off people.

So I did a little bit of research, and sure enough, it's true: Poor people are more likely to smoke. Something about being socially disenfranchised. I don't know, but it seems like a pretty piss-poor decision to buy a pack of smokes when your kids are dressed in tattered clothes. I mean, COME ON.

Oops, there I go, being all judge-y there. All I know is, that's seventeen hundred bucks that I would not have right now if I hadn't kicked the habit when I did. And no, I'm not going to go back and try and figure out how much I blew on cigarettes over my thirty-year smoking career, 'cause than I'll feel like an even bigger idiot. Kids: DON'T START.

Moving on ......

Stuff you didn't know

Heather over at Welch Happenings has tagged me to reveal ten things you don't know about me. I think I did a similar meme a while back, but I'm too lazy busy to look it up, so I'ma gonna do it again. Some of this stuff you probably do know, at least if you've been reading here for a while, but here goes.

1. I am a Notary Public. If you need something notarized, just send me plane fare, and I'll be on my way. Heh.

2. Back when "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" was insanely popular, I came thisclose to making it on the show. I choked in the final phone interview, though, and blew it. It did not help that I've never seen The Godfather, and did not KNOW the birth order of Fredo's(?) siblings. Sheesh.

3. I don't understand Facebook. Even though I had some good times in high school, there is not a single person from back in the day with whom I care to reconnect.

4. I played drums for a couple of years, but now, if you handed me a pair of sticks and pointed me to a drum set, I wouldn't know what to do. Similarly, I was in all things band and choir in school, but I can no longer read music. Selective forgetting, or something.

5. I had a horse when I was a kid. He was a Palomino named Trigger. We didn't live on a farm, so my folks boarded him at a local riding facility. I rode Western, and thought that the girls who rode English were just way too prissy.

6. I almost joined the Air Force straight out of high school. Talk about a narrow miss. I would have been miserable in the military. (That, or I would have been insanely great at it. Who knows? That plane has flown.)

7. When I was a kid, I was terrified of the song "Seasons in the Sun". I would freak out every time I would hear it.

8. Until I bought my house this past summer, I had never mowed a lawn. Ever.

9. In high school, I was the girl who was rumored to have slept with the band director. (I didn't.)

10. I don't know how to blow my nose. I never learned as a little kid, and now any effort to blow into a tissue turns into a frustrating comedy routine.

Aaaaaand here's a couple of extras:

11. When I'm doing a task I don't enjoy, I sing to pass the time. I'll bet all my neighbors laughed their butts off while I was shoveling snow last weekend. Hey, "King of the Road" is a classic!

12. I can't eat anything mint-flavored, because it just tastes like toothpaste to me.


There ya go! Thanks for inviting me to play, Heather! And if anybody wants to play along on their own blog, consider yourself tagged by me.

Winter

Return from Mount Kilimanjaro:

Little Girl gets up on her haunches and peers around like a meercat to see over the snowbanks.

When they get tired of the snow, they torture the indoor foliage:

The pic above was taken before the recent snowage - you can tell by the bare ground in the yard. The next time we have bare ground, it'll be ...... well, it'll be a long time from now, I'll put it that way. And the palm tree Little Girl is chewing on currently has about two fronds left - they batt them around until they break them.

And you should always match your furniture to your cats, obv.

Snowmageddon It

We interrupt the previously scheduled inaugural edition of Freaky Friday to bring you .....

.... a shit ton of snow.

47 years + 650 square feet of driveway + 18" of heavy snow = I'm too old for this shit.

The cats, on the other hand, don't seem to mind.

A kindred spirit

Rechelle over at My Sister's Farmhouse is currently going through the same journey I traversed a couple of years ago ..... from believer to atheist.


She's much more articulate about it than I ever was. She's also hilarious. And she lists all kinds of links for people who are questioning their faith.


There's nothing wrong with questioning. There's nothing wrong with looking for answers. There's nothing wrong with not being a Christian. Honestly, that was the hardest thing for me to accept: That by being an atheist, I was no longer a Christian. Because in the time and place where I grew up, not being a Christian was ...... well ..... you didn't even talk about people who were not Christian, because, OBVIOUSLY, people who were not Christian were out worshipping the devil and murdering babies and stuff. So! This has been quite a trip for me.



Rechelle, I hope you don't mind me linking to you. I just think you're doing a fantastic job of educating people through your own experiences. Thanks!



Oh, and apropos of nothing other than the fact that I'm linking to stuff, all my fellow former marching-band geeks need to click here.

Cool!

A massive dose of guilt can be highly profitable, Part Two

My boss has a long and storied history of forgetting work anniversaries. Back in 2007, my boss forgot my twenty-year work anniversary, and I reaped the rewards. I mean, come on, twenty years? Worth every makeup present I got, in my opinion.



So yesterday, when my boss yet again promised to take me to lunch for my work anniversary and then forgot about it in that massive time span between 9 a.m. and noon, I knew what to do.










Sorry for the fuzz-osity. That's my time sheet, and the post-it says, "Insert monetary amount here to make up for blowing off the 23rd anniversary lunch", with an arrow pointing to my Expense line.



I'll let you know how much I get.

Whut whut!

Today is ....... drumroll please ....... my twenty-third anniversary of working for the company on whose computer I am typing as we speak.

Hard to believe that I've been here for twenty-three years. Whoa. And it's not even my first job - I am actually celebrating (or mourning, depending on how you look at it) thirty years in the full-time workforce this year.

Holy SHIT I'm old.

Here's some completely unasked-for advice on how to survive working for twenty-three years for the same company:

1. Keep your head down. DO NOT get involved in office politics, no matter how tempting it may be. Loyalties shift, and you could find yourself out the door if you back the wrong pony.

2. Keep your head up. Make sure your boss hears about your accomplishments. If you don't toot your own horn, you'll get run over by more assertive employees.

3. Keep learning. Almost anything is job-related, when you think about it, so never turn down an opportunity to take a class or learn a new program, whether or not it directly applies to what you're doing at the time.

4. Have fun. If you don't look forward to going to work every morning, you don't necessarily need to quit, but you do need to speak to your boss about how to make your work more enjoyable. If there's simply no way to accomplish that, you're in the wrong place, and it's time to move on. I can honestly say that I laugh at work every single day, and I'm glad to be here. That being said, work is, after all, work. It's not always fun, it's not always easy, and keep in mind that you are there to serve the company, not the other way around.

So! That's all the advice I have for now. Happy anniversary to me! And hopefully many more.

In need of a little inspiration

A while back, I picked up a giant ceramic horse's-head chess piece at a thrift store. Because I don't already own enough crap, obv.



I thought I could make it into something different. Something cool. The first thing I did was give it some eyes, because it just looked creepy without them.






Yeah, my garage is a grungy place. Sorry.



I thought about making it into a zebra, but I've already got Mr. Z:






And I'm currently working on a tiger, so tiger is out. I thought about cow, but I'm afraid if I paint a bunch of cow-spots on it, it'll just look like a blotchy chess piece.



I wonder if I could make it into a T-Rex .......

Rocky

March 1992 - February 19, 2008

I still think of you every day, my friend.

Outsourcing

The other night, for the first time ever, I paid someone to prepare my income tax returns. And I can't even TELL you how this grieves me.

I've always done my own tax returns. Well, except for the year my sister Texas did them for me. Thanks, Texas! But this year, with the first-time-homebuyers' tax credit, and the credit I'll get for insulating the garage, and not knowing where to enter the mortgage interest and the property taxes and ........

.... I just was not up for it. But here's what kills me: I KNOW that if I just spent enough damn time reading through the instructions or using TurboTax or whatever, I could probably figure it out. I just didn't want to. It made me tired just thinking about it. STOP YELLING AT ME, okay? I don't like numbers. So sue me.

So the other night, I gathered up my paperwork and took it to an accountant and sat across the desk from her and let her figure it out.

And she saved me lots of money! At least seven hundred bucks that I know for a FACT I would not have figured out on my own. Which is way more than what she charged me to do the returns.

So it was worth the money. I just feel like a failure for not being able to do it myself. Which is ridonkulous, because there are lots of people (dentist, plumber, electrician) whom I pay for their knowledge without having a (major) cow over it.

Someday I've got to get over this fear of spending money. Oh wait, but that's how I was able to save up enough buy a house!

What about you? Are there some things you can spend money on, no problem, and other things you HATE to spend money on? Or is it just me?

Seven Pounds (of shit) continued .....

Okay! So, yesterday I flogged the first hour of Seven Pounds. Last night I suffered through watched the last half, so let's soldier on, shall we?

Warning: The rest of this post contains MAJOR SPOILERS about Seven Pounds. I am about to TELL YOU what happens in the end. Do NOT keep reading if you have any intention of watching this movie. Spoilers ahoy! Okay, don't say I didn't warn you.

I mean it!

Here we go: In Seven Pounds, Will Smith plays a dude who kills his wife, possibly his kids (not sure on that one), a bunch of people in a van, and evidently half the population of Los Angeles because he was ...... DUN DUN DUN ....... texting while driving.

Lesson for audience: Do NOT text while driving, or you will kill half the population of the planet. All at once.

So, yeah, pretty sure this one's not gonna be a musical.

Anyhoo, Will decides to kill himself because he can't deal with the guilt, but FIRST, he starts giving away little chunks of himself, like, part of his liver, and a bunch of bone marrow, and HOLY SHIT I AM NOT EVEN KIDDING HERE.

He decides to pick some worthy people to get the stuff they can't harvest off him while he's still alive, like, you know, his HEART and shit, and then things hit a snag when he sleeps with his future heart recipient. Oooops!

But! First he fixes her 1956 printing press, because he's an aeronautics engineer, and that's what they do. Totally plausible.

Then! He fills a tub with ice, and I'm all, like, okay, he's gonna try to lower his core temp so his organs which are going to be donated stay, like, FRESHER longer, before he takes the pills or slits his wrists or however he's going to off himself and at this point I can't even believe I'm trying to make SENSE out of this bullshit

and then he puts a jellyfish in the tub and HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA no shit you guys, suicide by jellyfish, I SWEAR I am not making this up.

And then they harvest all his parts, and the heart transplant chick goes to meet the blind dude, and there's a children's choir singing a track they swiped wholesale off the Langley Schools Music Project CD, which I actually OWN a copy of because I am strange.*

Anyhoo, the movie ends, and while it was not the WORST movie I've ever seen, it was sort of god-awful, considering the big names starring in it. Which reminds me, I've heard that Valentine's Day is a pretty horrific piece of crap - anybody seen that one yet?

*A while back, somebody (I think it was Rob) (Hi, Rob!) commented on all the weird shit I have in my house. You know how some bloggers do "theme days" like Wordless Wednesday or Thankful Thursday whatever? I think I'm gonna start doing "F*cked-up Friday" and every Friday I'll, like, display some weird thing I have in my house. Coming soon!

Oh yeah, and does anybody know where I can buy a giant dinosaur model? Like, two feet tall, at least, and realistic, with scary teeth and stuff?

Movie Review: Seven Pounds ......

..... of shit in a five-pound sack.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Has anybody else besides me tried to watch this turkey? Seven Pounds, starring Will Smith? Will Smith, who is trying SO HARD in this pic to win an Oscar and he is just EMOTING all over the place and there is dramatic CHAIR THROWING and JELLYFISH in his room* and a girl who needs a HEART TRANSPLANT and BLIND Woody Harrelson or whatever the hell that bartender from Cheers's name was and

oh boy is it bad.

Has anybody made it to the end yet? Because I hit about Minute 50 and told myself I only had to watch ten more minutes and then the movie would be halfway over and I could give it a rest and only have an hour left to watch on another night and those were the longest ten minutes of my LIFE which I will never get back by the way thankyouverymuch Will Smith and

okay. I'll stop now. I'll let you know if I ever manage to claw my way through that last hour.




*I'm not even making that up. *sigh*

World Tour of Local Diners, revisited

Okay, I just have to add one more entry to the World Tour of Local Diners.

The Sunrise Diner on Clinton Street recently opened in an old Pudgie's. And I have to say, they have the best special going, by far, of any of the local diners we've toured.

Check it: Chicken-fried steak with sausage gravy, two eggs done any way you like 'em, toast or biscuits (the biscuits are HUGE), and home fries or grits, all for ...... drum roll please ...... $5.50!

Oh my God you guys, that chicken-fried steak is SO GOOD. And hard to come by, here in the Northeast!

I really can't speak for the rest of their menu, as Mom and I never make it past the special, because, really, why bother? That special is the best thing around. Yum.





Oh, and yes, I AM aware of the irony of following a post about working out with one about diner food. Hypocrisy is my middle name, folks.

30-Day Shred Haiku

Jillian Michaels:

The doc says knee surgery

Send a check, okay?




Seriously, my right knee feels like spaghetti. PAINFUL spaghetti. I was afraid I was going to end up shredding something, dammit.

HEY, KIDS, *mumble mumble mumble*

Okay, so while we're talking about music, let's talk about the KING of mis-heard lyrics, Sir Elton John!

I remember a few years back, hearing about how some parents were up in arms about Bennie and the Jets (which, really? That song came out, like, thirty-five years ago) because it mentioned kids fighting their parents.

And I was, like, it DOES? Because I'd been listening to that song since Hector was a pup and I'd never heard that part.

So, of course, I had to pull out my ALBUM (am old) and give it a listen, and sure enough, there it was, "We'll fight our parents out in the streets/to find who's right and who's wrong".

Huh. Never heard that before. Of course, any Elton John song is chock-full of words evidently spoken in some made-up language, because despite repeated listens, you're still going, "WHAT? WHAT did he say?"

And it's not so much that Elton John doesn't enunciate (unlike the late Kurt Cobain, who sang like he had a mouthful of marbles), it's that the lyrics make no damn sense to begin with.

May I submit an excerpt from "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road":

"Back to the howling old owl in the woods/hunting the horny back toad"

What. the. f*ck. is a HORNY BACK TOAD, for Pete's sake?! And DO NOT direct me to the Wikipedia entry, because to be honest, that would just piss me off at this point.

And Elton John's already pissing me off enough for one day.

Pop Quiz!

On a dark desert highway

Cool wind in my hair

Warm smell of ---------

Rising up through the air







Fill in the blank!

Oh man, I never learn

So, I was reading this other blog



Note to self: Shut UP! Shutuprightnow you are going to get in trouble again for the love of Pete SHUT UP



.... ANYhow, I was reading this other blog, where the poster is talking about the Blue Buffalo kibble she feeds her dog, and someone comments in



SHUT UP RIGHT NOW DO YOU NEVER LEARN



.... someone comments in about how THEY feed THEIR dog Natural Balance Potato and Duck hahahaha I am not even kidding here (I feed my cats Friskies, which I guess is probably like feeding them the sweepings off the slaughterhouse floor )



hahahahahaha Potato and Duck? Ducks? Really?!



oh I am in trouble now.



Duck?! bwahahahahahahaha .......

Ya Lost Me

Last night, for the first time, I didn't watch the new episode of "Lost". And I didn't tape it* to watch later. And I probably won't watch it on line, either.

After how many years? Five? Six? I'm tired of never getting any answers, just more questions. I know, I know, it's the journey, not the destination, blah blah blah, but for the love of Pete I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHO LOCKE IS.

And now they've added alternate realities and they just keep piling on MORE MYSTERIES and all I want to know is what the hell is that smoke monster thing?! And what about the four-toed statue?!

So. No more Lost.

Oh! But in other TV news, I've developed an oddly disturbing crush on that dude on the Dirty Jobs show. And is anybody else watching American Pickers? Isn't that show the BEST? It cracks me up, because they basically go to hoarders' homes and tell them they were ABSOLUTELY RIGHT to save that bucket of rusty fence posts for all those years.

And here come the Olympics! Which ..... meh. Watching people out in the cold makes ME cold, so I probably won't be watching a lot of that.

Anything good on that I'm missing?






*Yes, I still use a VCR. SHUT UP.

It's like a bad Jeff Foxworthy joke

Oh, wait. All Jeff Foxworthy jokes are bad.

Anyway, the rumors are confirmed! A family member is dating his second cousin.

I think so, at least. This genealogy stuff is SO confusing.

Here's the deets: This particular family member was adopted as an infant by his uncle and aunt when his mother (his uncle's sister) was killed in a car accident. The aunt's sister is the mother of the woman he is dating.

So that's second cousins, right? Or is it?

ANYHOO, certain family members are skeeved right out by the whole holy-shit-they're-related thing. Personally, I'm more skeeved out by the ten year age difference (he's mid-thirties; she's mid-twenties), and the fact that this guy has been in and out of rehab for various addictions for his entire adult life. The woman in question is a babe in the woods compared to this thug. (Isn't my family fun?)

It should be interesting come family-reunion time, anyway. Sheesh.

Stampy, the Angry Deer

Remember the deer who was mad at me? Here she is, in all her foot-stomping glory:





Deer with 'tude.

Late afternoon

Best thing I've heard lately

Family member, bemoaning the fact that her brother is (allegedly) (possibly) dating his second cousin:



"I don't want the family tree to look like a telephone pole!"

Holy shit you guys, you're not even going to believe this ...

(Yes, I did put this up for a few hours yesterday, and then I pulled it. But f*ck it, it's too good to hide, so I'm bringing it back. Sue me. (not really) (please don't))


Okay, I'm burying this sucker in the comments because I don't want to get flamed on, so head to comments now (but be warned that I am about to get incredibly, meanly SNARKY on another blogger) ......

Movie Review - "District 9"

I didn't really have a lot of preconceptions about "District 9" - I knew it was about aliens kept in an internment compound, but that was about it.

It turned out to be a story about one person, and how that person's feelings change based on the reality he is experiencing, and it was really, really good.

Until about the last third, when it morphed into a bloated, shoot-em-up, CGI-laden extravaganza. I didn't like that part much, but I'm sure people who like that kind of thing loved it.

So? Sure! People who like a more "human" story will like the first part, and people who like special-effects-laden over-the-top stuff will like the last part. Everybody's happy.

Ten

Running the numbers: Number of cigarettes I would have smoked between April 3 and today, had I not stopped on that date: 9,000. *whew*


Amount of money saved: $1,605.00.

After going bowling (I KNOW) last Saturday, we stopped by the local bar that had sponsored the outing. And let me tell you, that was one smoke-filled bar.

I was not tempted.

I still want to smoke sometimes, especially when I'm stressed out, but now when I look at a smoky room I just think, "what was I doing to my lungs?" And smoke just smells chemical-ly now, not good. Oh, and I spent this morning taking dictation and listening to my boss (a smoker) cough. and cough. and cough. And then he'd light a cigarette.

I'm done. I've made it ten months, I can make it the rest of my life.

I can do it. I AM doing it.

30 Day Shred

STOP LAUGHING! Yes, I bought the "30 Day Shred" DVD. SHUT UP.

I tried it for the first time last night, and, okay, first off, I'm pretty sure I don't want to "shred" anything. I'm pretty sure that if something actually shreds while I'm doing this workout, I'm doin it rong. See also: Trip to emergency room.

Oh! And right on the cover of the DVD, in GREAT BIG LETTERS, with no asterisk, is the phrase "Lose up to 20 pounds in 30 days!" Which, really? Because I think the only way I could lose 20 pounds in 30 days is by cutting off an arm on Day 29. Or becoming anorexic. Neither of which is especially appealing to me.

Okay, and also, the "Level 1" workout, which is supposed to be twenty minutes, is actually twenty-seven minutes and thirty-one seconds. F*ck you, Ms. Michaels, we ALL have counters on our DVD players. You're not fooling anyone, here.

All that said, first off, if you want to do this thing, you'll need hand weights. I started off with two pound weights, because I'm a wuss who has not worked out in, oh ..... ever. If the workout gets too easy (SNORT) you can always increase the weights (HA). And there are three levels of workouts, so you can increase your difficulty (OH PLEASE).

The twenty-seven minutes (see above) goes by pretty quickly, because the exercises change every couple of minutes. AND there's no dancing-to-shit-music-from-the-eighties bullshit, which is excellent, because I HATE that shit. Mainly because trying to dance and exercise at the same time is likely to result in embarrassing injury to myself, but whatever.

The backs of my legs were starting to emit little girly-shrieks by the time I finished, but I'm up and walking around today with no problem. Will I do it every day for the next thirty days? Probably not. Will I try to do it at least a few times a week, to try to get rid of the pinch-an-inch flab on my stomach? Probably. Is it worth the nine bucks? Definitely! Especially if I can bust it out twenty years from now and laugh hysterically at the workout clothes, which is all I do with my old workout tapes.

Oh yeah, and when I got done with the DVD last night, I had tacos and beer for dinner. Yum! Or, you know, oops.

I'm sorry, but that place smelled NASTY

So! I got roped into going bowling on Saturday.

The LAST time I went bowling, around twenty-five years ago, was, well ...... I'm trying to think if "debacle" is too strong a word and the answer is "no".

But! A good time was had by all on Saturday, and I didn't throw TOO many gutter balls, and I wasn't the WORST bowler there, which is all I could ask for.

I do have to ask, though, do all bowling alleys smell like ........ blech? Because that bowling alley smelled bad. Like gym-locker bad.

Open a window, for Pete's sake!

Dodging a bullet, aka looking on the bright side ....

.... aka everything happens for a reason, aka *insert your own cliche here*


Remember the mold house? The one I almost bought last May, except I backed out of the deal because the home inspection revealed it to be a disaster?

It flooded Monday. BIG time. They were rescuing people from that neighborhood in a hovercraft, that's how bad it was.




In other flood news, it's really disconcerting to walk around your house knowing that there's three feet of water underneath you. The water in the crawlspace wasn't floodwater; the creek didn't get that close (thank God). It was groundwater that was forced up from the flooding around it. Everybody told me that I didn't need to pump it out; that it would recede all by itself, just the way it came up. And they were right! By Wednesday, the crawlspace was dry again. But it was still odd, to know that water was down in there.

My compost piles got washed away. All those coffee grounds and eggshells have gone to nourish someone else's land.

I have to give huge props to my neighbor, L, who came over Monday as soon as I got home, to make sure I was okay and to reassure me that by that time, the waters were actually receding and would not come any closer. And she took my work number so that if something happens again, she can keep me posted. What a sweetie!


According to L, this is only the fourth time since they moved in, in 1963, that the waters have risen this high. And they've never gotten high enough to flood the inside of my house (she knew the people who lived here before). Which is at least a little reassuring. And I do have flood insurance; I had to buy it to get a mortgage. I just hope I never have to use it. And please don't start going off about the federal flood insurance program; trust me, I HAVE HEARD IT ALL.


Oh yeah, and you'd better believe that on Monday, as I was driving home, knowing that they were evacuating people one street away from my house, and having no idea if my house was full of water, I wanted a cigarette really, really bad. After almost ten months of NoMoBloSmo, I wanted a cig. Did I have one? No friggin' way. Go me.



Remember how I said shit comes in threes? Two days before the flood, phone service to the entire neighborhood went out. It was still out when the water came. And the day after the flood, my garage door broke.

Spring IS coming, right?

Last night

I was watching Obama's speech last night, and one thing he said jumped out at me:

"We have not raised income taxes one single dime."

And, yeah, okay, that may be true, but they DID raise PAYROLL taxes. An average of two bucks a week, per employee, where I work. I know, because I do the payroll, and I was not happy when I got the package from the Fed with the new withholding charts, knowing that I was going to have to tell my co-workers that they were going to be making a little LESS every week.

And you might think, well, two bucks a week, that's just a hundred bucks a year, but you know what? I can think of all kinds of things I could spend that hundred bucks on RIGHT NOW, thankyouverymuch.

I hate to say it, but Obama's starting to disappoint me. I mean, sure, he TALKS a good game, but then it's like he goes right back to the banks and the insurance groups and everybody else who are heavy campaign donators and gives them what they want.

I'm beginning to think that the only difference between Republicans and Democrats is that at least the Republicans are honest about being in the back pocket of big business.

*sigh*

Lord willing and the creek don't ......

...... shit.

This creek normally runs down the far side of the park, about 150-200 yards from me.

Yesterday afternoon, thanks to two inches of rain and a melting snowpack, it came within twenty feet.

I'm okay. The cats are okay. All of my neighbors are okay. I've got a crawlspace full of water and I'm still shaken up, but the water's receded and we're all okay.

That's enough excitement for now, creek.

Ryan Smith

I was watching this documentary on PBS the other night following singers auditioning for the Metropolitan Opera National Council. It was really interesting, and one singer in particular caught my attention.


His name was Ryan Smith, and he was 3o; older than the others auditioning. He explained that he had started training to become an opera singer, ran out of money, went bankrupt, got back on his feet, and decided to give it one last try. You just had to like him; he always had a great big smile and a booming laugh.


At the end of the documentary, Smith was one of the winners! And he went on to the training program at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.



A year later, he was dead of lymphoma at 31.





If there's something out there you want to do, go do it. Right now. Because you never know.

I think they're gonna need a bigger birdfeeder ....

These deer - momma plus twins - cruise my neighbor's birdfeeder every evening at dusk to see if they've filled it that day. I can't figure out why they didn't put the feeder in the fenced-in garden area (you can see the fence behind the deer).

What's funny is that these neighbors were complaining about ANOTHER neighbor who was allegedly feeding the deer (illegal in New York) - they're essentially doing the same thing by not moving the feeder.

The deer move through the park next to me, sometimes quite late. When I first moved in, I couldn't figure out why people in cars would pull up in front of my house and just sit there, idling. Traffic is light on my street, and I'm at the very end - often only one or two cars will go by in a night. So when the cars started idling out front, at first I was like, "oh, shit, I bought a drug house", but it turns out that they're just watching the deer in the park in their headlights.

Oh, and there's another big doe who comes around who does not like me AT ALL - last night she was stamping her feet and snorting at me. Back off, Bambi!

So far the most I've counted in the yard is seven - my neighbors say they've seen up to ten at a time.

Amazingly, there doesn't seem to be a lot of deer poop in the yard, but then again, the snow could be covering it up. The spring thaw could get a little messy, is all I'm sayin'.

Indian Giver

Way back about a million years ago, I won a Zune with a docking station on The Pioneer Woman's website. And honestly, I'm just not as into music as I once was, and what with one thing and another, I never took it out of the box. Sorry, Pioneer Woman!

I've been thinking for a while about giving it to someone who could actually use it. And Hack-Em-Up-Ed, one of the guys at work, helped me out when I was moving, and I know he's into music. So the other day, I asked him if he could use the Zune. Sure, he said, so I gave it to him.

I found out today that he's giving it to his wife for her birthday. And, oh my God, I'm not even kidding here - I found out because he asked me to WRAP IT for him.

Wait. What?

And here's the thing - I KNOW I shouldn't care what he does with it. But it just seems so ...... well ...... I don't know ....... CHEAP or something to take something that was given to you and give it to your WIFE as a GIFT like you went to the store and BOUGHT IT ...... and to ask the person who GAVE IT to you to WRAP IT UP so you could give it to your wife as a present ....

Am I off base here? I mean, this is totally a Hack-Em-Up-Ed kind of thing to do, but still ..... I feel like snatching that damn Zune back and giving it to someone else. Or, you know, telling Hack-Em-Up-Ed to shove the damn thing up his ass. I mean, obviously I'm not going to actually do that, but I sure feel like it.

What do you think?

Breaking News!

Traffic on Route 26 came to a halt this morning while a flock of turkeys crossed the road.


It's nice to start the day with a smile.

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails

Has anyone else seen that Redi-Whip commercial? Where the lady's at the diner and wants whipped cream on her pie and the hostess is like, do you want that fake oil-saturated Cool Whip or do you want Redi-Whip made out of real whipped cream?


Now, I had never given much thought to dessert toppings, although honestly, I've always been a Cool Whip gal myself. Growing up, my Mom always made real honest-to-Pete whipped cream made out of heavy cream, but there's no way I'm going to all that trouble for myself, so Cool Whip it is.


But! After seeing the commercial describing Cool Whip as basically being made of things not found in nature, I thought I'd give Redi-Whip a try. I mean, come on, real whipped cream! The logistics of how they got real whipped cream jammed into an aerosol can and then managed to keep it stable long enough to get it to a store and sell it before the cream curdled were kind of troubling, but screw it. I bought a can.

Guys. Have you eaten any Redi-Whip lately?

That shit is nasty. I don't know what it's made out of, but if there is indeed real whipped cream in there, it was long ago overpowered by whatever chemicals they jam it with to get it to the table without spoiling. I swear to God, it tasted like metal. And other unpleasant things that you do not want to eat with your apple pie, for chrissakes.



Pass the Cool Whip, please. It may be equally chemical-laden, but at least it tastes good.

SnoCats

Blasphemous Friday!

Last week, it was Virgin-Mary-In-A-Dildo; this week, I give you:






I debated whether to go with a saltine or a graham; I thought about using a communion wafer, but not being Catholic, I don't have access. In the end I went with a graham and mod-podged it for posterity.

Shit comes in threes

At the end of last month, I let the moths out of my wallet and coughed up four hundred bucks for a (used) washer and dryer.



And once I got my Christmas bonus (thanks, Boss!) I went ahead and bought new fixtures for the bathroom. This past weekend my niece's boyfriend, along with HIS friend the electrician, came over*, swapped everything out, and installed some new electrical outlets. Because do you know how many electrical outlets were in my bathroom? ONE. One lousy outlet, attached to the medicine cabinet that was being replaced. Which Einstein designed that bathroom, is what I want to know. Who the hell builds a room with NO OUTLETS in it?! Oh! And did you know how much electricians, even ones working "on the side", charge? A METRIC SHIT TON OF MONEY, that's how much.


So imagine how thrilled I was when I jumped into the car Sunday afternoon, started her up, and watched the "Service Engine Soon" light come on, blink a few times, and then stay on.


"Spark plugs", the mechanic said, after running the code-thingie on the car. "Unfortunately, I'll have to take off the intake manifold and blah blah blah to actually reach the plugs blah blah blah, so there's a lot of labor involved."

Over TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS worth of labor, actually. To change six lousy spark plugs.



Tell your kids to become appliance-store owners when they grow up. Or electricians. Or car mechanics. Because all of those people are making a F*CK of a lot more money than I am.








*FINALLY. Don't even get me started on that. Oops! Too late.

It was like watching Jeffrey Dahmer audition

Okay, okay, I'll admit it - I caught some of American Idol last night. And I have to say, that dude who sang "House of the Rising Sun" creeped me right the f*ck out.

The segment went on and on and on, with him acting creepier and creepier, and I couldn't figure out why they'd give a misogynistic sociopath so much air time, unless they were trying to warn the people of Boston (where last night's auditions were held) that a Hannibal Lecter is in their midst.

And here's the thing - a lot of the weirdos on that show are obviously putting on an act. They figure the stranger they are, the better their chances of getting airtime - and let's face it, they're right. But I got the feeling that this dude was not acting AT ALL, that he went home after the audition and strangled some puppies or something.

I honestly thought twice about posting this, because I get the feeling that this is a dude who will google himself and then hunt down anybody who said anything bad about him.

Just leave it in the comments, okay, bud?

Oh, yeah, and what happened to Posh Spice's face? She looks like Jocelyn Wildenstein! Yikes!

Heads up - An alternative to American Idol

Tonight, a lot of PBS stations are airing "Young @ Heart" as part of the Independent Lens series. "Young @ Heart" is a documentary about a senior citizens' choir who sing songs by The Clash, James Brown, and others you wouldn't expect. The documentary treats its subjects with respect, and it's touching to watch.

A million miles away from American Idol, and worth a view.

Recently Read

As usual, skip it if you wanna.

First off, let me say that I am weirdly excited about the return of American Idol tonight. I know that within the first fifteen minutes, I'll be covering my ears and changing the channel, but right now antipication is high.

Here we go:

1. I Smile Back by Amy Koppelman - Oh, for f*ck's sake. Novel about a housewife who becomes unbalanced. Good writing, but I had zero sympathy for the main character and gave up about halfway through.

2. Home on the Bear's Domain by Martha Martin. I loved her first book, "O Rugged Land of Gold", despite the cringeworthy title, but I just couldn't get into this one, another memoir about her life in Alaska. For one thing, she really doesn't seem to like her kids very much, which actually should endear her to me, but she just came off as kind of cold. I quit about a third of the way in.

3. Closing Time by Joe Queenan. Memoir about growing up with an alcoholic, abusive father. Mr. Queenan took what should have been a fascinating story and intellectualized the shit out of it. Which is his prerogative, of course, but I gave up halfway through.


4. Official Book Club Selection by Kathy Griffen. The stand-up comic's memoir. I like her, but her book? Not so much.


At this point I was beginning to think I was never going to find a book I could get all the way through. Thankfully, I came to:


5. Gap Creek by Robert Morgan. Novel about a woman in the late 1800s. Well-written and interesting.


6. The Keys of the Kingdom by A.J. Cronin. Published in 1941, this is a novel about an English priest in China in the early 1900s. A really good story. Oh, and I did a little research and discovered that they made the book into a movie starring Gregory Peck as the priest, which cracks me up because in the book, the priest is a nebbishly little nerd.


7. The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer. Oh Christ, another full-of-himself journalist writes a "memoir" while in his forties - bleecch. Dude, you're not all that.


8. Hey! Let's do a movie review! "Adventureland" is a coming-of-age tale of kids working at a six-flags-like park. It reminded me of Garden State, which means it was boring and lame.


9. Jesus Saves by Darcey Stienke. Novel intertwining the stories of an abducted girl and a minister's daughter. Interesting and disturbing.


10. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot by John Callahan - Autobiography of a disabled cartoonist. Meh.



Boy oh boy, I'm not liking much of anything these days, am I? Must be the season. Right now, I'm about halfway through "Under the Dome" by Stephen King, and while it's interesting because Mr. King is a hell of a writer, it's following the same old King formula: Person/Group of People find themselves in peril from an outside source and must Slay the Enemy/Save the World, with a healthy dash of the Supernatural thrown in for good measure. Although so far there hasn't been much of the supernatural crap in Under the Dome, which is a welcome relief.



How bout you - read/watched anything good lately?

An exercise in futility

I have a suet feeder hanging outside the kitchen window. It's up high enough so that the cats can't jump up to it from the ground outside, so The Runt's decided on a new tactic:





It cracks me up that he completely ignores the stuffed parrot toy hanging from the ceiling. He's all, like, you can't fool ME with that fake shit. Ima after the real thing.


Sorry, Runtski, the window's closed.





And the funny thing is, the birds have evidently figured out that he can't get to them, because they just hang out on the feeder (see woodpecker in these photos), watching him scrabble against the glass and figuratively flipping him off. (They're giving him the bird! Hah! (sorry.))


I'll bet that The Runt's fondest wish is to sprout wings so he could get those damn birds.

Those Crazy Catholics!

'

'

First off: This post actually contains an image that may be, kinda, sorta, NSFW (not safe for work), so use caution if your boss is standing over your shoulder.

Question: What is this?:



No! Wait! It's not what you think it is!

Take a look inside:







It's the Virgin Mary! Standing on a globe! In a ...... dildo? What the .......? That is just so wrong.



God, I love the flea market.


Oh! Oh! Does anybody besides me remember the very first Waltons movie, The Homecoming, where they're having a Christmas pageant, and all the little church kids are singing "Hey, Mary, whatchoo gonna name that pretty little baby?" That's all I can think of when I look at this little tchotchke, except I'm thinking, "Hey, Mary, whatchoo gonna name that pretty little dildo?"

I'm sick.

It's all happenin' in my garage

The new* washer and dryer were delivered on New Year's Eve. I think the guys who did the delivery may have started celebrating a little early. But! No more laundromat! I'm livin' the dream, my friends.


I had to break up a cat fight at two in the morning the other night. When I heard the squalling, I flipped on the garage lights; my two came flying inside, and the other cat ran out the back pet door. Can't they all just get along?


The morning after the cat fight, I looked out in the garage to see The Runt and Little Girl sitting on top of my car, staring intently up into a corner. Great, I thought, there's a frickin' neighbor's cat up in the rafters. But no! - it was a grackle, who swooped out in relief when I opened the overhead door. I can't figure out if he got in under his own steam, or if one of the cats ......well ..... brought him in. In any case, he didn't seem any the worse for wear as he made his escape.


The Runt has developed an odd fascination with the garage insulation. One of the walls, which was insulated by the prior owner, was done with unfaced insulation, which means the insulation is exposed. (Can I use "insulation" one more time in that sentence? No? I didn't think so.) The Runt pulls little pieces of that insulation off the wall, wads them up and sits on them until I throw them away. I swear, it's like he's trying to build a nest or something. I've been covering up the sections of the wall that he can reach - it doesn't seem like that fiberglass can be doing him any favors.

Thanks to the grossly-oversized furnace installed by the previous owner, the car is nice and toasty every morning. I've discovered that winter is much easier to deal with when you don't have to scrape the ice and snow off your car first thing every day. Woot! Of course, I'll probably break down in bitter tears when I get my next utility bill. *sigh*


What's happenin' in your garage?





*Okay, okay, used. Heck, they're new to me!


What? What's that you say? How's that cold doing? Heh. I think I'm on the upswing, but I made the mistake of taking some pseudofed or however-the-hell-you-spell-it right before bed last night, and I was wired up like a gerbil on meth. No rest for the weary.

Illness update, Day .......

....... hmmmm, let's see. Saturday, Sunday, {counting on fingers} Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ....... Day Five?! Are you f*cking kidding me?! Five days?



Excuse me while I go hunt down that rat bastard from Sears and stab him.

Illness update!

Because I know you are all dying - DYING - to know how I'm doing, let me tell you:

Right now it's three in the afternoon and I'm at that stage where I'm not sick enough to justify going home, but I am sick enough to make being at work pure drudge. All I really want to do is put my head down on my desk and snooze, and I probably could since there's nothing shaking around here right now, but I get the feeling I'd wake up at, like, midnight, with only the light from the monitor illuminating the office, and then I'd have to drive home and crawl into bed and then get back up at 6:30 and come right back in again and

*wah*

am miserable

Oh! Oh! And adding to my angst is the fact that my niece's boyfriend was supposed to come over to the house yesterday, FINALLY, to install the new lighting in the bathroom and it DID NOT HAPPEN, something bullshitty about ants in his apartment HELLO BUDDY CALL YOUR LANDLORD and I have been trying to get this laid-off jerkwater over to my place since CHRISTMAS to install this shit HELLO DUDE I AM PAYING YOU SO GET YOUR LAID-OFF ASS OVER HERE

oh, sorry. I'll stop.

am sick

*wah*

Dear Asshole

Dear guy ahead of me on the escalator at Sears on Friday morning:

Thanks so much for that gigantic sneeze that you unloaded right before you stepped off the escalator, leaving me no choice but to walk into the mushroom cloud of contamination you left behind, seeing as I was right behind you, and you were too busy texting to bother to, you know, cover your mouth or anything.

What started out as a sore throat on Saturday has now grown into a full-blown, nasty-ass cold, all thanks to you, Mister "I'm too involved leaving important text messages to bother about the well-being of those around me".

Hey, at least I'll be feeling better in a few days. I hope your next girlfriend gifts you with an STD, you bastard. Karma's a bitch.

Oh, and texting on the escalator at Sears, for God's sake, does not make you cool. It makes you a dork.

Yours truly,

RockyCat

Pulling a post

This morning, for the first time, I pulled a post.


It was written last March, and it was mostly a movie review, but I also mentioned the name of someone who had treated me shabbily in high school.


This past week, that person found the post.


And I got to thinking, anybody who googled his name could possibly find the post. What if it was someone to whom he had applied for a job? What if it was his minister? What if it was his mom?


The last thing I want to do is cause anybody pain, even if they treated me like a jerk back in the day. Bygones, eh?


And when I went to delete that post, I found another one calling people out by name. I pulled that one too.

RockyCat: Starting the new year fresh!

Number nine, Number nine ......

Number of cigarettes I would have smoked between April 3 and today, had I not quit on that date: 8,100.


Amount of money saved: $1,444.50.


The other night I was pulling out of the parking lot at work and I reflexively reached over to grab my purse and make sure I had my cigarettes.


Old habits die hard. Really, really hard. And at this point, it's getting a little bit ridonkulous. I mean, come on, it's nine months later, and I still can't get smoking out of my brain. Sheeeesh.



*sigh*



Soldiering on .......

Tragedy at Bethlehem

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound he pulls the speeding high tension wires down

Helpless people on subway trains scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them

He picks up a bus and he throws it back down as he wades through the buildings in the center of town

Oh, no .... they say he's got to go

GO GO GODZILLA! (whooa ohh ohh)



Oh, no ..... there goes Tokyo Bethlehem



GO GO GODZILLA!









Rock on, Godzillacat.

The year in review

Let's see ........



In April, I quit smoking after thirty years.



In July, I became a first-time homeowner.



Peeps, I can't go any bigger than that.



Happy New Year!

The most fun ever

Every year, on Christmas Eve, I give my Mom a Christmas stocking filled with stuff from the dollar store - Puzzles, pretty soaps, warm gloves, candy, etc. As usual, this year I ended up buying way more stuff than I needed for her stocking (the dollar store does that to me). And when I ended up with some stuff from the office gift exchange that I already had, I really had a surfeit of stocking stuffers.



So I Secret-Santa'd my neighbors.

Two of my neighbors are women who live alone and don't seem to get much company. I wrapped up all the extra stuff, put it in gift bags, donned a trench coat and a Santa hat, and on Christmas Eve I left the bags on their porches.



And I had SO MUCH FUN wrapping up all that stuff and deciding who got what and sneaking through the neighborhood (don't call 911! It's just me!) that I think I'll do it again next year. Maybe pick a few more neighbors.



Next to the owl hooting, that was the best part of my Christmas.

Wait a minute .....

.... I can't even take a tube of christing toothpaste on a flight, and some asshole already on a watch list manages to carry on enough sh*t to take down an entire plane?



And then we have Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, after this sh*t goes down, saying flying is "very, very safe"?



F*ck you, bitch. No it AIN'T.

and I can't get it out of my head

I saw a deer get hit by an SUV last night.

Actually, I would have hit the deer if I had been just a few seconds later. It was dark and I was on a busy two-lane road, going about 50, with cars behind me and cars going the other direction next to me when I saw the deer step out of the woods and onto the shoulder on my side of the road. I couldn't slam on the brakes because of the other traffic, so all I could do was pump the brakes and watch as the deer hesitated, then jumped into the road right in front of me.

I missed it, barely, but an SUV going the other direction nailed it. I heard an incredibly loud CRRRRRUUNNNNNCCCHHHHH and watched in my rearview as hooves flew in the air and the SUV lurched onto the shoulder. When I got home I checked the car, fully expecting the driver's side to be covered in blood, but it wasn't.

And I know I'll be thinking about this for a long time.

I remember several years ago, driving that same section of road, and watching a cop pull his service revolver and shoot a deer that had been injured in a car collision.

And there was that time I saw a cat ........ oh jeezus christ I still can't talk about that.

And I don't understand why I can't just put this stuff out of my mind and forget about it. I mean, I don't bring back good times in my mind in graphic detail; it's just the nasty stuff that sears itself onto my brain and lurches to the surface, unbidden, from time to time. I wonder why.

Well, at least THAT'S over with

Actually, I like everything about Christmas except the day itself, when I have to spend time with people I do not like. Bah. It helped to know that I don't have to see these folks again until Easter.

But! I got through the day without killing anybody or even making any snarky remarks. Well, there was that one incident with the monster truck show*, but that's between Ditzy and me.

My Christmas bonus came through, meaning that I spent yesterday morning at Home Depot buying new light fixtures for the bathroom. Woot!

My sister Texas was nice enough to gift me the new Stephen King book, which weighs approximately ten pounds and is over 1,000 pages long. I predict a March finish. Shit, I don't even think the Bible has that many pages.

By far the coolest part of the weekend came yesterday afternoon, when I was out in the woods and heard an owl calling. I've been spending a good chunk of my weekends in forests for years now, and that was the first time I've ever heard an owl call. Hoo hoo hooooooo hooo hooo. TOO COOL.

I hope everybody had a good Christmas, and nobody's in jail for murdering a relative or anything. Ho ho ho!






*Did you know that there's a TV channel devoted entirely to monster truck shows? Is true! And it doesn't even have, like, a voiceover or anything, it just shows monster trucks jumping over stuff again and again and again, with a heavy-metal soundtrack. It's EXTREMELY popular with my two-year-old nephew, whose favorite Christmas present was something called a "Gravedigger". Yeah.

All is calm, all is bright .....

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!

My Christmas gift to you

First off, to everyone who sent me a card, thank you very much! You're helping to make the new house a home.

Now, a blast from the past.

Scene from a wedding:





HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

There's so much to say about this, where do I even start? How about:

Out of the five people in the photo, three of them have bad spiral perms. Hell, just because it was 1984, that's no excuse.

The cinderblock wall, with the electrical outlet hanging down. Talk about a no-budget wedding. Check out the lavish decoration: One measly paper-bell-thingie.

The maid of honor, who is apparently using her drink cup as a spitoon.

Paper plates and plastic silverware, peeps. At the wedding party's table. Jeezus Christ. Who organized this?

OhmyGAH that poufy-sleeved dress. *shudder*

The groom, who apparently thinks he is one of the landed gentry, instead of a pot-smoking, job-losing asshole.

Looking at this photo, you know I was doomed from the start. I think I realized it as soon as the reception was over, when instead of heading home to get busy (no money for a honeymoon, doncha know), the groom decided we should head over to the best man's PARENTS' house to get stoned. I shit you not. Thank god it only took me four-and-a-half years to make a break for it, and now I can look at these pics and laugh. Oh, and cringe. Lots of cringing involved as well.

So I hope you all are having a very merry Christmas, but if not, take another look at that photo and rest assured that things could be worse. Much worse.

Happy holidays!




Oh! Oh! Oh! The best part? The house I bought this past summer? I can now SEE that reception hall from my front yard. Whoa.

In which The Runt impersonates a refrigerator magnet

The magnet (the crawfish one on the right):

The Runt:

How do you like my old-lady sofa with the old-lady afghan artfully placed across the back? Bitchin', no?

We won't even talk about the f*cking Bills schedule on the fridge. Bah.

Oh, and while I'm talking about cats (jeezus anything as long as I don't have to talk about the Bills), The Runt and Little Girl aren't that fond of human food. They're not even that fond of tuna juice, which Rocky used to love. I've tried all different kinds of food with them, including broccoli and other weird shit that cat owners claim their cats adore. These guys? Not so much.

So I was really surprised when I set a cupcake on the table the other night, left the room for about thirty seconds, and came back to discover that The Runt had hoovered all the frosting off that sucker. I mean, seriously, I think he set a land speed record for getting the frosting off a cupcake.

A cat after my own heart.

This is why our taxes are so high

I was reading this thing on AOL today about this woman up in Boston who was pissed off because her son wouldn't put down his video game and go to bed.

So she called the cops.

She called the f*cking cops to come discipline her son.


You know, you need a license to get a dog, but any f*cktard can have a kid.

Check this out .......

I got a Christmas (and Hogmanay!) card from Scotland! How cool is that?

Obviously, Fish Food* and her husband have mad computer skillz - my poor cards look like a third-grader made them compared to this! (Click on the image to embiggen.)

Thanks, Fish*!




*I'm using her alias because after what happened on her blog earlier this year *cough*, I'd hate to start an international incident or something by mentioning her real name. :)

The Catholics have all the good stuff

I went to a couple of religious stores this weekend looking for images to use in some projects I've been thinking of.

I went to the local "Christian" store first, which was a total bust. It was all new-age-y and vague, with no actual images of Christ at all.

So I headed down the road to the Catholic store. Bingo! The first thing I saw when I walked through the door was a picture of Christ with his bleeding heart in his hands. Literally, he was holding his bleeding, possibly still beating heart in his hands.

Those Catholics have all the good stuff.

So I loaded up with prayer cards, little plastic Jesuses, and an illustration of a nun holding a crucifix with Christ on it.

Crazy Catholics!

And I felt a little guilty, because if the nice old lady running the store knew what I was going to use this stuff for*, she probably wouldn't have sold it to me.

That said, I'm definitely going back for more.




*Christ on a cracker. I KNOW.

..... and while I'm on the subject ...

...... of pop culture, what the f*ck is up, Survivor? You voted Shambo off? SHAMBO?

Dear Survivor-people: You need to get that little Machiavellian bastard Russell off the show RIGHT NOW. PRONTO.

I don't understand these people. They're wandering around the damn island bleating like flippin' SHEEP about how Russellllllll willl wiinnnnnn, bleattt bleattt bleattttt, when all they have to do is VOTE HIS ASS OFF.

Of course, the minute they vote him off, I'll stop watching, because then it won't be any FUN anymore, not being able to watch evil Russell manipulate his flock of freaking SHEEP, but still.

Save yourselves, Survivor-people.




Updated 12/21/09 to add: The finale was last night, and Russell lost to a woman with a Bumpit in her hair. *sigh*

Just plain wrong .....

The "Finding Nemo" ice skating spectacular is coming to our town, and the media have been flooded with ads for the show, the better to get the kiddies to beg their parents to take them.



And I have to wonder who thought up the costumes, because every time I see one of the ads, all I can think is, "what is it with the boob-eyes?"

Because, really:










Who wants to see a bunch of people skating around with eyes in their boobs? Not me. That's just creepy. It's, like, oh my God, what was that Stephen King short story where the astronaut grew an eye on the palm of his hand. Bleccch.

And how do you explain this to the kids? I'd like to be a fly on the wall for THAT conversation.

Well, I thought about the Army .....

So! Last night's Sing-Off!

First, let's backtrack to Tuesday's show. I am embarrassed to admit that when they did "Freedom 90", I knew every. single. word. And, the song got me thinking about the album it was on (yes, I said "album" - I am old) and the song "Praying for Time", which totally rules, and which I also sang, in its blessed entirety, during a commercial break.

I know the words to twenty-year-old George Michael songs! Aren't you glad you don't live with me?

Anyhoo, moving on to last night's show. That college group, the Beelzebubs, or however the hell you spell it? I've come to the conclusion that they're my faves because I have a totally inappropriate crush on the chunky, curly-haired dude. I don't know if I want to give him cookies and milk or f*ck the hell out of him, and that's just wrong.

But! "Baba O'Reilly"? Really?! Rock on, dudes!

I couldn't figure out why the lady judge was on the show, because none of her comments made any sense. Then I read the captions and discovered that she was a "Pussycat Doll", which ..... um ..... aren't they strippers? WHY IS SHE ON THE SHOW?

I'm getting a little tired of the beat-boxing. I mean, I know they need it to keep time, but still ..... and I just now thought about how much spit must be on the floor of that stage by the end of the night and ........ ew. Just ew.

Oh, and Voices of Lee did Man in the Mirror, which, Michael Jackson notwithstanding, is one of the best songs ever. I'm sorry, but that song is the shiz. Too bad Voices of Lee butchered it.

One last thing: Seeing as how BEN FOLDS is a judge, when, oh when is one of the groups going to whip out "Jesusland"? Come on, guys, there's only one night left! Man up! Or wait ..... "Army!" I wanna hear somebody sing about three sad semesters and Chick-fil-A!

My prediction? The Beezlebubs (or however the hell you spell it) for the win!

I didn't know what to do

Okay, so I was in line at the grocery store last night, and the woman ahead of me was unloading her groceries out of her cart. And she was doing it slowly, because one of her arms was crippled.

And I SO MUCH WANTED to ask if I could help, but I was afraid it would embarrass her, or insult her.

And I remembered back when my wrist was broken and my arm was in a splint, and I would have GLADLY accepted any help offered. But then I worried that maybe it was different when the disability was permanent, and maybe she'd be mortified if I tried to help. I didn't know what to do. So in the end, I did nothing, and this morning it is STILL bothering me.


So. As usual I am clueless here. Should I have asked if she needed/wanted help? Should I have just gone ahead and started unloading her groceries with her? What would you have done?

I need to know, in case it happens again.