Confetti!

had a dream

Okay, so I had this dream ....

I know. I KNOW. I'll keep this really brief, I PROMISE.

Anyway, I had a dream last night that I bought a pack of cigarettes.

(For those of you who may be new here, I quit smoking last year after smoking a pack-and-a-half a day for thirty years.)

So, I dreamt I bought a pack of cigarettes, except it was more like a nightmare. In the dream, I was all, like, nooooooo! Don't doooooo it! But I went to the store, and I bought the cigarettes, and I took the cellophane off, and I was peeling back the foil, and the whole thing was in slow motion, the way dreams are, and I was SO DEPRESSED that I was going to start smoking again. I was all, like, you've worked so hard to quit, and now you're going to just throw it all away?! DON'T DOOOOOO IT.

And looking back now, it was really kind of funny that I was going through all this turmoil in my dream over smoking a cigarette. I mean, it's not like somebody was forcing me to smoke it; it's like I was having a little existential meltdown over the idea of smoking again.

Whew. Glad it was just a dream. And I mean, come on, I'm SURE this has something to do with my niece and her whole situation. But it's weird that it's like my subconscious wants me to start up again, and the conscious me is all, noooooooooo! Hell, at least I'm refusing.

Heh.

Weird.

Oh, and I went to visit my niece last night. She's doing better, and is expecting to be released either today or tomorrow. I'm not really sure if she has a plan for her quit, but I guess all I can realistically do is be there for her if she needs me. Who knows - maybe she'll surprise us all.

What do you say ....

.... to a niece who drank herself into the hospital this weekend?

Yeah. I got nothin'.


Oh, I mean, there's plenty that I could say, but I doubt it would do any good. I swear to God, my little community has got to have the highest rate of alcohol consumption in the entire state. This is a neighborhood of people who think it's perfectly normal to get up in the morning, start drinking, drink until they pass out, and then wake up and start drinking again. I've never seen anything like it.

And it doesn't help that the niece's live-in boyfriend is also a heavy drinker. He's been known to literally drink himself into seizures. He quit for a couple of days after that. A couple of days.

And now niece is in the hospital with pancreatitis, which the doctors have informed her will kill her within five to ten years if she doesn't stop drinking. She's only thirty-four.

You know what she asked me?

"I wonder if I can still drink O'Douls?"

Probably not, niece. Probably not.

Oh boy.

Well, now I know what I'm NOT doing this weekend ....

Okay, okay, first off, scroll down to see Freaky Friday, if you're so inclined.

Now, a headline from today's local newspaper:

'Renaissance fair with wings' to bring out fairies and elves

*cough*

The story:


"Fairies, elves and other creatures will gather this weekend in the hamlet of (local town) to celebrate nature's wonders and the magic of imagination. The second annual New York Faerie Festival starts today and will run through Sunday on private land on (insert location here). The family-oriented event offers the opportunity to (blah, blah, blah)."

"It's like a Renaissance fair with wings," said (so-and-so). Everyone at the festival will be dressed up in their best fairy costumes, organizers said."

errrrrrmm ...... "best fairy costumes"? "Faerie Festival"? Renaissance fair with wings?


Put me in a car and point me in the opposite direction, is all I'm sayin'. Sweet Jeezus.


Oh! Oh! And apropos of absolutely nothing, is anyone besides me watching "Raising Sextuplets" on the WE network? The mom seems nice enough, if somewhat vacuous, but the dad .... oh boy. What a jerk! He's just such a .... jerk. The mom does ALL THE WORK taking care of ALL SIX KIDS, PLUS she works a regular job, and if he, like, changes a SINGLE DIAPER he struts around like he deserves a f*cking medal. I just want to punch him.


But then last night, I was watching the episode where the mom and dad go out to dinner, sans kids, and she actually salted his dessert to get him to stop eating it because she wants him to lose weight.


She salted his dessert. I'm not even kidding here. WHO DOES THAT?!


So they're both total jerks. I guess I can stop watching the show now, except I'm still watching Little People, long after Matt Roloff revealed himself to be, basically, the biggest (um .... littlest?) jerk in the Pacific Northwest.


I watch too much tv.

Oh! And in other news, a local garden center is getting ready to close for the season (yes, I DO live in the Frozen North, dammit), and they are having a fifty-percent-off sale.

Oh peeps, how can I resist that? I can't.

Time to dig some more holes ....

Freaky Friday!

Okay, so I had several contenders for this week's Freaky Friday, among them:

1. Me doing dishes, as suggested by an earlier post.

2. My new three-hundred-and-eighty-four dollar toilet. *sob*

3. The beheaded baby bunny I found in the garage this morning. (1)

None of them seemed quite right, so I decided to continue with the garden theme as found in last week's Freaky Friday.

Here's some stuff you would find as you walked toward my front door:




That dude above stands guard at the foot of the path that leads to my door. If you press a button in his chest he roars and moves his head back and forth, which is pretty cool.

.... with a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound, he pulls the speeding high-tension wires down ....

This guy is at the bottom of my front step:



He's wearing a white silk beribboned top and a tutu, because that's what all the fashionable sentries are wearing this year.



(1) I'm afraid those cats are earning a lifetime of bad karma. Seriously - three baby bunnies in one week? What up with all the carnage? On the other hand, my neighbors with a vegetable garden are very appreciative.

Oh, and "beribboned" IS TOO a word, blogger spell-check. Shut up.

I blame it on the earthquake

Did you know we had an earthquake here yesterday? No? Me neither, until I heard about it on the radio.

So anyway, I woke up around three o'clock this morning to the sound of rain dripping out of my leaky gutters.

trickletrickletrickle

It was kind of peaceful, actually, until I realized that it didn't really sound like it was raining out.

It sounded

It sounded like

It sounded like it was coming from inside the house!*&%!

Oh shit.

It's never a good sign when you hear running water inside your house at three in the morning and you're the only one home and you've been fast asleep.

Wondering what fresh new level of homeowner hell I was about to experience, I reluctantly crawled out of bed and went to investigate, only to discover

*splash*!

The bathroom was flooded. Floooooooooooded.


The toilet tank had SOMEHOW managed to develop a top-to-bottom crack, straight through the goddam porcelain, that was merrily dispersing water all over my bathroom floor. And of course, the water level in the tank could only get so low before the float kicked in, sending fresh water into the tank which subsequently ALSO ended up all over the bathroom floor, etc., etc.

So, I turned off the water to the tank, and commenced mopping. And, this morning, made a call to the plumber, who will come out this afternoon and cheerily charge me an arm and a leg to replace the toilet.

And no, I'm not going to try to replace it myself. I don't want to deal with it. I will cheerily (okay, grudgingly) write a check to Mr. Plumber-Man to do it for me.

I blame it on the earthquake.

It's either that or the ghost.

And while it's possible that my homeowner's insurance covers earthquake-related toilet damage, I'm pretty sure it doesn't cover ghostly manifestations.

Earthquake it is.

This is where your Grandma shops

Okay, so you guys know the Skymall catalog? The one that's always in the seatback ahead of you on the plane? The one that you grab a couple of hours into the flight, when you're insanely bored, and you're idly flipping through it, and all of a sudden you're, like, "Holy shit! I really need one of those!" and "Look at that - it's the coolest thing ever!" and pretty soon you're dog-earing pages and shoving the catalog into your purse as you get off the plane, and then you go do whatever you were on a plane for to begin with, and you forget all about the Skymall catalog, and you find it again like five weeks later when you're FINALLY unpacking your carryon after you've already been back home for a MONTH and .....

Okay. So we're talking about the Skymall catalog, which is full of cool things that you reallyreally need when you're insanely bored at thirty thousand feet.

Allow me to introduce you to the exact opposite of the Skymall catalog:

CollectionsEtc.


Dudes. Duuuuuuudes. Click on that link. Go ahead. I dare ya. Here, I'll give it to you again: CollectionsEtc.



hahahahahaha so THAT'S where Grandma buys all that shit.



What's making it even funnier is that I'm trying to paste some of the eye-searing images from that catalog onto here, and a pop-up comes up informing me that the images are COPYRIGHTED by CollectionsEtc. and unauthorized use is STRICTLY PROHIBITED and ohmyGod it's like they KNEW somebody was going to use those pics to make fun of them and so they paid some poor summer intern schmuck to program the site, photo by photo, so that nobody could take their images and say HAHA LOOK AT THIS SHIT and ...


oh. It worked.


Know what's even funnier? I was trying to reason why they would send this catalog of horrible, polyresin schlock to ME in particular and then I figured out that it was probably because of that order I placed with Oriental Trading for the pink flamingo lawn ornaments and ...



ooops. Shutting up now.

Recently read

Per usual, skip it if you wanna.



1. The first three Harry Potter books. (Chamber of Secrets, Sorceror's Stone & Prisoner of Azkaban.) Kid lit, but I really enjoyed them - fast reads, with good (if fantastical) plot lines. If, like me, you've been avoiding reading these because they're "kids' books", go ahead. They're actually quite well-written.



2. Velva Jean Learns to Drive by Jennifer Niven - Novel about a young woman who wants to sing at the Grand Ol' Opry. Set in the thirties, this was a really interesting book. I liked it.



3. The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips. Novel about 1930s Alabama. This was the best book I've read in quite a while - I even bought it after reading the library's copy, because I know I'm going to want to read it again. It was reminiscent (to me, anyway) of To Kill a Mockingbird. I don't understand why this one didn't get a lot of press, because it's really, really good. Read it!



4. American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell - Short stories about marginalized people. These stores were good reads. Not like most of the other fiction out there, subject-wise, and I enjoyed that. Recommended.



5. Rush Home Road by Lori Lansens - Novel about an old woman living in a trailer park who takes in an abandoned girl - pretty good.



6. Sporty Creek by James Still - Fictionalized account of a boyhood in Depression -era Kentucky - Technically a kid's book, but still interesting for the period details.



7. Just Checking by Emily Colas - Vignettes from the life of an OCD sufferer. I thought I had a bad case of OCD, but this woman is flat-out batshit crazy. Her accounts of incidents in her life so unnerved me that I couldn't finish it.



8. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin - Novel about an Irish woman who immigrates to Brooklyn in the 1950s - Entertaining and a quick read - I just never felt really close to or involved with the main character - she seemed a little stand-offish and cold to me.





So! That's it for now! Anything out there I should be reading?

.... survey SAYS

Here's the vet's explanation (see the post below if you have no idea what I'm talking about):

1. There is a $12.00 "dosage fee" on all medications. Oh, please.

2. The extra cost for the Frontline is to pay for the vet's support if there's a problem. (Come ON.) Also, they buy their Frontline directly from the company, so you know you're not getting diluted product from China or something.

3. Animals metabolize medications much differently than people; thus, cats need a dose of benadryl equivalent to what you'd give a kid.

4. She hemmed and hawed over this one, but bottom line seems to be that the office gets paid to pimp for Frontline.

Sometimes I think I should find a new vet, but these guys were so good with Rocky I hate to give up on them.

The Runt continues to hold his own, with no new welts and much less digging, so we're going to wait and see if improvement continues. And now I'm getting the shit bit out of ME, so I think whatever was bothering him has transferred hosts. Excuse me while I go scratch ....

Oh, and Katie, the dishcloths are GORGEOUS! Thank you so much!

This would probably go in the "What is WRONG with you?" category

First off, ROB, there is TOO a Freaky Friday post; scroll down, yo.

In other news, I just finished that bag of goldfish.

It took me two months, but I worked my way through a bag of goldfish that expired two YEARS ago.

I don't know why; I just did it. They needed to be eaten, and I was there.

Oh, and if you were in my neck of the woods the other night and saw someone on the side of a busy road, diligently digging milkweed out of the ditch, yeah, that was me. And yes, Jess Riley DID send me some milkweed seeds, but sadly, only two of them germinated, so I was ditch-diggin'.

I'm getting ready to leave the office early - The Runt has to go back for a follow-up visit to the vet. Some things I plan on discussing with said vet:

1. Why she charged me $13.10 for ONE OUNCE of iodine the last time we were there. That's a thousand percent markup over the drugstore price.

2. See also: Why she charged me a hundred bucks for six shots of Frontline Plus, when Doctors Foster & Smith are selling the same thing on line for seventy bucks. With free shipping.

3. Why she told me the proper dose of children's benadryl for The Runt would be a 3.5 ml syringe dosage, which, when squirted out into a measuring spoon to make sure you're doing it right, is the SAME DOSE you would give a six- to twelve-year-old child. I don't know how much an average twelve-year-old kid weighs, but I'm pretty sure it's not TEN POUNDS, which is what The Runt weighs. I could've KILLED that poor cat if I hadn't made sure to double-check (and adjust for human-to-pet ratio) the dosage first.

4. Why she never discussed the studies that point to Advantage being a better flea med than Frontline for cats with flea allergy dematitis.

Should be an interesting visit. Have a good weekend, everybody!

Freaky Friday!

I know I've posted about Mr. Z before, but never for a Freaky Friday, so this totally counts.

Meet Mr. Z:





Mr. Z is a kid's-rocking-horse-on-springs thingie that I painted into a zebra. At the old place, I had him in the shade garden out back, but here at the new place, he's right out by the front door, so that all the passing neighbors can conjecture about the crazy lady with the weird shit in her garden.



Mr. Z is one cool dude.

You can't make this shit up

Headline from today's local newpaper:

Woman kept dead husband, sister in home

Ah, the local newspaper, providing blog material since ...... forever.

Here we go:

"The mummified remains of people found in a 91-year-old Wyalusing woman’s home are believed to be her late husband and sister.

According to court documents filed in Pennsylvania, two workers from the Area Agency on Aging contacted state police to report that Jean Stevens’ home contained the body of her husband, Jimmy, and sister, June.

Jean Stevens showed the workers the body of her sister and told them her husband’s body was rolled up in a rug on the premises, according to the document.

The agency workers told state police that “Mrs. Stevens is in control of her mental faculties (other than her acts of keeping the bodies in her home).”

Jean Stevens told the workers that she received help to disinter her husband’s body from an unnamed cemetery years ago. She said she retrieved her sister’s body from its grave shortly after burial in October 2009.

A press conference is slated for 1 p.m. today at the Bradford County Children’s Home in Towanda.

State police in Towanda said the remains of two people were found at a house on Old Stagecoach Road at about 3 p.m. Tuesday following the execution of a search warrant.
District Attorney Dan Barrett said Wednesday his office is not involved in a criminal homicide investigation. He declined to answer other questions."

Best (or worst, depending on your opinion) line? : "She said she retrieved her sister's body from its grave shortly after burial in October 2009."

Holy shit, you guys, I wanna meet this lady.

Or, you know, not.

It's over, it's over, it's ohhhhhhver ......

IT'S OHHHHHHHHH-VER!

The local Little League season, that is.

Now, I knew when I bought my house late last summer that there was a park with a little league playing field right next door. I mean, duh, it's kind of hard to miss.

What I did not know was that the Little League games would start up in April and not end until, oh, ....... LAST SATURDAY.

Jeezus f*cking CHRIST I got sick of coming home from work every night and hearing over-testosteroned dad-coaches SCREAM at the little kids on the teams. I mean, yelling so loudly (GO BACK TO FIRST!! GO BACK TO FIRRRRRRSSSTTTTTT!!!!) that I would flinch, out in my back-backyard. I can only imagine how loud it was on the field itself.

I hope those dudes are prepared to pay the psychiatrist bills in twenty years or so, is all I'm saying. Why a grown man would think it's okay to scream at a little kid is .... well, it's beyond me.

And this would be every weeknight, from five-fifteen until seven-thirty or so, and often all day on Saturdays. It got a little ..... tiring.

Admirably, there was very little cussing, although there was one memorable night when a dad-coach lost his shit, and the F-bomb flew fast and furious for several minutes as the stands went silent and younger siblings of the players started to cry.

Ah, youth sports.

The best part of the season, for me, happened last Saturday, during the marathon, ten-hour season-ending extravaganza of games. One of the coaches was out in the practice field (adjacent to my backyard) losing his shit and screaming at one of the kids, when evidently a large bug of some sort flew into his wide-open mouth, because what I heard was something like this:

TODDDDDDDD! CATCH THE BALL!!! CATCH THE BA-*hack hack hack HAAAAAACKKKKK HAAACCCCCCCCKKKKK* *cough* *choke* HAAAAAAACCCCCKKKKKKK *gasp*

Yeah, that was pretty sweet.

Next up: Soccer. Oh, and this morning the dozers were back in the undeveloped part of the park they started to level out for new fields last year, so I'm thinking it was a good thing I dug up all those plants. The Good Samaritan, that's me.

RockyCat and the Ghostly O-Ring

So, Sunday morning I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, fed the cats, brushed my teeth, glanced at the paper, and then hopped in the shower.


And on one of the shelves in the tub-surround, next to a bottle of shampoo, was an o-ring. A black rubber o-ring, about half-an-inch in diameter.


Where did it come from? Ya got me.


Seriously, I've been wracking my brain, trying to think of where on earth that o-ring came from, and ....... I got nothin'. I thought maybe it somehow broke off the showerhead, but it's still intact. I can't think of any possible other place that o-ring came from; I mean, my house isn't exactly overrun with o-rings to begin with, and how one would end up on a shelf in the shower ....


Right now, my best guess is that I have a ghost. A ghost who got tired of listening to me bitch about the slow-running shower drain and got sick of watching me dump Drano down the drain and plungeplungeplunge and bitch when it backed up AGAIN less than a week later and .... well, the ghost went down the drain and located the errant o-ring that had been gumming up the works and then set it on the shelf to let me know what he had done because - you know what? - the shower's been draining FINE since the o-ring appeared.


Yeah, that's all I got.


Any guesses?

Music like you've never heard

Okay, so I was watching "Glee" the other night, and they did "To Sir, With Love". As soon as those first notes started up, I knew what song it was, and I remembered the jolt I got the very first time I heard the song on the radio - I must have been five or six at the time. That song was like nothing else on the radio, like nothing I'd ever even heard before, and I remember that every time it played, I'd sit, transfixed, until the final notes. Some time after that, the movie that the song is from played on one of the local TV stations, and I remember seeing it in the listings, and FREAKING OUT, because, well ...... THAT SONG!!, and I remember begging my mom to let me stay up to watch it, because obviously it must be the best movie EVER if it had THAT SONG in it.



It's happened for me with other music, too. I have a sister who is eight years older than me, and I got exposed to a lot of cool stuff as a kid. When "Fragile" by Yes came out, my sister was eighteen and I was ten, and that song "Roundabout"? BLEW MY MIND. I can still remember the thrill I got listening to ..... that song. That song!



That song.



"The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" by Genesis (I know. I KNOW.) came out when I was twelve, and I remember being up at the lake, eared pressed to the radio, listening to that music ..... there was something so different about it ...



See also, "Carpet of the Sun" from the "Ashes are Burning" album by Renaissance - I was eleven when that came out, and I would listen to that song over, and over, and over, wishing that it would never end, because it was so ...... something.



It still happens now and again, although not with the same gut-wrenching impact of the first time you hear a song that you think might change everything. The first time I heard the "Avenue Q" soundtrack, it blew me away, just because it was a Broadway album that was actually ...... gasp ...... funny! The first time I heard Susan Werner's song "Time Between Trains" on the radio, I called up the station, desperate to find out who that singer was, because she was doing stuff that didn't sound like anything else I was hearing right then.



It hasn't happened in several years now for me, hearing a song that's like nothing else. I hope it happens again.

The Runt says ....

..... I am fine. Thanks for asking. Thanks for not making me talk LOLspeak.






Please excuse me ..... I'm busy .......





Seriously, The Runt is doing much better. He's still grooming, but not the excessive digdigdig grooming he was doing. I don't know if it's the flea meds, the steroids, the miticide, or the (attempted) change in diet, but his welts seem to be healing and the bare spots look like they are getting better as well.

Keeping fingers crossed ....

Freaky Friday - Lookin' out my front door edition

I looked out my living room window this morning and saw this:

Why did the deer cross the road?

To get to the tasty shrubbery in my neighbor's yard, of course!:

Riddle me this: Why, when DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET from this property is acres and acres and acres of undeveloped, tree-, shrub-, bush- and flower-laden land, do the deer insist on coming into the neighborhood to eat the shrubs? Do they taste THAT MUCH BETTER than the stuff growing wild all over the place?

Is a mystery.

Oh, and the deer COMPLETELY BYPASSED all my plantings on her way to the neighbor's house. Heh.

If this doesn't scream "old", I don't know what does

I am now the proud owner of a Craftmatic Adjustable Bed.

Duuuuuuuuudes.

I can explain!

I'd been looking for a bed for the spare bedroom since I moved in last summer. At first, I was going to put a full-sized bed in there, and I even bought a full-size bed frame, see?:



Is pretty, no? Twenty bucks at the thrift store. Win!

But the more I got to thinking about it, the less sense it make to put a full-size bed in there, the main reason being that I have overnight guests approximately once every kabillion years. The room isn't that huge to begin with, so I decided to go with a twin-size bed. If I get more than one person sleeping over, somebody's going to Sofa City, is all.

Enter a guy at work, who was cleaning out a deceased relative's house, and wanted to unload a twin-size Craftmatic Adjustable Bed that had only been used a few times.

Score!

Just call me Gramma.

Oh! And did you know that Craftmatic Adjustable Beds are fun? The head-part goes up! The foot-part goes up! You can do both at once and be all pretzel-y!

GodDAM, I'm old.

You can't make this shit up

Okay, so I'm reading the local paper yesterday morning, and there's this blurb with the heading, "Miracle on Hudson passenger to speak". And the blurb goes, "Dave Sanderson, a passenger on the "Miracle on the Hudson" US Airways flight that made an emergency landing in the Hudson River in January 2009, will be at the Barnes and Noble in (insert local town here) from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday."

And I'm reading along ......

"He'll sign copies of "Brace for Impact", a book to which he contributed his story about the crash and how his life has changed since the crash."

Still reading, and here's the killer ....

"His appearance is being sponsored by the (local town name) Airport."

What. The. F*ck.

This dude survives a terrifying PLANE CRASH into an ice-filled river, and the LOCAL AIRPORT is sponsoring a stop on his book tour?

Maybe it's just me, but maaaaaaan, I just don't get that.


Don't even get me started on how the local Alzheimer's Association holds a fund-raising "memory walk" every year. Errrrrrm, "memory walk"? For Alzheimer's? That's just f*cking cruel.



What are these people thinking?

A buck a can

So! Friday night The Runt and I went back to the vet. I'll tell ya, finding that cat and getting him into a carrier to go the the vet's on time, twice in three days, is a miracle akin to the loaves and fishes, but we pulled it off.



The scraping {shudder} wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and he tested negative for mites. The vet is treating for mites anyway, just in case they were all burrowed in when she took the sample. She suggested getting him started on hypo-allergenic cat food (Nutro), mixing it in with his regular stuff to start with, just in case food allergies are the problem.



Oh! And you can give cats benadryl! Who knew?



Saturday morning I was off to the pet store for some hypo-allergenic cat food, and peeps? A BUCK A CAN. Sweet jeezus. I took thirty bucks' worth of canned food, dry food and anti-itch spray home.

The anti-itch spray was a big fail. I sprayed it on, he licked it off. *sigh*. At least his tongue's not itchy. The benadryl worked okay, basically making him sleepy, but I don't know how many times I'll be able to get that stuff in his mouth without him throwing an armed revolt.

It was time to try the food.


I mixed the hypo-allergenic stuff with their regular stuff, fifty-fifty, set it down, and ........ nope. Both cats turned up their noses. Next mealtime, I tried a ninety-ten mix, nine parts old stuff to one part new stuff, and ....... nope. At this point, if there is one molecule of that new food in their bowl, they won't eat it.



What the hell do I do now?





Oh, and The Runt did land a mouse on Sunday, and spent much of the weekend stalking his sister and pouncing on her, so it's not ALL misery around here. Just so you know.

Freaky Friday!

This started out as a black chandelier, and by the time I got done messing with it, it looked more like a birdcage, so I added a bird.

It hangs in my kitchen, facing so the bird can look out the kitchen window.

In other Freaky Friday news, work edition, there is a guy out in the company parking lot right now, pressure-washing a bunch of refrigerators.

Don't ask me. I don't know what the hell he's doing out there, either.

Yes, I WAS in a bit of a bad mood yesterday .....

..... could you tell?



The Runt was sick. He's always been a, well, rather conscientious groomer, but over the weekend it got to the point where he was literally licking his fur off and developing bald spots. And then he'd digdigdig at himself until he raised welts. He felt awful, and I felt awful for him, so obviously a trip the vet was in order.



And the lawn mower, which had been acting pissy all season, finally crapped the bed on Tuesday night and was at the shop for repairs.



It was just one of those days when all you can do is sigh and pull out the checkbook.



So when that jerk on the bicycle shit his pants over having to use his brakes (I didn't come anywhere NEAR to hitting him, I swear; he was all pissed off because he had to slow down for me), it was pretty much the last straw. Kind of like Michael Douglas in Falling Down, where he goes all medieval on people's asses.



Hey! Maybe they'll make a movie about me!



And maybe Julia Roberts will play me, just like in the Pioneer Woman movie! (Can you even believe that shit? Jeezus Christ.)



ANYhow, the vet seems to think The Runt has a case of flea allergy dermatitis (which I tend to disagree with, for various reasons, but hey, she's the vet) and she started him on Frontline and steroids. If that doesn't work, I'm to try hypo-allergenic cat food (oh dear Lord), and we go from there.



Poor cat. Although he DID manage to take down a mouse last night after we got home from the vet's, so he must not be feeling TOO poorly.

Dear dude on the bicycle

I. did. not. see. you.

Yes, I did pull out into traffic in front of you, causing you to have to *gasp* step on your brakes. And yes, guys-who-have-so-many-DWIs-that-they-lost-their-license-and-can-no-longer-drive DO have the right of way over cars.

But I did not see you.

And the reason I did not see you is because you were peddling madly down the wrong side of the street, up on the sidewalk where you are not supposed to be.

I'm sorry I pulled out in front of you, but you know what? When you jumped off your bike and started swearing and screaming and giving me the finger?

You are goddamn lucky I didn't pull a fucking u-ey in traffic and come back and run you over, you fucking fucktard.

Keep that in mind the next time you're pulling a fit, you asshole.

Movie Review: The Keys of the Kingdom

The Keys of the Kingdom is a 1940s-era movie about a missionary priest in China in the early 1900s, with Cary Grant in the leading role. Boy, he was a tall drink of water, wasn't he?


It was interesting, if dated. The Chinese were portrayed pretty stereotypically, but I guess that's to be expected, given the era. I liked the book better, mainly because they cut so much out in the movie, including the part where the priest and two of his companions get waterboarded in the river - that was the most vivid and compelling part of the book for me.


Oh, and I was surprised to see Vincent Price show up in the role of a bishop - How many movies was that guy in, anyway?


So! An okay movie. I probably wouldn't pay to rent it again, but if it turned up on TCM on a rainy Saturday afternoon, I'd watch it.

TV alert

Tonight, some PBS stations are showing "Alone in the Wilderness", about this guy who went way into Alaska, built himself a cabin, and lived there, alone, for many years.

The first time I saw this show, it boggled my mind how self-sufficient this guy was. And how lonely he must have gotten - he didn't even have a radio to listen to! And ohmyGod it got cold there in the wintertime - I can't even imagine how he made it.

So anyway, it's a really good show, and if the thought of watching America's Got Talent makes you want to stab yourself, you might want to catch it.

Notes from the weekend

On Friday night, I got home from a trip to CrapMart to discover that I had been charged twice for a package of razor blades. Being that razor blades are not cheap*, on Saturday I went back to CrapMart with the razor blades and the receipt, and they actually refunded me the money. They didn't have to; I mean, I had no proof or anything that I hadn't actually bought two packages, but they did. Thanks, CrapMart!

More daisies and ferns in the playing fields next door volunteered for my relocation program and are now residing around the mailbox. See also: Broken wooden bird feeder down by the creek, which is now a planter.

Speaking of the mailbox, I concreted the post in the ground over the weekend so that it'll stop falling over when my niece's boyfriend backs into it. Which ....... oh, crap, that means that the next time he backs into it, it'll probably break in two. Shit. I shoulda thought that through a little more. Too late.

Okay, so I finally watched the finale of Lost. Did I cry at the end? Yes I did. I cried until tears were running down my neck; I sobbed until I choked. You know what did me in? The dog.

Did you know that everybody smokes at the flea market? They do. It's really quite amazing; I wouldn't have been surprised to see a baby or a dog with a cigarette.

There was some kind of drama at my sister TIB's house yesterday involving a missing bowl of macaroni salad. Don't ask me; I wasn't invited to that particular cookout. Not sure why everyone felt I needed status updates.**

Did you know that pileated woodpeckers sound like demented, laughing chickens? They do. Oh, and there was one out back yesterday doing his very finest impression of a choking crow.

The fireflies are back! I never used to see them until July at the old place, but they were flashing like crazy on Saturday night. Welcome back, dudes.

Somehow, with three days off, I still didn't manage to get the lawn mowed. Oops.

So! How was your weekend?





*Razor blade manufacturers price their product using the "polaroid" method. Charge almost nothing for the original product (camera), then charge a frickin' fortune for replacement parts (film). Crude, but effective.

** (ring ring ring) "Hello?" " We found it; it was in the breadbox!" "Um ..... okay?"