You better think .......

...... is what I told the lawn mower on Saturday afternoon when it conked out. I left it alone to peruse its options, and when I went back an hour later it started back up. Wise choice.

Other random weekend stuff:

When you've got a bad shoulder, it's probably not the best idea in the world to spend two hours up on a ladder with your arms over your head caulking the gutters.

On the other hand, if it will stop the damn gutters from leaking, it's worth it.

The locksmith showed up! Hallelujah! Now all the locks are keyed the same, which is like a miracle, until of course I lose the key, at which time it will suck. (Yes, I did have him give me a couple extra copies. Thanks for asking.)

Painting window frames takes about five times as long as you think it will. As far as that goes, ANY type of home repair takes about five times as long as you think it will. At least.

Wasps do not like to have their nests moved. Bite it, wasps. You're not nesting on my window frames. Be thankful I didn't bust out the Raid.

Little Girl got her first (that I know of) snake on Saturday. On Sunday, she got her second. I'm sensing an ominous trend here.

The same Little Girl who hunts down snakes is scared of the ceiling fans. And The Runt is terrified of the ceiling fans. It's gonna be a hot summer if I can't get them past this.

I saw a barn owl yesterday, which was very cool.

The trilliums are blooming:





Oh yeah, which way are ceiling fans supposed to turn in the summer? Clockwise or counter-clockwise? I know you're supposed to run them one way when it's hot, and the other way when it's cold, but I don't know which is which.

Of course, it won't matter much, if the cats keep hitting the floor like they're being strafed by the Luftwaffe every time I turn the damn things on.

Freaky Friday!

The subject of today's Freaky Friday has been on my blog before; forgive me if you're seeing a repeat.

I'm pretty sure this was some grade-schooler's art project.

I like to imagine what a massive papier-mache mess must have been created to come up with this thing. The bow tie's a nice touch.

He likes to look out the garage windows. Keeping an eye on things.

(Oh, and doncha love the supa-dupa paint job on that window frame? I DID NOT DO THAT. Thanks, previous owner! Thanks also for painting the garage windows shut. Jeezus.)

More hare-brained schemes than Lucy Ricardo

So! Some of my mail-order plants arrived yesterday. You know how it goes: They show giant, full-grown bushes in the catalog, and what shows up on your doorstep is a couple of sticks with a few leaves on the top.

I was going to put the weeping cherry out in the far corner of the backyard. But right now it's only about six inches high; if the lawn mower doesn't get it, the deer/rabbits/whatever-else-is -roaming-around-back-there surely will.

I think I have a plan. I think I will plant that weeping cherry in a pot-with-drain-holes, and then plant the pot itself in the garden close to the house where the lawn mower and the deer can't get at it . In a couple of years, when the plant is hopefully bigger and more able to cope with the wild wild west of the far backyard, I'll dig up the plant, remove the pot, and re-plant the plant itself where it's supposed to go.

That's it - my Cruise-azy idea. Is genius! Or not? What do you think?

Speaking of death .....

While rooting around in one of my cupboards the other day, looking for the jar of mayo I was sure had to be in there, I discovered a bag of goldfish crackers with a "Sell By" date of April 5, 2008.


Yeah.


You know what that means? It means that I bought that bag of goldfish crackers sometime (presumably) before April 5, 2008 and stuck it in my cupboard. At the old place. And it sat there for over a year, until August of 2009, when I packed up and moved. And at some point in the packing process, I picked up that bag of goldfish that had expired OVER A YEAR AGO, took a look at it, evidently shrugged, and packed it up to move to the new place*.


Where it sat, for almost another year, until I rediscovered it the other night. I took a look at the expiration date, sighed, and took the bag to work to snack on. (I mean, I'm going to snack on the crackers inside, NOT on the bag itself, although at this point in time, there may not be a whole heck of a lot of a difference.)


I'll let you know how they taste.


Or, you know, not, depending on the outcome.




*And I can even tell what my thought process most likely was at the time: "Meh. It's only been expired for a year. It's still good - might as well pack it." I swear to God sometimes I think I'm a guy.

So bad it's good. Almost.

On Saturday afternoon I stopped at a cemetery to visit my Grandma and Grandpa's graves. I hadn't been there since my Grandma died over twenty years ago (the cemetery is a ways out of town), and I decided to take a walk around while I was there. The last time I was in a cemetery, I found some, well, unusual headstones, and on Saturday I found another doozy:

You can click on the photo to embiggen. Sorry about the poinsettia in the way. (Dear relatives: It's April. You can remove the poinsettias.) Basically, it's a bucolic nature scene, with a man, a woman, and a cat (!) on the left; the man is reaching across a stream to a buck on the other side. Why is he reaching out to the deer? I don't know! Maybe he had a pet deer as a kid?

One thing's for sure: They had a cat named Morris.

I have all kinds of questions about this headstone, namely: Why is the lady so flat? Granted, I myself am not chestfully endowed, but if I was going to be represented on a headstone, you'd better bet I'd give myself a nice rack. Why not? I'd be dead; who's gonna call me on it?

'

Also, who's the artist? Oh, wait, was it Morris? And he signed his name? Nah, I'm pretty sure Morris was the cat. I am guessing that the artist was one of the deceased (before they died, obv), or possibly a family member. Frankly, the artwork leaves a little to be desired*, but then again, maybe the headstone maker was at fault. Maybe he was presented with a fantastically detailed piece of art, and this was the best he could do.

'

And I got to thinking, having a bad headstone is kind of like having a bad tattoo; you don't have to look at it, but everybody else does. Forever, in the case of the headstone.

And then I wondered if the cat was buried with them. I mean, he is in the picture, after all. But then ....... what about the deer?

It keeps coming back to deer, doesn't it? I found YET ANOTHER set of deer remains on Sunday; I'm not even kidding you. One of these nights I'm gonna hear a tap, tap, tapping on my front door, and it's gonna be a deer, wanting in. Wanting his dead relative's bones, probably.

*Could I do better? NO I COULD NOT.

The reason why I haven't mowed the back yard yet

Freaky Friday!

Meet Gatorduck:



Gatorduck was a white ceramic goose in a previous life.


Here's Gatorduck being sprung upon by his archnemesis, MoonCat:




Their battles are epic.

Step AWAY from the tree

The Runt got himself up a tree the other night. WAY up. With bluejays circling his head, just like in a cartoon.

When he was a kitten, he had a nasty habit of getting stuck in trees. And needing neighborly intervention to get back down.

So when I saw him in the tree the other night, I was relieved that at least it was a many-branched tree, one that he would have a good shot of getting out of all by himself. Unlike the no-branches-for-the-first-forty-feet pine trees he was so fond of at the old place.

And thankfully, within a half-hour he had made his way out of the tree. No neighbors with extension ladders and tuna-smeared-poles were involved.

Stay out of the trees, Runt. Trust me on this one.

Holy SHIT he actually came through

If you've been reading here for a while, you may know that my boss has a habit of ignoring things like Administrative Professionals' Day (it was yesterday, btw) and work anniversaries.

I am not above using subterfuge and guilt to collect my due on special occasions.

This year, I was truly not expecting anything, especially as my boss has his foot in a cast and is, well, not doing so hot with the whole crutches concept. Actually, I almost took the day off, but decided at the last minute to come in.

Little did I know when he grabbed one of the guys from the office yesterday morning "to go to a job site" that he was actually going to the local garden center to get a flowering almond for my yard. He even got a card! And put money in it! Without me guilting him into it!

Duuuuuude. Thanks!




Oh! And the icing on the cake? The guy he took with him to schlep around the garden center and cart the plant around (because the boss is on crutches) was this guy. How do ya like me now, brudda?

How appropriate that this should happen during Administrative Professionals' Week

'
'
Dear CAD drafter:

When you said that the secretary (i.e., me) should take over some of your job responsibilities, implying that because I make less than you, it would save the company money?

What you didn't know is that I make MORE than you do, not less.

Get ready to do a bitchload of filing, asshat.

The bluebell thief

I was down by the creek the other day and discovered a huge patch of bluebells growing wild. We're talking at least a hundred plants. So I went back to the house, grabbed a spade, and dug up a couple of them for the garden.

I am a bluebell thief.

Now, as far as I can tell, bluebells are not endangered in any way. This particular patch of bluebells possibly arrived via the recent floods, as they're in an area that got about three feet of water in January. And, the spot where they're located is very likely going to be overrun by Japanese bamboo in a few years, as it's already within about thirty feet of the bluebells.

Justification blah blah blah

I stole some bluebells.

And just the other day I noticed a bunch of ferns popping up where the new playing fields are going to be put in .......

The Osprey Cam is back! The Osprey Cam is back!

Guys! The Osprey Cam at Montezuma Wildlife Refuge is back up and running for another year!

Last year Mama Osprey hatched three - count 'em, three! - little ones, so be sure to check in and see how many baybies appear this year!



Click here. The link is also over on the left, there, under ..... wait a minute, let me find it ..... Okay, it's under "Interesting People" - click over there on Osprey Cam!



Or, you know, click here. Heh.

Freaky! Friday!

First off, many thanks to the kind Jess Riley, who sent me milkweed seeds to plant. Thanks, Jess - I can't wait to get started.

Also, the lawn-mowing-Mexican-standoff in my neighborhood has officially ended. Everybody was holding off on mowing their lawns, knowing that once they started, the lawn-mowing season would carry merrily on for the next SIX MONTHS. So everybody was waiting, waiting for a neighbor to mow first and shame them into mowing their own lawn.

I resisted the peer pressure when T. across the street had her lawn mowed, but when L. right next door to me mowed? I bowed.

Lawn-mowing season has begun. *sigh* On the plus side, that's a pretty good sign that snow-shoveling season has ended.


Okay, on with Freaky! Friday!

I picked up this book at a thrift store (where else?) - it's a Christian Science book. An inscription on one of the title pages is dated 1919, so it's at least that old.




The thing that kills me about this book is the seal on the cover:



In case you can't see it, it reads "Heal the sick - Raise the dead - Cleanse the lepers - Cast out demons."

Raise the dead? Sounds like zombie action to me. Count me out.

craigslist.weird

The former owner of my house left behind an upright freezer in the garage. He left behind a LOT of crap, actually; boxes and boxes of old shit up in the attic, and a couple of garbage cans full of old shingles and ceiling tile out IN THE BACKYARD, and cans and cans of paint, opened and God only knows how old, in various places.

Thanks, former owner! It's bad enough that I had to clean out the place I was moving FROM; it just adds insult to injury that I had to ALSO clean out the place I was moving TO.


Sheesh. I don't get paid enough for this shit.



ANYhoo, I had myself a freezer. Unfortunately, I do not have a ton of kids or a husband who hunts, so I had no need for said freezer. And it was taking up valuable real estate, i.e., a corner of the garage that I would prefer to fill with crap of my very own.



First, I tried to barter it with the various people who were doing repairs on the house. No dice. Then I tried to GIVE it away. Nope. Finally, in desperation, I put an ad on craigslist.



And let me tell you, the squirrels come out of the woodwork when you put an ad on craigslist. Dear sweet lord, there are some ODD people out there. Along with the old deaf people who try to talk to you on the phone without actually being able to, you know, HEAR what you're saying, there's the scammers and the spammers, and there was ALSO one enterprising individual who actually HIGHJACKED my lowly listing in an attempt to sell some old Nissan. DUDE: Listings are FREE. Get your own.



But! The freezer is sold. Fifty bucks, in my pocket. And hallelujah, because that thousand-dollar timing belt job that I got talked down into three hundred bucks? Has morphed into a timing belt-water pump-tensioner EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLAR EXTRAVAGANZA* under the hood of my car.

Don't ever buy a Saturn. I am telling you right now, DO NOT EVER BUY A SATURN. I won't go into all the reasons right now, but a main one is that Saturn is proprietary with their parts, meaning that if something breaks on your car, you can't go to the local parts store and buy a replacement. You have to go directly through Saturn, which in this area means a warehouse an hour-and-a-half away, which means it takes AT LEAST a day to get parts.


Which means my car has now been in the garage, on a lift, for THREE DAYS, patiently waiting for various and sundry parts.


And the garage dude is all, "well, I'm having to rearrange the schedule here at the shop because your car's on one of the lifts", and I'm all, "YOUR schedule? I'M the one with no car, brudda!"


On the plus side, Little Girl was kind enough to bring me a mouse this morning. Thanks, Little Girl! Maybe I can trade it for some car repairs.



*Updated to add: Did I say eight hundred dollars? I just got off the phone with garage dude, and I MEANT to say eight-hundred-fifty-two-dollars-and-seventy-one-cents. SON OF A BITCH.

It's like the Deer World is trying to contact me

It all started with the antlers from Jimay's. Then came the Big Box O'Antlers. Then there was the deer bones by the side of the road. After that came the bones I found by the creek.

On Saturday, I was out mucking around and found yet another area where deer had been field dressed last fall.

These remains have a little more, well, decomposing to do before I'm willing to load them in the back of the wagon. I'll keep an eye on them.

And then, Sunday, I was out walking someplace else, and looked down and saw a big ol' antler just laying on the ground:

Look how big this sucker is!:

Did you know that white-tailed deer shed their antlers every year? I did not know this. In all my time wandering around in the woods, I had never found an antler. Until yesterday. I had always assumed that you could tell how old a buck was by how big its antlers were. Silly me. Although, as it turns out, in general the older a buck is, the bigger its (annual) rack will be, so I wasn't totally off base. Just some.

But with all these bones appearing to me, it's like the deer are trying to tell me something. With their bones. I just can't figure out what it is.

Maybe they'll get ahold of me via the radio station in my house.

Random cranky Monday-afternoon-office thought

People who leave time on the office microwave clock are like people who leave the seat up are like people who litter.

Inconsiderate of those who come after them.



And hey, kid, GET OFF OF MY LAWN.

Awake and dreaming

First off: TURRRTLES! The turtles are up out of the mud and sunning themselves on logs and rocks. Welcome back to the topside, guys! A hearty welcome as well to the snakes and the rabbits, also spied out and about this weekend. See also: Mayflowers, spring beauties, skunk cabbage, bluets and trout lilies. The fauna and flora are back in abundance.





Okay, here's a weird thing. On Saturday morning, around six-fifteen, I had a dream. (I'll keep this brief; I promise.) And in the dream there was a radio playing really LOUD. I woke up, and I could still hear the radio. At first I thought that one of the cats had knocked over the radio in the bathroom and it somehow turned on, but as I listened, it sounded like, you know how when you're dialing around to find a station and you somehow get in between TWO stations and you can hear bits and snippets of both?



Except it was just, like, syllables. Like, "kay-do-me-by-ee-lan-ma-dee". Really LOUD.



And I laid there, wondering, what the heck IS this radio station? And where is it coming from? And I thought, well, maybe the paperboy's got a radio. But instead of sounding like it was coming from one specific place, it sounded like it was all around me, like I was in the middle of a stadium and all the speakers were going at once. LOUD. And I was pissed off, because THIS IS WHY I MOVED.


And then, just as I was about to get out of bed and find out what was happening, the sound started to fade. Over the course of about a minute, it went away completely.


Okay, the way I see it, there's two options here:


1. I was still dreaming. Waking up and still hearing the noise was all part of the dream, and I woke up for real some time later.


2. The mothership came back for the damn winged rabbit, and was hovering over my house beaming down instructions for return to the homeland.



The rabbit's still in the kitchen, so I guess I've gotta go with option 1.


But it was still weird.

Freaky Friday - Peter Cottontail edition

Okay, so, the antiques store where I bought Saint Jude has a Table O'Crap right by the cash register, where all the dealers pile the cheap, often broken stuff they can't get rid of. Everything on the table is a dollar.

The dude behind the sales counter was bullshitting with the customer ahead of me and I had to wait to buy Saint Jude, so I turned around to purvey the Table O'Crap, when what did I see but this:







(Note: Not actual antiques-store-Table-O'Crap. This is my own personal Table O'Crap, one of several at my place.)



What in the hell IS this? It's about ten inches tall. It seems to be made out of plaster. It's got rabbit ears and and a rabbit nose, but also wings. It also has a human body, with what looks like six-pack-abs, along with a freakin' belly button, evidence that it was not crafted to look fur-covered as a rabbit would be. Rabbit head; wings; human body. WTH?



Peeps, I don't find this stuff. It finds me.

One born every minute

So, I was driving back from the bank the other day when I passed a house with a blooming magnolia tree in the front yard.

And I remembered how, this time last year, I drove past a different house with a magnolia, and I instantly wanted one, and even looked into the details of getting one, but then realized that the backyard where I was renting was already pretty shady, and did I really want another tree, and hey, I wasn't gonna live there forever anyway, RIGHT?

What a difference a year makes.

Now I am in my own house, with my great big backyard (photo taken last year; everything's still pretty brown right now):




Jeezus, I love that backyard. Even if it DOES get squishy this time of year.

And I can plant all the trees I want.

But not too many. I like sunlight, not shade.

Side note: According to my neighbor, that tree to the right of the willow is an elm. Evidently the neighborhood was once full of them, but then Dutch Elm Disease came along, and I've got one of the only ones left. Go, elm tree!

Back to the story: I went on line and bought a magnolia. I thought about buying a Catalpa, but you guys told me they were a pain in the ass, so I'm going to pass for now.

I don't know about you, but I find it impossible to go to a nursery website and buy just one thing. Plus, Michigan Bulb (I know. I KNOW.) is having a special where if you buy forty bucks worth of stuff, you get twenty bucks off the order. Who can resist?

Not me.

So now I've got a magnolia on the way, and a weeping cherry tree, and a butterfly bush, and three hardy hibiscuses. Hibisci?

Oh! Oh! And then I was in Crapmart the other night, and there was a whole shelf full of peony plants, you know how they come, just the bare roots in dirt in a bag? And one of them was struggling to start growing, inside the bag, inside the store, under those crappy Crapmart lights.

I'm not made of STONE, people. I bought that peony. If it's trying THAT HARD to grow, against all odds, I'll give it a home. I know this photo is blurry, but check out those shoots poking up:



And then I had to stop at another store, and they had a display of starter lilacs for four bucks. Four bucks! I had two lilacs, a white and a purple, at the old place, but they had grown too big to move and I had to leave them behind. So I had to buy one of the four-dollar lilacs, natch.



Time to start digging some holes. C'mon over!

Up next: Kazoo

What is going on with American Idol? Last night, that one gal was accompanied by a guy on a didgeridoo, or whatever you call those giant Australian horn thingies, and that other dude's performance featured a dramatic entrance by a ....... bagpiper.

And OH MY GOD could they have dragged that show out any longer? Gah.

Too bad none of this year's contestants can actually, you know, SING. Oh, I know, a couple of them have passable voices, but really nothing terribly stand-out-ish.

So said the girl whose cats flee the room when she sings. Heh.

Oh, boy, am I pissed (Now with updates!)

People I am currently waiting to hear from:

1. The mechanic, with an estimate for replacing my timing belt. Okay, okay, the car's timing belt. I called him yesterday, and he said he'd call me "right back" with the price. Yeah.

2. The locksmith. I've been trying to get a doorlock situation at the house remedied since, oh, last August. (Dear robbers: All of the locks work. I just don't like the type of lock. Repeat: All of the locks work. Just so you know. You robbers.) This particular locksmith got involved about a week ago, and said he'd have someone give me a call and let me know when one of his guys would be stopping by. Still waiting.

3. The furnace guy. Jesus CHRIST what is with this guy? He finally showed up a while back to put in the new blower motor, but the furnace STILL isn't running right, and he was going to just pop by when he got a break in his schedule. That was ....... weeks ago? Maybe months? F*ck.

4. The plate-glass window guy, who was out to lunch when I called an hour ago and ...... oh wait! He's on the phone. Hallelujah. Be right back.

Okay, so the plate-glass window guy said come right over, bring your windows, and I did. And he said he could replace the broken glass in my storm windows, no problem, and he'd - uh oh - "give you a call when they're ready." Shit. F*ck me.

I know I've ranted about this before, but WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET SOMEONE TO FIX SOMETHING AROUND HERE? I am paying GOOD MONEY to get this shit fixed and WHY WILL NO ONE RETURN MY CALLS and HEY KIDS GET OFF OF MY LAWN.

Sheesh.



Updated to add: The mechanic just called back. He wants a thousand dollars to replace the timing belt. A. thousand. dollars. Granted, that includes a new water pump (which the car does not need; it was replaced two years ago, thankyouverymuch) and a system flush, but still. It's a THIRTY-FIVE DOLLAR PART. Calling other garages in three ....... two ...... one......

Updated AGAIN to add: See the comments for the latest development!

Non, je ne regrette rien

'

'

Peep is Risen.

ONE

...... singular sensation.

I quit smoking one year ago today.

Can I have an Amen?

For those of you who may be new here, I smoked a pack-and-a-half a day for almost thirty years. And then I quit. Cold turkey.

One last run of the numbers:

Number of cigarettes I would have smoked between April 3, 2009 and today, had I not stopped smoking on that date: 10,950.


Amount of money saved: $1,952.75. (Just to clarify: I smoked cheap cigs I bought on line. Had I been buying name-brand smokes at the 7-11, that number would have easily been double. I used a figure of $3.56 a pack, since that's what my cigs cost at the time I quit.)


I've owned cars that cost less than that. A LOT less.


I suppose I really should get all introspective up in this space right now, but I'll try to avoid it. I've been posting Nomoblowsmo updates one a month for the last year, so I think I've pretty much said it all by now.


I hope to shit that this is not gonna come off as pretentious, but I do think that if you've got a kid, you may want to print out some of those once-a-months (posted on the third of each month) and show them to him/her. You may want to black out the swear words, but show him/her some of those posts.

Because when I was a kid? I bought all that smoking-is-DEATH stuff they taught us in school - hook, line and sinker. I remember making up anti-smoking POSTERS and parading through the smoke-filled family room, BEGGING my father to quit.

A few years later, I was bumming smokes from him.

When you're young, you think you're invincible. Lung cancer happens to OTHER people; YOU, on the other hand, are going to live forever. And besides, you can quit any time you want. It's easy!

Um, no. It's not. And maybe if you show your kids some of these posts, and they see the way I've struggled for A YEAR to quit, they'll get the picture. Just a little. Probably not, but maybe.

And I just want to mention, real quick-like, The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allan Carr. You can get a used copy for less than ten bucks, including shipping, on Amazon. I'm not saying that I wouldn't have been able to quit smoking without it; I don't know that. One of the attractions was that you could smoke while reading the book; honestly, I probably wouldn't have bought it if not for that. I just know that I bought the book, smoked as I read it, put out a half-finished cigarette as I read the last words, and haven't smoked since. I was actually kind of afraid to read it, if you want to know the truth; it was kind of like, holy shit- what if it actually works? What if I actually quit? What will my life be like if I don't smoke? What will I DO without cigarettes?

It works, and I quit. And there was nothing to be afraid of. What do I do without cigarettes? Everything I did before, just without a cig in my hand.


I made it.

Funny? Or not-so-much?

First off, I am pleased to report that the spring peepers were peeping away last night, which is VERY cool, because at my old place, I had to go down to the creek if I wanted to hear peepers. Here, I just open a window. AND, I found coltsfoot on my property. It's blooming away, which means spring is surely here. It also means that I have a very soggy yard, but we'll skip over that part, shall we?



Okay, so I have been delegated to bring dessert to Easter family dinner. And because it's impossible to accurately predict how many people are going to attend beforehand, I thought I'd just make a sheet cake and be done with it.


Except I thought that a sheet cake was kind of boring, so I thought, well, I'll frost it in a pretty spring color. Like pink, or yellow, or green.


Hmmmm...... green......... If I frosted it green, it would look like grass, and I could go to the dollar store and get some little plastic bunnies to put on it. Festive! *cough*


So! I go to the dollar store, and what did I find but ...... bunny peeps! Cool, I thought, I can put the bunny peeps on the cake.


And my mind keeps churning, and I'm thinking, I can do a whole Easter scenario with the peeps! Like, "Christ is risen", with peeps! And I can put one peep on a straw to get him up above the cake, and I can make a little halo, and all the other bunny peeps can be looking up in amazement ....



See, here's the thing: I think that's funny. I'm pretty sure some other people who will be at Easter dinner will think that's funny. But there's some others, in particular the Catholic deacon ...... well, I'm not so sure.



What do you think? Christ in peep form, or play it straight?

..... and these were the last images found on her camera after her death.

Duuuuuuudes, check it out:





Sorry for the poor quality - I was trying to get some pics quickly, before he stabbed me to death with his bloody horn.




It's hard to tell from the pics, but that horn is definitely not after-market or what remained after something else was broken off. The red color is original, too, and not the work of some emo kid with a Sharpie. You can click those pics to embiggen.

Here's a pic of something similar I found on Flickr*:



Who is this dude?!

Right now he's on my kitchen windowsill beneath the Cabinet Wall O' Religion. (Whole other post, right there.) But I would not be surprised if I woke up some morning to find him on my nightstand, peering up at me. **






*When I went to look it up again so I could credit the photog, I could no longer find it. Spoooky.


** ha ha, not really. Because then I would die of fright.




DISCLAIMER: This totally counts as this week's Freaky Friday. Shut it, Rob.

..... and I don't even know what nah-mah-stay MEANS

Yoga kicked my butt last night.



As you may recall, I decided to try and get rid of some flabby spots (ew) a couple of months ago, and settled on the thirty-day shred. After a few days, my knees spontaneously combusted, and I had to take a break to recuperate.

I started back up with a "core" workout, which is basically thirty minutes of crunches, which at least gives my knees a break. Oh yeah, and when did sit-ups become "crunches"? Who was the genius who figured out that you didn't have to go all the way up? In any event, I'm just glad that crunches don't require somebody to hold your ankles. Remember that, in gym class? Pairing off to hold each other's ankles for sit-ups? Ah, memories. God, I hated gym class.

ANYhoo, the crunch thing was going along swimmingly, and I decided to alternate it with a "stretching" workout, because if I was any stiffer I'd be plywood. I gradually worked Ms. Michaels back into the mix, and now I alternate between shred, crunch and stretch. The Spanish Inquisition lives!

SO, I was at the dollar store the other day (don't judge), and they had yoga DVDs! For a buck! I bought one, and last night was the big yoga debut, and ....... wow, those people are bendy, aren't they? I don't think my body is ever gonna do that stuff, and this morning, my back and neck are ..... cranky. They are not happy with this particular party.

But! Yoga is fun! You get to do all kinds of funny-sounding stuff. Oh! And speaking of funny-sounding, what the heck is "nah-mah-stay"? And how do you say it? This one girl on the DVD was saying, "nah-MAH-stay", but there was a dude on there who was all, "nah-mah-STAY". Is there discord in the yoga world? Are there warring factions over the proper pronunciation? Is there going to be a schism in Yoga, with one group breaking away from the rest? The suspense is killing me.

Okay, not really, right now it's the yoga that's killing me. Stay tuned - Eventually, I predict that I'll exercise myself right into the ER. It's only a matter of time.

I have my limits

Okay, so you guys know how my house is full of all kinds of weird shit. I have got to tell you, on Sunday I saw something in an antiques store that was too weird even for me.



It was a ceramic statue of a saint, about 8" tall, dressed all in flowing robes. The saint was cradling a medallion of another saint in his arms. And he had a bloody horn on his head, right in the center, at his hairline.



WHAT. THE. F*CK.



Catholics, help me out here. I really, REALLY wanted to buy that damn thing (three bucks!), but I don't want to bring some evil bad awful thing into my house. I don't want to end up like Karen Black in Trilogy of Terror with that nasty little kachinka doll thing chasing me around.



But seriously, which saint is this guy supposed to BE?! Is there a rational reason why a saint would have a bloody horn on his head?



I don't get it.

Alone

My neighbor T. invited me over for coffee yesterday afternoon. I had chatted with her before, but this was the first formal "visit", if you will.

We went in the kitchen, and coffee was poured, and snacks were had, and we chatted. Visited. And she told me about her grown children, and her grandkids, and her friends, and trips she takes to Oregon. And she talked about her husband, who died of cancer three years ago at the age of eighty-two.

And I thought how sad it must be, to have spent your entire adult life with someone else, and then to have them die first, leaving you all alone for the first time in fifty years. I remember how lost my Mom was when my Dad passed away. She didn't even know how to balance a checkbook, for Pete's sake - Dad always did that stuff.

After our visit was over, I said my goodbyes to T. and went back to my place. And I thought, Wow, how lucky I am - at least I'll never have to deal with that. I'll never have to fight panic at the passing of someone I spent my entire life with.

Because I'm already alone.

Freaky Friday!

Okay, okay, technically it's Saturday, but ROB was having a frickin' heart attack over the lack of Freaky Friday, so here we go. Oh, and by the way, ROB, it's FREAKY Friday, NOT "Wacky" Friday. Christ.

A while back I picked up this concrete tiger at a flea market, because I am a sucker. He's about two-and-a-half feet long, and weighs about what you'd think a concrete tiger would weigh.

I couldn't figure out what was up with the white. Was he supposed to be an albino tiger? If so, wouldn't the stripes be black instead of orange? And why was his face all orange, when the rest of him was white? So many questions. I couldn't figure out the original intent, so I decided to make him a regular tiger. Because that's what every house needs: A regular concrete tiger.


A few coats of paint later, and I have the world's largest paperweight:







I think I'm gonna varnish him and put him in the garden. To keep Mr. Z and Mini-Z company.





I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY, ROB.



(just kidding)

People I am trying my best to ignore right now

1. Tiger Woods. Okay, he cheated on his wife. A LOT. And then evidently claimed he had some sort of "sex addiction" and went into rehab, which is just laughable. Banging anything that'll hold still for it is not an addiction; it's stupidity, considering all the sexually-transmitted diseases out there. The honchos at the PGA must've shit their pants when all this came out - there goes the ol' meal ticket. I am vaguely interested to see what the ratings do when he starts showing up for tournaments again. It'll also be interesting to see how many Little Tigers come out of this.


2. Kate Gosselin. At least with her OLD reality show, she had to spend time with her kids if she wanted to get any airtime. Now all bets are off, and I'm just left to wonder exactly how much plastic surgery she had, because she sure doesn't look like she used to. At all. Those poor kids. All I can think of is that children's book where the little animal (chicken? puppy? I can't remember) wanders around asking various items, "Are you my mommy?"



3. Sandra Bullock and her (soon-to-be-ex) hubby. WHY DO PEOPLE NEVER LEARN? Sweetie, if he cheated on someone else to be with you, he'll cheat on you to be with someone else. Learn it. Love it. Live it.



Whew. I feel better now.

She. and. her. shaaaaaadow .......

While we're talking about Little Girl, I thought I'd put up these pics I took a few weeks ago, back when the world was still all white.






The snow had finally packed down enough so that the cats could walk on top of it, instead of floundering through.




Little Girl would paw at the snow, and then examine her paw, as if to say, "when is this stuff gonna GO AWAY already?"





I love the way her shadow stretched out behind her.

Today, just a few weeks later, it's rainy, and the tiger lilies and irises (and all the mystery stuff the last owner evidently planted - crocuses and daffodils, so far) poke out of the ground a little further every day. We may still get snow; heck, we've been known to get snow here on Mother's Day, for the love of Pete, but the worst is over.



So I hope.

She's a traveller

Little Girl has been giving me fits lately - she takes off and is gone for hours.


On Saturday, she left the house around ten a.m. and didn't come back until almost 7:30 that night. Yesterday, she was out the door by seven a.m., and I didn't see her again until after dark.

Saturday was especially worrisome, because I was working in the yard for a good chunk of the day, and usually when I do that, the cats come around to supervise. Faithful Runt was glad to oblige, but not Little Girl, even when I called and called and CALLED for her. Only to go inside, truly frightened, at dusk, to discover that she had done an end-run around me via doggy door and was (FINALLY) inside eating her dinner.

Where does she go? Someplace covered, because when she came in last night, it had been raining for a while, but she was fairly dry. I would assume she was double-dipping, i.e., hanging out and eating at two houses, but she wears a collar with my phone number on it, and I would think I'd get a call if someone had an extra cat at their house.

She's been spayed, so she's not out getting frisky. She's not scratched up, so she isn't fighting with other cats.

And I have to say, poor Runt is all out of sorts when she's gone. He paces, and goes in and out, and hops up in the cat tree so he can look out the window, watching for his sister.

Where do you go, Little Girl?






Ask my feral mama, she says. I'm not tellin'.

Last night's American Idol

'
'
Dear Miley Cyrus:

PUT SOME PANTS ON!!


That is all.

Recently Read

Skip it if you wanna.



1. Promise Not To Tell by Jennifer McMahon - Murder mystery. Interesting, and an okay read.

2. Under the Dome by Stephen King - Whew, this one took me a couple of months to get through. Not that it wasn't interesting; it just takes me a while to plow through a thousand pages. It's a novel about a community sealed off from the rest of the country - who did it, and why? I LOVED the big reveal - when you find out, you'll be reminded of an old Twilight Zone episode. It's typical King - Long, with lots of interesting characters, a plot that keeps you turning the pages, and an ending that's an absolute barn-burner. Oh, and there was one passage, just a couple of sentences, actually, that made me cry. It's been a long time since a book did that. One quibble - characters kept saying "clustermug", which may indeed be what they say in that part of the country, but where I come from, it's "clusterfuck", and I kept wondering why he didn't just go ahead and use it. Good book - good read.

3. Lark and Termite by Jayne Phillips - Novel about a young woman and her disabled brother in the fifties. It got good reviews, but I felt distanced from the main character and gave up about halfway through. I might try it again sometime.

4. Making Shit out of Sticks - haha, not really. I DID get a book out of the library called "Making Furniture from Twigs" or some such, because that willow tree out back is shedding like crazy - but I took a look at the diagrams and thought "nope".

5. If The Creek Don't Rise by Rita Williams - Memoir of an African-American woman raised by her grandma out west - interesting.

6. Dogwood by Chris Fabry - I really, really liked his book "Junebug", so I thought I'd like this one, too, but sadly, I just couldn't get interested.


7. Okay, let's do a movie review! (500) Days of Summer is a cute romantic comedy. There's no explicit sex scenes, in case you're looking for something to watch when the folks are visiting. It's bright, and funny, and not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.


So that's what I've been reading and watching lately. "Under the Dome" was the best of the bunch. How about you - read, or watched, anything good lately?

Notes from the weekend

1. When calling your cat who has been missing all day (I was so worried), it's best to call her by her nickname, Gee Gee. Because wandering around the backyard calling out "Little Girl! Little Girl!" is probably going to make the neighbors nervous.



2. That patch of ice WILL make you fall. Do NOT try to cross it because you WILL fall. Whoops; too late. Ouch.



3. BONES! I have them:






These aren't the ones from the side of the road. Mom and I were walking down by the creek yesterday when to what should my wondering eyes appear but a deer skull! Woot! Further examination revealed the rest of the bones. I do feel sorry for that poor lady we ran into on the way back who greeted us with, "Hi! What a nice day for a walk ............" and then trailed off as her eyes traveled down to the big ol' bag of bones I was carrying. On a related note, I wonder if someone from the FBI will show up at my door if I google "how to clean bones". Let's try that out.

4. My neighbor T. came over and chatted for a while when I was working on the front garden. Later on, I traded some just-started sunflower plants for a piece of homemade cherry pie from my neighbor L. My neighbors rock. And I definitely got the better deal on that trade.

5. I think I'm going to wear chain mail the next time I have to put new flea collars on the cats. Jesus CHRIST those claws are sharp. It's just new collars, cats; calm down already.

6. The prayer flags are up!

So pretty!

Freaky Friday!

Back around this time last year, when I had been looking at houses for months and hadn't seen much I even wanted to bother to put an offer on, I heard an old wives' tale about how if you wanted to attract a boyfriend, you should hang a mirror over your bed.



Well. I didn't necessarily want a boyfriend, but I did want a house. I got a mirror at the thrift store, and I put some illustrations of houses on it, so the ju-ju gods wouldn't get confused and send me a boyfriend instead. Then I started adding on stuff I picked up on walks, acorns and feathers and stuff, so that my new place would have a nice big yard. I added on stick figures of The Runt and Little Girl and myself, and put Rocky on top to supervise. And as time kept passing, and I kept looking at houses I didn't like, I kept adding to the mirror.






Please ignore the gal with the bedhead.



I don't know if the ju-ju mirror helped or not, but it IS hanging in the kitchen of my new house.

Just call me Jessica

Remember that TV show, the one with Jessica Simpson, and her hubby Nick Lachey (or however you spell his last name), and in that one episode, she's got a can of tuna, only she's all confused, because it's Chicken of the Sea brand, and she's all, "Well, is it tuna? Or is it chicken?"

Yeah.

I am currently pondering the status of Animal Crackers.

Are they crackers? Or are they cookies?

I mean, the bag says they're crackers. Animal Crackers. But they taste like cookies. Kind of shortbread-ish. But then again, there's that Shirley Temple song, "Animal crackers in my soup", which would seem to indicate cracker status, because you're not gonna put cookies in your soup. But then again, I've never heard of ANYBODY putting animal crackers in their soup, outside of that one song, so that would lean toward the cookie side of the debate.

And let's not forget, you can also purchase frosted animal crackers, and who the hell would frost an actual cracker, so maybe cookie it is.

Cookie? Or cracker?

I'm so confused.

Breaking News!

The Bleeding Hearts are up!

They start out as little spears of red fringe poking out of the ground. Two months from now, they'll look like this:



I'm so excited! These are some of the plants I moved from the old place, and because I moved stuff in August, possibly the WORST time of the year to try to move perennials, I had no idea if anything was going to make it. But the Bleeding Hearts are up! Oh, the tiger lilies are coming up, too!

Spring is coming.

People of Walmart

I had to go to Walmart last night. I try to avoid it whenever possible, and I absolutely WILL NOT go to Walmart on the weekend, because the people there fill me with rage, and there are exponentially more of them there on the weekend. Seriously, I can walk into Walmart on a Saturday feeling just fine, and by the time I leave, I'm ready to go do a drive-by shooting.


So! Weeknights at Walmart are decidedly less insane-making, preferably Monday or Tuesday. And last night, as I was shopping in the (relatively) quiet store, I noticed something that's struck me before: The most crowded aisle in the store is always, always the chips-and-snacks aisle. We're talking, you can't even get DOWN that aisle, it's so crowded.


Least crowded aisle? Fresh produce. It's like a ghost town.


And I was all ready to get all judge-y and shit, but you know what? Fresh produce is expensive. Junk food is cheap. So I get that if you have limited dollars to spend, you're going to spend it on the stuff that will fill you up. I mean, I can totally see why Ramen noodles are so popular with the struggling-college-student crowd. Four for a buck?! Yeah way!


No judging here. Today, at least.

Spongebob Squarecat

Hey, she like right angles - nothin' wrong with that.

Freaky Friday!

I bought a box of deer antlers at a flea market a while back. The best ones I hung in a doorway; I still had a bunch left that I wasn't sure what to do with, until I decided to arrange them in a display. Kind of like flowers. Or not.

Every day I drive past a spot where somebody field-dressed a deer not far from the side of the road, and the entire ribcage is right there. (Holla! I live in the sticks now.) You have no idea how tempted I am to grab those bones; one of these days it just might happen, if coyotes don't beat me to it.

First World Problems

Hahaha - Sorry about that - "First World Problems" - do you dislike that phrase as much as I do? The first time I heard it, it just grated somehow - it just sounds so, I don't know, condescending or something. And now, of course, it's all over bloggyland, so I guess I'll just have to tough it out for awhile.

Oh! And another phrase that drove me crazy from the get-go is "old soul". I do not like "old soul". If you want to call someone wise, go ahead, but unless we're talking about Vishnu or something, you might want to steer away from "old soul". It's been done. and done and done and done. I'm waiting right now for someone to call Corey Haim an "old soul".

Ooooookay, now that I've wandered about as far off track as I can, let's get to the point. I used "First World Problems" {shudder} as the title today because I'm about to talk about money and the lack thereof. And Ex, I am telling you RIGHT NOW, if you're gearing up to chime in about how if we all just got advanced degrees and cushy jobs like you, there'd be no problems, well ...... aw, go for it. It's always nice to hear another view. Here's my story .....


On Monday, my co-workers and I got some bad news of the financial kind.

Nothing earth-shattering, nothing to land me in the poor house, but it's always disheartening to discover that not only are you not getting a raise, you are actually going to be taking home less money.

And again, while this was no way going to ruin my world, it was a blow. And I was worried. Worried about how I was going to make my budget stretch that much farther, and worried that at almost fifty, I wasn't making more money and was actually starting to slide backward - never a direction you want to go.

Oh, and the reason for all this financial woe? MVP, our f*cking health insurance company, who decided to jack premiums 17% this year. Because they can. Meaning it will now cost my employer six grand a year per employee for health insurance. No dental, no vision, big-co-pay health insurance.

If there are any right-wing, tea-party, no-nationalized-health-care wingnuts reading this right now? KISS MY ASS.

Ahem.

So anyway, I spent a couple of uneasy nights re-working the old budget and trying to figure out a way around the problem, and I came up with a solution. I would still be making less money, but it would be coming out of my vacation hours, instead directly out of my weekly income*, and I thought it would work for both my company and I, but I wasn't sure if I should present it to the boss or not. And I kept worrying. And fretting.

So! Yesterday afternoon, the boss could evidently tell something was wrong, and he called me into his office and asked me to spill.

I started to explain, about how this financial loss would be hard for me to fill, and ..... oh f*ck me sideways ...... I started to cry.

I HATE it when I cry at work. The guys don't cry at work, for Pete's sake - why do I have to cry?

In retrospect, I guess some of what caused yesterday's tears is that I spent a long time at the financial edge. Then I finally started making more money, working hard, getting secure, and to start going backward was just ....... no. HELL NO. Waaaaaa.

And when you are the sole breadwinner in your household, when there is no spouse or significant other to help absorb the blow, well, it's up to you to hold off the damn wolf at the door. And that's scary.**

But! Happy ending! As soon as I started to spill, the boss said, "Oh yeah, I meant to call you aside after that meeting ...... it doesn't apply to you."

'{wiping tears away} '{feeling really f*cking stupid}

Yay! No ramen noodles for me.

But here's thing: In this shit-tastic economy, where the banks and the fat cats get bailed out and the rest of us get told to go piss up a rope, this kind of thing is happening to a lot of people who are NOT getting told that it doesn't apply to them. I just happened to be incredibly lucky.


And I am grateful. And worried about what happens next year, when MVP inevitably decides to jack their rates yet again.

And I am glad that I dodged the bullet this time.



*I know that makes no sense, but there is no way in hell I am going to go into any more detail about financial stuff here. Sorry.


**See also: That's being an adult. Suck it up. Jaysus. I annoy myself.

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 .......