Anniversary

Five years ago today my body, mind and soul were changed forever.

Five years ago today my life was permanently altered.

Five years ago today I went under the knife to remove my jacked up thyroid with the butthole cancer growing all over the stupid mother fucker.

Thank the baby jebus and all the candy in all the stores in all the world that I can say "Five years ago today..."

Woo to the fucking Hoo!!

Now don't get me wrong, this hasn't been an effing picnic sweet ride on easy street by any means. It's been far from a chill time and I have issues and scans and more blood tests than I care to think about to deal with for the rest of my life but through the crankyness and mood swings and complications and all the other shit I'm so thankful for everything I have and try to remember that every single day. Even when I'm trying not to punch someone in the face for being an asscake, I follow that with, man, I'm so glad I'm still around to not kick your ass.

All of the crap I went through in 2003 was all terrifying and sucked sweaty donkey balls but also necessary and as hard/weird/melancholy/contemplative this date is, and if you're a cancer survivor you know how big 5 years is, I'm extremely proud that I'm still here to hopefully make people laugh, squeeze my kitty even though she hates it, watch horrible reality TV, consume enough sushi to choke a tuna, swear at assholes on the road, eat my weight in chocolate, make my photography dreams come true, love my man till he can't take it any more, and etc., etc., etc., I'm so damn grateful for the life I have.

Cancer blows, but in my case I've been more fortunate than others so today I'd like to salute anyone who's been touched by the effing cancer demon shit from hell in any way or who deals with a chronic illness. You are brave and strong and awesome even if sometimes you don't feel like it. Every time you voluntarily walk into a doctors office and put up with that massive bullshit you're a hero. Every step forward is a triumph. And every breath you take is precious.

Thank you to everyone and anyone who's supported me in any way. I owe you a lot. Thank you to science for figuring out how to keep me here to grumble and crab and laugh and love. Thank you to my body for, in all it's imperfections, still manages to work. Thank you universe for allowing me to hang out here for a bit longer. Just, thank you.

Vodka floats for everyone!

WOOT!

Post revisited

I've recently (as of last night) decided that I need to hire a nanny for myself. For a long time I thought I needed a wife, which doesn't sound half bad, I like girls, I could use a house manager, and we could use the help, but now I think I need a soft spoken European au pair with flaxen hair and a sexy accent. I clearly need someone to take care of me and tell me when to go to bed and fix me healthy meals and take a lint roller to my clothes because I'm eternally covered in cat hair and I JUST DON'T CARE anymore! It's pathetic.

I'd still need to manage my own toys and be free to have a few tantrums and a nanny would be able to handle that. That's their forte. Although I probably wouldn't take so kindly to being put in the naughty chair, and if you go by the educational standards of a minute for ever year I'd be sitting there for an episode and a half of The Two Corey's and that would be a fucking crime. But I like the idea of Supernanny being my pseudo "muva" for a while. Damn, I lub her.

There's just not enough time in the day, week, month to do everything I want to do, need to do, have to do. I know it's a complaint we all have and sure, I could step away from the computer and plan a meal or clean something but I don't want to! I'm tired and fresh air is way overrated anyway. Blarg. I need a nap.

So, in light of me being a whiny turd today and beating myself up for doing most of this shit to myself I'm reserving the right to regurgitate a previous post. It's a couple of years old so it should be brand spanking new to the 3 people still checking on this blog. (Hi guys!) It's practically like going green, right? Consider it an upcycle.

The Very Very Very Bad Decision

It had been a long, hot day in the late 1970's. I'd spent the majority across the street at the much coveted 'house of fun' where my friend K lived. You know the one I'm talking about. The cupboards are stuffed with all the junk food a kid could want, (not a box of stale coffee nips hidden in the tupperware cupboard like my house), the front yard is as big as a football field and they have a game closet. OMG, a whole closet dedicated to games! It was better than Charlie and his freaky chocolate factory. (I mean really, do you think I want to put any candy in my mouth that Augustus Gloop has marinated in? I think not.)

As was the rule, I needed to head home at dusk to join my family for our nightly fight around the dinner table promptly at 6:00. I only lived a stones-throw away from K's house, hers being catty-cornered to the South-East from mine. Despite this close proximity, I still chose to ride my big yellow with the girly flowered banana seat bike and white basket (gag) over there. Mostly because my side of the street was the hilly one and I could get enough speed going down my driveway to coast all the way to K's house. Betty, thy name is Lazy.

Because of this fact, the reverse trek home was not a fun one for me since I'd have to actually pump the pedals a whole 300 yards. Oh. The. Horror. In my pre-teen lack of wisdom, and in an effort to avoid expelling one atom of energy, I thought I'd take a short-cut up my next-door neighbors driveway and just pop through the bushes to my driveway. Thus avoiding the very long and steep S-curve of my own and saving oh, 20 extra feet of effort. Hmm...I wonder why I've always had a weight problem. I just can't figure it out.

I climbed onto my bike and raced slowly and begrudgingly grunted and groaned willing my legs to work towards home. Half-way up my neighbors drive, with a violent yank that nearly catapulted me onto the handlebars, my gigantic bell-bottom jeans got caught in the chain. Aw fuck. Who the hell thought it would be cool to make the hem of jeans 25 friggen inches wide? And why did it take bicycle manufacturers a million fucking years to figure out the chain should be covered so idiots like me don't get their fashion statements stuck in them?

It ended up being good thing, I suppose, that I was aiming for the neighbors driveway and not mine or they would have found me laying by the mailbox the next morning in a heap of demin and dirt.

After assessing the situation and laying a respectable trail of swear words I managed to lug myself and my very heavy bike to the spot where I'd planned on "popping" through the bushes. As soon as I tried to drag my shit-show up and over the small asphalt curb and bushy incline to my own driveway I felt a blinding pain coming from my little pot belly. Christ almighty! What is killing me? I've been speared by a tassel!!

I looked down and saw that the unprotected, unlined, stupid zipper of my stupid 70's jeans had just caught a chunk of my stupid tummy skin and was now ripping my flesh apart like a rabid wolverine.

So now, not only am I practically fused with my huge bike, its giant banana seat wedged into my crotch, one leg held tightly in place in the grips of the fucking chain, but it feels like the teeth of Satan are tearing into my stomach and I neglected to remember that the "bushes" separating our house from our neighbors are not only contained in a steep slope, but they are inhabited by stiff foliage with unbending branches that I can't get me an my bike past!

And of course the evil bushes jumped out and took me down. Right down to China town. I'm on the ground, under a child-eating bush stuck to my bike and my pants are eating me. Stranded. Marooned. Wrecked. Ivy eating my face. I was doomed.

Like hell was I calling for help in that position and no one would have heard me anyway or my asshole brother would have stood over me like a dick and laughed while doing the spit-string above my filthy and bloodied face.

After what seemed like a hundred and fifty nine years I somehow managed to drag myself under the killer bush, out of the strangle ivy and catapult myself and the bike onto my driveway amidst the searing pain where I collapsed in a heap of scratches and chain grease.

I gritted my teeth, called upon all the dammit I had in me and finally freed myself of the skin chewing zipper and the bike chain of death and slinked my way into the house where I'm sure I enjoyed a lovely dinner of liver and onions and nursed my wounds with pink mercurochrome and a soggy bandaid .

The 70's were awesome.

Travesty

Your regularly scheduled weekly post will be interrupted by breaking news in the life of this here blogger who has suffered a mighty blow. A horror so devastating I'm sure you will all feel my pain, imagine my FURY, wipe my virtual tears, and assist in the teeny tiny 5 minute curse I'll be putting on my beloved, whom I love so so much, but deserves a least a twisted ass hair for his trouble over this monumental FUCK UP.

A fuck up that follows on the heals of leaving my car out all night with the door wide open and the keys in the ignition, cleaning the coffee table with caustic sink scrub thus effectively dissolving the veneer right off the mother, and vigorously scrubbing a kitty barf spot in the freshly-day-before-professionally-cleaned carpet with a brand new BLACK kitchen towel requiring an emergency and double the amount re-visit from said professional carpet cleaners to try and fix it.

I love this man more than anything but BLOODY HELL does he screw up sometimes.

In our attempt to clean the house for a showing (please, real estate gods, bless us with an offer - there might be brand new appliances in it for ya!) my boyfriend stashed some dirty dishes in the oven. But then he FORGOT about the dirty dishes in the oven and TURNED IT ON last night to cook himself some GAWD DAMN chicken strips.

Here is the result of plastic containers in 400 degrees of heat. Needless to say the theme for the evening was FUCKING. HELL. WHAT. ARE. WE. GOING. TO. DO. Seriously. What are we going to do? It all hardened again and the whole house smells like someone bar-b-cued a stack of tires covered in lead paint sprinkled with styrofoam peanuts.

Behold. Teh Tragedy.

The offending plastic:


The results:

sniff


sob


waaahhhhh

Good times

We had a pretty good holiday weekend. Although why does 3 days sound so luxurious until you get to Sunday afternoon and realize, fuck, 3 days is still not enough. You really can't work up a good laze unless you have 2 full days dedicated to doing nothing but laying around in your own filth eating junk food and watching truly horrible television. This time I was only afforded 1 day and it wasn't nearly enough.

However, we did have a great 4th. It was spent doing next to nothing. Glorious, glorious nothing. We put a ban on laundry, tidying, dishwashing, eating of healthy things, etc. I actually had a real live moment of relaxation. Those don't come often, let me tell you, and it was nice. In between napping I enjoyed some Hitchcock and watched almost all of Jaws.

It probably goes without saying but Jaws in 2008 does not have the impact of Jaws 1975. Speaking of which, can you believe that movie came out in 1975? That's 33 years for my fellow math-challenged peeps. Hardly seems possible, doesn't it? That puts Spielberg in his 20's when he directed. Amazing. My mother actually took me to see that movie when I was 7 or 8. What the hell? Thanks for the 25 years of trauma and permanent fear of invisible pool sharks, mom!

But despite the goofy effects, super duper fake shark and ridiculous plot "a great white shark has staked a claim in the waters off Amity Island, and he's going to continue to feed here as long as there is food in the water" (no one likes a predatory squatter), it made me feel nostalgic for that period of my childhood when it was all about no school and all fun. It was all about Saturday. It was all about the best day in your life, where the sun seemed to hang in the sky forever and the mornings were spent watching the most awesomely ridiculous television in the history of entertainment.

For those of you born after 1980, or (farging hell) maybe even a little earlier than that you will have no idea what I'm talking about so just straighten your Strawberry Shortcake t-shirt and skip to the previous entry.

I don't know what kind of fucked up genetics are plugged into a kids brain that makes them positively narcoleptic during the school week and pops your eyes open at 5:59 on Saturday morning but we were up and ready to consume mass quantities of sugary cereal, if my mother had had a fit of generosity and actually bought some, park our asses in front of the boob tube and tune in to hours on end of live-action Sid & Marty Kroft koo-koo for cocoa puffs craziness.

Looking back on these things is always a precarious activity. On one had you get the great sense of sentimentality and on the other is the cringe-worthy realization that we must have been stupid as a box of hair to buy the lame crap they were selling us. I suppose I'll go for the former since it's way more fun and I don't have to admit I was stupid.

And let me just say, hooray for creativity and tapping into the crazy Swiss cheese labyrinth of rug rat minds but what in the fuck were Sid & Marty smoking? Their offices must have been thick as a New England fog with bong smoke at all times. There's no way else to explain how they came up with that kind of weirdness over and over again. Thank goodness we were only hopped up on Cap'n Crunch while watching or my dreams would have been plagued with giant puppets and talking monkeys all trying to eat my head.

One I started to think about it I did a little research and it all came flooding back. Let's see how many you remember.

How about this guy?

Gawd, I had an unnatural love for that stupid show.

And of course who could forget:

If that wasn't the result of a weekend opium bender than I don't know what.

And somehow in my memory merged Pufnstuff with another psychedelic extravaganza starring a mop-topped young boy hanging out with giant hat plushies (hats??) being pursued by a flamboyantly evil wizard type person and a drunken witch. I don't know what the fuck was going on and it didn't help that half the actors from Puf were in this crapfest, too.

As I was doing a little research about this I stumbled onto this site:

http://www.70slivekidvid.com/main.htm

And holy shitballs did it bring back memories! I'd totally forgotten about Electra Woman and Dyna Girl (who was 27 freaking years old when this show was shot, not a girl, totally a woman.) And yes, the blond is Deidre Hall of Days of Our Lives fame.

And did you know there was a Ghost Busters before Ghost Busters?

A gorilla with a beanie? Seriously? How did we watch this drek?

Then of course there was the beauty of The Bugaloos. This one I actually sort of miss.



I suppose these are not much different than what kids have now, like those horrible fake fingered Doodlebops, and we all know Barney should have his own special place in hell. And I can admit that I've watched more than one video of Lazy Town but as popular as these shows are now, as clever and educational as they may be, they'll never capture the craptacularness of shows like Wonderbug.

Of that I have no doubt.