Princess Crankypants at your service

Employed once again

2010-11-01T18:08:00.000-07:00

Tis true. I finally got a job. After a year. Ahem, wtf universe. A year?

Not the one I wanted. Makes me really motivated to change careers. But it's a paycheck.

And oh, I've decided to start blogging again. Please contain your excitement. Thank you.

hmmm...

2010-10-24T21:23:00.000-07:00

To post or not to post.

That is the question.

So long, 2009. You bitch.

2009-12-31T09:28:00.000-08:00

So. Here we are. It's the last day of 2009 and I've posted once the entire year. Oops. Well, I can't really say "oops" because it was mostly on purpose. You see, I lost my mojo this year. I've misplaced my moxie. Lost track of my oomph. In a word, zombiefied.

I've taken to calling it Planet Apathetica of which I'm the ruling queen. I'm not really sure what triggered this trip to Club Coma but not long after we rang in 2009 I just stopped giving (most of) a shit. Turned my back on all things creative, let myself go, became Princess Blah.

Of course I've kept myself clean, bathed, smelling nice but everything else went out the window. This once dressed-to-the-nines girl with the shoe fetish wears nothing more than yoga pants and t-shirts every day and gawd forbid I put on a stitch of makeup. I've hardly picked up my camera all year and you may of noticed there wasn't a lot of writing going on.

I think a lot had to do with my work situation. I've concluded that my job had bored me to tears which then made me fiercely complacent (oxymoron?) which then caused me to become sort of depressed. Which all equals ZOMBIE. I didn't sit around crying about shit, I just turned OFF.

And then I got canned. Oh, the irony.

In February we heard a rumor that people with my particular title might be losing their jobs to a consolidated office in Bumfuck, Tennessee. Despite my boss assuring us we'd be OK I just knew I'd get swept up in the dust so I started to financially plan for it right away. Then 3 days after I got back from a July vacation I was called into my bosses office and found the HR Ghoul sitting there and I knew. Thanks for the (almost) 8 years of service, October 30th will be your last day.

I suppose being given more than 3 months notice was better than most people who've lost their jobs in this craptastic economy but I don't do well with sitting around knowing a hammer is going to fall on my head and it did nothing for my already questionable psyche. Stressful, it's been.

But, I've also tried to look at it this way. I wasn't happy in almost every aspect of my life. Planet Apathetica sucks. The view is shitty and the drinks are watered down. It's time to cash in my return ticket and get back to living, as lame as that sounds. I keep waiting for my Oprah a-ha moment but when you've narrowed your life view to a pin-point you're not going to see it even if it's an elephant dancing the lambada in the corner. This layoff was meant to be. Meant to wake me up so I can push myself out of this stupid hole. I'm sure of it.

2009 wasn't the worst year I've ever had. Not a bunch of roses but not a flaming bag of dogshit either. But it wasn't easy. So, here's the plan. I'm taking a few months off and thanks to a small severance package I can. I'm giving myself permission to step back and take the time I need to put my ducks back in their row. I will make goals to improve myself mentally and physically and follow through with good decisions. I need to flex my tight creative muscles so that's on the list as well. Not convinced I'll write more but we'll see.

I'm sure this will be a bumpy road, Lord knows I do everything the hardest fucking way possible, but I will succeed. Quite the new thought pattern for me, don't ya think? Don't worry, I'm still a cranky bitch a lot of the time but at my age I'd better have a few things figured out and being a full-time pessimist just isn't working any more. One of my work friends told me before I left that this was my opportunity to re-invent myself. I've taken those words to heart and that's exactly what I plan to do.

I've also discovered that the end result for these changes isn't to be happier, necessarily. It's to be better. And for me, that's the best destination I could wish for.

And to throw in a bonus here's this years re-cap:

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?

Got laid off.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?  

I didn't make any last year but I will this year.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?  

Nope.

4. Did anyone close to you die?  

Nope, thank Jebus.

5. What states did you visit?  

This year I've been to Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. The norm for visiting my folks.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

  The balls to fly on an airplane. This year was the worst ever and I really thought I was going to lose my ever-lovin' shit while in the air. Twice.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

July 13th - the day I got canned and October 30th, my last day at work.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?  

Holding myself together pretty well in spite of the enormous stresses of getting the boot in the worst economy since the Depression.

9. What was your biggest failure?

  Not losing the extra weight I've been carrying for the last 6 years. I'm really mad at myself over that.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Are you kidding me? Yes and yes.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

  42 " flat screen TV on Christmas Eve (with gifted money). It's my new boyfriend.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

  My boyfriends. My word he puts up with my shit like a champ and he did some pretty heavy decision making of is own.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?  

There are seriously too many to mention but if I had to pick someone I'd say any one of the numerous attention whore idiots on reality shows who do the stupidest shit imaginable thinking it'll get them some kind of fame and fortune. (I'm looking at you, Tool Academy.)

14. Where did most of your money go?

  Bills, bills, bills, bills, bills.

15. What did you get really excited about?

  Actually, the thought of being able to start over gets me hard.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?

  Lady GaGa, Just Dance. (Which I did in November and jacked up my back something awful.)

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: 

– happier or sadder? Sadder - but also hopeful, if that makes sense.
– thinner or fatter? A tiny bit fatter, darnit.
– richer or poorer? Poorer, definitely.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?  

Worked out. Ate better.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?  

Sitting around doing nothing.

20. How did you spend Christmas?  

At home with my bf.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?

  As usual, I love my bf more every year.

22. What was your favorite TV program?  

Too many to count. True Blood is at the top, though. Go team Bill!

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?  

No.

24. What was the best book you read?

  I wasted most of my reading on the Twilight series. Barf.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery? 

That my stupid Ipod is broken.

26. What did you want and get?

  A flat screen TV.

27. What did you want and not get?

Sales in my Etsy shop.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?

Avatar.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I turned 42 and spent the day at Diseyland with my best 2 boys. It was hot as Satan's asshole but we had a great time.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Figuring myself out.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

  Comfort.

32. What kept you sane?  

Being at home.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I think Ellen Degenerous is awesome.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?  

California not overturning the stupid, unconsitutional Prop 8. Shame on you, CA.

35. Who did you miss?  

Myself.

36. Who was the best new person you met?  

I got friendly with a woman at work who's totally kick-ass. Unfortunately we discovered how much we liked each other way too late since now I'm gone.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.  

That I have more control over the outcomes in my life than I thought.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.  

Just dance, Gonna be okay. Da-da-doo-doo-mmm

Hello again

2009-07-10T09:29:00.000-07:00

Have you ever followed a blog then the writer just up and disappears with no explanation and you check back a few times and think to yourself wtf happened to that person?

Are they dead?
Had a baby?
Move to Paraguay?
Living in a van down by the river?
Kidnapped by a cabbage worshipping cult?
Get married?
Get divorced?
Dabble in the dark-sided?
Unfortunate gardening accident?
Self-combusted?
Became a David Hasslehoff groupie?
Swinging on a pole in Pocatello, Idaho?
Bear attack?
Chained to a tree for political reasons?
Chained to a tree for non-political reasons?
Having a medical "procedure" in Sweden?
Counseling Tyra Banks on how to be even more fierce?
Bacon coma?
Creative block?
Lazy?
Hazy?
Crazy?

Yea. Me too.

Wrap it up

2008-12-30T13:48:00.000-08:00

Our holiday was nice, but busy, and half filled with stress as we entertained whitey's mom for 5 days. You know how it goes...It wasn't the crushing spectacular crap of last year but we still fantasize about having the kind of vacation/staycation we dream about. Just the two of us, a giant bottle of Vodka and nothing to do but whatever we want. Someday.

I'm not making that sound very good but really, we had a fun time. There were plenty of laughs and killer bloody Cesar's, we're all still breathing in-and-out (which is a plus), and grateful for what we have. There are a lot of plans for 2009 and I'm looking forward to taking care of the things I have the power to take care of. In the meantime, here's a wrap-up of my year borrowed from the lovely Sundry.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and will be enjoying a happy and safe New Year. Since whitey and I are cranky jerks we'll be spending the evening enjoying some Japanese food (sushi for me, Kobe beef for ~~the wuss~~ him) and just relaxing at the house safe from drunk drivers, cover fees and annoying people. Woot! It's just the way we like it!

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
Photographed two weddings. I'd add "and lost my mind doing it" but only the photographing part hadn't been done before.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn't. I didn't even write anything down last year.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Only to a few dozen cows.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Thankfully, no. The 2 previous years were too full of that crap.

5. What countries did you visit?
Fantasyland, Frontierland, Tomorrowland, and Adventureland.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Decent health.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
April 5th - the day I broke my arm.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Being the bigger person and repairing the relationship with my mother - and sticking to my guns on how visits will go from now on. Short and sweet. Even if it causes me a little pain that time is short with my elderly father - I'm proud of the way I've handled things and did what was best for me.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not losing this fucking weight.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Yes - on a daily freaking basis! Actually, things health-wise got worse this year and I plan on trying to fix what I can and brave my way through icky shit I'll be facing after the 1st. Darnit.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
A tie between my car and new washer/dryer combo. Getting those in the same month wasn't the brightest move, though.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Mine.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Mine.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Target and doctors.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
I don't think I got thrice excited about anything but our trip to San Fran in Feb jazzed me up quite a bit.

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Disturbia.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:a) happier or sadder?b) thinner or fatter?c) richer or poorer?
If we're talking about the exact date - things are better, way way better, but I've gone a few steps backwards with most of those - a bit sadder, a bit fatter and a lot poorer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Exercised.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Ate junk food.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
At home with family and friends.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
I fall more in love with my boyfriend every year.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Oh - there are so many. I'd have to say True Blood or Dexter since they were both new to me this year.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Oh, sure. I'm a bitch like that. Although I don't use the word hate often.

24. What was the best book you read?
Water for Elephants - incredible!

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I'm not a music junkie.

26. What did you want and get?
A new(ish) car.

27. What did you want and not get?
To sell my house and move. :(

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Ironman.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I had a lovely day playing hookie from work, went to the barn and rode my favorite horse, had lunch with friends, a little shopping, then a nice sushi dinner at home with my love. 41 was awesome.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Really getting my shit together and stop acting like I'm a damn teenager who can treat her body however she wants filling it with junk, not getting enough sleep, etc. It's ridiculous. If I could make better decision so I can feel better I'd be extremely satisfied, I'm sure.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
Concept? Like did I invent a pulley system for my tits? I didn't do anything new except find the best hair care products ever.

32. What kept you sane?
Being at home. It's my haven.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I have the warm fuzzies for a lot of people, men and women, but I'd have to say Robert Downey Jr. gets my vote for most awesomest. He walked through the fire and came out the other side full of win! I hope he keeps rocking the shit out of Hollywood for a long, long time.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Jesus, do I even need to mention it? The whole fucking year was about politics but I'd have to say watching California take a GIANT shit with Prop 8 was devastating. Hopefully that discriminating, unconstitutional bullshit measure will be overturned this year. Equality for all!!

35. Who did you miss?
K. and her mom, D.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
I can't think of anyone.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
That my mother will always treat me differently than my brother and it's her problem, not mine. There's nothing I can do about it so stop fighting it. Stop feeling terribly about it. I have a lot more control over things than I though.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year
She drives me crazy
Like no one else
She drives me crazy
And I can't help myself

And a bonus 39 by me - What do you continue to hold true?
I'm grateful for every breath I take. Despite my challenges I will continue to live my life to the fullest possible, I love life.

See you all next year!

Observations

2008-12-16T15:29:00.000-08:00

There's something incredibly creepy about a funeral home radio advert that wishes you a (emphasis on this word) safe holiday season. Is that like reverse psychology or something? I remain suspicious.

It's pointless to argue with a sonogram tech over the insanely stupid amount of required water newly filling into your bladder mere minutes after you were praised for said amount of water being "just perfect" but is now "too much" because one cannot be expected to get up and use the restroom "every 10 minutes" when the calmly bitchy tech has an 8 inch vag cam shoved into your nancy. She really holds the cards at that point.

I'd really like to develop a game of Walmart Bingo. The squares would consist of things/species/odors you will undoubtedly experience whens shopping there. Chances to win increase on Saturday afternoons. Things like wailing child, missing teeth, fart cloud, surly employee, mystery stain, fat ass blocking aisle, pile of broken glass, shoplifted item/empty carton, police car parked outside, and receipt error.

All U.S. Postal Service workers are assholes.

Yes. All.

Day 30

2008-11-30T18:49:00.000-08:00

Daily posting for the month of November has come to an end. It wasn't that hard this year. I really didn't stress about it. I'm sure there are quite a few crap entries but at least I didn't give up or get all bent out of shape trying to be perfect cause we all know there's no such thing and perfectionism leads to inevitable failure which leads to bad feelings which lead to eating mass quantities of chocolate and the eating of chocolate should always be for a happy reason. Well, unless your mother is involved then pound away.

We're also winding down to the close of another year and with Thanksgiving being all stupidly late it feels like Christmas and New Years will be here in fricken blink and how the fuck am I suppose to redecorate the entire house before my boyfriend's mother gets here when I only have like 2 gawd damn days? I'd like to write a terse letter to whoever decides that shit.

In the meantime, I will keep working on not getting stressed out and taking the time to have fun, pay attention to the right things and reflect on the year. And if that involves large glasses of wine then so be it. As long as I'm not driving or throwing air punches at old ladies cutting in my Target line then it's A. O. K. Friends don't let friends drink and shop.

And even though we have another whole 30 days until the the calender turns over to 2009 I'm going to issue a challenge now since I think it takes some practice to get this right. I want you to be nicer to yourself. Take some time to pay attention to how you treat yourself and what your inner voice sounds like.

Does she sound like a nasty teenage girl cutting you down every chance she gets? Is it a viscous guy tearing you apart because you don't look like an airbrushed, anorexic model straddling seatless bike on the cover of Maxim? Do you tell yourself things you wouldn't up with from anyone? Are you nice to yourself?

Now, before you start to think, jesus h., she's given up the bitter for benevolent don't' worry, I'm still a crusty crank and always will be but I've had it up to "here" with beating my own self up for shit I can't change or letting myself either wallow in the boo-hoo's for the things that will be hard to change or sticking my lovely face in the sand and ignoring stuff all-together and it's time to stop that.

That's not saying that there are certainly times when existing on auto-pilot isn't OK and extremely justified. There is nothing wrong with that, it's part of self-preservation and I support it whole-heartedly. It's the letting that turn into crap habits that is the problem. So, here's the deal, my own personal goal,and challenge for anyone else out there wanting to change some undesirable factor in your life is to adopt a simple word, a pledge, a mantra.

Enough.

That's it. That's all you have to do. Be it out loud, whispered quietly, in your own mind, or shouted from the rooftops just say that tiny six lettered word. Enough.

Say it to stop the bullet train of negative thoughts in your head. The next time you're tearing yourself apart for having a fat belly, crows feat, hammer toes, tell yourself "ENOUGH". If you want to lose that fat belly then after the 20th m-n-m you're shoving into your maw say enough.

If you're in a relationship that sucks the soul out of you, is harmful, wrong or dangerous, resolve that it's enough and make the right moves to change it. Know without a doubt that if anyone ever tries to tell you that you aren't enough, you tell yourself you are. Fuck that, of course you are. If some asshole doesn't see it then that's their problem, not yours. Enough!

Have a shitty person in your life that constantly brings you down? Enough! Reaching for that last tequila shot that will cause your panties to drop and a day worth of puking ahead? Enough. Been in that crap-ass job for far too long and hear yourself complaining endlessly? Killing yourself trying to be perfect? Do you think you're not worthy unless something else wants you? Well, let me tell you, you are. Enough.

Spent way to long laying on that couch wallowing in self-pity, self-doubt, self-loathing, self-absorption? Tired of being a zombie living a half-life, dragging around the past like a ball-and-chain? Are you so over being weighed down by regret and flesh and ghosts of the past? That's enough, babe. Enough.

You are enough.

Now go buy yourself something pretty!

The escapist

2008-11-29T19:26:00.000-08:00

I'm still a bit high from my 28 hours of non-carnage Thanksgiving with my family. That's not to say there were pa-lenty of times that I mentally rolled my eyed and called my brother an asshole under my breath. And I'm still giving myself props for not losing my shit in a monstrous way when I heard my brother say the exact same thing verbatim that I did to my mom last Christmas that caused her to unhinge her jaws and swallow me whole and treating me like a leper with weeping sores for an entire week saying no much more than go to hell and please pass the gravy.

Somehow I managed to stay breezy the whole time and didn't let any stomach acid of stress boil over or be reactive in any way. I just let it go, which for me is not an easy task. Telling myself that my mom treats me different and always will and it doesn't make me any better or more importantly, worse than my brother or niece or anyone else so fuck it. I'm not getting my ass hair in a knot over it.

Look at me, all healthy and shit.

Dinner was fabulous but as I've been fighting the stupid tummy troubles I didn't eat too much so I wasn't rolling around like a beached whale moaning about being stuffed like everyone else was. And frankly, my mother's inventive style of passive-aggressive cooking always leaves me a little leery. There are plenty of things she's does well but she has this subconscious hangup about putting a twist on food that sets you up for failure.

The stuffing was from a Trader Joe's box that I've made myself before and tastes great on its own if you follow the simple directions. My mother gets the bright idea of adding to it but you end up with a few moist bread crumbs amidst 4 thousand pieces of celery, which I'm allergic to. And I did my best to encourage her not to eat the pumpkin pie that inexplicably grew a colorful and thick layer of mold over night but she wouldn't hear of it and I watched as she scraped a little off with a knife then cut herself a nice, big slice.

Dear Mother - DO NOT EAT MOLDY FOOD. We have a WHOLE NOTHER PIE.

At least we've gotten her to stop putting the turkey guts in the gravy. It's impossible to pick out specks of pulverized spleen from your mashed potatoes, I'll have you know. Plus my dad can't keep his hands off the boiling gizzard, neck, bunghole or whatever disgusting bird organ he so desperately loves so there's nothing left over to make gravy with except the beautiful, beautiful juices.

Things almost took a turn as I was being dropped off at the platform to make my way home. There was a 20 minute debate on where I should be standing (granted, it was a bit confusing with 2 tracks with matching platforms and misleading signs) and my brother's inner grizzly bear was starting to show his fangs, but thankfully my train approached (as my father stood in the middle of the tracks to watch it for fuckssake!) and was stopped long enough for me to ask a porter if it was the right one. I was relieved beyond measure.

My train rides to and from my brother's house were a mini adventure, to say the least. I saw many walks of life and restrained from pounding the cranky old lady who tapped me on the head to tell me to move my suitcase to give another passenger a seat on the crowded train leaving San Diego. Apparently the 10 seconds it was taking me to get situation was a lifetime to wait.

I upgraded to business class on my last train home and was given a complimentary glass of wine that I gladly accepted. It helped alleviate the desire to break the ankles of the woman fucking around with the foot rest on the back of my seat the whole way. Seriously, there were 50 plus fucking empty seats and she sits right behind my stupid ass. Naturally. But I was not murdered in Union Station during my layover in Los Angles so I'd call that also a success.

Best thing of the whole deal? Making this gingerbread trailer with my niece and mom. It was hysterical. A total mess but hysterical. I highly recommend making one. Hope you all had a great turkey day and thank gawd Nabloblahblah is almost over!

WHEW!

2008-11-28T23:36:00.000-08:00

I made it. More than 24 hours with my family and nothing bad happened. Not one thing! And despite public transportation freakies and nusances, internally rolling my eyes about 20 times at stuff and having the obligatory worries about my dad, it all went smashingly well without any real smashing!

I'd call that a Success!!

YAY!

Happy Turkey Day

2008-11-27T07:40:00.001-08:00

I have so much to be thankful for. And I will be thinking of it all while I'm drinking in the bar car. Wish me luck and have a great day!

Is it over yet?

2008-11-26T22:50:00.001-08:00

I'm so looking forward to this 4 day weekend I could cry gravy. 4 whole days. In a row. NO. WORK. It's going to be glorious. Although I'm quite nervous about the next 36 hours since I'm spending Thanksgiving with my family sans whitey and spending the night at my brother's house. With my parents, their 2 dogs and my niece. In a 2 bedroom condo. Pray for me.

I decided not to make the 4 to 5 hour drive since I'm still having that stupid panic attack thing when I'm driving on the freeway (gawd, I feel like an imbecile over that) so I'm taking the train for the very first time. I've been on trains before but not like this so I hope it'll be fun and not a giant suckfest. And there's always the bar car to visit.

I figure that's another good reason not to drive. Since we all haven't been together since Fuckass Christmas 2007 Extravaganza of Shit I'm petrified another show-down will take place so I'm planning on lubricating myself on the way up and then I can drink to forget or celebrate, whichever is required, on the way home Friday night.

I've planned a few things to keep everyone busy, or at least me and the kid, and since my mother won't let me go near the food I don't have to cook. But it's really not my fault that I'm a menace to society when playing chef, my mother never taught me anything, I've had to wing it on my own but I will admit, I, ah, have a little bit of trouble in the kitchen.

The first turkey I ever cooked turned out awesome but it had a slight tinge of a plastic aroma to it since I accidentally left the baggie of turkey guts inside. And I swear I fisted the shit out of that bird and I could not find it. It was exactly like when someone is "changing" a "lightbulb" naked in the "shower" and "slips" off the "ladder" and "falls" onto the flashlight that's now lodged up in their grill. That stuff was jammed way up and in tight. But the people who ate it didn't complain, they just made fun of me a lot.

These days I'm not allowed in the kitchen very often since my idea of a decent dinner is spaghettios straight from the can. And no, I'm not kidding. Don't get me wrong though, I can bake like a fiend. Despite that one banana cream pie that turned out more like banana man creamed in the pie, but I have a pretty big repertoire of goodies that I kick ass making. And I can do a few choice appetizers too. But when things involve, oh, stuff like anything besides cookies it's bound to be a disaster.

Foods such as meat, vegetables and casseroles? Forget it. My chicken is raw in the inside, black on the outside and tastes like whatever was cooked in the pan the time before. With garlic. Burnt garlic.

My vegetables turn gray and my attempt at casseroles resemble the sweepings from a Denney's floor after the dinner rush. I managed to explode an entire Pyrex dish once by putting a rock-solid frozen steak straight from the freezer into a piping hot oven. It's a gift.

Pasta is easy, right? Not when I make it. My al dente will chip a tooth. Want me to add a little extra something to the sauce? No, you don't. Because I will add celery seeds and nutmeg to the ground beef. Those are spices right? Herbs? No? I don't know.

Poultry is cooked at 250 for 3 hours, right? 450 for 5? More salt the better, yes? Would you like another helping? WHY NOT?

Like I said, I blame this on my mother. She never taught me how to cook and even though she can throw some tasty meals together she cuts the mold off cheese and thinks beet juice is better than a fine wine. My father is even worse. The man puts ketchup on lettuce and calls it a salad. When I was in school I'd open my wrinkled re-used utterly embarrassing kill me now full-sized grocery bag at lunchtime to find peanut butter and butter sandwiches. Or peanut butter and mayonnaise. Mayonnaise, people.

And if I was really lucky? Peanut butter and tuna. OK, I made the last one up but I did get the other 2 and how gross is the thought of peanut butter and mayo? Pretty fucking gross, I'll tell you what.

So, I will help where I can on Thursday, trying to stay out of the way. And even though I won't be doing any of the cooking per say, I do have a pretty good recipe for stuffing. Of which I will share with you now. At least this is how I make it.

~ Open pre-made box of stuffing
~ Wrestle with hermetically sealed inner bag
~ Get out sharp knife to finally open stupid impenetrable inner bag
~ Cut finger
~ Silently swear
~ Wrap dirty paper towel around bleeding appendage
~ Drink glass of wine
~ Pour contents of bag into plastic bowl
~ Boil water in glass measuring cup in microwave
~ Sustain steam burn on hand reaching into microwave
~ Swear louder
~ Pour hot water over contents in plastic bowl
~ Splash boiling water on hands and stuffing crumbs into eyes
~ Fucking hell fucking fuck
~ Wipe face with egg-yolk encrusted dish rag
~ Watch plastic bowl melt
~ Stare as contents pour down side of cabinet onto floor
~ God dammit fuckity fuck
~ Drink glass of wine
~ Check to see if someones watching
~ Scoop up contents from floor
~ Transfer to glass bowl
~ Pick out cat hair
~ Stir
~ Drink glass of wine
~ Serve

Voila!

The author takes no responsibility for injuries to important body parts to anyone attempting this recipe. I suggest you have 911 on speed dial.

Just a number

2008-11-25T17:56:00.000-08:00

I've often said that I'm a 17 year old trapped in the body of a 40-something woman. Or sometimes it's 22, depending on if I need an ID to drink or get into a bar or buy porn. I've, on occasion, felt like I've reached a certain age that whatever I want to wear/do/see/be isn't appropriate for the number on my driver's license.

I remember shopping one time and seeing some trendy frock and thinking, crap, I can't wear that anymore. But as I get older I realize that most of that kind of thinking is just bullshit. Well, within reason. If I left the house wearing a onesie with glitter lipstick I'd look like a mental patient but for the most part getting older gives you the right to do what you want when you want without having to apologize for it. And if anyone gives you crap about the decisions you make for yourself that don't interfere with anyone else, yourself, or the law than I say go for it! I might make fun of you but who cares!

I still love stuffed animals. I have to stop myself from buying every cute plush thing I see because frankly I don't have the room but sometimes I splurge and why not? Who cares if I have a 4 foot dolphin on the bed? (I will get that someday, I will.) I like toys. 99% of time I buy a happy meal because of the goodie that comes with it. (Ironic that the one I purchased yesterday came with the hippo from Madagascar 2, no?)

I like to step on dried up leaves to hear them crunch under my feet. I covet wee little purses and own several yummy smelling lip glosses from Bonnie Bell. I think farting is hysterical. My adoration for crappy pop music is legendary (I'm downloading the new Mylie Cyrus song right now) and my idea of a good time is playing games until I win them all.

I want a gumball machine in my house and the best present I got for my birthday was a giant lava lamp. I don a tiara any chance I can get, wear my hair in pigtails, paint my toes bright blue, and buy magazines mostly for the pictures. I have a life-long love affair with Snoopy. I wouldn't say no to drinking a cocktail with a curly straw. My dream is to having an entire wall in my kitchen covered in chalkboard paint.

My parents think I'm mostly silly, but silly is fun! I don't ever want to stop being silly. I will never stop being silly. Life is too short not to be silly. And I'm sure Jenny Joseph agrees with me, although I'm wearing purple now.

When I am Old I will wear Purple!
When I am an old woman,
I shall wear purple - -
With a red hat which doesn't go,
and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension
on brandy and summer gloves and satin sandals,
And say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
and gobble up samples in shops
and press alarm bells
and run with my stick along public railings,
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick flowers in other people's gardens
and learn to spit!
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at ago,
or only bread and pickles for a week,
and hoard pens and pencils
and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry,
and pay our rent
and not swear in the street,
and set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner
and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know meare not too shocked and surprised
when suddenly I am old,
And start to wear purple!

--Jenny Joseph

Doubleyou Tee Eff!!

2008-11-24T22:34:00.000-08:00

Is it wrong that I'm SO EFFING PISSED about this?

I DIDN'T THINK SO!!

Snapshot Sunday

2008-11-23T22:39:00.000-08:00

In honor of the city I didn't get to play around in this weekend due to the cementbrainia I have going on here are a few shots I took on my last trip in February. It was a great time and hopefully I can do back in a couple of week.

The entire set can be seen here.

Saturday

2008-11-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

Dear Universe,

I would just like to get behind the wheel of my beloved car and NOT encounter 15 FUCKING ASSHOLES every 4 miles who put my life in danger by driving like headless IDIOTS who couldn't rub 2 brain cells together to make a fucking SPARK if their very existence depended on it!!

If you could arrange that I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,

Betty

Sigh

2008-11-21T21:24:00.001-08:00

So, I had an x-ray of my head today and will get the results sometime next week to see if there's anything in there. Ah, I mean anything nefarious, not the evidence of actual brain matter. Although a lot of times that fact is in question also judging by the amount of times I injure myself while doing completely insane and risky things like putting on my pants (smashed toe into closet door this morning.)

I went to my allergist dude today and he diagnosed me with a fucked up sinus cavity and in his words I'm "allergic to the world" and he's surprised I don't feel like shit all the time and I said for fuck's sake, doc I DO. So he ordered the fancy brain pikshure, threw some drugs my way and told me it was probably a good idea that I didn't get on a plane today or I could have 'sploded all over the cabin in a not-so-feminine splash of snot and skull fragments.

And that is not how I'd like to finally end up in the pages of People.

Bummed

2008-11-20T19:51:00.000-08:00

I just cancelled my weekend trip to San Francisco because it still feels like my head is going to explode at any minute and the high pitched squeal in my right ear reached a maximum high today driving me nearly bonkers and I'm totally bummed. And scared it's something more serious than mystery congestion. And really bummed.

And that's all I have to say about that.

P.U.

2008-11-19T22:14:00.000-08:00

It's 1980-something and I'm a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed teenager. OK, I'm a smart-mouthed pain-in-the-ass but somehow I sweet-talked my parents into leaving me home alone while they went traipsing off to Montana for a couple of weeks in the years before they moved there for goo.

I'm left with the house and our 2 dogs to take care of, was given a whopping $60.00 and instructions to "not touch the alcohol, sweetie". Sweetie was said through slightly clenched teeth due to a previous un-heeded warning I've written about before that involved me being very, very stupid with many, many cups of alcohol and my parents getting very, very mad after my many, many trips to puke in the toilet.

Everything goes just fine the first night, until I decide to finish the book Pet Sematary by Stephen King at 1 a.m. on a dark and scary night and the minute I read the last word the dogs started going batshit crazy barking in the garage over I'm sure a demon who wanted to eat my face. Needless to say the dog's got to sleep inside that night and I watched bad late night TV until I finally fell asleep with a crazy lab and a protective doberman on each side of me.

After I survived the scary night and the demon I decided to invite a couple of girlfriends over to "not touch the alcohol, sweetie" and we're having a good time with our naked pillow-fight, cause you know we really do that. Again, I hear those damn dogs going batshit crazy outside in the backyard and I run to the sliding glass door to holler their noisy asses back inside.

And that's when it hit me.

Like and atom bomb of shit.

Right in the nose.

SKUNK.

Oh shit, oh no, not this. Skunk? Damn those dogs! They had chased that fucking skunk again and got sprayed. Now the whole damn house is gonna smell all damn night!

I go into the garage to reprimand the pooches and that’s when I realize...um...there’s like no oxygen in here. WTF? It had been completely evaporated by the fresh ass blast of the scaredy cat skunk. And in all my life I have never experienced anything like that before. I couldn’t breath.

I immediately started gagging. I looked at my dobie and she was foaming at the mouth and squinting, unable to open her eyes. So of course I did the natural thing and grabbed her, drug her over the hose and tried to rinse out the offending substance. This however is where I met my own fate. I too was now covered in skunk butt juice.

I checked my lab and of course her whole neck was soaked. Yay! Another dose of puke smell all over me! Now I’m screaming for my friends to help me, they’re screaming and holding their noses and the dogs are foaming, spitting, snorting and barking at the screaming girls.

I lock them in the garage (the dogs, not girls), grab some money and hop in my car. My only choice is 7-11 since this was pre all-night grocery stores. I hauled ass through the streets, ran into the store, grabbed all the super size cans of tomato juice and plunked them on the counter.

The clerk starts to sniff the air with a look on his face like he just ate a rancid pickle. “Hey, do you smell something”? I say, “Ah…no, I don’t smell anything”, hoping he's none the wise. I pay for juice and haul ass back home. I dash through the house grabbing both dogs on the way and throw them in the bathroom and start filling the tub when I then had to DRAG both chicken shit scared of a little water dogs into the bath to start “the treatment”.

3 giant cans of cold, nasty tomato juice is not my idea of a day at the spa, btw.

Now I’m covered with skunk, tomato juice and dog hair, the muts are shivering and trying to escape from the tub and this shit it’s NOT taking away the smell one little bit and to top it all off now my white lab is a pretty shade of pink.

My mostly useless friends finally did pitch in to help me clean the dogs and get them dried off and just as we’re finally seeing the humor in this nightmare, laughing about the whole ordeal and wondering when I’m going to stop smelling like a wet dog, an Italian restaurant and ass (it was 3 days btw), our lovely state of California decides it’s time to relieve a little tectonic pressure and we have a fucking earthquake.

More screaming girls, more barking dogs and that’s when we touched the alcohol, sweetie.

Tip for Tuesday

2008-11-18T18:54:00.000-08:00

If you need a good laugh go to these places. They will make it so.

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

http://waiterrant.net/

http://failblog.org/

http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

Hey 1950, I miss you!

2008-11-17T16:54:00.000-08:00

You know, I'm an independent person, probably too independent, and I'm not one to hang onto the antiquated notions about what the particular sexes should and should not do. Girls not calling boys? Why ever not? Boys can't appreciate nice decor or that makes them fruity - preposterous. A woman can't be president! Well, never mind about that one. But there are certain things that have gone out the window that fall into traditional roles and it PISSES ME OFF!

I've recently had a man let a door slam onto my body when I was going through right behind him. The fuck, dude? I know you saw me! We walked across the parking lot almost in tandem. You couldn't hold the fucking door for me? Fuck forbid you actually let me go through first, like a gentleman would, but to let the shit slam onto my arm? You're a douchebag who needs to pull your head out of your self-absorbed bunghole, you rude jerk.

A few years ago I had 2 flat tires in as many months, both times stranded in busy areas with lots of cars whizzing past me as I struggled and sweat and cursed my way through putting my spare on. Did one fucker stop to help me? No. And the second time I made it to a gas station/convenient mart in a heavily populated area. I mean, I know I don't fit the typical Southern California Hooters girl profile but jesus, you'd think at one person would have stopped to ask if I needed help.

And then there's today. I'm walking to yet another doctors appointment to figure out what the heck is wrong with my dizzy head and hopefully get a solution and I see a fragile, little old lady standing at the bottom of the stairs leading to the office building. (Why the fuck there isn't a ramp there I don't know.) And I see several people pass her by without a glance.

I was wondering if she needed help or if she was waiting for someone and before I could inquire she said to no one in particular, "Can someone please help me up these stairs?" as loudly as her shakey, elderly voice could muster. And the 2 men walking past her didn't even entertain the thought of giving assistance. Not a break in their stride.

The younger guy looked back but kept going. The medical person with the white coat standing 8 feet away didn't budge. So of course I went over to her and had to haul her walker thing up the flight of stairs (with my still healing busted elbow screaming with displeasure) and help her keep her balance at the same time while trying to keep mine as well and I made sure she made it all the way into her doctors office.

She was very sweet and thanked me profusely calling me her angel for the day but god dammit I was mad! There must have been 20 individuals that walked past her and didn't even think to ask if she needed a hand. What is wrong with people?

You know - I complain about my parents sometimes, they have their faults and warts and hang-ups, but they fucking taught me to get involved when the situation calls for it. No way would either of them walk by a little old lady looking wantonly up a stack of steps without asking if she's OK. And my dad is 83 years old!! They taught me to be caring and aware and to do the right thing.

I'm not perfect but I hold doors open, I let fuckers merge onto the freeway (unlike the dick who didn't let me on this morning and got my middle finger in his face for his trouble), and I help when I can! I try not to be in my own world or have the "I don't want to get involved" attitude if the situation is right.

There are a lot of studies that show a woman calling rape doesn't get a response from anyone but if she yells "fire" a brigade of heroes come running. There are too many people who have the "it's none of my business" attitude. But what about the every day instances that is being just plain courteous? Looking out for your fellow humans, or animals for that matter? What happened to doing the right thing?

I think those values were left back in the 50's or 60's. I really do. Those people might have been square and hiding all kinds of addictions and secrets and there was way too much oppression but can you get a kid to rescue a cat from a grandma's tree? I doubt it. They're all too busy yanking their pants 14 inches past their asses to care.

Now, I know it would be stupid to pull over on a dark highway at night by myself to help a group of guys in a broken down car, but if I saw a couple having a nasty screaming match with a baby between them at Red Robin I wouldn't walk away. The least I'd do is call mall security. You, of course, have to look out for your own welfare but fucking hell, if you can, lend a hand! I don't want things to go backwards but I sure as shit would like to see an increase in thoughtfulness in the world I live in. That sure would be swell.

Snapshot Sunday

2008-11-16T19:13:00.001-08:00

Since I've spent the weekend in bed trying to keep my head from spinning, without the fun of earning it with alcohol, my plans of shooting some new pics didn't come to fruition so I'll have to post some stuff I shot this summer.

At the end of September my beloved and I set off for a monumental road trip. 3012 miles over 7 states in 8 days. Our goal, to have a short but sweet visit with my parents, then his family, then a couple of days to ourselves.

We met those goals but it wasn't easy spending hours upon hours in the car every day. I'd do a road trip again but not like that. However, the visits went surprisingly well (with the exception of one ruined evening with his crazy, drunk uncle) I was thrilled that we escaped my parents house without any type of repeat Christmas incident and whitey & I got along great. Thank the lerd.

We're both lucky to have family living in Montana and before you make a bunch of unibomber black helicopter hick ass jokes Montana is a beautiful state with a lot to offer, even if some of the people are backwoods weirdos. And I had to take most of my photos from a moving automobile, but I was pleased with a few.

Taken in Yellowstone

Lower Falls

America's Next Top Model

The world's shortest river

Desert highway

The entire set can be seen here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitterbetty/sets/72157608015415491/

Again

2008-11-15T23:25:00.000-08:00

My heart goes out to Los Angeles and Orange County. We almost lost our house last year in the San Diego fires and I know first-hand how terrifying it is. I really hope the firefighters can knock the fires out and nothing starts up in SD. No one wants to go through that again.

Spinning

2008-11-14T12:19:00.001-08:00

So I have a raging case of vertigo, of all stupid fucking things. I've been having little twinges of dizziness and ear pain for about a month but this week it kicked into high gear and has gotten worse since Monday. Today I feel like some invisable asshole is slowly turning me upside down and I'm spending a good portion of every hour trying not to hurl the pomegranate tootsie pop I ate earlier. I'd joke around and say it's probably a gawd damn tumor but I've had a real gawd damn tumor so it's not that funny.

I happened to have a doctor's appointment yesterday for some other stuff and told her I was spinning right round baby right round and she kept asking me what kind of dizziness. Um, the kind that makes you feel dizzy? Yes, but what kind of dizziness? Is the room spinning or do you feel faint. Well, neither, I said. It sort of feels like a head rush. Then she asked me again, what kind of dizziness. Gah!

Then after she slammed me onto the exam table a couple of times and made me touch my finger to my nose then to her finger (I passed that little sobriety test with flying colors) she determined that she really didn't know what was causing it - maybe an inner ear virus or allergies - and it'll go away. When? I don't know but it should be fun to get on an airplane next week and see if the pressure makes my head explode at 30 thousand feet!

I'm going to leave work early and go get some sea sickness pills, a vat of chocolate and a gallon of Propel. I've never experience motion sickness and always thought those that did were being wussies. I owe you all an apology. So, from the bottom of my dizzy, nauseous heart, I'm sorry. I'm not going to hold your hair while you're puking over the side of a boat or anything but I won't make fun of you any more. Much.

A little off the top, please

2008-11-13T18:38:00.000-08:00

Personal grooming and how much maintenance you want to do on your own body is up to you. I know it changes with cultures (I'm looking at your hairy armpits, France) and with generations (remember when it was a whispered topic of scandal if a lady colored her hair?) and changes with age (my upper lip is a bit fuzzy, eh, whatever.)

But, I do believe looking good equates to feeling good and letting yourself totally go like a hippie living on a commune using a bucket for a toilet and having dreadlocks down to your taint is unappetizing for everyone. I also understand if a mom is so tired and haggard trying to corral rugrats all day she can't see the point of donning more than sweats that will just be puked on my noon and piling dirty hair into a ponytail, however, looking like you just crawled out of a Walmart hole is not good for you or anyone else. I might not be a supermodel but I'm clean and smell good 99% of the time.

That being said, I have some advice for what not to do concerning hair. These may or may not be from personal and excruciating experience.

Hair coloring:
Do not buy a container of funky hair color and apply it to your dark brown hair without knowing the first fecking thing about the process. Oh, important things like lifting the natural color of your hair before depositing the contents of Paul Mitchell's Cool Blue onto auburn locks which will not be a lovely shade of azure but more like guacamole vomit. Let a professional do what they're trained to do. That's why they get paid good money, to not fuck up your hair. Or be prepared to explain why the bottom 5 inches of your long locks look like toxic waste.

Hair conditioning:
Despite what you might have heard out of the corner of your ear while flipping channels on a hungover Sunday morning smooshing an entire over-ripe banana does not add moisture, shine nor body to your hair. It will, I promise you, disintegrate into a slimy, stinking mess of fruit jizz snot hardening into a quick-set cement causing you to spend the next several days and endless washings trying to get the hot mess off your skull. Save your pennies, buy something from the beauty supply and keep products from the kitchen away from your body.

Hair trimming:
(No, I'm not talking about the hair on your head, I've never in my life cut my own hair because my mother probably threatened me with a slow and painful death if I ever put a pair of scissors near my noggin' and I never wanted it screwed up worse than she did herself when trying to "tidy up my bangs" which always ended up with me crying, her yelling and my hair looking like a fell face first into a fan. I'm talking about downtown.)

Do not use razor sharp nail scissors to trim your trim. I'm a believer in keeping the forest cleared, if you know what I mean. No wild woods on this woman. Sure, when I've been single and going through dry spells I let things get all granola but I prefer not to mess around with all that jazz and I know my partner appreciates it but there are better, safer ways to take care of this if you want avoid the dreaded Brazilian but they don't involve squatting over a cracked mirror and using microscopic but deadly scissors that will catch a chunk of oh-so-delicate skin. And while you're sitting there bleeding all over the bathroom floor wondering how you're going to explain this to the guy stitching you up at the Urgent Care you will regret that decision.

Hair trimming part 2:
Do not use a dull razor to shave your asshole. I believe that is self-explanatory. (And don't get all ew, that chick has hair on her bunghole because ya'll know you have it too. I don't know why God decided your crinkle star needs a few stray hairs in that area but there you have it.)

Hair waxing:
Do not wax yourself. Just don't. Because let me just tell you, if do you choose to do some home waxing with one of those kits where you warm up the goo and try to spread the thick layer of molten lava onto any part of your tender anatomy do not, I repeat, DO NOT wait ONE SECOND longer than the instructions recommend or you will feel an unholy pain that will bring forth salty tears of instant regret and slam your asshole involuntarily shut for at least an hour. And there may be some puking. And bleeding.

11/12

2008-11-12T18:37:00.000-08:00

14 years ago today I walked down the aisle and married the biggest asshole ever.

OK, he wasn't an asshole immediately before and after the wedding but I knew it would never last and shouldn't have gotten married and went through the whole exercise in pain for the wrong reasons but I tell ya, it was one hell of a great fuckin' party and I looked awesome.

However, I don't recommend doing what I did. I was a stupid 27 year-old kid who'd been with a motherfucker for almost 6 years already and was miserable part of the time through most of it. I knew 6 months into the twisted relationship that it wasn't right, good or healthy but I was too chicken to leave. I vividly recall the instant the tide turned and I knew, knew I'd just made a huge mistake.

We were driving somewhere and having a normal conversation but I inadvertently hit some hot button and he about ripped my head off going 75 mph on the freeway past the mall. I remember sitting there, choosing to hold my tongue and thinking, I just created a pattern. If I don't tell him he's shithouse crazy if he thinks he can talk to me like that then he will do it again. But, that stupid wuss fear got in the way and I kept my mouth shut.

And who knows if it truly would have made a difference if I spoke up at that moment. If I made him take the next exit and drive me home, making a loud-and-clear statement. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't have changed the course of our relationship. I doubt it. I was too dependant on having someone "want" me to feel worthy. I needed to have a boyfriend then a husband to prove that if a man chose me then I was good enough.

I don't feel that way anymore.

I'm in a relationship because I want to be there, not because I need to be there. Took me a long time to figure that out and I would never say I don't have my insecure moments, but I know I'm fine on my own and what I think of myself is the most important thing before what someone else thinks of me.

I'm much, much better at picking and chosing my battles. At paying and giving attention to the important things. I've worked hard on my communication skills and picked a guy who does the same, has the same goals, is in it for the same healthy reasons. The road isn't smooth as glass but it's a hell of a lot better than something littered with killer landmines.

As for my x-husband? I knew on the last day of my honeymoon I was in deep doodoo. I realized as I was crying alone in the bathroom on our first Valentines day as a married couple that I wanted out and agreed with myself I needed to stay a year so my parents didn't have tandem heart attacks over the 20 grand they'd just spent on my big, fat white wedding. I ended up lasting more than 2. 2+ years that took me 5 to get over. But that's all another story for another time.

I'm sure the fucker is out there somewhere, wearing his dirty sweats, taking advantage of his parents and being a dick to some other girl. I don't think of him often, except for the thousand dollars he never paid me back, that I'd like to see but I think icicles would be hanging from my tits before that happened.

This day doesn't mean anything to me any more but a tiny little wee small part tucked back in the recesses of the naughty part in my brain hopes he thinks of me before the night is through and this is what he sees.

Ha ha. Eff you, a-hole.

7 days later

2008-11-11T17:16:00.000-08:00

One week ago my country voted in a new president. A man who has restored my hope. A man that I pray will fix the things that need to be fixed. A man that has made history. Wonderful, rightful history. I can finally say again that I'm proud to be an American, something I've struggled with for the last few years.

I don't get political very often but I've been in a state of bliss for a week, excited at the prospect of the good that can come. Now, I'd like to say the same about California. But that will take reversing this stupid, discriminatory, assbackwards, offending piece of shit Proposition 8. I pray to my God, the one who loves everyone, that this can be done.

As I told my gay best friend, who's much more affected by this, and rightly so, you are not less by the color of your skin, you are not less by the size of your body, and you are not less by the person you love.

I don't know anything about Keith Olberman (apparently he might be nuts?) but I think he sums it up with a powerful and extremely well-said message.

Get your shit together, California. Take Obama's lead and get your shit together.

Crushin'

2008-11-10T17:21:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I'm a little late to the party. Be it circumstance, innocent ignorance or my rejection of most things wildly popular until the hype wears off and then I'll get on the bandwagon. Like with SUV's. I sure picked a great year to buy one of those! But most of the time it's something I didn't give a lot of thought to until I tripped over it on my own then said to myself, why the hell didn't I do this sooner?!?

Since the writers strike fucked up our television watching for nearly a year and this summer I couldn't take Dirty Dancing one more effing time I started to rent TV shows from Netflix. And that's where I discovered Dexter. Seriously, if you haven't watched this show or you've caught it on broadcast channels I implore you to rent every season you can on DVD and pay your cable company whatever they want for Showtime on Demand and catch up with the rest of us. It's that good.

It's grizzly as fuck but the story lines are entertaining and the tension is almost too much to bear but not quite and the music will haunt your dreams in a good way. It's funny, too. The cast is superb and writing top notch, although I can't figure out why the freck they put the female police chief in the worst wardrobe of pastel nightmare suits every single week. She looks like a demented Easter bunny with tits. So distracting. Beyond that, it's an absolute must see. If you loved Six Feet Under you will love Dexter.

As I was finishing up the last season of Dexter on DVD my friends started talking about a new show and giving it rave reviews. I knew it was on HBO and my HBO was currently screwed up because my dumb cable company is just that, dumb. So I called and told them to stop being dumb and fix my shit and btw, please give me extra stuff with On Demand type things and they did and that's when I discovered I could finally see the show my friends had told me to see and thank you LORDY LORD that I did because now I'm OBSESSED with this:

Oh my good gawd am I obsessed. There's only been 10 episodes so far but they are 10 packed-with-awesomness episodes and let me tell you, if you google this guy you won't get much. It'l be a whatever endeavor because really, he's sort of a plain Wayne in his past roles, but holy crap on a stake, is he not ever sexy brooding you can suck on my neck anytime HOT when he's playing Bill the vampire.

And this isn't the very best pic but the brood thing - this is what I'm talking about.

That man can give brood like no other. And that accent. ~swoon~ And when his fangs pop out with that little whoosh-click, quick as could be, well, I'd let him bite me wherever he wanted to. He could pinch the fat on my underarms. He could borrow $50 bucks and not pay it back. Just chomp on my neck for awhile and give me that look. Sex. On. A. Stick.

Oh, and this show also has great writing and is entertaining as hell and I've discovered I have a major boner for vampires. Probably something I've been repressing for a long time but not any more! I love vampires and I'm not afraid to say it! At least the kind like Bill. Nice Southern gentlemen blood suckers that give you the big "O" after draining a pint or two. Maybe from my inner thigh...

Man, I can't wait for Sunday.

Snapshot Sunday

2008-11-09T17:29:00.001-08:00

Well, I must say, I let things get too far and I think what weakened pulse my blog had left before I joined NaBloPoMo this year is nearly gone. Disappointing but true. I'm trying to find the point of keepin' on keepin' on. I've never been one to shout to hear my own echo. It's not as fun if someone isn't there with you to hear your voice reverberate off the mountain. I dunno. I'll give it a couple more days but it might be time to close the old gal down for good. We'll see.

In the meantime, I've been having a ball playing with new and old photos in my jr. version of Photoshop, adding layers and textures and playing with doo-dads I keep finding as I fiddle around. It's a major time sucker, though. I can spend a good 2 hours screwing around with one photo and that doesn't get me any closer to the long list of to-do's I've got going right now. Especially for my Etsy shop. But it sure is fun to see a previously discarded as crap photo turn into something sorta cool.

Here are some I've made recently.

Love

2008-11-08T18:26:00.000-08:00

My 10 favorite things today:

1. Naps
2. Ice cold water
3. Naps
4. A surprise present from a friend
5. Naps
6. Saltine crackers
7. Naps
8. A long, hot shower
9. Naps
10. Naps

Voyeur

2008-11-07T17:13:00.000-08:00

I love people watching. Going to a really populated place like Disneyland is ripe for this and whenever I go I try to take some time to just sit and observe the folks walking by. Or count how many black socks with sandals combos I can find. Then I go nuts because crowds make me crazy and I'll have a melt-down tantrum if I don't get the fuck outta there.

Today I was in Walmart. Yes, I know, boo hiss scratch my eyes out but I'm broke as a joke and they be cheap so put on a curse on me and be done with it. And when when I'm there I'm usually so freaked by the jammed up aisles I start to scream on the inside until once again, I can get the fuck outta there.

Somehow this morning I remained fairly calm and took note of the usual freaks on parade with more observant eyes. Which is seriously the only way you can survive that fucking place because gawd damn, what a freakin' nightmare. It's almost not worth it to save 50 cents on a box of 100 calorie fake ding dongs. Christ.

Unfortunately some things I saw were disturbing to say the least but I held it together. And I do my best not to be a judgmental asshole, but I can't always help it. Like when I meandered down the craft lane looking for a supply I need and as I got about 5 feet away from an elderly Walmartian woman stocking a shelf she let out an audible and slightly impressive gurgly poot from her nether regions without so much as a glimmer of embarrassment on her face.

And as I turned my cart around as fast as possible, but not obviously so, to avoid walking through her freshly emitted ass cloud I thought to myself, you go on with your farty self old lady! That's right! Let 'er rip! You've earned the right to cough in your pants whenever you want! And then I threw up just a little.

Next I ran across an adorable young family. Young mom. Young dad. And cute little baby in the cart. Cute little boy cherub with a cute little crew cut and not so cute caterpillar eyebrows engulfing his wee little face. I know a baby can't help it but dammit, that poor kid looked like a tiny version of Groucho Marx minus the mustache. Seriously, I ran into them about 5 times and it just got worse. I feel bad for the little tyke but that was weird! I've never in my life seen a baby with eyebrows let alone big, thick, dark mini bushes crawling across his forehead. Eesh.

As my claustrophobia meter was about to go off I encountered one more oddity I wasn't prepared for. Another Walmart employee came dashing down my aisle and atop his head sat the worst toupee I've ever seen in my life. This thing looked like a road killed skunk. A pile of soiled brillo pads. A petrified wolverine. It was spectacularly awful, adhered all askew to his dome with wispy tufts of fuzzy gray hair sticking out the bottom.

I mean, my lord, is that better than being bald. Really? Looking like you have the muffs of 10 hippie chicks glued to your skull? That is preferred over a shiny pate? I wanted to pull him aside and say "Bald is beautiful, man! Throw that fried squirrel away!" But he was gone in a flash and I didn't want to get bashed in the face with discount chips.

I'm no better than anyone else and I know there was probably someone looking at me going, Oh Emm Gee, Becky, look at the size of her butt, but I tell ya, people watching is Eff Uu Enn.

This is what I get

2008-11-06T19:07:00.000-08:00

An acquaintance of mine has been touting the succulent wonders of a certain candy bar that I've never had. I've been told on numerous occasions that I'm a crack smoking idiot if I don't run right out and purchase said goody but it has proven to be an elusive bitch and as much as I've been looking I haven't come across her beloved bar until yesterday.

As I was returning back to work after picking up my automobile from the ~~ripoff over-priced whores~~ Honda service department I felt a little peckish and stopped to pick up some lunch at one of the hoity-toity groceries in La Jolla you'reaworthlesspigifyoudon'tdriveahummer, California near my workplace.

While cruising through the throngs of Dolce & Gabanna sunglasses and designer dogs, trying to find some sushi among the free range starfruit and Peruvian purified by pious part-time priests bottled water, I spied the candy aisle. Sorry, the Ruelle de Sucrerie, shoo shoo poo poo. And what did my little eye spy but a Zagnut bar! The one and only sweet my friend has been bugging the shit out of me about.

Not one to pass an opportunity to munch on something bad for me I snatched it from the shelf with cat-like speed and trotted to the checkout (where I was soundly reprimanded by the snooty clerk for fucking up the cash back feature that, may I say, was stupid beyond all measure and their electronic cc slider thingy was over-sensitive and tried to give me $200 instead of $20 because when I gently and delicately barely touched the zero button it fucking freaked out and ran across the damn screen.) But I digress...

After returning to work and eating my over-priced and substandard sushi it was time to finally consume the candy confection I've heard so much about. I picked it up and scanned the packaging and was surprised to see there was no chocolate involved in this tantalizing treat. Hmm, I said to myself, I wonder what could be so good about it. No chocolate = no fun but I'm a gamer and a sugar fiend and would probably eat a dog turd if it was covered in frosting.

I pealed back the red wrapper and was perplexed by what I saw. It looked...fuzzy. Sort of like a fish stick. And not a color found in nature. This could be bad, I said to myself. I ingest enough cat hair to choke a chicken, I don't want to purposefully gobble up the edible equivalent of a mohair sweater covered in tuna sprinkled with pesticide but what the hell, I'll give it a shot.

I took a hearty bite, this was candy after all, and my first impression was, shit, I just bit into a compressed stick of wood shavings but then the taste hit my buds and it was good! Wait. Toasted freeze-dried coconut bits? Bad. But wait! A delightful peanutty taste. Good! Wait. Freeze-dried coconut PLUS a peanutty taste. BAD. But wait! It's sugary and sweet and not so awful. T'was GOOD! But wait again!

GAWD DAMMIT. THIS SHIT IS ALL STUCK IN MY TEETH LIKE HARDENED LAVA AND MY SHIRT LOOKS LIKE I RAN THROUGH A SAW MILL IN A HIGH WIND AFTER BEING DOUSED WITH HONEY! WTF?!?

Then I proceeded to spend the next 10 minutes picking pulverized floor laminate lodged in my molars but hey, it was sweet and not so horrible but kind of a waste of calories and without chocolate it's sort of like eating white label cookies that are crushed at the bottom of the bag. They're no Oreo but will do in a pinch. So, in conclusion, and on a scale of 1 to awsome, I give the Zagnut a big, fat MEH.

Can I get a Wah Wah?

2008-11-05T18:40:00.000-08:00

One of the best things I've ever witnessed in all my life has become a joyful, internal mantra of mine. An inside joke running through my own head I enjoy endlessly. Sometimes paired with a loud verbal proclamation that usually causes those within earshot to wonder what the hell I'm talking about and just what exactly is my problem. This, of course, makes me even happier because I'm inherently evil and making someones prim little head snap around in surprise makes the devil on my left shoulder giggle like a schoolgirl. It just never gets old.

I've also attempted to epitomize the players in this story, borrowing lines and actions with thankful glee, to gain an advantage during a tense situation a few times. Although something usually gets lost in the translation and my efforts to weasel out of a predicament fall short. However, I encourage you to use the following and see where it gets you. Might be surprised. And besides, it's fun.

It was a normal Saturday afternoon and I was shopping in Target. Or it could have been a Thursday night. Or a Monday afternoon. Or any friggen day of the week since most people know Target is my self-proclaimed house of worship and on this particular occasion the angels sang on high and communion was served. Granted, it was musak being pumped through a loudspeaker, a bag of Hershey kisses and a liter of diet coke in my shiny red cart, but it still counts.

I'd made my way around the right side perimeter of the store, as is my usual Target trekking style. Past the clothing, jammies, purses, jewelry. Cruising through the shoes and picking up a few things here and there. (Very important necessary items, so shut up). Ignoring the men's clothing and hardware, but looking wantonly at the doggie isle.

My next move is usually down the home section for some decorating ideas, but today I made a right instead of a left. And I'm eternally grateful that I did. Inexplicably, perhaps through divine intervention (love you Target!) I ended up in a toy isle. Shielding my eyes from the blindingly pink Barbie boxes and getting wistfully woozy over the Easy Bake Oven.

And dammit, I never got one of those as a kid and I'll never forgive my parents for it, even though they knew I'd eat the cake batter in it's little miniature cake pan before it ever had the chance to slowly broil under the power of a 60 watt light bulb, they still should have gotten me one. Now I can't cook worth a crap and I still eat batter so who didn't learn their lesson? Huh mom and dad? WHO? But I digress...hmf.

I love toys and always will, so I was somewhat mesmerized and having fun silently oo-ing and awe-ing over the new-fangled play dough accoutrement's that involved shapes and squeezy things and bright colored doo-dads instead of my mother's broken, oily rolling pin. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed an obviously haggard young mother toting 3 very small children turning up my isle.

She was pushing the cart with a big fat baby stuffed into the front seat. His chubby, naked feet hanging through the leg holes. There was a young toe-headed boy standing quiet as a mouse at his mothers hip that appeared to be about 3 1/2 and a wee girl, long ringlets spilling down her back, who looked about 2. (Jesus lady, tell your husband to get off ya once and awhile.)

There seemed to be a little scuffle and I was trying to not give my eves-dropping away while I inched ever closer to the scene unfolding before me. Like a Ninja, I am. The mother grabbed the little girl with one hand and took the baby's foot with the other and I heard her loudly, but with straining restraint say "What did you do??" "What DID you do!?!"

I couldn't figure out what the hubbub was about since I hadn't seen anything obvious out of the corner of my voyeuristic eye and none of the kids had made a peep but it was clear something heinous had gone down.

And that's when all hell broke loose.

Or rather the baby, who I realized had been been doing one of those 5 minute inhales of rugrat rage finally exhaled with a scream that could shatter glass, melt your eardrums right down your face and kill a full-grown dog dead on the spot. With his next opened-mouthed pause between howls I heard the mother once again ask the little girl, who was now sporting an impressive pout, "Did you bite your brother's foot??" "DID YOU?"

The bitee was calming down pretty quickly, so now it was the biters turn to express herself. The mother was still pointing to the baby's foot and was leaning down into the little offenders face making it very clear that "you DO NOT EVER put your MOUTH on your BABY BROTHER and BITE him. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"

I could barely contain myself. It was like theater. I felt for all of them. The exhausted mom, the poor kid with teeth impressions in his toes and the little girl who, I imagine, felt completely warranted in dishing out her own rough justice however, getting caught sucks. Getting caught and your ass ripped by your mom in public sucks double. And I know a thing or eleventy thousand about that.

Little Shirley Temper, in all her awesomely selfish 2 year-old glory, did not care a fucking wit about the pain she herself had inflicted on her brother and no doubt having a damn good reason in her own mind for doing so. With her pudgy arms tightly folded across her chest and her bottom lip pushed out as far as it would go she stomped her foot and hmph'd loudly, completely ignoring the angry inquisition and giving her irritated mama a little taste of the hormonal teenage years to come.

The requested apology was not coming and I had a feeling hell could freeze over right there between the action figures and Lego's before any true remorse would be shared. And then it happened. A moment of truth so pure I still wish to this day that could have soaked up this scene just a little longer.

The little girl had reached her end. She threw her head back in glorious melodramatic fashion. Sucked in a huge, weepy breath in short staccato bursts. And with all the diva drama of an academy award winner proclaimed with great fervent indignation as powerful as her little voice could profess she said:

"I WANT TO BE HAP-PEEEEEEEEEE!"

And really, who can argue with that?

Too nervous

2008-11-04T20:00:00.000-08:00

Too keyed up to think. After months and months of having daily political enemas it all comes down to tonight. I'm so afraid the way I want things to go will not. And baby doesn't like not getting her way.

I feel like this country is a drowning victim that has been left to splash in shark infested waters for so long its skin is pickled and raw and there's only a few last breaths left before the carcass sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Please, let a life ring be thrown. Let the hypothetical coast guard come with warm blankets and cool, fresh water, and please, please let the healing begin.

Clearly the only way to get through this night, while we anxiously wait for the news on important Props and the biggest race of them all, praying for the rescue we all need, is drinking Irish whisky and watching Michael Myers chop up horny teens on TV. Clearly.

Eff you, Hershey

2008-11-03T18:48:00.000-08:00

I love Halloween. I've often said it's my favorite holiday but I don't think that's true any more. For a long time I hated, nay, rejected with a pissy passion, Christmas, but now I'm fuckall crazy about it again. (I don't even mind that little plastic mangers are jammed up against the skeleton candles on store shelves but Christmas music playing within hours of stumbling home from the party where you drank too many booberry martini's and flirted with Darth Vader? Really? Just, no.)

And since the boy and I started our super rockstar kickass tradition of finding each other the most hideously awesome Valentine's Day gifts for 10 dollars or under that holiday fights for one of the best but I will admit, there's still something super fun about Halloween and it just might have something to do with the candy.

I mean, I know I'm an adult and I can buy anything I want at any time but feasting on fun size Snickers for breakfast and pawing through the candy bowl inbetween tricker treaters to snag a coveted 100 Grand bar (screw that little Velma, she can have the Twix) it's just somehow more fun.

Until now.

Christ on a sugar cookie am I candied out. I don't even want to think about chewy caramel or tasty chocolate or the thought of picking remnants of Skor out of my teeth. I don't want to hear the crinkle of a wrapper or imagine the pop of a Crunch bar or contemplate the goodness of a Peanut Butter Cup melting on my tongue.

I want to brush my teeth for a year, eat vegetables and take a walk instead of finishing off the potof hot fudge, for gawd's sake. I OD'd. And how. So no more spending the day licking the sweet bits of cocoa from the corners of my mouth. Walk past the co-worker's desk with the full jar beckoning. DON'T BE WEAK TO THE SWEETS!

Ironic that my dentist's office called me today to set up an appointment for my overdue cleaning. I'm just praying I don't have 14 cavities because after all the sugary confections I've consumed in the last week I won't be surprised if half my teeth fall out before next Monday.

Now excuse me while I go spend the next 3 months on the treadmill.

Snapshot Sunday

2008-11-02T17:25:00.000-08:00

Last week I took my best friend out for a little birthday excursion of scenic driving, photo-ing and pie eating. We headed up to a small town called Julian that rests in the Eastern part of San Diego county, our version of the country, and known for its rustic flavor, apple orchards and bakeries. (Mmmm, pie.)

The old-fashioned soda fountain also cooks a mean burger even though you might get some pervy attention by one of the town "characters" dressed in full Tombstone-era regalia who stares a second too long at your boobs but whatever, the iced tea was cold and the price was right.

One of our goals of the trip was to find the town cemetery and hopefully get some good shots, a location we've both been wanting to hit. We quickly found it a the top of a huge hill and made our trek up the crude, railroad tie steps to the graves, hoping to find some really cool, old headstones. What we hadn't really counted on was how sad some of the markers would be.

Of course, death is inevitable but it still sucks and seeing the babies graves was heart wrenching, as were the young people and headstones that gave a lot of information. "Wife and mother." "Beloved brother, father, son, and friend." "He always took the short cut home." But we also saw a lot of people that lived long, long lives. We hoped fulfilling ones.

As melancholy as it was, we tried to be respectful and it's a good reminder that life is short. Shorter still for some, so you'd better make it good. Flowers grow in the middle of poop, you know. (Hey, I should stitch that on a pillow.) So take a moment at least once a day to say, you know, I have a lot to be thankful for. I swear, it helps you see right through the stinky shit.

OK. Enough lecture. Here are some pics. The rest can be seen on my Flickr account.

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaack

2008-11-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

I've set the lofty goal of posting every day in November to participate in NaBloPoMo. Which is funny coming from someone who's written, what, 4 times this year? But I'll do my procrastinating best. I can't promise entertainment but at least I'll be here!

Maybe I can distract you with shiny objects and candy. If not, I put out, so there's always that...

Here comes the ?

2008-08-01T13:20:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in a previous post I'm shooting another wedding tomorrow. I seriously don't know why I said yes to this. In fact, I'm pretty sure I said maybe but my co-worker clearly decided to ignore my wishy-washiness and inked me in. For the tune of less than a 1/3 of what I charged for the other wedding I shot. I nearly choked when she told me that's what she quoted to the bride and groom. The fuck, lady? It takes me at least 40 hours of work to prepare, shoot, edit and present the final results to the couple if not more. I'd better get a good tip or at least some rubber chicken for my troubles. Grumble grumble.

I expect it to be about 129 degrees in lovely Chulajuana tomorrow and will try not to faint onto the cake but at least I'm not as freaked out gut punching nervous like I was last time. Gawd, I hope this is not some type of false confidence and my ego will burst causing the universe to flip-flop on me and things will be a crapfest extraordinaire. Keep your fingers crossed for me, people! KEEP EVERYTHING CROSSED!

Speaking of weddings... I haven't been a guest at a ceremony in a very long time. Besides the one I photographed last February, which doesn't count, I think it's been at least 5 or 6 years since I witnessed loving nuptials exchanged while being strangled by twisty pantyhose and consuming way too much cheap champagne eventually making a fool of myself and perhaps playing swap the ice cube with a cute waiter type fella or sort of elbowing the ring girl in the face to keep her from catching my, ahem, the bouquet. (Kids should stay the feck out of that ritual anyhoo, grumble grumble.)

Question. Is it wrong to grind the groom's father on the dance floor?

But I digress...

I've attended all manners of ceremonies. From four star affairs with crab legs and live bands at the snooty country club to a magnificently white trash wedding complete with sloppy joe's and a self-serve keg, no, I am not kidding, and everything in between. My own wedding was fucking classy as all get out, if I do say so myself, and people still compliment me on it even thought the marriage lasted less than a blink. And I fully realize people have different budgets but sweet fancy Moses on the moon, do tastes differ.

Many years ago when I was a manager in charge of live people (the horror) one of my staff , we'll call her C., had found twoo wuv and was engaged to be married. She was an odd girl who was raised by odd parents in an odd way. For example, I remember her claiming she was never taken or went to an actual movie theater until she was in her 20's. I just could not comprehend that. What parent doesn't shlep their brood to the latest Disney dreck? It's in the parent handbook for chrissakes.

It sounded like C's folks maybe hadn't planned on a baby entering their lives judging by her increasingly bizarre stories. It was like she was deposited onto the coffee table by aliens in the middle of the night and her parents were too scared to do anything but take care of the foreign object screaming in their living room. Although they provided food and shelter they didn't teach the basics like personal grooming and social interaction so this poor girl was a lump of coal in K-mart pants trying to turn into a diamond painfully slow.

She was already going out with her guy when I hired her and became engaged about a year into her employment. And OK, I'm going to be a little judgy here because I was stunned in the first place that she had a main squeeze because lets just say she wasn't a looker and her personality was um...hard to take and ah...sta-range. But she did have a sweet side and when I found out her and the beau had met on some Klingon dating forum or something I got it. Then when I met the dude I really got it. They were meant for each other, and how.

Although I will say it was disturbing to see them together since they looked like they could be brother and sister, twins in fact. Burst forth from the same pod. OK, they looked exactly alike in all the wrong ways but it was love. Big ol' ugly love.

As I'm sure most of us have experienced, when a co-worker is planning a wedding they are obsessed. It's WEDDING WEDDING WEDDING, ALL ABOUT MY WEDDING, HERE'S WHAT I'M GOING TO HAVE AT MY WEDDING all the time. Makes you want to stuff a ring bearer in their gaping maw and shut 'em up for a gawd damn second. OMG! the wedding talk never ends and my employee was no exception.

The biggest problem was, she a crazy lady. Her ideas were nuts! I tried to help her out because, if I may brag for a moment, my wedding was kick ass 5 star class act all the way. I had a better budget than most but it was no platinum affair. I just have good taste. My little C. did not.

She was a big girl, which I can appreciate. I have extra curves myself, but she bought a dress that needed considerable alterations and she didn't want to shell out the extra 75 bucks to lop off 8 necessary inches of fabric at the bottom. Her solution? She bought herself a pair of honest-to-goodness stripper-whore platform shoes with 5 inch heels so her dress wouldn't drag during the ceremony. This idea coming from a person who wore nothing but plastic purple moccasins from JC Penny. She actually had "practice walking in big shoes" in her frilly wedding daily planner.

Thankfully she had the foresight to know she couldn't sustain herself in an upright position the entire night in her working girl footwear so she purchased a second pair of demure white pumps from Payless (also plastic). Her dress would pool a bit at her feet but at least we'd all be spared the potential trauma of watching the bride trip and topple onto the buffet table. At least in theory.

Another bright idea C. had was to have a dry wedding. Now, mind you, I know I should respect someones personal wishes especially when they have family members with past problems but in my opinion the reception is a thank you for the people putting forth the effort, time and money to be witnesses to your promise and the party is mostly for them. It's not like I expect a magnum of champagne with my name engraved on it but I'm gonna drink a damn cocktail with my cake.

And come to think of it, I helped organize her official bridal shower and a threw her a bachelorette party at my house that left my living room with a purple booze stain and riddled with every manner of penis shaped or related items and 10 condom balloons bouncing around. And I have some cringingly awful photographic evidence of a well-endowed stuff panda bear and the bride-to-be. So punch just isn't going to cut it with this bitch.

Oh, and did I mention the wedding was at a local CASINO? Why in the hell would you try and have a no booze affair in the middle of an establishment that gives it away for free? Why don't you just throw a pile of sex addicts into a naked pornstar store and tell them not to touch the merchandise. Sheesh.

So, because I'm a bad person as are my friends the girlfriend I was carpooling with and I devised a rotten little plan to get around the sober statute and brought a cooler of Cosmo's with us to consume in the hot parking lot like the fancy fucking ladies we were. After discovering that swigging down lukewarm Vodka in the sun is less than appealing we headed inside where we found a group of our co-workers with like minds heading to the bar. This would become a theme with us ne'er-do-wells. We all had enough time before the ceremony to kick back a couple of drinks a piece and were properly lubed to witness the, um, spectacle to come.

As we attempted to navigate the casino we were directed to a set of double doors only reached by walking a slalom course through a large contingent of slot machines. All, it seemed, to have a geriatric creature perched precariously in front of on a red vinyl stool, oxygen tanks attached and cigarettes sizzling. We opened the door and stepped in to a large theater-type room that was completely black from floor to ceiling. Black walls, black floor, black curtains. It was like a giant armpit.

The only bit of color was from the white cross-hatched wooden arch placed in front of the stage adorned with dusty silk flowers and 2 funereal standing wicker urns with again, dusty silk flowers stuffed into the tops. The lighting was a spectacular display of naked bulbs pointed towards the congregation and the faint "cha-ching, blingalingaling" of the slot machines could be heard through the walls.

Those of us from work were horrible people and as supportive as we were trying to be the site of this nightmare scene started us with a bad case of the giggles. I prayed for the thing to start and be over with so we could get the heck outta there before we really lost our shit. Finally the music started and the groom took his place at the alter. We were motioned to stand and here came the bride, in all her hooker shoed glory, slowly, slowly, sloooooowwwwwlllyyy, galumping down the isle on her huge shoes trying not to fall.

Galump.

Pause.

Galump.

Pause.

Galump.

She finally made it the 20 required feet and stood with her beloved, both wearing their matching glasses and hair, and said their "I do's." We all breathed a sigh of relief and got up to make our way in the adjoining room for the reception. Until a polyester vest wearing casino employee stopped us in our tracks to announce the room wasn't ready. Ok, then. Back to the bar!

We were all finally seated for an early dinner and much to my surprise I had not 1, not 2 but 3 little chotchkie's of crap sitting before me. So this is where her budget went! A porcelain swan filled with Michael's mints, mini Hershey bars with the bride and grooms name on the label and a tiny, useless basket with Easter m-n-m's in it. In June. Thanks for saving those! I just rolled my eyes and waited for the dinner line to start.

As you can imagine things get a little sketchy from here. I know we made at least 2 more trips to the bar and got properly shitty. I do remember walking up to the buffet, if you could call it that, and witnessed the staff lift a gigundous punch bowl off a rolling cart only to discover at the worst possible moment that another bowl was underneath and it fell with a deafening crash as if a jetliner had just come barreling through the building as it shattered into a zillion pieces all over the place. I thought we were going to have a group heart attack on our hands.

The glass was cleaned up and we went about inspecting the food we hoped to eat soon since I had nothing in my system but booze and stale candy. And that's when we saw it. The tray of "sushi". For my fellow sushi eaters the mere mention of the stuff makes you closes your eyes while a nearly orgasmic smile slides across your face as you daydream about your personal favorites. What I saw before me was NOT sushi.

Someone had taken the creative license and dyed all of the rice 4 horrifically nauseating day-glo shades of green, yellow, blue, and neon pink. And I don't know what was stuffed between the offending layers of rice and seaweed but it wasn't anything resembling fish or the normal ingredients found in my favorite food.

To be nice, and frankly out of my own morbid curiosity, I grabbed one and put it on my plate. When I gingerly took a test-bite nibble I can only describe the taste/consistency/texture as something like eating a vinegar-soaked leaf wrapped around sawdust and dogshit. Yum.

No amount of wasabi could hide the flavor of pure evil, and they had a ton of it. While I was back at the food line trying to figure out what I could consume that wasn't dusted with lead paint I saw an obvious family member of the couple trying to figure out what the big bowl of green was next to the odd looking pinwheels. In a thick southern-ish accent I heard the woman say to her male companion, "Way-ell, I 'spect that'n a musta be sum uv dat fi-yancy gwake-a-mole-a" as she slopped a spoonful onto her plate big enough to take the breath out of jabba the hut.

Of course I didn't say anything! Did you even have to ask!

The rest of the afternoon was fine. I gave a lovely little toast to the happy couple without slurring or swearing, although I do remember threatening the groom with bodily injury if he hurt our girl C. in any way, but I'm told my speech was moving and touching and made some people cry. Half of the room was a little disappointed I didn't drop an f-bomb but my friends at the time were deliciously horrible assholes who couldn't have everything so fuck them and the other half of the room was relieved I didn't.

We left after the fake cake was fake cut and I realized there would be no real cake to eat so off to McDonalds we went with about 5 swans worth of mints I'd swiped on my way out. I left the company about a year after that and have never seen C. again. I'm sure she's just fine and when the mood strikes straps those big stripper shoes on now-and-then for old times sake.

Galump.

Galump.

Galump.

Anniversary

2008-07-30T14:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-10T12:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Lovliness

2008-06-27T14:34:00.000-07:00

Just in case you live in the dark reaches of a cave in outer Mongolia and haven't seen this, take a peek.

I've watched this about 400 times in the last few days and it never fails to make me tear up through a huge smile. I just love this kid. I love what he's done here and I love that he's sharing it with the world. Gawd bless Youtube, too.

There is a time, unfortunately, every damn day when I just hate people. The asshole tailgating me on the freeway, the check writer in line at the grocery store (I think we can all get behind the ire for that one), the puppy mill operator trying to defend their hell-worthy depravity. But when you see something like this it gives you a break from the negative turd that always seems to be floating in our pools.

It makes me want to do something special like that, too. Sometimes I dream of making some huge impact, imprint, impression that will touch people like Matt has. I really don't believe altruism exists and I struggle with the fact that doing something nice for someone else also makes me feel good so did I do the something to make them or me feel better? But in the end, does it really matter?

I say no.

Bringing joy to 3 million people on the internet or one little kid on the corner is equal. It makes a difference. One tiny drop in the ocean and how far it goes might not be visible to the naked eye but we can be rest assured it's there. The impact is felt, big or small.

And that's all that matters.

Dear Kitty,

2008-06-16T18:10:00.000-07:00

You are the furry love of my life, KeeKee cat, and I appreciate the fact that you have an uncontrollable need to sleep as close to me as possible, even when that compulsion hits you at 5 fucking o'clock in the crackass of the morning. But must you park your butt on top of the pillow my head is currently occupying?

It is vital to snuggle with my face immediately after a visit to the poo poo house so I wake up with kitty litter stuck to my cheek? And as much as I Just. Can't. Get. Enough of your sweet purring it's not necessary to do so directly into my ear when mommy is trying to squeeze the last few drops of sleep out of her too-short night.

Also, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't CHEW MY HAIR like some circus freak with a follicle fetish.

Love you. Mean it,

Mama

p.s. please stop barfing. We all know it's you, despite the look of innocence you give me. Thank you.

Long time no write

2008-06-11T06:21:00.000-07:00

I guess it's time to give this blog a good dusting and push that gnarly pic of my broken arm down off the front page. Yes?

Hiya, kids? How are ya? Let's get all caught up, shall we?

Last December whitey and I went to visit my parents for Christmas. My brother and niece joined us as did whitey's mom for a few days. It was horrible. Of course whitey was awesome as was his mama but my mother and brother were bonkers in a bad way. In a word? It was fuckass.

(Some of you might have noticed I pulled 2 very long and gloomy posts detailing what happened with a lot of personal back story. And as much as I was hoping that would be an explanatory and cathartic thing it wasn't. Those words out there for the world to see never sat quite right with me and down they came. The short version is, my mother and I have always had problems, she crosses the line, I retaliated pretty hard, it was not good.)

My mother and I didn't speak for months. My brother can go suck it. I was depressed with a capital ugh. This lead to much crying and eating of chocolate and the inability to do much more than play Spider Solitaire (I will beat you 4 suits! I will!) and watch very bad reality TV day after day after day. (What were you thinking Big Brother? Seriously.)

In February I was the main photographer for a wedding and nearly lost my mind. Jebus H., the stress. That endeavor took up nearly every inch of space in my brain for 3 months solid not-to-mention most of my free fucking time. I said I'd never do that again but I've been booked by a co-worker to shoot her brother's wedding in August. It's a low-budget backyard affair and if the bride and groom are anything like my office acquaintance there will be a keg of Bud and illegal fireworks for entertainment so I'm not too bunched up about that one. As long as no one gets Velveeta on my camera we're all good.

Then in early April I fractured my arm in a horse fall. (See blechy pic below.) This was unfun. I put in a years worth of whining in the last 8 weeks and will have a sore arm for a couple more months but it's on the mend. Well, with the exception of some weird wonky scab issue from the wound that is usually found on horses and not humans (of course) that had to be treated with silver nitrate (!) but that's fixed now as well.

Also in April I finally retired my '95 Honda Accord (I cried like an idiot saying goodbye to that car. I'm such a girl.) and got a car I've wanted for a long time. Isn't she pretty?

Around that same time I'd had enough of the blubbering and fretting over the mom situation (brother can still suck it) and took my dad's advice and wrote my parents a letter, with a special paragraph to my mom. I didn't apologize outright, since it wasn't deserved, but I honestly expressed my sorrow for what went down, ate a little petite shit sandwich, and that did the trick.

My mother called me, sort of kinda apologized in her back-peddling way, but it opened the door and although my feelings are changed forever and I can't ever see spending more than 2 or 3 days with her under the same roof ever again, at least this wound isn't gushing blood all over my light beige carpet any longer. My mood improved a great deal and I could finally concentrate on new things.

Speaking of new things...

I've never considered myself the crafty or artistic sort. Oh, I've dabbled in a few things like quilt making (can you even imagine?) and I made a very ugly pair of earrings once. Mostly I just get a whim up my butt and buy all the supplies for the next, great objet d' crap that I'm convinced will be the envy of the world and prominantly displayed then I lose interest or can't bring myself to read the instructions and it gets shoved unmade in a cupboard or under a bed. (Anyone want nine thousand marble magnets?) Or I do things like glue my fingers together and stab myself repeatedly with pins. And there was that one night involving Saki and cement, but I won't go into it.

However, I've always enjoyed photography. I didn't start to take it seriously until about 2 years ago, or at least as seriously as I take anything. Taking pictures has nudged the desperate wanna-be artist I know is living deep inside my skull, lurking somewhere behind all the useless Brady Bunch trivia and memories of 5th grade. I have a serious technology disability but I'm learning and trying and sometimes getting lucky.

I've even opened up my own Etsy shop to hopefully sell some prints and things. (For those of you who aren't familiar, it's a place where people sell artist type hand-made stuff and supplies to make handmade stuff and handmade supplies to make more stuff.) Go check it out here:

http://www.tasteslikepurple.etsy.com/

So, I think that catches us up. I sure did miss you guys but how many posts could you have read that said "Still depressed. Ate my weight in cookies today. See you tomorrow." Not many, I'm sure. The AWOL is over, the bitchslappings and story telling shall commence once again.

It's good to be back.

Hello?

2008-06-10T07:16:00.000-07:00

Anyone still out there?

Intermission

2008-04-08T07:17:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay. I've been stalled by an accident over the weekend that nearly broke my arm which is now hanging off my shoulder like a big meaty purple ham hock. It's impressive in a holy shit did you get the tag off the semi that ran you over kind of way and only half-functional.

I'm telling people I used my elbow as a battering ram to break down the door of a flaming orphanage to save 29 parentless children since confessing that my scaredy-cat widdle horsie didn't like the looks of my utterly terrifying light blue waterbottle which sent his pea-brain into a convulsion of horror causing him to jump 4 feet sideways effectively dumping my fat ass onto the ground and smashing my entire right side.

~sigh~

Be back soon.

**update: It's fricken broken!!

Not gone...

2008-02-20T09:20:00.001-08:00

...just hibernating.

Deep breath

2008-01-01T20:51:00.000-08:00

Boy. Are things going to be different this year.

Way different.

Merry Happy

2007-12-24T17:55:00.000-08:00

Well, as you can see I've taken a little break from blogging. And I do believe that break will continue for a while longer. Time to regroup and get some stuff behind me, cleared out of my brain and re-energize, which will SO CLEARLY NOT HAPPEN this week since I'm spending it with MY FAMILY. Then I need to decide if I can still do this. Should do this.

At least whitey and I will be together and his mom is joining us too. Oh, did I not mention? His mother is meeting my parents FOR THE FIRST TIME as we're all trapped in the same house for near a week during the holidaze. I don't know what I'm more nervous about killing me, the flights up there and back or all of us under one roof.

Anyway, I wish anyone who's still cruising by a very Merry Whatever You Celebrate and a safe & happy New Year. See you on the flip side. Sometime. Hopefully.

Here's a little prezzie from me to you.

Day 30

2007-11-30T21:32:00.000-08:00

It's the end of Nablopomo 2007 and I'm left feeling, well, like I half-assed it. My head was full of ideas and stories but the motivation, she wasn't really there. Last year I definitely felt the pressure to push myself and I think I did. This year, the pressure felt very homeworky and being resistant to all things mandatory I performed like I normally do, with the enthusiasm of a teenage boy who's been asked to take out the trash. That kid will need a bulldozer and a barrel of vaseline to remove him from the couch.

And for that I'm sorry. I'm sorry for boring anyone (all 4 of you, heh) and sorry to myself for not trying harder. But hell, I know things have been emotionally crazy for awhile and I'm checked out half the time these days. I suppose it's my way of coping. And man, I didn't want to sound like Bummer Girl here since things are OK today. I've actually felt the first twinges of excitement over moving which is really fucking cool since I wasn't sure if that would come back and so soon to boot!

I've got a bit of the Christmas spirit and have hopes for our vacation to my parents house, which will be a total disaster but at least I'm laughing about it now. And planning the cocktails. Lots and lots of cocktails. I'm doing great on my gift budget this year and haven't done my usual 1 to 1 ratio of a gift off my list and one for me. Progress! I'm going to decorate this weekend and put up our little tree since we're flying out X-mas day and will have to celebrate on our own the night before.

We finally got some much-needed rain here, albeit with trepidation since it will cause mudslides to the burn areas and jesus, please, no one needs to have what's left of their house crash down a muddy hillside too. I'm going out to brunch and doing some shopping with one my favorite friends tomorrow and I took my first round of a special antibiotic to hopefully fix my eternally fucked up stomach and I haven't barfed it up yet so that's good too.

I'll most likely try Nablopomo again next year and hopefully I'll be in a better position to get my ass in blog gear soon.

Mind over emotion

2007-11-29T19:20:00.000-08:00

I'm totally freaking out.

Like crying, hyper-ventilating, panic-attacking, dizzy-spelling freaking out.

We're putting the house back on the market. And never mind the fact that my new real estate agent is a creepy little weasel man and his associate/assistant is persistent as a raging yeast infection and we have to re-list my home for a disgustingly rock-bottom price because the fucking housing market is being a sullen bitch, the real panic is that WE'RE MOVING.

Oh my fucking gawd. How am I going to do this? How am I going to pack up and leave the only hometown I've ever known? Leave the city I've grown up in? Start all over virtually from scratch? New state, new city, new house, new job, new set of fears, phobia's and anxieties to contend with. There's not enough medication on the West Coast.

I weighed the pros and cons forever before I decided I was ready, although I've never really been ready. I don't do well with change. I don't even like to switch brands of pens, how the fuck do I think I can move 1000 miles north?? But I know I need to do this, for a myriad of very good reasons, intellectually I realize this is something that must be done. But emotionally? I'm screaming on the inside and mentally death-gripping the doorjamb while common sense is trying to shove my fraidy-cat fat ass through it.

And I had made the decision, months ago. I was going to go and was handling it but then the condo didn't sell and we took it off the market and once again I was saddled with tons of mixed feelings because I had been so ready, or rather I was going to fucking do it and get out of here and my window of opportunity for the decision was closed. And now I'm all fucked up about it again!

But I'm also afraid that if I don't do this now, if I don't take this chance and push myself for the experience of it all I'll be stuck in a rut forever and I'm sick of the sound of my own voice complaining about things I have the power to change. But gawd damn, is it ever terrifying. Even after all the research and questions posed to strangers and family and friends and hoping that our choice of new cities will be a good fit, it's still brain-numbing petrifying.

I don't like my job- hate it in fact, I don't have nearly the amount of friends I used to, most of the people I love are peppered all over the country and aren't in my hometown. My best friend here has a chaotic, busy life and we hardly see each other. I've been riding at my barn for 16 years now and it's sort of run its course. I don't love it like I used to and our core group isn't tight like it was 5 years ago.

Whitey and I have out-grown my little 1100 square foot condo and our neighborhood isn't the kind we'd like to live it. Our windows face our neighbors, all of them, so to have privacy we have to be shut up tight as a ducks ass. We spend most of our time working or sitting at home. Our commute sucks giant, sweaty donkey balls and it's so expensive here we're both working paycheck to paycheck. Our Homeowners fees are $375 a month which sort of feels like being rammed in the ass by a Duraflame log come billing time.

The weather sucks for me 8 months of the year, it's starting to smell like Los Angeles on the bad smog days, and we don't have a yard for the dogs we so desperately want and need for our sanity. To do any of the "touristy" things we like to do we have to wait for the off-seasons or we're contending with the million people vacationing here in the summer and escaping snow in the winter. And let's not even talk about fire season.

So why am I being such a pussy about this move??

On the list

2007-11-28T21:37:00.000-08:00

This morning I was asked what I want for Christmas this year.

I do believe I'd like one of these.

Anyone know how to add this to my Amazon.com wish list?

The Setting

2007-11-27T20:25:00.000-08:00

For the last two nights the sky has gone crazy. Right before sunset, when I leave work, the clouds have been slicing their way across the horizon and the colors change about every 30 seconds. I've barely been able to pay attention to the road as I crane my neck and stare into my mirrors trying to catch another glance and another and another.

I'd like to try and weave in a metaphor, grab a higher meaning, ponder some philosophical point about all of this, or apologize for the photos taken with my pocket camera with urban detritus in the way, but sometimes when you over think something you just muck it to hell.

Bottom line is, it's been unreal and stunning, taking my breath away. And sometimes you just need to shut your mouth and tell your brain to take a pill. Forget all the bullshit of life for a minute, let your eyes do the work and fucking appreciate the moment.

Tonight was one of those times.

Home stretch

2007-11-26T22:10:00.001-08:00

I sort of feel like I've been a bit of a failure in this year's Nablopomo. My motivation and energy level has been so low I haven't put the effort into it as last time. And with my work blocking almost all blogs and my connection at home sketchy, I just haven't been able to do what I did or do what I wanted to do. Such a neglectful blogger. What a bummer.

Sew my knees, please

2007-11-25T20:36:00.001-08:00

I wrote the story below a couple of years ago and because I'm not in a tricking mood I'm confessing to the reposting not-to-mention that after all of this time I still feel the exact same way. Especially when I have a holiday like the one I just survived that included all the fun things like my family, a house full of crazy and a surprise visit from one of my brothers old high schools friends, his mail order bride and their 2 kids.

You know when you get asked a question you can't possible say no to? That's what I was caught between, a rock and a bitch place. I say no and I'm a crab not to be forgiven and my torture level would have gone to new heights. Say yes and my Thanksgiving gets further crapped up than it already was. So, when I was posed with the question if it was OK for this family to "stop by" before dinner what could I say? Hell no, keep that weirdo old stoner and his brats out of my house? Not bloody likely.

This dude showed up more than an hour later than he said he would which fucked up my plans to take my parents dogs to the dog park and shoot a bunch of photos to hopefully use in the photo-calender I'm making for my mom's X-mas present. When they got to my house we all said our hello's and the 7 adults tried to find places to sit in my tiny condo that comfortably seats 4.

The baby wasn't an issue and I didn't mind bouncing her around for a little while but the 3 year old was a holy terror with unresponsive parents that thought it was perfectly fine for him to empty my decorative dish of pot-pourri all over my coffee table then take a brand new candle holder and dump the 9 tea lights out of it before having a tantrum and throwing them all over my living room. About 25 times. All while his parents did nothing. NOTHING.

I finally put my foot down when he grabbed the stack of glass coasters I got whitey for Christmas last year and this little shits father didn't move an inch to physically take them away from the ankle biter while they dangled them over my brick fireplace. I told them all, I was a preschool teacher, I don't have a problem making a kid cry and yanked them out of his sticky hands.

It was so fucking ridiculous.

Anyway, I thought it might be fitting to revisit some thoughts I had on the subject awhile ago. Thoughts I still hold, maybe even more so now.

TICK TICK TICK

I've spent a considerable amount of time with both children and animals in my life, and particularly today, while being poked, prodded, bothered, bugged, teased, tormented, and irritated by my niece, I've come to this conclusion. I do not have a ticking timepiece in my loins wanting for an offspring to go forth and prosper. I yearn for a puppy. A dog. Any dog. In fact I want lots of them.

I do not have a biological clock, I have a dogilogical one. And that fucker isn't echoing through the halls with a gentle plink plink plink. It's a giant gong and it's shaking the mother off its foundation.

I've never been one of those girls who knew they always wanted kids. I didn't dress up my dollies and lovingly push them in a miniature carriage cooing and fussing over imaginary wet diapers and play bottles full of fake milk. I forced my cat into a pink dress with matching bloomers and Maryjane shoes amidst screeching and flying fur and chased her through the house yelling "kitty kitty kitty, pretty kitty."

I don't posses the ability to try and talk myself into it. The thought has always scared the shit out of me, even if I might, and I mean might have ever for a fleeting, minute, infinitesimal, weensy, pocket-sized nano-second ever had a slight cervical twinge to maybe one-day spawn, it was gone before you could say mucous plug.

This involuntary flinching of my fallopians has been reinforced by the gory and elaborate details I've been subjected to at the thousands of grueling baby showers I've had to sit through. O.K., maybe there haven't been thousands, but it sure as hell seems like it when you're sitting there trying to keep your knees daintily together and not loaf on some mother's floral sofa like the pig you really are while attempting to stifle the huge burp crawling up your throat.

And whoever in the fucking world thought it would be cute to pin a fake piece of shit on my $100.00 Nordstrom blouse only later to rip it off of me with shrill screaming of satanic glee shall I accidentally utter the word "baby" at a fucking "baby" fucking shower?? Oh yea, can I get a lifetime membership to that club please? I only go to those things to win the prizes, lame as they may be, and I don't care if you're 8 months pregnant. I'll knock your ass over to get that mini shower gel with the matching loofah.

By some twist of sadistic fate after I graduated from college I found myself at the head of a preschool classroom staring at 16 little grimy faces while they waited to be entertained by the one person who thinks kids are a pain in the ass while I said to myself, how the hell did I get here? But I took my job seriously and really got into it. I was a great teacher and most of the kids and parents loved me. But I tell you what. That's the hardest god damn job I've ever had and I never want to do it again.

I love being an educator, and plan on making that my next career move, but not the little guys. They can be sweet, but it was hard enough dealing with my boyfriend at the time let alone being the stand-in parent for thirty 4 year-olds all day long. I only lasted 2 years and I learned some valuable lessons. Among other things, kids can do a lot more then most people give them credit for, and they're a pain in the ass!

One of the things that bugs me the most, and this is hard to choose since so much chaps my ass, but I get this one all the time and I'm losing my ability to respond with patience and kindness. "But you'd be such a good parent". Even my MOTHER threw this one at me recently. MY MOTHER!! Maybe, yes, I'm sure I would, but really, why is it so important to people that we all procreate?

It's THE MOST IMPORTANT thing you'll ever do and I for one do not want any Joe Blow Dipshit popping out a bunch of babies if they're not sure. This is not a color choice for carpet people. I can't say, aw damn, I should have gotten the sand dune instead of the wheat field and order up another roll. I've always, always, had an affinity for animals instead of people. The only scene in Jaws I care about is when the dog gets whacked in the first five minutes. Damn you George Lucas! Damn you to hell!

Dogs are especially dear to my heart. Maybe I was a wolf in a past life (insert bitch jokes here, har har). My black lab Casey was the love of my life. I can't imagine loving a child more than I loved her. Ah yes, I know that there's no love greater, yada yada, and everyone with kids didn't think so either until they placed that squirming pile of goo in your hands, blah blah, but I don't have any other reference point so throw me a bone.

Casey was the sweetest, smartest, funniest, (yes, funny), baby girl that ever walked the earth. And I still miss her so much it hurts. By far the worst day in my entire life was the day I had to put her to sleep. And that even beats the day I was told I had cancer. Casey and I were best friends and she got me through some tough times. She learned new tricks right up until the end, even though she'd gone almost entirely deaf. That smart cookie learned sign language! I even looked the other way when she apparently grew 12 more appendages at night that all managed to jab me in the ribs and push me to the very edge of the bed. If I could just kiss her sweet head one more time...

I haven't gotten another dog because of my work/life schedule. I didn't want to leave an animal that, by nature, runs in packs and would be home alone and sad all day and in the worst case scenario destroying my furniture from severe separation anxiety. I would still love that puppy, but don't be eatin' mama's fucking couch a'ight? I vowed that I would get another dog if I had another significant other and we got one together, or adopt 2 dogs so they had a buddy to hang with during the day. (I'm a huge advocate of adopting adult dogs from shelters by the way.)

But all of a sudden, it's been 6 years since my Casey has been gone and wow, I don't have another dog. Something is wrong with this picture. So, today, as I was taking a walk in the snow with my mom & her dog, a friend of hers & her dog, and my niece, I felt my dogilogical clock ring louder than I've ever heard. We were walking down a trail, hard snow crunching under our feet, while our dogs ran like salt and pepper bullets back and forth.

My parents have a black lab mix that isn't that much fun. I think she is schizophrenic or something, but the other dog we were with was this big, lovable yellow lab. And I fell instantly in love. This is not to say that I don't love my niece, or some kids in general. They can be cute as hell, and funny and entertaining and I know they're all special. But I really think I'm meant to raise animals and not people. And that's O.K. So everybody, stay out of my uterus and I'll keep my foot out of your ass.

And future puppy, mama's on her way.

Awwww

2007-11-24T22:52:00.000-08:00

When things get to be too much, with emotions running at a steady high and tempers flare and life-altering HUGE decisions are being made. And you feel like a caged animal being poked by sticks from all sides sometimes it's OK, nay, necessary for your mental fucking health to take a breather, sit back and admire something like the intense love between a dog and her stuffed buffalo.

Even if that love is wildly inappropriate most of the time...

sob

2007-11-23T20:11:00.000-08:00

Today was worse than yesterday. Sorry for the lame contribution but I don't have it in me to say much more than I'm fucking wiped out with a side of depression.

Hope everyone else had a better holiday than I did.

2 more days

2007-11-22T18:45:00.000-08:00

In addition to things I'm truly thankful for, having my house spared from the San Diego fire storm, my wonderful boyfriend, my kitty, money in the bank, the fact that I'm not 6 feet under, yada yada I'm going nuts. Starting with the food.

We might have gotten a little overzealous with the size of turkey we thought we'd need. It really didn't look that big all wrapped up in its shiny white straight jacket. But after being tenderly caressed with herbs and spices, roasted in the oven for 5 hours and lovingly placed on a pretty platter, that thing was FUCKING HUGE.

19 pounds. Who thought we needed a 19 pound bird for 5 people? What boob brain decided having a dead hunk of poultry bigger than 4 chihuahuas put together was necessary?

Um...

That would be me.

Did I think we'd all chow down like the Donner party after they'd run out of tasty man thighs to gnaw on? Was I anticipating turkey sandwiches, for what, the next 6 months? Or maybe I'm really smart and knew in order to consume that much left-over turkey we'd need at least a ratio of 2 to 1 for gravy with means there'd have to be at least a gallon of that to go with the meat.

Man, I'm smart.

And if you're wondering, yes, I'm surviving, but barely. My brother the wunderkin can do no wrong showed up this morning and it was just SO AWESOME to watch my mothers entire demeanor change as he lumbered through my door. She was all full of "reallys" and "you don't say, you had to drive in traffic, you poor boy" and "I've heard that too, breathing is necessary" when I get "you suck" and "you don't know what you're talking about" and "I hate you."

OK, maybe she's not that severe with me but she sure is encouraging to someone who hasn't held a steady job for more than 9 months IN THE LAST 10 YEARS when he comes up with yet another hair-brained idea to make money like oh, become the next Marlboro man just because he's tall and smokes a pack and a half a day. Jesus on a day glow cross. If I even suggest that the pie crust isn't thawed all the way I get the mouth noise of disdain and a grimace followed by a snotty, "it'll be FINE and a WHATEVER." Whatever? My mother whatever'd me!

My mom doesn't just have her picture in the dictionary next to passive-aggressive, she's has a lifetime membership to Anal-Retentive Quarterly and is in the PA hall of fame with a giant mural painted in her honor on a wall of the Sigmund Freud Institute for Backhanded Comments and Maternal Manipulation.

It never, ever goes the way I hope it to, these family visits. In fact, I stopped hoping and started gearing up for what I was going to endure, which I'm still not used to. It still upsets me and I found myself in tears once today already. I have to get to that place where it doesn't bother me at all, I ignore every single comment, even the ones where she purposefully screws up what I just told her 10 seconds ago ("Oh, I thought you told me to throw the brand new can of whipped cream away when in actuality you asked me to pass it to you") and not reply back. Better yet, I don't want to feel anything but calm coursing through my veins.

Either that or Vodka laced with Ativan. And don't think I didn't do that today already.

Gah.

Not the record but...

2007-11-21T17:23:00.000-08:00

We made it 23 hours and 42 minutes before a huge argument.

My mother has turned on the passive-aggresiveotron.

It's all downhill from here.

Pray for me.

Send booze.

~sigh~

Hit me baby one more time

2007-11-20T21:33:00.000-08:00

As Thanksgiving approaches talk of that day is upon us. The intertubes are crammed with leaked info, the news reporters are foaming at the mouth talking about it and you just know a bazillion goons are dusting off their camping gear in anticipation of spending a chilly night on a sidewalk in front of Circuit City hoping to snag the one and only flat panel TV in stock discounted by 5%.

I'm talking about Black Friday. The day after turkey day. The biggest shopping heyday of the year. And one of the stupidest things I've ever done.

Last year I nearly killed myself getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to score all the deals I wanted to buy for Christmas.

I didn't get a single one.

The throngs of crazies beat me to it because they never went to bed the night before and stupid me thought getting up before GOD would be good enough. You really have no chance. Not when stores open earlier and earlier every year. It's insane. And with so many of the big ticket items and large stores having their sales fliers stolen and posted online, and only 1 thing per customer it seems, everyone knows where they should park their asses before the doors are unlocked.

I understand wanting and needed to save a buck, lord knows I've put myself on a very strict budget this year that I'll try to stick to, but is a $4.00 savings really worth standing in a line behind caffeine soaked scrappers, risking being trampled by sensible shoes at Michael's trying to purchase 100 feet of curling ribbon? It's just not worth it.

Personally I will never do that again. I won't wait in line like a fool for nothing. I will never, ever, ever, ever get up at 4:30 ever again.

5:00 maybe...

Dialing it in

2007-11-19T22:29:00.001-08:00

On account of me and whitey working our collective asses off for the last 3 days getting this gawd damn house ready for my parents arrival tomorrow afternoon I am too brain dead to write much of anything. There have been multiple grocery trips, massive spit-shining, yard work, carpet cleaning, present buying, and porn hiding. I scrubbed the shower walls for fucksake. This bitch is tired.

Therefore I will gift you with another recipe that will give you multiple mouth orgasms and your guests will shower you with compliments and probably money. The angels will sing your praises, the dog will stop farting and children will behave. It's that good.

Bitter Betty's Super Fanfuckingtastic Pumpkin Cheesecake

1 cup graham-cracker crumbs
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
6 tablespoons butter, melted
16 ounces cream cheese at room temp.
1 can (16 ounces) pumpkin
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon each ginger and nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 pint sour cream (2 cups)
1 teaspoon vanilla
optional garnishes: whipped cream, toasted almonds

Mix crumbs with 1 tbsp sugar and melted butter until blended. Press onto bottom of 8 or 9-inch springform pan; chill. Beat cream cheese and 3/4 cup sugar until well blended. Beat in pumpkin, spices and salt. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each. Pour onto prepared crust. Bake in preheated 350° oven for 50 minutes.

Remove cake: raise oven temp. to 400°. Mix well, sour cream, remaining 1/4 cup sugar and the vanilla. Spread over filling. Bake 8 minutes. Cool cake on rack. Remove sides of pan and chill.

Makes 12 servings. Calories = you don't want to know and it's a holiday. Who cares. Eat the damn cake.

This isn't as hard as it might look and I always get compliments when I bring it to a holiday dinner. Just make sure you have a good springform pan so it doesn't leak all over the oven. I usually put foil underneath just to be safe. Be prepared for people to kiss you square on the mouth and be sure to save yourself the biggest piece. Enjoy!

First place

2007-11-18T21:06:00.000-08:00

If there were ever a prize for this sort of thing I think I would win. At least I'd be a runner-up or considered for some type of award like a diamond encrusted trash can or a sweet title such as Miss Congealed.

To give you some back story and an itty bitty explanation of how my brain works I live by the philosophy that if it doesn't matter to me it doesn't matter. Now, I'm not talking about things on a global scale but more like what goes down in my own house. I don't care about the dead spiders in my bathtub because I don't use that bathtub. It has a straight back, which is very uncomfortable, and is shallow with an emergency drainer thingy in the middle so if I want to soak in a luxurious bath with smelly oils and a trashy magazine I get a crick in my neck and my tits get cold. Not my idea of a spa night.

Others might be horrified at the thought of an arachnid graveyard in their tub but eh, I never think about it unless company is coming. Also, stuff magically goes invisible on me and can remain transparent for years. The elliptical torture machine I purchased with my tax return last year was placed in prominent view next to the dining room table. Totally disappeared from my vision and I had to step over it to answer the phone! Same with the 10 extra feet of TV cable that is hanging under my bar that's been there since I moved in 9 1/2 years ago. I just don't see it.

And lets not even talk about what's shoved in cupboards, drawers and under beds.

Pair that disorder with my mother's mixed messages of "you need to get rid of this junk" then giving me all of hers I've somehow, in the many moves I've made in I don't know how many years, inherited a plethora of sundries and kitchen paraphernalia from her that I have no crapping idea why she would think I need or want. Things like a bottle of liquid smoke, sterling silver nut picks and half a tube of anchovy paste.

Normally I wouldn't blink at such clutter way down towards the bottom shelves on the fridge door, since usually I'm only interested in the diet Coke and cheese and when I open the door 18 times in a row hoping for a tasty snack to appear, I ignore everything that doesn't have the word Whiz in it. But tonight when I was cleaning it out, in anticipation of my family coming for Thanksgiving and making room for the 4 tons of food I think we need to feed 5 people for 1 meal, I was stunned to find this:

And upon further inspection, I noticed this:

That's 1985 y'all. Eightyfuckingfive. Twenty 2 years ago. Twenty plus Two.

With that kind of longevity I didn't have the heart to throw it away. Now. Who'd like some pecan pie?

Today...

2007-11-17T20:15:00.000-08:00

I saw a hitchhiker. I can't tell you when the last time was that I actually witnessed a person standing on the side of the road, and in this case a random spot on the freeway forgawdsake, with their thumb out trying to get a ride.

Who does that? Who would take such a chance to possibly become Dahmer-meat in some crazy mother fucker's stew? Or have your parts lopped off and thrown in a dumpster. Or become the Hoff's love slave. Not this beotch, no way no how, not even if DH wore his leather Member's Only jacket and sang Hooked on a Feelin' three times.

And what about the people who will actually pull over and pick this shlub up? Won't they feel stupid when they get a shank to the ribs 5 miles into their trek. I just think it's one of the stupidest things you can possible do. Unless you see a pregnant woman crying next to her actively burning minivan you do not stop and put them in your vehicle.

Even more so when they resemble the guy I saw today who looked exactly like this:

Blast from the past

2007-11-16T22:40:00.000-08:00

I came across this old gem earlier in the week and I must say, I smiled at myself for having such a deliciously sarcastic reply to some ass clown accusing me a couple of years ago of "always being mean." I detest absolutes and I abhor crybabies who stick their foot in their mouth then act surprised when I follow that with my boot in their box. Don't throw your opinion out there then run away like a pussy if you can't handle a debate and don't accuse me of shit I don't do or this is what you'll get from me.

Sorry, I'd stick around and help you figure it out, but I have to rush off to my Neo Nazi Skinheads and Knitting Circle meeting. If I'm lucky, I'll get to kick a couple puppies this afternoon. I've already scheduled to make several babies cry by pinching their fat arms after lunch.

Then tonight, I'm going to throw bread at an Atkins dieter and yell "100 grams 100 grams 100 grams" while sprinkling sugar over their head. After that, I think I'll log on to the internets and send some random e-mails to shut ins and tell them about the lovely sunny walk I took after dinner where I will shoot several birds with my hollow-point BB gun. There's a nest with some newly hatched morning doves and they're ripe for the pickin!

Then it's off to be randomly mean to people on a few message boards I belong to and bully my way into the Nellie Olson Hall of Fame. A girl has to have goals. Gotta go, these steal-toed boots aren't going to kick themselves. Tah.

Man, sometimes I really like me.

Em Oh Ewe Ess Eww

2007-11-15T21:39:00.000-08:00

A woman was questioned and caused the Pirates of the Caribbean to close at Disneyland the other day because park employees saw her deposit some kind of powder into the water while she was on the ride. She claims it was baby powder. Those in the know say it was human remains.

Um...what?

Apparently, according to some Mickyfile who runs a popular website for Disney crazies says this is an occurance that's happening more frequently.

Um...WHAT??

Now I totally understand trying to abide by someone's final wishes, and I know there are loads of people out there who are beyond cuckoo for all things Disney, but do you really want your final resting place to be inside a 40 year-old mostly meandering boat ride that while highly enchanting and nostalgic is crammed with creepy animatronic pirates and smells like a giant moldy sock?

These people need to keep Uncle Fester in the urn on the mantle or toss Grandma into the ocean like everyone else and do what the rest of us do at Disneyland. Eat so much junk food your tummy aches for a week, make fun of all the freaks from the square states wearing their black socks and sandles and get drunk off of Vodka snuck through the gates in a Gatorade bottle. You know, civilized behavior.

Squee!!

2007-11-14T21:26:00.000-08:00

I'm sorry.

I cannot dedicate myself to a real post tonight.

I have a very important date.

I'm sure you understand.

Carry on.

Honey, I'm home

2007-11-13T20:51:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I don't know how I got so lucky to have met the love of my life. Looking beyond the fact that every single gawd damn star had to be aligned for us to meet in the first place is the blessing that not only do I dig this guy like a giant spoonful of fudge right out of the jar but I can actually live with him. Something I've been unable to do with any other living person ever.

I'd like to blame my inability to cohabitate on everyone else, because people are crazy and impossible to live with, but I'm sure my occasional rigidity and slight OCD probably wasn't the ideal situation for my former roommates but lets face it, I'm a bright light in the crushing despair of sharing your private space with another so clearly I was less to blame. Clearly.

I traipsed off to college a little later than most. I was a few weeks shy of my 21st birthday and had made the decision to follow my then boyfriend to the school he'd transferred to the previous Spring. My only experience living with people were with my parents, my brother who moved out when I was 9 and a brief and extremely painful period of time when my divorcing Aunt and her 2 very young children lived with us before she got her own place.

I decided to live in the dorms and was happy to get placed into the same one my bf was living in but of course we weren't in the same room or even the same floor. I was randomly paired with a girl about year younger than me and a complete stranger. I remember filling out some kind of "this is the type of person I won't hate" card to get hooked up with someone remotely compatible. I think someone took that card and used it to roll a joint then smoked any hope of me rooming with an actual human to the roach.

A few days before school started we moved in. I walked through my door and there she was. Her shit spread all over the room, her ample frame lounging on my bed, the phone glued to her ear as she gave me a barely perceptible nod. I knew instantly this was going to be a nightmare and I wasn't wrong.

She routinely ate all of my food, leaving my cans of precious Pringles stealthily on my shelf where I'd find only a few sad crumbs at the bottom. She also ate my saved piece of birthday cake waiting patiently in the fridge for my sweet lips. Birthday cake!! And I never had a chance to confront her since she disappeared during the day like a vampire and came home while I was asleep.

A daily call to her mother that lasted for hours tying up our phone and every single fucking morning she'd set her alarm for 2 hours before she had to get up and 4 hours before I had to leave for class then sleep through the snooze for 5 minutes at a time until I grabbed something huge to throw against our dusty metal blinds making a racket big enough to wake the dead so she'd roll her fat ass over and turn the fucking alarm off. This happened every day.

Then there was the snoring. Snoring so boisterous and powerful she could suck up a shoe through her thundering nostrils. You could hear the cacophony from her sinus cavity at least 2 doors down and people routinely sent looks of condolence my way. One night it was so bad and the tension so tight between us I had to sleep on someones foam couch that unfolded to a small and desperately firm lump of a mattress.

A quarter and a half in and I was beyond done. I believe my exact words to the dorm association person were, "unless you want to find a dead sophomore in room 201 with a potato chip sticking out of her eye socket you'll move me to an available single before the week is done." Which they did.

The next year at school I had a terrible time as well. When I drove the 100 miles to school, showing up to collect my dorm packet without checking first to make sure everything was kosher, I was told I had no room as I'd failed to fill out another damn form somewhere along the way. Completely panicked I started calling friends from the payphone until I found space off campus with 3 girls who were going to share a 2 bedroom condo.

Thanking my lucky stars I accepted their invitation as they agreed to my sobbing pleas and the deal was made. Little did I know I was entering a den of insanity. One girl stole my clothes and absolutely refused to admit she'd done it when I'd have the evidence in my hot little hands. Another girl made a CHART WHEEL with a myriad of chores for all of us to do on any given week. Right, like I'm washing the crusty remnants of your fucking burrito adhered to cheap plastic plates.

The girl I shared a room with wasn't too bad but she had the longest list of weird idiosyncrasies ever. We actually ended up moving out of the condo after 11 weeks, each of us unable to cope with the dopes for an entire school year. But as our tenure as roomies went on the more I couldn't stand her. At least we weren't in the same room any more but she drove me fucking nuts.

She was a creature of intense habit attempting to make her world as small as possible. She refused to listen to anything resembling news, world events, entertainment gossip, local happenings or traffic reports. She didn't want to be exposed to anything. And she was going to become a teacher! She could only drive her car if she took just her left shoe off, not the right, only the left. And she only wore those cheap, flimsy Keds from K-mart with cotton stirrup pants and a t-shirt. Every day.

The only food she would eat was frozen burritos but she'd unwrap them and scoop the guts out then roll up the tortilla like a cigar and eat that last, spaghettios that would be heated then poured into a tortilla-lined bowl, apples with half of a jar of peanut butter, and an entire pint of peanut-butter chocolate Hagen Daaz consumed weekly. (That last one I actually envied.)

Since her diet consisted of super-rich and fatty food her alone-time in the bathroom would send a stench through our apartment that could knock a buzzard off a rotting corpse. Every morning she'd wash her long hair with Flex shampoo, another sickening and distinct smell, and I'd be awoken at the crack of 7:30 by a loud SMACK as she flipped her wet hair against the tub to I guess beat the water out of it but she only managed to get the entire bathroom soaked. She was a nice enough girl but as you can plainly see, a lunatic.

After I graduated and moved back home I once again lived with my parents, which is hard enough, then with my boyfriend, back with my parents, then got married. Somewhere along the way my Aunt, the same one mentioned above, moved in with my parents who then moved to another state and left me, my new husband and my Aunt living under a single roof. Needless to say, that didn't go well and is a long story for another time.

Fast forward through my divorce and finally living on my own for 7 1/2 years. Until June of 2005 when whitey hauled his juicy ass to San Diego from Northern Cal and we took the shacking up plunge. We didn't intend on living together since neither of us knew how it would work out, and I'll admit the first few months took a lot of butt-sniffing to get used to it and each other, but now more than 2 years later I can't imagine coming home to a house that didn't have my baby in it.

We do really well in our tight space and limbo-existence with most of our belongings boxed up and packed in the garage while we patiently wait for our desired future in the Pacific Northwest to begin. We laugh all the time, do our own things, hold hands watching T.V., have dinner together and sometimes alone, respect each other's space, needs, and wants, respect each other, cooperate, compromise and try to have the most fucking fun we can.

It's not perfect, sometimes I accuse him of being raised in a barn when he sprays caustic veneer-eating cleaner on my $500 coffee table, or try to ignore his bizarre humming that I know he doesn't even realize he's doing. But he also makes me laugh on a regular basis like the other night when he tuned in to a Clint Eastwood flick then gruffed when he realized it wasn't a man movie but rather "The Bridges of Fuck You." I'm still giggling over that one.

I really never thought I'd ever, ever, ever find someone who could put up with my shit and I the same but I did. And I'm so fucking lucky.

So lucky

2007-11-12T22:25:00.000-08:00

It's been about 3 weeks since the horrible fires that ravaged San Diego and things are finally starting to calm down in my town of Rancho Bernardo. I didn't see anyone wearing a mask this weekend and the media seems to be giving us a break. The National Guard has gone home, the recovery center has disbanded and I finally saw an actual soccer game at the park that had become the hub for everything, littered with FEMA trailers and Allstate reps.

I still think about it every day and need to write down all the details so I don't forget them, but that will come at another time soon but for now it's still a bit too fresh. Since photography is my main hobby and now I practically see everything as a potential photo I've found it important for me to record some of what we went through and went on around here. To document the damage to my home town and hopefully the regrowth. You can see them here.

I haven't taken that many pictures in the last few weeks since we were trying to be extremely sensitive to our neighbors, not wanting to add to anyone's pain or invade precious privacy. And really, within a few days the lookie-loo's were so bad all the of streets that lost homes were closed to all but residents anyway and rightly so, but I think it's important to see what the earth is capable of and hopefully wake us all up to try and be proactive, just in case.

We're still cringing a little every time we hear a siren but we sure do appreciate all the hard work our firefighters and police put in to keep our homes safe from fire and theft. (I heard about one house that was looted twice while the residents were mandatory evacuated. Such assholes among heroes.) Thankfully there are good stories to go along with the bad.

And my advice to everyone - please be prepared.

Keep a small fire extinguisher next to your stove, you can get one for $16 at Target. Have important paperwork in one place and available to grab. Keep an emergency kit under your bed and in your car with a full set of clothing, gloves, flashlight, a crank radio in one, food and water. If you get the warning that something is coming don't think it'll probably be OK. I've heard more than one story where people didn't think the fire would reach them and they literally ran out of the house with the clothes on their backs (my neighbor with a 3 year-old included who regrets being unaware and caught unprepared.) You can buy pre-made kits or at least get ideas of what to put together from the Red Cross.

If you're anti-cell phone get over it. Whitey didn't have a phone (for financial reasons) during our hell and it was horrible. Trying to make sure we didn't lose each other on the roads when we had no idea where we were going or ending up after being evacuated TWICE sucked giant sweaty balls. He has a fucking phone now and it only cost $25 to get and activate with 80 minutes that are good for 6 months.

Put a kit or kits together for your animals. It's against the law to leave an animal behind and they deserve to be protected. I already had a pop-up disposable litter box for my cat, a harness and leash and big, sturdy carrier and the first thing I did was get a bag ready for her - food, litter, treats, toys, blankie. She was out-of-sorts but had everything she needed. The ASPCA has info here to give you more ideas about this.

Every morning when I walk out the house and smell the sickly stink of burned homes and hillside I feel for those who lost nearly everything, am SO grateful for what we have and vow to make sure I'm even more prepared for a disaster that I hope doesn't come in the future. I'm not the most organized pea in the pod but I have (almost all) the important stuff all in one place now. It's not that hard. And please, be safe and smart.

At least there will be turkey

2007-11-11T21:04:00.000-08:00

OK. I've accepted the fact that I'm hosting Thanksgiving this year and forgiven my mother for calling me on a Sunday afternoon literally 2 (fucking) minutes after I laid down for a nap. A nap that never happened because she insisted on torturing me with one of her famous loop conversations where she repeats herself 9 times in row about various things I just "need to do" then chuckles that she always calls me when I'm trying to sleep because I guess when I warned everyone on the planet not to fucking dial my number between 1 and 5 on the weekends my mother was somehow exempt.

Sigh.

I even called my brother and formally invited him to our holiday dinner (the thing my mother told me on Friday I needed to do) and the conversation went surprisingly well. He was actually slightly un-morose for a few minutes there. I'm hoping he maintains that attitude until at least New Year's and I'll make sure there is plenty of beer on hand to keep everyone nice and lubricated, so to speak.

Now I've decided to think about the food. Which can be tricky because my weight has become a family issue (such a long story) so I get self-conscious about everything that goes in my mouth when I'm around them. That's why I'm on the active hunt to find recipes loaded with alcohol and hopefully no one will notice I've created a mashed potato grand canyon to contain the Colorado river of gravy I plan to pour into it. Not forgetting the forest of butter, of course.

My mom has little faith that whitey and I can pull off an entire Thanksgiving dinner but I assured her we've done this a time or 50 and we have it covered. Which is code for stay the fuck out of the kitchen, woman, or be prepared for Kahlua infused green bean casserole and wine-laced biscuits. I'll throw her a bone to keep her idle devil hands busy. She can make a pie. 1 lovely Vodka meringue pie.

If you have any good recipes to share I'd love to see them. We usually cook a turkey and do taters from scratch but everything else comes out of a jar or box, which we cannot get away with this year. The Queen does not abide by packaged stuffing.

There is one thing I'm going to make that I usually don't because my boyfriend has a defective gene and doesn't care for sweet things. This is by far my all-time favorite holiday fare and a crowd pleaser to boot. I'm going to share with y'all because I'm nice like that. I promise you or your guests won't be disappointed. It's easy peasy and deeeeeelicious, served warm or cold. Best eaten with a fork straight from the pan.

Cranberry Casserole

3 cups unpeeled apples, chopped (I use red delicious)
2 cups raw cranberries
1 1/4 cups sugar

Topping:
1 1/2 cups quick oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/2 cup melted butter

Mix apples, cranberries and sugar. Put into baking dish. Sprinkle with topping. Bake at 350 degrees for 60 minutes.

I'll be enjoying mine with a nice big glass of chardonnay/Baileys/rum.

Day 10

2007-11-10T20:51:00.001-08:00

Thank you for the nice comments in my last post. I didn't write that fishing for those but I appreciate them all the same. I'm struggling with the realization that a few things I so desire will probably never happen and it's taking the wind out of me. It changes my whole future, which is scary and a bummer, and right now the vision of my life is being stuck in places I don't like. So, yea, there's that.

In other news. It's official. My parents are coming for Thanksgiving. This mean we'll be spending both holiday's with my family. Both.

Here's my survival plan. If you have the kind of time I do at these gatherings I suggest you follow my lead.

Chocolate
Booze
Boozy chocolate
Prescriptions drugs (go Ativan!)
Sleep
Chocolate
Screaming into a pillow at regular intervals
Booze
Super quiet sex since my parents will be on the other side of a paper-thin wall
Chocolaty booze
Sleep

Repeat

~shrug~

2007-11-09T19:58:00.001-08:00

Jesus. Am I having trouble writing every day. And it sure shows in my lack of traffic and comments. Ouch. I don't remember it being this hard last year. Was it this hard? I know last year I was able to read blogs and write during the day which I can't do now so it's making it very difficult and me sad. It's becoming agonizing sitting here late at night trying to come up with something that isn't painfully lame.

I've been increasingly worn out this week and I'm not sure what it is. Left-over fire evacuation shit? Hormones? I don't know but I'm finding myself unable to hold back tears at the littlest things. I've fucking cried during every episode of Oprah and Ellen I've seen this week. I've misted up in the car listening to the radio, I've bawled at a country music song and blubbered over a puppy in a commercial. I'm exhausted and now a little depressed and I can't stop thinking about a lot of stuff. My brain is tired.

Tonight as I sat down I started 3 different times to post. First I typed up a stupid staccato-type entry trying to be clever. Things like; I have to post. I have nothing to post. But I have to. It was bad. Next I tried writing a pithy little list of what I did today - total snore. Then I erased that crap and said, no, you can't do that to the one person still reading this shit, try something else. So I began writing a poem. A fucking poem. Which I quickly realized was so lame I wouldn't blame people for taking me off their blogroll and I laid on the backspace key like I was trying to squish a bug.

I started again and the words were all blah blah stupid stupid blah and I got rid of those too. So now I'm just going to talk a little bit because I seriously don't have the energy to try and find some humorous or interesting voice to say anything humorous or interesting.

Speaking of which, I've been thinking about my voice for awhile now. Not my actual voice, which sounds awesome inside my own head but like Minnie Mouse in real life. At least I think so. I'm talking about the written voice or an author's personality that translates to a reader and how that relates to the most successful blogs, books, etc., but in this context I'll talk blogs.

It seems that those blogs that get the most attention, and deservedly so, are written by people who are themselves, not trying too hard, just writing what they'd say to a good friend and not someone acting like they're on stage with an audience of strangers who paid to be entertained. A lot of times I feel like an actor trying to project my shtick to someone a thousand miles away. Over-laughing like Tom Cruise and hamming it up like Jim Carey. Those people are good for a few laughs but ultimately become boring. God, how many times can we see that silly face?

I'm trying to figure out my voice. What I should say and how should I say it. I've spent a good portion of my life trying to get a working balance between trying too hard and not trying hard enough and as is my challenge whenever I don't fall into a nice, steady in between it doesn't work and I fail. Or at least I'm not being successful like I want to be and this goes for anything in my life.

I think I was born a little entertainer. I was never a shy kid and didn't have a problem getting up in front of a group of people to talk or sing or do whatever. I got the taste for attention at a very early age and have craved it like crack my entire life. And when I really want it, when I send messages out to the universe that I need it, she answers back loud and clear and teaches me a lesson. Which has taken me a long time to learn to read and is usually painful.

When I want something too much I'm not going to get it. When I need attention too much I might get the opposite of what I'm hoping for, either none at all or the wrong kind. When I'm screaming into a microphone thinking that I'm just using my voice people plug their ears and run away.

So what to do when you've got a lot to say but don't know how to say it? Or you think you know how to say it and it still doesn't work? Or having it work for a few is better than none so just be satisfied with that. Is commonality that important? Because I'm not getting pregnant to join the mommy bloggers. I might want this but I'm not going that far.

But this is exactly what happens to me when I desperately want something. To be an artist, to make someone laugh, to share, to teach, to belong. I know there's another lesson here. I just need to figure out what it is. As for tonight, I'm going to bed.

Not necessarily...

2007-11-08T18:18:00.000-08:00

Wisdom is a good thing. Sage advice is another. Cliché's, eh, maybe. We've all been bestowed with lovely little chestnuts of advisement that when in theory make sense but being the ~~glass-half-empty~~ realist type person that I am I can't help but seeing the flip side to all of these profundities. Not everything should be taken at face value all the time.

Never pass up the opportunity to go to pee.

Except when you're drinking.

Normally this is an extremely important endeavor, especially for chicks. Although I must confess that I don't have the rumored walnut-sized bladder that most girls do. I can really hold my stuff. But I also have an unpredictable system and there are times when my cells decided it's time to shed the water weight at the most inopportune times like when I'm stuck in traffic or in the middle of slamming my boyfriend like a 2 dollar hoor. So normally I'd make this proclamation from the highest peak, except when you're partying.

This is the one time you should forget the fact that you're consuming a liquid dinner and dessert and hold off as long as you can. Once you break that seal you are screwed. Your body is now all WOO HOO, lets eliminate! and you'll find yourself standing in line outside the bar bathroom behind 14 drunk girls who are shouting about the bartender oh my gawd!! isn't he key-oot!! I would toe'ally make out with him!!! while you're fighting the urge to jam your hands down your pants and physically shut off the valve threatening to burst. This will happen every 20 minutes for the rest of the night.

It's the thought that counts.

Unless it sucks.

Sure. Someone remembering your birthday or adding you to their Christmas list is a nice thing. Getting a gift should be appreciated and acknowledged with a thank you at the very least. But let's face it, we've all gotten a present that reeked of crap.

Receiving something hand-made is a sweet gesture and those kinds of things don't count but when you're standing around a plastic 2 foot Christmas tree with your co-workers because your boss thinks it's more important to exchange bullshit tokens at a company sponsored lunch instead of giving bonus's and the sad sack who picked your name out the hat has wrapped a box of stale candy that still has dust on it from sitting on their kitchen windowsill for the 12 months the thought that came with that was shit. Same thing when your (ex) husband decides a Thomas Guide from the gas station he picked up on the way home on your first anniversary is the perfect show of his affection. There was thought there, it just wasn't very nice.

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all.

Jeez. Do I even need to explain this one?

Of course, mouths should be watched and the older I get the more I learn that not saying something is as powerful and important as saying something in warranted situations. Learning how to pick-and-choose your battles is incredibly vital to any person's mental (and sometimes physical) health. As many times as I'd like to tell the chatter sitting behind me in the movies to please STFU before I drown them in my bucket of stale popcorn you never know who's one letter shy of going postal and your moment of bravery gets you shanked with a straw in the middle of an Adam Sandler atrocity, which in itself is a nightmare.

But there is no way that all situations and/or people deserve my silence just because what they need to hear is rough or anything opposite of verbal sugar. Fuck that. If someone is being a dick you should say something. Assholery can't and shouldn't always be ignored. If you're actively trying to eff over me or a friend of mine you bet your sweet ass I'm going to tell you and them about it. I'm not interested in telling someone they look fat in those jeans but no way will I spend my life sensored into Stepfordville. No freaking way.

Trust me

2007-11-07T21:19:00.000-08:00

I have the answer. I mean, the answer. To ev ah ree thing.

Feeling down and need a pick-me-up to jump start your giggle?

Thinks it's funny when your dog winds his head back and forth trying to figure out what that unnatural, unexplainable, other-wordly sound is coming from your computer?

Need to exact some revenge on a mother effer who did you so wrong they deserve to have the equivalent of one of those Star Trek The Movie Legend Of Kahn Part Two crazy-making ear crawling brain eating bugs bestowed upon their every sense?

Behold. It is. Teh Perfection

Signature required

2007-11-06T17:56:00.000-08:00

I love my parents, I really do. But they don't have very healthy senses of humor. There was never a lot of laughter in my house and there still isn't. They just don't find a lot of life funny. I used to joke that they were both born 40 but now that I'm that age I realize they were just born serious. I have a very long list of subjects I keep from conversation or save for other company because my parents, well, they're both wound tight as a nuns butt.

I was a fairly good kid. I'm sure my mother would disagree (memories of her yelling "YOU WERE HELL TO RAISE dance in my head) but I didn't do some of the other things that the kids in our social circle did. I never crashed the family car into the golf course pond, I didn't have sex until after high school and I wasn't the one who got kicked out of highschool for smoking pot in the classroom while the mentally disturbed history teacher who wore his pants inside out on a regular basis was at the blackboard.

However, since I was raised by strict parents that weren't so much disciplinarians in the "you're grounded" sense rather than poo-poers of anything resembling crazy, fun or crazy fun I didn't get to do much unless I was sneaky about it. (I'm very good at sneaky.) But I was in trouble all the fucking time and on a very short leash so if I could go a little wild while avoiding a ration of shit at any cost I would.

I didn't know too many kids who were able to keep from rebelling in some way and I was no different. Hell, my "church group" was one of the rowdiest I hung with. In between singing Jesus Christ Superstar and hand-holding praying we were playing grab-ass in the choir robe closet. So it's not my fault that all my peer groups were demented.

I got away with so much stuff I can't believe it. And you might be saying, well no shit, we all got away with practically murder and our parents didn't find out. But the difference with me is that I can't confess any of my (mostly) harmless antics with my parents now that I'm a full-grown up 40 year-old adult because it would STILL MAKE THEM MAD!!

A half dozen or so years ago some of my family were together for some holiday and after dinner the subject of reports cards came up. I was an infrequent stellar student, mostly struggling or not caring and occasionally pulling out a top grade when I was interested in the subject matter or motivated by a truly good teacher. One particularly bad Spring semester in junior high I screwed the pooch but good and ended up with 4 out of my 7 grades big fat D's.

I was so terrified to show my stunning contribution towards my education to my parents that I sweated for weeks during the beginning of the summer, watching the mailbox like a hawk after a fat field mouse hoping to intercept the letter containing my biggest failure to date before my stay-at-home parents got it and I was forced to watch my father's head explode into a fine pink mist and my mother send me murderous glances until I was 27 from the shame of it all because really, what moron gets a D in Home Ec? ~raises hand~

As luck would have it my mother and father were both out of the house playing tennis or something and I had a rare afternoon alone free to watch Let's Make a Deal and raid my mothers Coffee Nips stash when I saw the mail truck pull up at the bottom of our long driveway. I shuffled my chubby ass down the hill as fast as I could go and retrieved the contents of the mailbox. With my hands shaking I rifled through the envelopes and that's when I saw my school logo.

Holy Balls. I couldn't believe my luck! I jumped around and wooted at the dog and hid that fucker in the deep recesses of my closet while my Xanadu album spun on the turntable at high volume, because this was indeed, Magic.

Then I worried for the next 10 years that one or both of my parents would suddenly be aware that there was a missing transcript somewhere and question me about it where I'd then have to come up with a lie so elaborate they'd send me off to mow all 3 acres our lawn just to get me out of their sight. I realized after it was too late to turn back that the agony of fretting about that damn report card wasn't worth the secret I was keeping from my parents.

Until that dinner. That casual conversation sitting around a table post feast when I stupidly thought enough time had passed and my mother and I were at the point in our relationship that I could confess silly school-age transgressions and I brought it up between laughter and story-telling and as I was giggling and smiling at my mother, divulging my long-ago deception, I saw the grin vanish from her face as she stiffened her spine, pursed her lips so tight her mouth nearly disappeared and hissed with the venom of 50 king cobras in heat;

"YOU. DID. WHAT?!?!?!"

My heart stopped, my eyes bulged and my face felt the sting of her verbal slap and I knew this was a place I could never take her. The past was alive and well and the carnage instant. I quickly put on the charm, playfully slapped her on the back, forced a backfire of fake laughter out of my face and said, "Noooooooooooooooo, Mom! I'm totally kidding. HA HA HA HA" and promptly poured her another glass of wine. And she bought it.

Shit. I'll never be able to tell my dad that the reason his truck smelled like curdled milk for 15 years every time it got above 79 degrees is from the time I swiped a full bottle of Kahlua from a friend's house and spilled the entire thing into the freshly laid carpet of the bed while I was making out with a freshman instead of being at the movies like I said I was.

Fuck you Farmer's

2007-11-05T18:13:00.000-08:00

I'm not a big fan of physical violence. (Hear me out!) Even though we have a little bitty obsession with watching every brutal, action-packed bloody movie we can get our hands on, I really don't like real-life fighting such as angry fists smashing into a drunken face or chunks of hair yanked out at the roots. I've been witness to a few brawls that left me sick to my stomach and giggling uncontrollably like an escaped lunatic because I'm blessed with inappropriate reactions to extreme stress. (Don't ever hurt yourself in my presence or I'll practically piss myself laughing. Sorry in advance.)

And I especially don't like getting to that scary angry place where my eyes turn from light brown to murderous gold because it's more adrenaline than my body can handle and one of these days I'm really going to take a shovel to the back of some bitch's skull and lord knows I'll get caught and be on trial and probably an episode of Dateline, dubbed the Ample Assed Assasin, then end up in prison as some woman's wife and we all know I make a much better husband than a beotches slammer squaw.

However, there are certain people, places, times where a swift punch to the throat is not only warranted it's deserved. Very much deserved. One such person is the condescending twat from my auto insurance company I had the displeasure of speaking to recently. That bitch kept me on the phone for a useless 45 minutes before I finally had to tell her that it was all dumb and a waste of time and can you please go fuck yourself gently with a chainsaw? Kthxbai.

A few weeks ago I received a confusing letter from my insurance company asking me about how many approximate miles a year I drive. According to some mysterious information they magically obtained they realized they were off on their estimation. The letter stated if I agreed with them I could do nothing. If I protested please sign and return.

In the very small portion of my brain that's able to work out riddles of logistics I realized the way they worded the letter didn't quite make sense and I wanted to know where the hell they got this info anyway and what did it all mean. Did someone install a Lo-Jack in my ass while I wasn't looking? Just what was that nurse practitioner doing down there at my annual last year?

Anyway, I called and got an insurance drone person on the phone, we'll call her, Cunterella, and she proceeded to confuse me more by saying things like, "I don't know where we get that info" and "it might raise your rates", and "I don't know if you should sign and return if you agree so you should sign and return it." All very informative and committal, as you can plainly see.

I mentioned that I had no idea where they got the idea I only drive 7500 miles a year because I work 20 miles from my office and we don't live in a commuter city and if you think I'm taking a fucking bus anywhere you've clearly smoked your breakfast and dropped acid with your pre-lunch chocolate cherry Yoplait whipped fucking yogurt. And I shouldn't be penalized because of it. The best I could get was some hemming and hawing and an I don't know maybe. Great.

A few days later my renewal bill for the next 6 months only came in the mail with $70 added to the total. Seventy stinking bucks! Now, that might not seem like a lot, which in the scheme of things isn't, but when you've just spent a grand on an almost totally fucked up vacation and another grand on hotel rooms, air purifiers, junk food and carpet cleaners because of San Diego Fire Storm 2007, and when you took a look at the bills vs. budget death match title fight and the bills kicked the living shit out of the budget seventy dollars felt like seven fucking hundred.

I called back, extremely unhappy, to ask WTF and why for? Lucky me I once again got to speak to Cunterella and today she was wearing her slick-as-shit sweater & nothing I said got to her. The more irate I got the more condescending she became. It was infuriating. She was a frothing ass-sucking crap bag. And please understand, she earned those titles. She was rude and interruptive and the patronization dripped down her fucking chin like grease from a Paula Dean pork chop.

She actually tried to make a point by telling me she paid more than I did for her insurance. I'm sorry, am I supposed to give a flying fuck about that? Ahh...no. But the comment that really put me over the top was delivered with enough saccharine to grow a watermellon-sized tumor on a lab rat, "Insurance isn't a savings account." Oh no you di'int.

Why we blathered on for so long I have no idea. It was clearly past her closing time and nothing I said was going to do any good. I finally had to tell her the endeavor was pointless and stupid and I was done. It hadn't mattered a bit that I said her company sucked and what they did to me sucked and I wouldn't have been so pissed if I was told WHEN I CALLED THE FIRST TIME that my rate was going to go up like that because I'm in the corporate world too and I know better. I know someone would have been able to tell me a definitive yes, we will be bending you over your checkbook you'll take it and like it, bitch. Then I wouldn't have been so surprised by the shaft shoved up my butt.

I just hate insurance companies. Or at least I hate the way they do business. I'm glad they're there and I've been fortunate to save a lot of money in the last few years because I'm no cheap date, but I loathe the way they have you by the balls all the time. They make billions upon billions while we get barely get compensated. We pay them thousands of our hard-earned dollars and they act like they're going to file chapter 11 if they have to pay out the 10% it costs them when there's a normal claim. I firmly believe insurance agencies are the legalized mafia. Just without the shiny track suits. They have doctors in their back pockets and decide our fates at every turn, mostly not in the consumers favor. I fucking hate it.

I sincerely hope the thousand plus people in my town who lost homes last month in the fires don't run up against this kind of shit. Gawd help those people or supply them with lots of brand new shovels.

Fluff

2007-11-04T16:39:00.000-08:00

Because this is Sunday and not only did I clean the bathroom (blick) and finished up my five millionth load of fucking laundry, I took a time-change nap that had me waking up feeling like someone had slipped some rufies into my Crystal Light. The brain, she is fuzzy. I won't even mention my surprise period attack this afternoon that left me screeching "Too soon! TOO SOON!" because when I checked my calender I counted exactly 23 days from the start of my last shark week, for christeffingsakes, which means I enjoyed exactly 16 days of flow-free days and that is a fucking ripoff, yo.

I have a crapload of glimpses of blogging ideas for this month of torture, ahem, I mean great daily writing but nothing is solidified in my mind yet. So I'm going to steal from Krishanna who so kindly linked me on the main Nablopomo site (and I in turn linked her back - kisses!) and who I'm sure it a perfectly lovely person who shares my penchant for the cranky and dang if she didn't make a good point that hopefully (for me) new people are cruising by and some of you might want to know a thing or three about me. And you go ahead and jank this from me if you're so inclined. I cut out a lot of the question cuz I got hungry mid-way through and left to go munch.

Do you have any weird things in your room?:
Since I'm trying to sell my condo all the weird stuff is packed and in the garage. Unless you count what's in the bottom drawer of my nightstand. There's a couple of things in there that could be mistaken for a giant ear cleaner, if you know whatta mean.

If you could have any pet what would you have?:
Dogs dogs dogs dogs dogs. (May they come with a purple Dyson.)

Best thing to do on a rainy day?:
Since we only get 4 of those a year here in Southern California I like to wrap up in a fuzzy blanket and watch movies or read next to a window. Of course I'd only last about an hour before needing to turn the AC back on but a girl can dream.

How many movies do you own?:
Oh shit, I don't know. Half the DVD's I've bought are still in the fucking wrapping. That stuff is like impossible to get off.

Best vacation you've ever gone on?:
I have yet to be able to claim any one trip I've taken as the best vacation. I mostly visit family on any time off I earn and we all know that doesn't qualify. Jeez. I just made myself really depressed.

Coolest person you've ever met?:
My boyfriend. (Please don't puke, it's true.)

Ever taken a trip on a bus?:
Ew, gross, no. Oh wait, in 8th grade I went skiing in Utah with my jr. high ski club. And that's when my body decided to enter me into womanhood for the very first time somewhere between Vegas and Brianhead. Oh. The Joy.

Wildest thing you've done while drunk?:
There are too many to count. And I could be giving away future posts. Y'all will have to wait.

Best time you've ever had at a playground?:
Making out with my bff Matty while we were in high school. And before he was "out."

Ever almost get hit by a train?:
What is this, Oklahoma? No.

Has anyone ever sent you flowers, why?:
Of course, lots, because I'm fabulous.

Ever have an imaginary friend?:
I tried to make one up when I was in grade school but I already knew then it was stupid and fake and my stuffed animals were better conversationalists anyway.

Best color of eyes?:
Personally I like grey eyes but mine are shit brown.

Ever electrocute yourself?:
Holy gawd, did I ever. Once when I was about 19 my bff Shawna and I went to Sea World. After going to the Shamu show and being soaked from head-to-toe with marine mammal poo water we hit the bathroom to pee and clean up. Thinking I'd be oh-so-clever and copy Madonna's little armpit over the dryer thing from Desperately Seeking Susan and I grabbed the damn thing with both wet hands. I felt that shock hit my feet and instantly felt like someone had just shoved a cattle prod up my ass. The pain traveled back up to my head for the next 2 hours before I was OK. One (of many) of the dumbest things I've done for a laugh.

How many phones do you own?:
2. One land line, 1 cell.

Do you collect anything cool?:
I'm a pack rat with a shopping addiction. You do the math. Right now it's photography equipment, which I think is very cool.

How often do you clean your room/house?:
HAHAHAHAHA. ~takes breath~ HAHAHAHAHA.

Best thing to watch late at night?:
Conan. He's high-larious.

What friend do you have the most fun with?:
My boyfriend. He's high-larious. And cute.

Ever caused or been involved in a car crash?:
Oi. Yes, 3 of them, all not my fault. The first was a high-speed (over 100 mph) single car crash that we literally walked away from, albeit limping. Still can't believe we survived it.

Are you creative?:
Oh, I so hope I am.

Favorite class you took in high school?:
Odd enough, Health. Even though the teacher was an asshole extraordinaire.

Something you like to eat that everyone else thinks is gross?:
Spaghettios right out of the can.

Ever think you were going to die?:
Sooner than later? Yes. It's one of my new obsessions, unfortunately.

Have anything on your computer you wouldn't want people to see?:
Heck yes. My scanned high school senior picture for one thing.

What do you think of tongue piercing?:
If you want to go ahead and risk losing your sense of smell and taste be my guest. They are fun to kiss, though.

Favorite place to get food from?:
We are so addicted to Del Taco it's obscene.

Favorite thing to sleep in?:
Tank-top and shorts.

Ever slept outside?:
Yes. I had the misfortune of camping quite a few times as a kid or getting the delusional thought
that spending a night in the backyard would be fun. I HATED it every stinking time.

What's the worst day of your life?:
Three-way tie. The day I had to put my dog to sleep, the day I was told I had cancer, evacuating our home during the fires the week before last.

What did you dream last night?
I can't remember last night but right before I woke up from my nap I dreamt I was with a group of girls and someone was making us swim through water and under rocks or something to go fake SCUBA diving with only our clothes on. It was weird.

Are you having a good day today?:
Yea, sure, it's been alright.

Supah Stah

2007-11-03T19:45:00.000-07:00

What is it with guys and comic books? Are they hard-wired to love this stuff? Is there some undiscovered teeny tiny mutation on a chromosome somewhere in the shape of the Superman logo? Is this really a mystery we should unravel? I'm thinking, no. One thing I'm certain of, it's some serious shit. Do not get between a man and his Super.

I've never dated or hung out with a guy that was in to this. Until now. And even then I was fooled for a long time because it just didn't come up. But as Hollywood churns out one action flick after another I've come to the realization that I'm in love with a comic book geek. A person who has carved out and saved a very large portion of his mind for storing, organizing, cataloging, and recalling more comic characters than I could guess.

He seems normal enough on the outside. Multiple tattoos, piercings, likes girls. You know, the regular stuff. And not that he still isn't the coolest mother fucker I've ever known, but I have to tell you. It's more than a little disturbing when you're watching Spiderman 3 (a complete ass-fest, may I add) and when a seemingly nondescript by-character picks up a shirt to replace his prison jumpsuit and your boyfriend casually mentions, "Oh. It's the Sandman." It makes one stop.

"And how the fuck do you know that", I asked. "Can you tell FROM THE SHIRT??"

"Yea", he says, like that saved bit of info in his genius brain is not only important but vital.

And that's not all he knows. We've watched, and I'm not exaggerating here, a few dozen movies that I had absolutely no idea had anything whatsoever to do with any minuscule relation to a comic book and he's busting out detailed trivia so specific I can't believe he still doesn't have a four foot stack of comic books next to the toilet for daily in-depth review.

"Oh", he'll say, "That's the Crap Man. His poo dissolves metal." "And that's Projecto. He blames everything on his friends and makes them feel really bad." "Aww, look, it's Porcupine Pete. He shoots deadly quills from his ass. He's one of my favorites."

I did not make the last one up, I'm sorry to say.

I just had no idea, and unfortunately now I have some idea, the massive scope of comic books, companies, heroes, villains, super powers, semi powers, lame powers, cool powers, and useless characters in existence. I know who Stan Lee is by sight, people. By sight!

And what's with these boys hating any girl that comes near their beloved Boner Boy? What? The poor kid from planet Copulate who fell to earth and right into a giant vat of Viagra isn't allowed to have a girlfriend? What's up with that? Are you afraid his 10 foot phallus won't work if he gets some on the side? How do you know she's a bitch?

But I guess us girls don't have anything to complain or be judgemental about. I'm sure there are a million chicks out there who can tell you the names of every My Little Pony what his or her body color was, butt markings, mane color, and personalities. (Let's not get into their particular scents, shall we?)

As I was doing my journalistic (4 second) research while writing this I came across a site that, well, stunned even me. This gem on one of the pages took the cake:

"It could be said that Pony Utopia is a happy place in my imagination, a land filled with frolicking ponies, green leafy trees, soft yellow butterflies, pink buildings, and blue sparkling water. Then again, it could also be said that I am a raving loonie for loving these little plastic horses with the silky, brushable hair."

Yes. Yes you are. A raving loonie. Hair on fire fucking freak. You. Are.

So I guess boys have their things and we have ours, neither sex is innocent from the lame or weird or obsessive compulsive mania. Let your freak flag fly, brothers, just don't get mad when I make fun of your strange little ass.

TGIF?

2007-11-02T20:08:00.001-07:00

Do you know what's worse than spending a week trying to recover from the fact that your neighborhood nearly burned to the ground and you've been driving past armored National Guard vehicles at your local Longs and the roads are crowded with news vans and gawkers and your kitty gives you the hairy eyeball every time you come near her because she's afraid you're going to pick her up and stuff her into her crate then drive her around for 2 hours in the car and your house stinks like smoke and you're grateful and sad all at the same time and your sugar levels are somewhere around 40 blazillion from all the "but it's a mini" Halloween candy you ate and you're getting your period and this month your boobs are so tender that when you carelessly grazed a nipple with your hairbrush it felt like someone had stomped on it with a steel-toed work boot then set it on fire and your insane co-worker had a spaz attack on your face within 5 minutes of entering the building and some dillhole decided to throw a fake bomb on a nearby freeway that they completely shut down in both directions for hours thus fucking to hell your already shitty commute home and you peed a little when you sneezed which makes you feel like 40 might as well be 70?

Having Mmm-Bop stuck on a continuous loop in your head.

That's what.

I (she) was (not) amused...

2007-11-01T07:22:00.000-07:00

She (I) loves them.

She (I) can't wait to put them on.

She (I) couldn't decided between the 2.

She (I) was extremely happy about it.

She (I) paid for her eventual bad attitude.

With interrupted sleep.

But it was worth it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get rid of (eat) the metric ton of candy I have left over since we only got 5 stinking trick-or-treators and I think 1 of them was a 30 year-old with a sugar tooth.

Havin' my back

2007-10-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

Scene: sitting on the couch watching TV out of the corner of my eye I see a figure in white swirling about the front yard seeming to repeatedly bump into a trashcan.

Me: Oh, fuck. I think we have zombies now. Have we not been through enough in the last fucking week?
Him: No problem. I know how to handle that.
Me: Are you sure?
Him: Oh yea.
Me: Really sure?
Him: ~with breezy confidence~ Totally.
Me: What do you do?
Him: It’s simple.
Me: Oh yea?
Him: Yep. You just remove the brain.
Me: ~whining~ OMG. I have to cut off heads now? I don’t want to have to cut off heads.
Him: That's what you gotta do.
Me: Can they get into the house? Like smash through windows and shit?
Him: Yea, but they move really slowly. Don’t worry. I’m on it.

Reason 1 million and ninety three why I love this man.

Relief

2007-10-25T18:38:00.000-07:00

The house is fine. We're a bit frazzled but the house made it unscathed! Whew!

What an ordeal. I'll write about it later - right now my nerves are raw and exhausted. And my thoughts go out to the neighborhoods in my town and the one I grew up in who weren't so lucky. We saw some of the devastation today, people just standing and staring at the rubble what was their lives. It's heartbreaking, no matter how grateful anyone is to be alive, it's still a horror.

Thanks to everyone who put me on their personal radar this week - the vibes were felt and much appreciated!

Plea

2007-10-23T14:51:00.000-07:00

I've added a new title to my name. Evacuee. I don't care for it.

As some of you may have heard on the national news there are terrible fires raging through California leaving a wake of destruction in their path we've never seen before. I know they aren't the only thing happening in our world but it's the worst thing currently taking place in mine.

We were evacuated from our home in Rancho Bernardo at 5:30 Monday morning while the hot, gale-force winds whipped debris, ash and smoke into our faces and minutes before the Witch fire touched down and did her evil bidding. This funny little town has never made the map before. We're a congregation of soccer stars and blue hairs with a few other demographics in between. I for one would have rather made the worlds largest burrito or something rather than this shit.

But today our lives have been turned inside out, upside down and changed forever. I do not know if my home is still standing or a pile of smoldering ruble like so many of my neighbors. Homes I know, drive past and admire have been burned to the ground. I know every single neighborhood in the Rancho Bernardo/Poway area that have been affected. It's been my home for 35 years. And despite my recent want to move, I still love it and always will.

It's a surreal experience to say the least. One moment numb then anxiety flooded the next. Sobering thoughts all the way to future plans of how to rebuild from scratch if we have to replace literally everything in our lives, except what we could fit in our cars on the way out. Your worldly possessions reduce to the size of a car trunk. The stories are already heart-breaking and devastating and I'm sure they'll only get worse. Until things hopefully get better.

My hearts go out to those who have nothing left. We've seen this horrible destruction before. 4 years ago almost to the fucking day, if you can believe it, although it wasn't as close to me as this time. This time it's my direct neighborhood.

Also - get out of my hood, Matt Lauer, and take your cockroaching fellow reporters with you. We're going through enough. If I see Katie Couric at my Taco Bell, hoping it's still there, I'm going to kick her ass. Just sayin'.

As of right now, as I'm writing this inside a Budget motel room on a make-shift set up 90 miles away from my home and all of my cherished possessions, my friends and psuedo families. Just trying to keep my non-stop terror in check and hoping I still have a home as do my loved ones. So, I just ask for a few good vibes to be sent San Diego's way. We sure could use it.

And if you could spare a couple of nickels help out the red cross that would be aces. They totally kick ass at helping out others and I know a lot of us our going to need them in the days, weeks and months to come. It would be much appreciated, I guarantee that.

San Diego Red Cross

Thursday is the new Friday

2007-10-11T16:24:00.000-07:00

I'm heading out on a jet plane tonight.

Destination: San Francisco.

It's the tail-end of my birthday month extravaganza stretched to the limit super mega celebration. There will be cocktail parties and musicals and shopping and photo taking and sight seeing and relaxing and laughing and eating and joking and and smiling and contended sighing.

However, there will be no gratuitous vacation screwing because...

I GOT MY FUCKING PERIOD TODAY.

Of course.

You kids have a great weekend and I'll see yooz on the other side of this one.

Monday

2007-10-08T07:20:00.001-07:00

What is it about feather pillows that transforms them into slabs of fucking cement during the night? You lay your head down on the wings of angels, sent off to dreamland with baby soft kisses caressing your face and get jolted from your slumber when you realize you're now laying on a parking lot speed bump covered in 400 thread count sheets. WTF? and Jesus. I really need a new pillow. One that doesn't begin as a fantasy and end like a nightmare. That's what first marriages are for.

Anyway...

So if you hadn't noticed already by the new additions to the sidebar over yonder I'm once again participating in the writeeverydayforthemonthofNovember Nablopomo excercise? Project? Thingmajig? I wave a hearty hello to new readers. Welcome! My, you sure are pretty.

It was really fun last year, although not without some pressure added in for extra flavor. Ack. The stress I put on myself to entertain. How do people like Pamela Anderson Lee Lee Rock Solomon do it? Poor girl. The things you have to do to keep it fresh and an audience in their seats. I guess flashing vagina's and store-bought tits isn't that interesting anymore.

Digressed again...

What I'm saying is, it's a good way to stretch your brain. And if you've been feeling a little -ahem- constipated in the thinking department with a blockage in your corpus writereous, I highly recommend you join up and do eet. Even if you only have time for a big highlighted "FUCK" because you're having a bad day, it still counts. (But don't steal that idea, I'm sure I'll be using it.)

Since The Man has taken away almost all of my fun at my Corporate Drone job I'll be getting up early and staying up late to to post and read so don't be whining at me you don't have time. I'm cutting into crucial couch sitting time. So if I can muster up the strength so can you.

This year there's more of a network thing going and I really like having a separate page on the Nablopomo site. But most importantly it gets some new traffic to your blog and there are prizes! I promise you won't have to show anyone your Britney.

Unless of course you want to.

Crapalicious

2007-10-02T07:38:00.000-07:00

Not being able to read blogs, post, see my comments, or spend half my day trying to escape from the soul-sucking monotony and abundance of assholes I deal with on an hourly basis because work is afraid that if I fill my head with anything but policies and numbers and stupid bullshit busy-work uninteresting meaningless super crap the world as they know it will surely end.

I mean, GAWD FORBID I get 20 seconds of joy in between 8 hours of crap.

And it really sucks.

So, I hope your doggies are good, you're feeling fine, that guy still likes you, the baby is healthy, you acerbic wit is entertaining, that job isn't killing you, your new private page is working out, the move went well, they find out what's wrong, your blues are lifting, happy birthday, happy holiday, happy life, pretty pictures, sounds like a fun time, stay dry, stay warm, stay cool, stay sweet, bff 4 ev-r, I love you, I miss you, I mean it.

That should cover it.

:(

Happy Birthday to Me!!

2007-09-19T05:32:00.000-07:00

40 years ago today a young woman, probably alone and scared, pushed me into this world and did the most unselfish thing possible and gave me away in the knowledge that I'd be better taken care of. Or else she didn't have room in her VW bug for a baby and her bongo drums, but whatever. In any case, September 19th was my debut and I've taking extra bows ever since.

The big birthdays always give me some growing pains. I remember turning 10 and a friend of my mother's making a big deal about being "2 digits! You're 2 digits now! You'll never be anything else but 2 digits!" and I thought nervously to myself, well shit, maybe 2 digits is too much to handle, jeez lady, get a grip and shut up you're freaking me out!! Then I ate cake. Of course looking back now it was silly but my sensitive cheese-brain got a little stressed out over it.

Photographic evidence: Home haircut and 2 giant front teeth swallowing my whole face.

Then there was 13. The intro age into teenagerdome. The time when I was straddling between being a little kid and being a little lady. Barbies in one hand and lip gloss in the other. I clearly recall loving that age because for a short time I could bounce between those 2 worlds with ease. Until the zits and periods showed up that same year (on the school sanctioned 4 day ski trip thank you very fucking much.)

Photographic evidence: High waisted pants and feathered hair.

Then there was sweet 16. People really make a big stink about that one. In my day it was left-overs from the 50's when 16 meant you were about a minute from being engaged so your family could marry you off the day after graduation with corresponding songs by bouffant haired blonds crowding the airwaves. Now it's the second or third? MTV generation with the spoiled rich bitches sobbing onto their Escalade dashboards when mommy won't let them wear nothing but duct tape to their party. Mean mommy!

I was really excited about my 16th birthday and started planning my party a couple of months in advance. For some reason my mother felt a party that year was unnecessary. I think it was because she turned 16 in that golden age I mentioned above but her family didn't have the money or inclination to celebrate beyond a family mention and maybe a cake, so she put the stop on that. It was horrible a the time but I get it now. I was allowed to invite 1 special friend to a fancy restaurant and had an OK time.

Photographic evidence: Very liberally applied gray eye shadow. Oi.

Then there was 18. I think I had a big party. I can't really remember but I do recollect being a slight bit worried that I was now "legal" and could get arrested for statutory rape so I needed to be careful. Christ on a crutch, the things that go through my dumb brain. Like that would ever happen, not-to-mention I was still a virgin. Tard.

Photographic evidence: ??

21 had it's pressure to be perfect with the perfect amount of debauchery and hope that I'd finally get to whip out my ID and the bar would have to serve me because HA HA! I'm legal now boyee. I've always looked younger than I am and the ID scramble lost its magic a few years later and now I just laugh HA HA HA and thank them.

I turned the magic age of drinking on a Monday night. Not the best part of the week for partying. I went out with my then boyfriend and best girlfriend and we bar hopped from one empty establishment to the next pouring booze down my throat until I was literally blind. Of course the next day I was sick as a dog but I supposed I reached my goal.

Photographic evidence: The universe's largest shoulder pads holding up my giant head of hair.

When I turned 30 I was in a weird place in my life. I'd filed for divorce, finally got my asshole husband out of the house and wasn't feeling like a penis magnet. At the last minute I decided, screw it, I'm throwing myself a fucking party and that's just what I did. I rented out a private loft at my favorite bar, invited a plethora of friends and acquaintances, got properly hammered and made out with a 24 year old stranger I met on the dance floor. It changed my way of thinking forever.

Photographic evidence: Me and the stud bleary eyed with pink rings of my lipstick smeared around our mouths. Excellent.

Today I turn 40. Life has gone in a zillion different directions in the last 10 years. Some good, some bad, some I never dreamed of for all varieties of reasons. Big birthdays like this always make your life score-card pop up in front of your face. Accomplishments, goals, obstacles overcome. What's the score?

I've been having a hard time with this one but I did with all the others too. And with age hopefully comes wisdom and I know it's just a stupid number and I can't let that panicky voice in my head take over telling me I can't do stuff now because it's never too late and one of the perks of getting old is not giving a fuck what other people think. So there. And of course there have been triumphs and if I want more it's up to me to do it.

I'm so grateful for what I have. A few years ago I was afraid I'd never make it to this age and I'm so glad to be here. Looking beyond the number, because GAH! 40! How the fuck did that happen? I choose to celebrate the awesome stuff about myself and focus on the good things in my life.

I'm so fortunate to be with the love of my life. As lame as it may sound, I didn't know it could be like this. Even when he leaves the oven on and he's snoring and I want to smother him a wee bit with a pillow, I'm still blown away by the love I feel for him and from him.

I have some of the most spectacular friends a person could hope to have. They are funny and kind and tough when they need to be and aren't scared away by my shit. My famdamily is like every other, a bunch of weirdo's with baggage but I've had a good life and have always been taken care of and I love them. Even my jerky brother.

Today I salute the woman who gave birth to me and the parents who did the rest of the very hard work. I thank my lovely friends and send kisses to my family. Virtual hugs for my online friends for being so kick freaking ass. Love and all that shit for you all! And for my baby, I cherish you for taking such good care of my heart. You've kept your promise and I love you more than my luggage.

I took the day off today to lounge and relax and eat chocolate until I go into a sugar coma. I'll put the final plans into place for my party this weekend, which happens to be at the same bar from 10 years ago, and eat my favorite junk food. I will take a nice long nap. I will be nice to myself. I'd like it if you would do the same.

Photographic evidence: You'll just have to wait and see.

Boo!

2007-09-16T21:03:00.000-07:00

While flipping channels today I zoomed past a war movie I had the misfortune of seeing as a young girl in the summer of 1976. I recognized it right away, which is funny since that was about a million years ago and after looking up the year it came out was surprised at the date and the age I was when I got to witness 2 hours of WWII carnage that left me slightly scarred with the image of Charlton Heston, or whoever, burning alive in his crashing Corsair.

I remember being dropped off by my mother with my bff and her younger brother at the only movie theater within 15 miles. A small hole of a room with exceptionally sticky floors and a questionable staff of be-fro'd burnouts. I think Gene Simmons worked the soda machine.

It was a very hot July day and no doubt my mother could have done without me under her feet whining about the temperature, my unending boredom and begging for sugary treats. So, my little ass was deposited at the theater for a double feature. Forget the fact that were 9 and 8 respectively (good gawd) we were seeing unrated (?) movies never meant for people our age but no one gave that a thought.

After the intermission, peeling our keds off the floor, pee break, and popcorn refill, we took our seat again for the second feature. This one would prove even worse than the first and would haunt me for weeks to come. Bigfoot. That big damn hairy scary fucking Bigfoot. Nevermind the fact that we were alone at that age, but we shouldn't have seen either of those movies!

That effing monster movie Messed. Me. Up. I couldn't sleep for weeks without my parents both being in my room trying to convince me that there was no Bigfoot looming in the doorway or scary things under the bed or in the closet or monsters waiting to eat my face when the lights went out. Although we all know differently, don't we. Just ask Stephen King.

Another movie that jacked me up for half of my life was some B creature feature where some guy tries to save his wife by keeping only her head alive in a fucking pan of juices after she's decapitated in a car accident. I saw this when I was 5 years old after a day of kindergarten happily eating paste and showing my panties to the boys. I was never the same again.

I've had a strange relationship with all things creepy. In junior high I would regularly check out fiction and nonfiction accounts of ghost stories and look at freak show and circus people pictures that seemed to be oddly abundant in our small library. Lobster men, parasitic twins, conjoined heads floating in pickle jars. I was a tad obsessed.

At the same time I couldn't handle more than a few minutes in a campfire round of scare the shit out of the kids. I'd start to shake and cry and through my chattering teeth beg to be anywhere but in the middle of a tale involving a beating heart under the floorboards or Lizzy Borden coming to get me with a sharpened axe.

Things didn't improve when my 6th grade teacher showed our class some bizarre film about a farmer from the 1800's tending to his freshly dead wife on the kitchen table, cleaning her skin and dressing her in a fresh bonnet when all the time she was really alive or zombified or something horrible and when he's out on the farm she gets into a brawl with a mountain lion who fucks her up and kills her for real and he finds the aftermath which is shown in a series of strobe-light bursts.

WTF, teacher? WTF late 70's? WTF?

By my junior year in high school things began to change. Watching scary movies with a group of friends was a fun thing to do and my intense reaction was starting to wear off. Somehow a tradition started between my best friend Matty and I and every Sunday we'd rent a few slasher flicks, get a can of nacho cheese and some chips and spend the afternoon squealing and laughing and overdosing on junk food. It's one of my fondest memories.

Now, I can't get enough. We go out of our way to see as many scary movies as we can that are worth a look and I am a religious King follower. I've always loved Halloween and look forward to the season more and more every year. Decorating the house with spooky stuff and planning out a month of horror movies to watch. The dark skies and ghost stories shared on the radio. I love it all.

I still get scared sometimes and can work myself up in instant, seeing things out of the corner of my eye, not wanting to reach for that lightswitch in the pitch dark, just knowing something is reaching for me at the same time, and I don't like it when the cat jerks her head up at the ceiling looking at nothing. But a good scare gets the blood flowing. Well placed words that bring the hair up on the back of your neck is a thrill. Watching Paris Hilton cut into tiny pieces is delicious.

I might be turning 40 in a few days but I'll never stop enjoying a good old-fashioned fright.
Even if I have do to occasionally watch through my fingers.

Is it fall yet?

2007-09-07T12:45:00.000-07:00

Picture me gritting my teeth. Please envision me making a fist, pursing my pouty lips and flaring my nostrils. Then imagine I'm breathing heavy and turning red and reaching for a very large hammer. Now run away.

I'm having system issues. Both at work AND at home. Problems that make my computers freeze, lock, hang, swoon, hiccup, block, weep, gossip, binge, purge, write bad checks, and in all general terms of intense annoyance NOT FUCKING WORK RIGHT.

My work puter acts like a surly teenager sunk deep into the couch and barely lifts their half-lidded eyes when you ask it to do something. Now, please. Right now. Please do it now. NOW! RIGHT NOW. FOR FUCKSSAKE GET OFF YOUR ASS AND DO IT NOW! But they still don't move a slack muscle and in fact fall into a deep and comatose sleep while you wait and wait and stomp your feet and have a stroke and get very pissed, not accomplishing what you want to do.

Half the sites I try to open simply won't, half the links on this blog are now blocked, and random pics are missing then show up then go missing again. In a word. It sucks. Right in the middle of trying to post this entry Blogger was blocked for not being a "work related" site. RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE. They're so on to me. Assholes.

And now my system at home has apparently been bogged down by the 20,000 photos I've (accidentally many, many times) uploaded and (accidentally) shared between 4 different editing programs and/or it's haunted since my keyboard decides not to work whenever it damn well feels like it.

This all leads to much rebooting, frustration, hair pulling, screaming, tantrums, and threats of throwing heavy equipment onto the ground in hopes it will implode in a fiery mass of shitty non-working wires and motherboards. Not to mention the massive cramp that's been put into my time-wasting at my retarded job and creative-outlet avoiding at home because gawd knows I have the patience of a short statured flea and cannot wait 60 seconds for a page to load.

Christ. Almighty.

Hopefully I can at least get things running better at home because I'm close to going crazy and I don't think whitey can handle one more of my whining fits while I pound my hands on a dead keyboard growling like a drunk monkey. It's not attractive, is what I'm saying.

~~~~~

We've finally gotten a weather break and the temps have gone from uninhabitable to I think I'll keep my skin after all. It was hotter than Satan's balls in a broiler pan the entire Labor Day weekend and any hint of a possible plan to venture out of the house was scrapped when I heard a warning on the radio to be careful while driving since the heat could cause hot tires to explode. What is this, Phoenix for crapsake?

I didn't step outside but about 4 times from Saturday afternoon until Tuesday morning. Although I was desperate to take a photo of something other than the cat and the one flower that's still alive on my patio so I took an early morning walk around my neighborhood on Monday.

It wasn't even 9:00 a.m. yet and within 100 yards of my front door I had sweat rolling down my back and steam fogging my sunglasses. The shorts I was wearing were made of cotton and defective lycra and have a tendency to lose their shape a little bit and while I walked around they began to slip down to a level lower than appropriate. And because I was so sticky with sweat when I crouched down to shoot a rose I plumber-cracked my entire neighborhood and those damn shorts got stuck like that. I pulled and tugged and balanced camera equipment with holding my pants up and finally said fuck it and went home, took a cold shower and stayed the fuck inside.

Summer really belongs to kids anyway. No school. All play all the time. Swimming. Games. Hide-n-seek until the street lights came on then running home for a bar-b-que'd dinner. Sugary, cold popsicles for dessert. It was non-stop good times. Well, most of it.

Like 90% of the houses on our street we had a pool, which was a blast, but swimming on the day the pool man came meant chemical poisoning and squinty eyes for the night. How the hell we didn't all grow an extra head I don't know.

All of us kids would watch whatever cute high school boy was working his summer job throw a handful of this and a cup of that then a thingamajig into the deep end where bubbles would rise and fizz and a soup of caustic substances would be deposited into our wet playland to keep it fresh and blue. We'd barely make it the requisite hour waiting time then happily jump in, swimming and splashing for hours, getting out smelling like a fresh jug of bleach and unable to see. It was great.

And I don't think our parents ever let us in the house. We were ordered outside all damn day no matter how effing hot it was. Although I really can't blame them. We were dirty rats getting into all kinds of trouble and I wouldn't want 5 unruly hooligans dripping otter pops all over my light colored carpet. (Didn't those things rip the shit out of your mouth? It was worth it but damn.)

Now I associate summer with blinding sun, migraines, chafed tits, and a searing hot steering wheel. Ah well. At least now I don't smell like chlorine, I can spend the whole weekend in bed if I want to and my AC unit could put frost on your ovaries. And that, my friends, is what I call a good time.

Reunion

2007-08-27T22:00:00.000-07:00

I do believe I'm fully recovered from that damn reunion. It sort of seems like a blur anyway, which might or might not have anything to do with the fact that I was nervous, it was 100,000 degrees that day and the only thing I consumed in the way of food was half of a Jack-n-the-Crack kids-meal cheeseburger 8 hours before drinking a gallon of white wine.

In a word? It was weird. So, so weird.

Matty and I were both jittery, some from excitement (mostly him) and some from dread (mostly me) and some from holy shit we're going to see people from 20 years ago (mostly both.) So after getting appropriately fabulous and cleavaged we headed down to the hotel lobby for a pre-soiree drinky-poo to take our edges off. ($28.00 for 2 drinks, wtf W??)

After we'd drained our cocktails we hopped in a cab for the mile drive to the fucking boat this party was being held on which was possibly the worst choice for a venue I could think of. No climate control, no big room for mulling about, and it was fugly.

I'd like to send a terse letter to the genius who thought it was a good idea to host a reunion on a floating museum with 7 foot ceilings that trapped the summer heat like a sauna full of old men with B.O. because they should be fired from whatever volunteer position they'd signed up for. Hello! Ladies in nice dresses that don't want to peel the paper ass-gaskets off their butts in the bathroom! Hi! Didn't really want to spend the night daintily wiping the running sweat from my forehead! High heals on uneven floors! Jesus, that part sucked.

Since one little ol' drink wasn't enough to calm our nerves we decided to head straight for the bar when we joined party. As we were shuffling and scooting between the bodies in this god damn small space I recognized the guy I took to my junior prom. Even 22 years later the face was (sort of) the same. I grabbed Matty and loudly whispered, hey, I think that's J!! And then proceeded to yell J's name.

J whipped his head around and looked at me, trying to figure it out. We ran over to him and the group he was standing with. As we all merged and looked at the name tags the hoopin' & hollerin' began. "OMG it's YOU!!" "OMG it's YOU!!"

More of our old friends were nearby and came over to us. They all recognized me immediately with the claim that I hadn't changed a bit which is really not the compliment it seems to be. Hell yes I've changed! Hopefully for the better, you fuckers. One girl did say I was pretty which finally made me feel like there had been at least some type of improvement from my 80''s feathered mullet and grey eye shadow. For fucksake, people.

As more old friends were recognized, cries of recognition commenced and the how-are-yous were asked and a pattern began to emerge. Everyone was GREAT and we said we were GREAT and everything was GREAT which we all know is a total lie but that's what you do at these things. Some people we thought were going to be there weren't and they were sorely missed. Some people we didn't think would should up in a million years and we had no idea what had happened to them were there and we were happy. Go figure.

It was all going well and a bunch of us sat down for some dinner, I'll keep my liquid thankyouverymuch, and even though I didn't know everyone at the stupid boat booth, the conversation was going well, centered around number of kids, marital status, etc.

One of the (many) guys I'd had a mad crush on in high school but whom I'd irritated constantly with my obnoxious antics was sitting to my right. He's become a working actor/musician and we were all excited & proud for him. As he and I were chatting I suddenly became retarded when I thought I was going to be charming. As is the long-standing tradition of my big stupid mouth I looked him right in his nice face and blurted, "Wow, so like I'm like so totally sorry I was like such a pain in the ass to you in high school."

His smile faded to a little sneer and he said to me, "I have no idea what you're talking about and if you hadn't said anything I would never have thought about it (you stupid idiot)." I tried to play it off but he chose to torture me about it all night bringing it up over and over but changing it to me being mean to him when in actuality I was mean to everyone else but him. To him I was annoying which is completely different and by the end of the night I really don't think he was kidding about it at all. :(

As the evening wore on old personalities took over and it was just weird. Some truths about hard times were slipping out but the whole thing was so frenetic and booze-laced I don't remember much until it was midnight and the party was over. At least half the crowd of reunionors walked across the street to the nearest hotel to continue the night at the bar but being San Diego it was already closed. God forbid you want to party after 12:00 around here.

After much drunken shouting of plans we decided to have people come back to our room with a stop for more refreshments on the way, which also didn't work out because liquor stores close at midnight too. Some people began walking, some jumped in cars blah blah, we ended up with a group of about 10 people in our room with a few booze-hounds getting lost along the way but hey, we're all adults, they'll be fine. Again I didn't know everyone in the room but whatever, we had a mini bar!

We raided the tiny bottles in the tiny fridge and had a lot of laughs, told some old stories, passed around some old pictures and a yearbook, and promised to keep in touch. Which probably won't happen. I learned, again, that people really don't change that much and some people I don't need to see again and some I hope I do, although my expectations are unfortunately low.

I went to bed with a million mixed emotions which lasted for a few days beyond that. As I whined to Matty fretting that I'd probably said many stupid things and I really think I offended that one person by not clarifying that I was kidding when I really was and failed miserably at conveying my true feelings that I just hope everyone is happy in their lives and wish them nothing but well. Damn my tough-chick persona that always pops out when I'm trying to protect myself. Or drunk.

Sweet Matt kept telling me that these people haven't spent any real time with me in the last 20 years nor had they really in a few short hours on one crazy night so they don't know who I really am which is not that 17 year-old fool from 1985. Therefore, I dunno. It was bizarre and good and strange and poked at old wounds and was weird and fun all at once.

I came to the conclusion many years ago that High School is the 4 years you never get over. Unless you've spent a crapload of time with childhood friends people are locked into your memory banks back in that time and really, life doesn't get much different. People aren't much different. Every time I hear someone say, "this isn't High School" or some derivation of the phrase I think to myself, fuck yea it is. Behavior doesn't change that much. But I will give everyone the benefit of the doubt, which I hope they give me, and wish them happiness and all that shit.

All-in-all I'm glad I went and I'm glad I could be there for my beloved Matty, but I don't think I can go through that again. Unless I become a rich and famous artist. Then I might consider it.

Is this too much to ask?

2007-08-22T15:36:00.000-07:00

I want someone to tell me that spending 6 hours with people you haven't seen in 20 years, most of whom you will never see again, is nothing to become so obsessed about that you actually lose sleep over agonizing that you did or said something wrong making these virtual strangers think, Jesus, she hasn't changed at all, when in fact you have changed a lot despite falling right back into old patterns of jokes underlined with threats that I will still fuck your shit up when in reality I just wanted to kiss every single person square on the mouth and tell them that all I wish is that they're happy but maybe it came out wrong and please forget that I became the fat one.

I would like someone to point out the fact that turning 40 is no big deal and the alternative is not turning 40 which means that you've been sprinkled over your favorite cliff by drunk and crying (you'd better be crying) friends so it's entirely stupid to fret over it and remember that you, in fact, are indeed not a total failure and do not possess a retarded "must be accomplished by" list folded and worn, deep in the back part of your wallet and it's not too late to start over in any manner of things you want to change and you're not stuck in a shitty career that's not a career anyway but a dumb job and you can move and you will alter your life for the better because you are not powerless over every single thing and age is just a stinking number even though you'll have to check a new age-range box on surveys but life is what you make it and there won't be a mob of angry villagers chasing you out of Sephora to confiscate your pink glitter lip gloss.

I need someone to distract me with something shiny.

Thank you.

Such a tough girl

2007-08-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

I've stolen a meme. It wasn't given to me so I took it. And you can't do anything about it. Whatcha gonna do? Call the meme police? Just go ahead and try. I bet they're stupid anyway. A bunch of posers with carpal tunnel and Halloween costume cop hats. They can't do anything to me. I'm untouchable. So here I go, flaunting my 5 finger discounted meme which I'll just use up and throw away anyhow because I don't even like the word meme and this one isn't that interesting but it doesn't change the fact that I'm a bad ass motherfucker who shoplifted the meme.

~flips off security camera~

Yea.

5 THINGS ABOUT YOURS TRULY

Five favorite days of the year
Besides Saturday and Sunday when I get to do whatever the feck I want to, ride my horse, shop, nap, eat nothing but half a tube of low-fat chips-a-hoy (not that I did that last weekend)?
1. My birthday - should be recognized as a national holiday. Will someone please get on that?
2. Halloween - despite the lack of awesome parties I never get to go to or the ability to show off the most righteous costumes I come up with, I love this day and the creepy, fall, crisp-air, monster-movie vibes that come with it. (And the shit piles of candy)
3. Christmas - day off, pressies, duh. It's good.
4. Thanksgiving - license to pig.
5. Any day I don't feel like crap.

Five things I watched this week
You might sense a theme here...
1. Big Brother - for chrissakes, Amber! STOP FUCKING CRYING!!
2. Hell's Kitchen - thanks for giving me the phrase "You fucking donk-ay!!" I will use it with pride.
3. Real World 492 - Australia - another group of egotistical assholes. It's gonna be delicious.
4. So You Think You Can Dance - I'm over it already.
5. Porn. What?

Five things you don't want to do but should
This is stupid because everyone is going to have the same answers, eat better, sleep more, blah blah blah and I'm no different. Let's see if I can shock you.
1. Go to the bathroom in a timely manner. Seriously, since I was a kid I hated taking time out for this. Now that I'm a bit - ahem - older, I can't play that particular game of Russian roulette, if you know what I mean.
2. Talk to HR about my fuckface boss. I know damn well HR is only there to protect the company but I need to nut up and get something on record if shit goes down. But I don't wanna.
3. Do my physical therapy exercises.
4. Alright, I'm caving. Eat better.
5. Leave more comments on blogs I like. It's the one area I get stupidly shy.

Five things you want to learn
There are too many to list but here's the current things on my radar.
1. Photography
2. Dog training
3. Photography
4. Photography
5. Whistle with my fingers

Five animals you've had as or have pets who impacted you
I like animals more than people. Nuff said.
1. Dogs, especially Casey my baby girl forever, Chance and Ginger
2. Cats - RIP Boo Boo Kitty, love you Rass, you were totally kick-ass, Precious.
3. Hamsters - oh, my first taste of death. How you rocked me to the core.
4. Rats - science experiment that turned out pretty darn cool.
5. I had a horse for about 5 fucking minutes but couldn't keep him because of $$ and I've regretted it ever since. I still love him and always will and wish he'd been mine for all this time because now all I can do is kiss his sweet face.

Five favorite pieces of clothing
1. Black yoga pants.
2. Black yoga pants.
3. Black yoga pants.
4. Pajamas.
5. Latest cleavage top.

Five things you enjoy in the summer
1. Hibernating in my super-air-conditioned house napping and watching bad Lifetime movies with my baby. That's pretty much it.

Five foods you don't like
Well, if you're going to make me narrow it down to 5!
1. Bell peppers - gross, gag, ack, barf, puke. How do people eat that shit?
2. Carrots - raw, semi-raw, semi-cooked, cooked, pureed, sliced, diced, mashed, etc etc etc. NO. Carrot cake. YES. Go figure.
3. Raisins - blech. Chocolate covered raisins. Delightful.
4. Tapioca. Might as well eat a slice of hell.
5. Any meat stranger than chicken, pig or grown cow. No venison, no elk, no buffalo, no lamb, no duck, no shark (for other reasons), no antelope, no game hen, no veal, no Thumper, no snake, no frog, no alligator, no oxtail, maybe quail egg. All sushi exempt.

Five things that are not where they belong
1. My brand new contacts are not in my eyeballs because they are defective and I can't fricken see.
2. I have a crazy space in my second and third teeth from the front. Get back in your right spot, tooth!
3. Whitey and I. Wrong state. SOMEONE BUY MY STINKING HOUSE!!
4. My sacroiliac. WAY out of joint.
5. My bank account. Needs a few more zeroooooooooooooooooooooooooo's.

You are given $50,000 to give to 5 people as $10,000 cash gifts, who and why
1. whitey so he can pay off a dept and breathe a little easier for awhile.
2. My best friend Shawna so she can get on her feet and out of the hood.
3. My parents which could possibly be a loan repayment...
4. A random person sitting on a bus bench. San Diego is not a public transit-friendly city and taking a bus anywhere sucks a special kind of ass.
5. The Humane Society so maybe a few more puppies and kitties could avoid the gas chamber a few more days.

And now I feel a little guilty for my gross theft. Darn being raised by a middle class professional shamer mom.

I hate summer

2007-08-12T14:28:00.000-07:00

Too long days
Traffic jams
Black socks in sandals

Giant spiders
Biting skeeters
Over-exposed love handles

Stupid tourists
Jam-packed crowds
No parking spaces

Crying kids
Slow strollers
Sticky ice cream faces

Allergies
Crushing heat
Broken bbq grill

Sweaty boobs
Chafing crack
Gigantic AC bill

Hot car
Burning metal
Infected finger splinter

Blistering sun
Sleepless nights
Damn, I miss winter

I want my M T Very strong drink

2007-08-02T15:43:00.000-07:00

I had dinner with a lovely friend of mine last Thursday and while I was sipping on a mojito and waiting for my Miami-inspired Cubanish weirdo chicken salad to arrive my cell phone rang. And I answered it. And it was my best friend Matty. Who then asked me point blank if I was going to his reunion with him or not. Then I blinked twice. Then I whined that I'm a chunker. And he had the nerve to make the tsk sound to me where I then said, alright. Fuck it. I've triumphed over bigger things than my big ass so I'll go. IN 2 WEEKS!!

Then I barfed a mint leaf.

You see, this is not just a friends random high school in Whateverville, US of A. home of the Raging Ratfucks (GO RATS!), it also MY high school with MY old crew of INSANE friends (even though they were 2 years my junior) MOST of whom I've delighted in NOT seeing or thinking about for the last 20 PLUS YEARS. We had, shall we say, theatrical and volatile relationships peppered with wine coolers, clove ciggies and CRAZY. Oh, and did I mention, we were the DRAMA fags?

Yea. We were those kids. And yes we used the term fags. It was the 80's, don't get all up in my grill over it.

We were the overly hormonal insane teenagers who practiced their scene's on the quad and cried at the drop of a wardrobe hat and were vicious, horrible assholes if you got on the wrong side of whatever faction was in control at the time. The ones who would form "I Hate So-And-So" clubs and take the air out of your tires while you innocently sat at a football game watching your team get clobbered by the low-rents from the next town over, and fill your mailbox with a spaghetti dinner complete with meatballs. Yes. These all happened to me.

Although I must admit, I wasn't an innocent victim all the time. I was, hrm, how should I put this? A bitch on wheels with a dyke haircut (before it was a dyke haircut) and a temper that could rival a pissed off cobra with PMS and an infected hangnail. Well, if cobras had nails, which they don't but YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. I was, in fact, (sometimes) very, very mean.

Not like now. I'm a total softy now. Quit gagging at your screen, I'm different. Sorta. I can still tear you a new one but I'd rather have a good laugh and a tight friendship. OK, I still enjoy the occasional idiot beating but I'm not bossy like I was back in high school. Yes. That's the difference. Bottom line, I've always had a low tolerance for bullshit but now I can better harness my super power and use it for good instead of evil.

Oh, who am I kidding. I was kick ass then and I'm kick ass now but now I have more money. Ha ha, I'm kidding. I have grown up and I'd like to think I'm a totally different person. I could be fooling myself but most of the time I think I'm pretty fucking awesome with a good heart, generous nature and fiercely loyal to those I love. Which is probably the same for everyone else but I'm fucking nervous as hell about this stupid party. But, I'm going. With Matty. To his freaking 20-year reunion. Even though I didn't go to my own 20 year reunion 2 years ago just to avoid the trauma that I experienced at my 10 year. But I'll go!! Because, as I've mentioned, I'm a good fucking friend!

Of course I am now obsessed, obsessed with finding the perfect outfit, shoes, accessories, make-up, handbag, underwear, nail polish, weather system, driving music, alcohol compatible drugs, and long term therapist. I'm considering renting a fancy car that probably no one will see. I've given up losing a shit ton of weight in the next 10 days since that would inevitably mean losing a limb, and as chunker as they may be, I like them all.

So I will go. As (thebestofme) is.

I will be brave and smile and crack jokes and try not to get shit faced and finally punch that smarmy bitch Suzy in the neck like she totally deserved for doing that thing with her fat face sister when we were 17. I will smile and try to be funny and know that it is what it is and my life is my life and there are good and bad things in everyone's. And I will try to pretend that no one cares that we're all fat (please god, let some of them be fatter then me) and probably not millionaires and just happy to see each other after all of these years anxious to catch up and trade a few stories.

And please, Jesus, kind and loving God, creator of chocolate & kittens, let there be an open bar.

Hey! You're squishing me!

2007-07-31T10:53:00.000-07:00

Since I'd been so antsy the weekend before last, whining and moaning that I didn't know what to do with myself, I asked whitey if we could please go to the coast to take some photos. We haven't done that since last year and I felt the irrefutable need to go out into public on a Sunday because I've gotten bored with slamming my face in a cupboard door so what better way to torture myself then try and find a parking space at a San Diego beach in the middle of summer on a lovely weekend morning?

Needless to say, it was difficult. And then I had a parallel parking freak-out and we almost scrapped the idea all together (well, it was me who yelled "oh forget it" while whitey looked at me like my hair was on fire) until I found a space I could pull in to. While the boy nursed his coffee, trying to rev up his brain after I woke him at 9:30, (even though I'd been awake since 6:30 and had waited around patiently for 3 stinking hours loudly crumpling paper and maybe on purpose heavily throwing my big camera bag onto the bed hoping to stir the coma-sleeper) we got out of the car and I readied my camera and surveyed our surroundings.

Holy bajeesus, the place was packed. Unbelievably swarming with people, dogs, kids, picnics, a wedding, cars, kayaks, divers, snorklers, and cute lifeguards. I knew we had left the house too late as it was but I was mostly worried about the light, not thinking we'd be shit out of luck at our first location as we wound through the slalom course of parked cars then saw a steady stream of auto-vultures trying to wishfully find a space that was not going to become available until someone got stung by a jellyfish and went crying off to the nearest ER or the sun went all the way down.

It was daunting and a bit of a bummer, even though I know we can't expect to have any public place to ourselves, ever. Hell, I've been in what I thought was the middle of fucking nowhere in the mountains thinking there couldn't possibly be another soul around and just when I was about to drop trou and pee on a tree here comes a person whistling Dixie, blissfully unaware that they almost saw my money maker in a most unflattering way. But this was regoddamndiculous.

Crowds are something I didn't used to have a problem with. As long as I had a personal space big enough that a stranger wasn't literally crawling up my ass, I'm looking at you Disneyland lines, I was OK. I even used to like going to compacted clubs and squeezing my way into the middle of a sweaty hoard to dance off my rum & Cokes. But not any more.

These days I don't like it. I already live in a major tourist town and one of the largest cities in the United States and frankly, I'm feeling a bit claustrophobic. Squeezed out. Crowded. And besides the physical confines of living with so many damn people, it's making me think about other areas that have turned into virtual mob scenes and I just don't know if there's room for me.

Take the internet, or more specifically, blogs. There are millions upon millions of them. Is there room for another cranky girl who writes about whatever and is occasionally funny, sporadically admired or randomly read? I don't know. Why do some blogs take off in a short time and others putter along with hidden gems and no feedback?

I've had this conversation with whitey a million times and it's his opinion that a lot of bloggers whore themselves out like mad when they first come onto the scene, leaving comments on as many sites, posts, other blogs as they can just to start their own fan base. I'm inclined to agree, but that can't be the case all the time. Demographics play a part as well, I'm sure.

I don't have kids so I don't write a mom blog. I could regale you with crazy stories of my insane cat, like last night when a stranger kitty perched his orange ass on the windowsill and caused Rascal to fly into a blind rage of white fur and clawless paws and I'm sure we were 2 seconds from her crashing her hurtling body through the glass but I saved her by yanking her back through my wood blinds she was almost breaking and threw her into the bedroom with some fucking catnip. But I don't want to write about my cat all the time either, like some nameless bloggers do that get 192 comments whenever they post a fucking photo of their cats doing nothing but sitting in a box!! But I digress.

I'm not political, I don't post pictures of my tits, fabulous as they are, I'm not selling vibrators on the side. I haven't gotten fired for my blog (yet), I have no shopping section, I can't see a publisher ever asking me to submit my goofy memoires to sell on Amazon, and I'm not part of the Blogher inner circle of women writers that all seem to know each other and go weekending in Napa every 3 months having wonderful times with expensive bottles of wine and even more expensive cameras. Not that I'm jealous of that in the least. ~wahh~

It all boils down to competition, which is something I've never been very good at handling. I hate to lose. And when I use the word hate I mean hate as in I would rather dive into a pool of used syringes than take second place or worse. I'm trying to reconcile those completely rational ha ha feelings because it's stupid and eventually leads to giving up at the first sign of struggle which is also stupid. No one can win all the time and personal goals are just that, personal. There doesn't have to be a trophy at the end of every race.

A sparkly tiara, maybe.

But what if you set a goal and because of the sheer numbers of other people who have the same goal make it so your goal is never going to be reached? Is there enough room for everyone at the table?

This is what I don't know.

I've been so desperate (this could be part of the problem) to be considered an artist my entire life while watching my friends draw their little asses off while I scribbled my lopsided circles. To have something, anything that could be deemed an artistic talent. And of course I'm my own worst critic, although my mother comes in a close second (ha ha, mom, I win!) I am occasionally pleased with something I've written and now that I'm getting really passionate about photography I've experienced the same pride there.

And then I see other people's work and I think, omg, I'm crap. I have a lot to learn and I'm willing to do that work, but will it make a shit of difference? There are so many people doing the same thing. So many people that are already there. Is there room for one more and most importantly, room for me?

And what if you want to make a HUGE career change that is artistic in nature and is known for its practically unbreakable glass ceiling and high level competition. What I see now is a world saturated with people doing the same thing I want to do. Others recognized for it, some deserving, some not, others seemingly successful and happy. Does there need to be an empty space to fill before you feel content and accomplished? Should outside accolades be part of the goal? Is self-satisfaction with one's art enough? Does that really matter? Should it matter?

Is there room for one more?

Splish splash

2007-07-27T12:35:00.000-07:00

Well, summer is in full-swing here in Southern Cal which means the temps are starting to climb up towards the 90's and no doubt will break the 100 mark within a few weeks. ~barf~ Which is all about 40+ degrees hotter than my sweating, red, whiny ass can take. ~hurl~ And I just checked our current gas & electric bill and was pleasantly surprised to see it was only $130.00. Clearly there's a lot wrong with that picture. ~gag~

Last summer I took a day off to attend a memorial service and get-together to say goodbye to a dear lady and fellow riding buddy who lost her long and valiant battle with cancer. Unfortunately her timing, which was notoriously bad, differed not a bit on that day since she decided to leave this world during a heat-wave and about 70 of us tried not to expire ourselves as we told stories of our lady through tears and sweat under a blistering 103 degree sun. It sucked the high hard one but we knew she'd be laughing and saying, suck it up and have another sangria.

When I was younger and living far inland from the beach, which hasn't fucking changed at all since I still live 20 miles from any kind of semblance of a refreshing breeze, we'd head to the ocean for a break and some boogie-boarding when boards were made of burlapish covered styrofoam (don't think I'm kidding.) My parents didn't take us very often since they weren't the "take the kids somewhere fun" kind of people but I did get to go now-and-then and usually loved it.

One such excursion was with the youth group I was involved in at my church. They piled a large group of us in the half-rusted church van and various station wagons and headed for the shore for the day. One thing that bears explaning is this church group was not your typical bunch of Christian kids reading the bible in their spare time, volunteering at old-age homes and treating each other with kindness. (That's typical, right?)

We were kids of privilege and sported attitudes and were on our way to being professional back-stabbers with no grasp on the concept that there was only one ultimate judge and it wasn't our pimply selves. Needless to say, we were up to our assholes in judgement of each other and the leaders were party animals and basically it was like a bad John Hughes movie with crosses and no fairytale endings.

I don't even know why I signed up for this stupid outing since my few years hanging with these people, most of whom were complete assholes and my closest friends, (which is totally interchangeable when you're a 14 year-old girl), and there was a major issue causing me mountains of anxiety. An undeniable fact that has burdened me my whole life. An experience-altering situation that effected almost everything.

I was a chunker.

I was born a chunker, I grew up a chunker, I will always be. A chunker.

It's the way my DNA is built. My little double helix is thick and crowned with a ding-dong. I've craved sugar since I took my first breath and even if I ate nothing but bean sprouts and carrot tops I'd have boobs that could smother a small child and an ass Sir Mixalot would be proud to tap. Of course I'd like to be different and blah blah that's a topic for another time but my point is, the chunker was going to the beach. With people. And would have to wear, I'm sure you'll feel my pain...

A bathing suit.

I was totally worried about it since the girls I grew up with, and who were my direct competition, were fucking built like fucking chopsticks with feathered fucking hair. One friend was actually too skinny and looking back now I wasn't like a mack truck or anything but standing next to her even a normal sized person would appear to be one wafer-thin mint away from exploding.

I couldn't talk to my mother about my woes since she was naturally thin and has never understood my struggles and frankly I wanted the entire universe to pretend I didn't have this problem. Instead I had a crying fit and proclaimed, while standing in front of my stuffed closet, that I had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO WEAR and please why can't I have a NEW SUIT all my old ones are HORRIBLE and UGLY.

Which was true. I grew up in a house with a pool, as did all the neighborhood kids, and our swimsuits were hammered, faded, misshapen messes before we reached the halfway mark of our summer vacations. My mother obliged my tantrum but neglected to take me with her to make a decision on the perfect torture accoutrement and when I got home from school the day before I was going to the beach with all of those thin people, I found this on my bed:

When, pulled over my fluffy flesh, looked more like this:

Which caused my selfish, ungrateful eyes to well with tears because, GAH, pink! I had a healthy hate-hate relationship with pink and saved a special animosity for hot pink. This was the WORST possible choice in the history of choices but my other suits were tattered shit and I had no alternative. I tried not to get hysterical and mustered up some bravery and wore it. And hell, I was a character and funny and maybe no one would notice my hot pink nightmare stretching across my butt.

The next day I was dropped off at the church, met up with the group and we headed for the crowded beach. It was amazing how many people had crammed onto the limited supply of sand and the waters were full of swimmers, surfers and the like. Things were going surprisingly well and I'd gained a bit of confidence throughout the day and decided to ditch my t-shirt and take a dip in the ocean to cool off. Big pink ass and all.

I was by myself and swam out past the breaking waves and was bobbing along in the water peaceful and happy. Minding my own business and perfectly fine I decided to do this little maneuver that I often did in my own pool, sinking under the water and slowly breaking through the surface by doing a modified breast stroke. Instead of pushing the water behind me while being horizontal to the water I pointed both hands towards the sky and pushed them down to my sides with popping myself through the surface.

It really was a zen thing for me and I was a very strong swimmer with approximately 12 years of water time under my belt and in no way was I in any type of physical jeopardy whatsofuckingever.

Which apparently escaped the psychotic and overzealous female lifeguard who mistook my controlled and untroubled floating in 8 fucking feet of calm water as hysterical drowning and took it upon herself to "save" me by screaming in my face, flipping me on my back and smothering me with her rescue buoy strapped around my chubby middle where she then proceeded to kick the living shit out of me while hauling my now air-deprived carcass as she violently yanked me through and under the water exposing my face in the direct line of crashing swells and maniacally dragged me by my hot pink swimsuit until the back side was crammed so far up my crack it took a professional spelunker and a jar of vaseline to get it out and I was deposited choking and sputtering in all manners of public humiliation neon mightaswellhavebeenabeaconofwhitehotpinkglory by the beserk wanna-be super hero right in front of 4 thousand beach-goers and my 28 friends. And chaperones.

That suit mysteriously disappeared soon after.

Do they have a cream for

2007-07-23T12:55:00.001-07:00

WRITERS BLOCK!!!!!????

A pill? A shot? A fancy hat? Hello?

I open this blog 20 times a day and nada. It's not coming. This page has turned into Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction. She keeps sticking her head in the door and sneering, "I WON'T BE IGNORED, DAAAAAAAAAAN" but I'm that asshole Micheal Douglas who does indeed give her the brush-off and gets a boiled bunny for his trouble. Bah.

What do you say after you spend a full week with your family then top it off with air travel and an esophageal endoscopy? Thank you sir may I have another? If it's not one thing it's your mother? How about, GIVE ME THE DRUGS AND KEEP 'EM COMIN! Because that's exactly what I said but they didn't give me the requested "take home" supply I so nicely asked for. Such jerks.

Backing things up quite a bit, The Police were great. We trudged through hours upon hours of Los Angles traffic, getting lost along the way (thank you Westin shitass directions) but had a fab time despite the compost greenhouse temperature of our swank hotel room and the closing of the late-night bar in our faces. It was a dream come true for me and I rub Sting's face on my chest whenever I wear one of my two $35.00 concert t-shirts. I took some pic's of LA and the aquarium in Long Beach which are here and here if you'd like to take a look.

My ~~vacation~~ visit was hard. It literally takes me 2 weeks to recover from one of those and this year was no different. I go because it's my family and we do have some good times. But I also go because my dad is a few days shy of 82 and although I don't like to even say this kind of stuff out loud I know time is precious and I'd better savor what I can since we live over 1000 miles apart and don't see each other very often as it is.

I was also hoping to reconnect with my brother but he proved to be the stupid asshole he is the whole fucking time. But I held my tongue when he spewed crap because I'm the GOOD kid! Not that you'd know it by the way my mother says nothing to the assholenish coming from him but yells at me if I voice a thought she doesn't think is reasonable like being afraid my very much needed (and only) flight home might be canceled due to the thunder and lightening storm blowing through the skies. (It wasn't, by the way, has been before but clearly my 2 hours of crying got me a break from Mother Nature.)

I did have some nice moments with my family and went into Yellowstone by myself twice to take some photos and have a few hours of peace & quiet, which was oddly calming since I generally don't like doing things like that solo. Although I missed my bf like crazy and wished he were there with me. Those pic's are here and here, if you're so inclined.

Consequently I arrived home completely emotionally spent. I'm remiss to discover it takes me longer to recover from these trips when in reality it should be the opposite, no? I'm old enough to have figured out how to let this shit slide off my back but alas, it is not the case. Seeing the breakdown of my family in living color is hard. Watching my dad fade into a sad, old man who gets treated like shit by my mother is unbearable. Not being able to do anything about these stupid things is frustrating. Knowing my mother loves my brother more than me when he's such a fucking asshole is something I can barely describe. (Boy is there a lot of back story there.)

This paired with the prospect that my house is either never going to sell or I'm going to have to dump it at a price that will fuck my future for good has me feeling intermittently (I say intermittently because it's not all the time but I haven't been able to shake it full-time. It's like I'm walking around in wet clothes and for the most part I don't notice but if the circumstances change then ugh, wet jeans. Is there anything worse?) pretty fucking blue. And I feel bad that all of this crap is visited on my boyfriend who is the best and doesn't deserve more shit piled on top of his own shit.

And oh yea, I had to have a camera snaked down to my belly button which revealed nothing of why my stomach hurts every day. That was fun! But let's shift gears since I'm tired of this boo-hooing.

I reported for jury duty yesterday and had detailed fantasies of hurting the woman who stole my seat (she was sitting 2 seats from me and watched me go to the vending machine) when I got up to get some water but since there were oh, like 29 cops within 80 feet of me I opted to send out my best "you're a fucker" vibes which I think worked a little because she about folded in on herself to read her library book. Stupid bitch. And lucky for her we were all released at 11:00 because all the trial cases "went away", whatever that means.

While I was sitting there, sending out the hate, I opened the blank journal I brought with me in case anything (finally) struck me to write about and I had to document it right then and there and was surprised to find a few pages were already filled with blather and ideas (I use the term loosely), some of which made me cringe, most I didn't remember, and some I couldn't read at all.

I won't give it all away (since I might use some in the future) but let me just say we should all be grateful that my idea for a rant aimed towards dumb T.V. channels dedicated to inane things like golf and poker hasn't surfaced yet since my suggestions for new all this thing all the time stations were "The Pap Smear Channel" and "World Series of Booger Flicking."

Another asterisked paragraph said the following:

"Why do people feel the need to make you look at disgusting things? Do we really need visual proof of the turd that split your taint?"
- brother shit
- dog fur

One second thought, I think I'll keep that one.

So that's what's what. I can't think of much else that's going on. We've watched a bevy of bad movies in the last few weeks (Dreamgirls? Seriously? How did that even get in our queue?), but nothing worth writing about. I'm reading a Stephen King novel that is bugging the shit out of me (not all experimentation is good, Stephen, we've talked about this) but I'm determined to finish it and one of the ladies that works within a few feet of me, but whom I cannot see so I don't know exactly who it is, has taken to loudly clearing her throat several times a day which ends up sounding like a harbor seal being choked with a thorn-studded strap-on covered in hair gel. Like I'm not on the edge of puking all the damn day already.

And this brings the worst entry of the year (the author has the right to rescind that proclimation at any time) and blatant abuse of parentheses to a close. Thank you and good night.

I'm home...

2007-07-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

...and I didn't kill one single person.

I'd call that a success.

I'm ready for my strip search, sir

2007-06-29T21:41:00.000-07:00

No, the title is not a reference to she who will not be named that got out of her stint in jail this week and instead of disappearing like I've been praying for nightly, over the span of many years, she's even MORE in the news. For fuckingsake, I nearly had to turn off my TV. The reason for my titillating title is because I got arrested myself this week and boy did it suck.

OK, that was a total lie. I didn't get put in no slamma. I'm going on vacation! Well, that's also a lie. I'm not leaving on a jet plane to a tropical isle where cabana boys draped in loin cloths bring me fruity drinks with paper umbrellas and I get shtuped on a boat deck by my beloved, I'm going to visit my family. Alone. No whitey. Just me. Yea. Family.

In a few short hours I'll be here. It's breezy, but nice.

My brother and niece are already at my parents house and that kid, in all her obnoxious monkey behavior, does act as a buffer between the crazytudinal adults that will sharing space under a single roof for a week. And she's 10 now so hopefully she'll be interested in more than Polly Pockets and riding her bike up and down the street.

My parents live in (near) fucking Yellowstone, dammit, who wants to ride a bike when you can go molest grizzly bears? Not me, that's who. Plus I don't ride bikes anymore. My ass swallows the seat whole and I dunno, that's not the look I want to portray to the world while trying to enjoy a Sunday stroll. Like a woman with a Schwinn growing out of her poonani. Call me crazy.

I'm pretty excited about getting away because work has been a bitch and my house is not selling and when I'm not thinking about how grateful I am for being alive or kissing on my lovely boyfriend I feel pretty damn shitty. Could be hormones. Could be the time of year since summer isn't all that when your a hot, sweaty mess all the time.

Remember when summer came and you struggled through the last few days of school and everything had that special feel about it? All the formal clothes were retired and replaced by shorts and swimsuits and it was all about having fun.

Eventually we'd come into the house smelling like chlorine and the sun and beg my mother for some type of frozen treat to cool us off and instead of store bought otter pops that were the rage and envy of any house that had them, despite the sharp edges ripping your mouth apart, we got knock-off grape sugar water in the ice cube tray with toothpicks.

Ahh, good times.

I plan on taking a bazillion fo toes and I hope it'll be a fun time and while I'm away you kids be good! Don't blow yourselves up with illegal fireworks and you Canucks turn on some AC. I'll miss you like stupid, baby. See you in a week!

Take note

2007-06-25T19:39:00.000-07:00

Things I will do while drunk in Los Angeles:

1. Shove my ample cleavage in the cabbies window as an extra thank you.
2. Alternate between Corona 40's and Sutter Home zinfandel and be proud of it.
3. Tell a perfect stranger that I'd fuck Prince because I'd have no choice anyway. If Prince wants to fuck you it's gonna happen.
4. While trying to do the pee-pee hover get a little on the floor (and shoes) and not care a bit.
5. Scream "IT'S STIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNGGGGGG" at the top of my lungs like a teenage girl. Many times.
6. Pay $70.00 FOR 2 GOD DAMN CONCERT T-SHIRTS!
7. Yell "YEAAAAAAAA" while waving double rock fingers in the air. \m/ \m/
8. Walk 2 miles through the ghetto trying to catch a cab and shouting "asshole" at those who wouldn't pick us up.
9. [censored]