Category: nothin’ much

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You Will Be Sorry If I Do, So I Won't.

I had a dream (don’t leave!!) that I was sitting at my mother’s vanity at home and putting on my face. Literally. Including my hair. There wasn’t a choice of lips or noses like when you create an avatar. There were just the items I normally have on my head sitting on the vanity marble top waiting to be attached. Not sure how I could see without my eyes, but I could and they were the last thing I put on. Then I sang “All That She Wants” long and loud in the mirror to myself. If you aren’t familiar with these particular spectacular Ace of Base lyrics, basically, all that she wants is another baby. Ba-A-beh. Sometimes I feel like my subconscious is phoning it in.

When I was in the single digit years of my life, my older sister had a 45 with a scary story on one side and who-the-heck-cares on the other because the scary story was so awesome. It was called The Velvet Ribbon and I played it and recited it every chance I got. It scared my sister and my brothers and man, that was fun. I would wait until my sister would ask me to do something for her and then I’d say, ‘You will be sorry if I do, so I won’t.’ in the creepiest voice I could muster. I even wore a black ribbon around my neck one day but she cried so hard that it wasn’t really funny anymore. Well, it kind of was. And when she told me to take it off, i did and then started to say, ‘I told you you’d be sooooooooooooorry!’ but her face went white as a sheet and she was too scared to cry. And then it wasn’t really funny anymore. Well, it kind of was.

You can read the story here and listen to the original recording from my childhood here complete with the last, scary line I’d say right before we went (did not go) to sleep. Thanks to the authors of those two pages.

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Toss In Your Own

What did Mr Spock say when he looked in the toilet?

Captains Log

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Hello, and welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline. If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly. If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2. If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5 and 6.

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Confucius says, “A constipated man does not give a crap.”

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How many folk singers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Two. One to change the bulb, and one to write a song about how good the old light bulb was.

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How many Taoists does it take to change a light bulb?

You cannot change a light bulb. By its nature it will go out again.

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How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A tree in a golden forest.

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A Party??

While I was following the deep labyrinth that is the blogroll from site to site, I found L.A. Daddy. He’s married to L.A. Mommy. And they are having a blogger party on June 2nd. Yay! for parties!

I think I had a whole lot of other stuff to write but I can’t remember any of it at the moment. Joe comes home tonight. Maybe my brain will come home soon, too.

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End-of-the-Weekend Poop Talk

There are slugs with more motivation than me. The boxes – still there and unchanged in any regard. They are gathering a layer of dust

I showered today and I assure you that the pizza delivery teen was appreciative of that, even if he didn’t know it. The nameless bird is quite cute. He poops every 20 minutes, which is highly appropriate for him. I remembered earlier today, as I was grinding tissue bits into my jeans, that the reason it wasn’t so annoying last time I had a bird was because I had wipes everywhere in the house. The two oldest kids were 2.5 years old and 8 months old. They were, in and of themselves, pooping machines and wipes were to be found in every single room of the house along with most of my coat/jacket pockets, all purses and both diaper bags along with a couple of pairs of boots, the camera bag and anything else that had a pocket. Currently? All kids wipe their own butts so I own no wipes. I’m going to have to get some because they got the birdy poopy out of my clothes so much easier and with much fewer tiny bits of ground up poopy tissue all over the carpet.

Since we’re talking about poop, I’d like to ask who would build a house where the company half bath has a mirror directly across from the toilet and is the perfect height to watch yourself while sitting on the pot? Who does that? Why? Freaks. Freaks who want to think about their company coming over and having to watch themselves while on the toilet.

Not just that, but look what we found? These two guys conveyed along with the freakish company bathroom, the broken and rusty BBQ and the spider, snake and rat habitat the previous owners called a wood pile.

pet_doggies
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Phone, Again

Remember my funny, funny phone? Oh my gosh, has it just been a ton of laughs. At some point, when the people were fiddling with it over and over and insisting that pressing just ONE MORE combination of buttons would fix everything (hint – not.), someone placed the wrong number inside a deep code that sends out my phone’s signature to the heavens. Now, normally, going incognito wouldn’t bother me. I mean, who cares if your vacuum wants to pretend to be a toilet paper holder for a few days? Wouldn’t you? My side table is always masquerading as the trash and I know it likes it that way sometimes. Like a dirrrty vacation. Heck, sometimes I pretend to be a functioning human being.

So, there’s my phone, blipping out its signature to The System, and it’s off by just one number. Not too much, you might think, but enough to be The Wrong Number. Enter Trish. Hello, Trish. We spent many a long day together. You fending off calls and text messages that were meant for me and me trying not to flip my top because my voice mails and texting wouldn’t work? Good Times.

I had thought we were equal in our frustrations. I called Sprint. You called Nextel. We both yelled and cried and pulled our hair out. You got a new phone. And mine was on the way. Phew. Odd that your sister-in-law is named Leah and my kid’s step-mom is named Trish.

But, that was before you got rude with my daughter, who called me but got you through the system screw-up, and thinking it was me, started pouring out her heart about school stuff only to be sternly spoken to. She entered the Twilight Zone for a second and it left her a little off all day. I have to say that if your child, although I doubt very much you are a mother, called me, I would not have yelled and made her feel terrible because she is a KID who started the conversation with Hey MOM no matter how frustrated I was. Can I get an amen?

Anyhoo, I got my new phone. This new phone has no static. It also doesn’t have some of the same ring tones and alert sounds, which I don’t understand since supposedly it is the same phone. This has created an environment where I do not understand and cannot relate to my phone. I don’t recognize it, even after programming it as close to the old one as possible. I’m not even as competent as the penguins that find their children months later by listening to their cries. I hear blipping and bleeping and odd trailing whoo-de-dooing and I look around, blaming the remote or the camera or a stray sock.

My new phone also does not call Trish anymore when I call my voice mail. Nope. On the way home from the very inconvenient and very far away official technical phone fixing office, I checked my voice mail. I just wanted to be sure. I hit the 1 and enter and it promptly called Jeff. Hi Jeff.

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Zero Boxes

If you call me right now – and you should! Call me right now! – then I’d hear, ‘Lea-KKSSHHHHH-tha-KKSSHHHHH-on-KKSSHHHHH-righ-KKSSHHHHH.’ Because for some reason, which no one can ascertain, on incoming calls, there is hella amounts of static which makes it impossible for me to hear all the nice things you are saying about my hair. You, on the other hand, would hear only my melodious voice asking and then yelling, ‘Huh? What was that? WHAT?? I’ll call you right back. Hang on.’ And let me tell you, that does NOT get old. This does not apply to outgoing calls where the static is down by 2/3rds and I can, in fact, hear you compliment my hiney in these jeans with just a few KKSSHHHHHs mixed in.

I was the first one to try and fix my phone. I looked at it. Studied it. Shook it a little from side to side. Turned it off and on. Looked at it really hard AGAIN and remarkably, nothing changed. Then Joe took a stab at it. He actually did things that seemed like they should work and sat on hold and then talked with customer service for 30 minutes while they walked him through all the things they could think of to do. Sadly, noting worked. During that process they had him reset the phone to factory settings which replaced all my rings and alarms and stuff, most of which I didn’t even realize I had customized, so now every time my phone rings I jump or don’t even realize it’s mine. Also? the number that is coded into the phone for auto-dialing my voice mail, yes, that would be my own cell phone number, is wrong. I called someone named Trish in San Diego, twice in 30 seconds, before I realized what was happening. I thought I had just missdialed, uh, hitting the number 1. Twice in a row. GOOD TIMES! (Sorry, Trish.)

When I took the phone into the local Sprint office, they couldn’t help me. They just SELL the phones there, silly. So they gave me directions to the Fix It Store. My guess – Sprint and Nextel combined to create phones that don’t work and office buildings far, far away from me.

I took it out to the Cell Phone Fixin’ store which is neither convenient or inviting and is placed in one of the worst looking abandoned areas I’ve seen since my small stint in Florida a million years ago. I’m not sure why I have to drive 30 miles out of my way to get my phone fixed, the one that I pay extra each month to insure for just this event. I have learned a few things since dropping my old phone in the toilet. But I feel inconvenienced and ornery. And the directions to the building were WRONG. So, that was fun calling and asking why they weren’t where they were supposed to be. The girl on the phone kind of giggled and said, ‘Ya, we need to fix that.’ Well, you don’t say.

In any case, they don’t sell or promote my phone anymore (I WONDER WHY RATHER LOUDLY IN MY HEAD) and they don’t make a newer model but they do have a very large stock pile somewhere sequestered in the US of A with which the are willing to keep replacing my phone for as long as needed. No matter how many times this happens. And they don’t know why it’s making the noises and why it’s worse when someone calls me, but they sure will replace my phone for ever and ever, amen. Only I have to go back out in a few days to get it since they can’t send it to me.

Also, since I know you want to know, there have been zero boxes packed. Yes, that’s right. Zero. And what is worse is that the panic hasn’t set in yet to make me move in a frenetic, buzzing manner and get things started. In my head? The entire house has been packed and moved about 6 times. In real life? Oh, right. The count was at ZERO BOXES.

Does anyone know how to move lovely, full and happy houseplants from one home to another without harming their long trailing vines?

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Favorite Places (Not)

The dentist is rarely a person’s favorite place to go so it’s not a shock that it lands squarely in my bottom 5, in between being in the bathroom when someone else is pooping and spending an eternity at the DMV. My really fun trick-tooth, which I take off for party games and to scare small children, is finally gone and in its place is a beautiful and nearly indestructible crown, slightly off-white to match the others in my mouth and is one of the most expensive cubic bits of calcium composite ever known to man. I could have bought a small, used economical car or fed a family of 6 in a 3rd world country for a year but instead, I can chew.

This trip to the dentist was the strangest since I was in 2nd grade and experienced grape-flavored laughing gas for the first time. That visit, wearing my green corduroyed pants and plaid shirt with pointed, pocket flaps tipped in metal, I was totally unprepared for the disorientation of having pain but not caring in the least and thinking that the old dentist’s breath was extraordinarily pungent but thinking the whole thing was funnier than Scooby Doo. When I got home I sniffed everything in the house wondering what hidden products might have a similar effect. Turns out – nothing works like laughing gas except for laughing gas but taking a hard sniff of Ajax powdered cleanser will give your sinuses a burn that will last until well after your next birthday and most likely make you dumber.

I’m aware of my teeth sensitivity. It’s been well documented. Everything hurts my teeth including, oh, air and room temperature water. So, little nubs of teeth that have been worn down to accept crowns and have exposed nerves are prone to make me wriggle in my chair unless I’ve been properly medicated or bashed over the head with a mallet. The dentist emptied a full vial of numbing agent into my jaw under my tooth nub. He poked the needle here and there, pushing fluid in and making involuntary tears come to my eyes until it was completely empty. Then, he left. 15 minutes later, he came back and asked me how I was doing. I told him it hadn’t taken effect yet. He nodded and left for another 15 minutes. This time when he came back and I told him nothing was numb, he looked at me as if I was a teen caught stealing a beer and then lying about it. He poked my cheek with his finger and said, ‘Here? Here?’ and I told him the truth – nothing was numb. So he got a second vial, popped it into the needle press and said, ‘Well, maybe you just need a little more to help it kick in.’ He did that two more times until an hour and a half had passed and that vial was empty and my tongue was numb, my neck felt numb but my teeth and lip and cheek? Nope. Nice and awake. And then he got impatient and decided to just go ahead and place the crown anyway. He took that crown off and on about 25 times to make sure it fit correctly. I tried to keep my mouth open but sometimes, dude, that sucker HURT and I would kind of close my mouth or jerk away. I knew he was getting irritated but there was nothing I could do. When he was finally done, my jaw ached a deep, dark ache that only comes after childbirth. Ok, maybe not that bad but pretty, super bad! In fact, it still aches. And I’m ornery. And my tongue is still numb.

Unless you have laughing gas, you’d best keep your distance until tomorrow.

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Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree

blossoms

To the guy on the freeway, in the carpool lane, who was sitting next to a straw hat propped up on the headrest and a blanket wrapped around the seat to simulate shoulders – you suck and you aren’t fooling anyone.

But, those blossoms are sure pretty, aren’t they?

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The House

The fridge is slowly dying. First, I noticed that stuff on the door wasn’t cold, the mustard and ketchup were far too fluid. Then came the smell and I noticed that the milk was almost warm. I suppose as someone that likes her milk with tiny ice clusters here and there, normally chilled milk would seem not cold enough, but believe me when I say the cold cereal was colder than the milk. Then, the light stopped working. Now, I realize that the light is probably not connected to whatever mechanism keeps the refrigerator cold, but it is a bit suspicious, no? And now, the things on the freezer door such as the OJ and the 8 Wendy’s cups of leftover Frosty* are barely not frozen. You can squeeze the sides and the stuff inside squishes without a second thought. I’m looking at the meat and the fish and thinking they are destined for the trash, as getting sick to my stomach happens easily enough to me with well-cooked food, let alone slightly bad meat.

This is all in conjunction with the drains upstairs suddenly not working well, the sprinkler system shooting off the tops of some of the sprinkler heads and flooding the neighbor’s yard and the carpet downstairs looking like ass due to our awesome ability to run the rented professional carpet cleaner. The lighter-colored stripe from the front door, through the living room and out to the back door by the kitchen looks like the pelt of a very large skunk. When the commercial tells you that you can just clean the ‘well-trafficked’ area of your home? Be smarter than we were. Clean the entire thing or 2 days later you’ll be very, very sorry.

*I only want 2 bites. Only 2. And then the rest of the Frosty goes in the freezer. I keep thinking one of the kids will eat the rest. But they don’t. I might need to rethink my strategy.