Friday, October 31, 2008

Happy Halloween...

...and abracapocus! (for the King)


Watch more Dailymotion videos on AOL Video

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Matches? We don't need no stinkin' MATCHES!

OK, so I’ve been through the matches. There were something like 20 of them when I first checked in! I thought “Man, I am some extra-matchable kind of chick! Lookit me matchin’! Matchy-Matchy-MATCH BABY! Twoo Wove in no time!”

Then I noticed that about 1/2 of them had already sent me “thanks but no thanks” emails. So nice that my good friends at E-Melody take the time to send me pre-rejected matches, thereby saving me all that pesky time normally spent reviewing their profiles and getting excited at the prospect of them and maybe dreaming a little dream where you meet and they look like Robert Redford and talk like Paul Newman and their biggest worry about you as a potential mate is that you won’t be able to spend all of their big, heaping heaps of cash as fast as they absolutely MUST be SPENT. Much better to see that it took them all of about 16 minutes to run away, away, away. MUCH better.

I also love how they insist that you look at the “reason” that you’ve been rejected before you can just make the rejections GO AWAY. Most of the reasons were the same as that which I have used: “Other” (because they don’t have a pre-fabricated rejection reason for “Your favorite movies were “Deliverance” and “Dude, Where’s My Car?” or “I already lived with my mother – I don’t want to live with yours”, let ALONE “you look like Nick Nolte’s mug shot”) The one(s) that were more specific were Michael (not his real name), who rejected me because of our different family backgrounds (I come from Europeans, he comes from jerks who pre-reject people) and Del (not his real name too) who rejected me because he’s pursuing another relationship (with his hand. HO!!!!)

You don’t think I’m taking these rejections personally, do you? Me neither.

ANYWAY, after I closed the fabulous rejection connections I was left with about 10 or so guys who either still might think I’m match-worthy or don’t realize there’s the pre-rejection option. I started looking through them and in a word? AWESOME. (another possible word: celibacy! I also like “dies alone!” but it’s too many words, so…)

My favorite is the guy who is 1) shorter than me, 2) possibly naked in the picture? And 3) LIVES IN A COMMUNE. Having read his profile now about 16 times I still cannot for the LIFE of me figure out why we were a match. I’m officially doubting the relationship wizards and their systems if they can find a single thing in common between myself and someone who could keep a straight face while typing “I'm looking for a woman who can navigate the rapids and enjoy the calm, serene waters of a relationship.” Oh yeah, and did I mention COMMUNE? Imagine how awkward it is when your date has a roommate. Now imagine the roommate is a family of 6, their compost heap, their rain stick and their goat named “Mr. Crystal Hope Rainbow.” (if this self-sustaining living collective is rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’, but DO attempt to use our kinetic energy as a new power source!)

The rest of the group was a disappointing collection of invisible men (want some lovin’? SHOW YOUR FACE, DAMMIT!) with some wee bits of possible potential (but still no picture) and guys who posted pictures, and probably should not have. (Note: just because you CAN post a picture of you shirtless does not mean that you SHOULD.) After 30 minutes of checking the matches I realized that this experiment is doomed because I’m suspicious of those who DON’T post photos, but turned off by most who do.

And then there was the guy who sent me questions.

This means that one of my matches looked at my info and thought “hey, this could be interesting. I will interrogate her for possible future love.” Nothing much to look at and all, but for the sake of the experiment, the project, the FRIGGIN’ PILE OF MONEY I SPENT TO JOIN I’m going to answer the questions. We’ll see where it goes from there.

And of COURSE I’ll post about the interrogation! Sheesh! What do you think we’re DOING here?

Monday, October 27, 2008

Green... thumb.

I started this post about the matchie matches, but lost it and now I can’t get it back. My brain is stalled. So I will try that one again tomorrow, and instead I will tell you now about how my landlord raised my rent.

And that it is awesome.

I have lived in this same 1/2 of a duplex for almost exactly 5 years. When I moved in here fall of 2003 my landlord explained that I had to keep my lawn and corner lot trimmed and such. I didn’t have to GARDEN, mind you, but packs of raccoons should not be able to travel through my lawn unseen. And let me assure you, nothing that I do could accurately be called ‘gardening’; however I can shove a mower in waves across a lawn. In fact, I pushed the hand-me-down mower from my uncle back and forth so diligently the first 3 years that it eventually coughed a final gas-powered gasp and croaked. And I did what any responsible home-renter would do. I nestled the non-mowering mower in the bushes ‘round behind my carport, bought a new one and finished the lawn.

My landlord has only raised the rent once before, so I was a little bummed to hear of the hike in early October, but mostly on principle. It’s not a lot of money at all. But it’s more than the previous amount of money. Sigh. I decided to blame the government and moved on with my world.

Then about a week later I was home during the day, eating lunch, and I spied someone stealing my lawn mower. My broken lawn mower. Someone was pulling my dead lawn mower out of the corner of the carport bushes right there in front of me! “Scuse me!” I yelled, “are you stealing my broken lawn mower???” and then the next few minutes are a soft, nice-smelling blur of hot dudeness.

Here stood this hot dude! A lawn mower stealing dude? Well, sure. But it was so broken and he was so YUM! Let him have the mower! Finally the blood rushing. Hormone-fueled, past my ears calmed down and I heard hot-mower-stealing-dude mention that he worked for a yardwork business that my landlord had hired to come and clear out the mass of bramble bushes behind the house. With my brand new, now completely justified and maybe even a bargain, rent hike.

Tangent: I’m extremely independent. To the point of being simultaneously stupid and annoying about it. I get angry when my helpful Auntie M folds a towel for me, because my overly independent brain translates the act of towel folding into somehow impuning my ability to clean up my own towels. Many smart, loving people in my world would probably hesitate to pee on my flaming form for fear of my insisting I was just about to pee on myself and totally didn’t need the help thank YOU! So for months now I have been girding my loins in preparation for an assault on my neighbor’s attacking bramble bushes. I even got gloves! Special barb wire gloves, so very thick and stiff as to not allow one to touch thumb to finger! But these brambles were apparently transplanted from the land of Sleeping Beauty, being the same ones they used to keep Princey McPrince-boy from reaching her for some hot smoochey-smooches. Of course none of this kept me from momentarily getting defensive at the idea of someone being hired to do this bramble bush warfare. Because HELLO, I was TOTALLY going to do it! I was! I could totally do it myself. Wanna see my plywood gloves??

Beautiful bramble bush attack boy worked all during my lunch and I was able to find a good 11 or 30 reasons to go into the back of my house during lunch and peek out the back window. “hey, I wonder is the sun spontaneously setting in the east? At 1pm? Nope! Good to know! Veeeeerrrryyy good….” He was still hard (gulp) at work when I went back to my job. I came home to a note that he was all finished and some other guy would be back in a few weeks for general maintenance. Wah.

And yet there he was again, today, to blow my leaves and edge my lawn, both of which suddenly sound just a little dirty. Do I know his name? No. To me he is just Hot Yard Guy. But I am very much looking forward to the summer months! The hot, sweaty, hopefully shirtless, summer months… I think I may take up gardening after all!

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

My, what a very full circle I have found

So somewhere along the line when I wasn’t paying attention this humble little blog passed the 2-year mark. Two Years! Kind of amazing really. According to my good friends at Google, those two years included 255 published piles of words. 422 published pictures, a happy little chunk of comments (thank you so VERYmuch!!) and one o’ these:


In the beginning it was all “ooh, look at me being so single and Wah, I sure wish I was less single and Grrr, being not so single is HARD!” and nobody tired of that shit faster than me. Because seriously, crap or get off the pot, right? MOVE ON, WOMAN!

After a year I said “ENOUGH!” I said I didn’t want to keep bashing my soft, squishy head into the glass ceiling of relationships. I was DONE with all that crazy free dating sites and speed dating and meeting some random dude in a restaurant, all the while trying to figure out if I could make a break out the back and get the bike unlocked without being seen through the window. (good times.) I said to you, my peoples, “hey, couldn’t we have just as much fun if I stopped hunting for love and just wrote about my life? And the stuff that I do? By myself? With nobody along with me? Eh?”

This winning strategy brought such posts as “My co-workers are filthy, filthy people – look how I mock their fridge use” and “my pritty, pritty toes – let me show you it.” and (of course) the classic “Gu-Huh… blue pens R fun.” Clearly my choice to refocus was genius.

I won’t lie to you, my peoples. Sometimes I sit here in front of my keyboard wondering what in the HELL I could possibly write about which anyone other than my mother would give a single ounce of crap. And she doesn’t even read this blog anymore!

And then the universe started poking me. Poking, poking… insisting that I look more than 2 inches beyond the end of my adorable little nose. It sent me not one, but two cool chicks who mete their eventual husbands online. It gave me a tiny little bonus that I didn’t expect to get and don’t already have spent. And it gave me something like 12 matches on one of the most popular online dating sites around.

So tonight around 10:39pm I gave this online dating site a pile of cash. And they promised to give me Twue Wove. (or the cash equivalent. Or possible a home version of the game.)

I’m not feeling confident about this. In fact I made the payment but could not bring myself to look at the matches. I’m actually kind of sure that I’m going to go through things and find nothing but rat droppings, pumpkin scones and serial bed farters. UUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHH. But I gave them the money and their promise of wove, wove and fabulous wove lasts for the next three months. And you can’t let me go through this alone!!!

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Girl-Island, no boys allowed

Ugh. I’m a very bad friend.

I went to the wedding reception party thing today of a friend of mine whom I will now dub “Kermit”. Kermit is a very cool chica who is my age, my temperment, my style, and just generally very me-like. Me-ish, if you will. Me-esque. A lady I have always felt like could easily be a super-close friend if it weren’t for the fact that she lives over an hour away. (stupid geography.) She got married up in Canada this summer with a petite little “family only” wedding, so TODAY was the domestic, less-Canadian party where the rest of us not shiny enough to trek to Canuklandia could come and say “woo hoo!” and the like.

But instead of woo-hooing like a good friend shoooo-hoould, I waffled back and forth between being annoyed that she got married (because hello, wasn’t that something that we had in common? Being the last single women on the planet? Did I mention HELLO???) and being uncomfortable that I, in fact, now AM the last single woman on the planet. I just kept waiting for that fabulous moment when someone would ask me “so, when are YOU getting married?” so that I could reply with the requisite “SHUT UP YOU SUCK I HATE YOU AND SHUT UP (please pass the turkey rolls) YOU SUUUUUUUUCK!”

This is the second fellow last-single-girl-ever to quit the club this year. You may remember the SUUUUUPER-COOOOL co-worker who got engaged last May (I called her then, and will continue to call her now, Joette Cool, or JC for short)? HER wedding took place last month. (and, big surprise, her wedding was tremendously and absurdly cool, cool, cool. Of course.) For both of these folks I should be very happy and “good for you, getter of a life partner!” but I swear that the petty and crappy part of me can’t seem to get past the part where I resent them for not just staying here, on this desert island of singledome with me. We can make s’mores and braid eachother’s hair! But do they care? No. They want someone to mow the lawn and make waffles and sometimes do sex-things! Sheesh!

So now I’m sitting here staring at E-thingstuff because I came home to find that “Hey! You have a new match! We’re your last chance for partnership because you’re broken and stuff! Click now or die alone under an avalanche of cats! Matchy-matchy-match-match!” I don’t even WANT to find a life-mate-partner-dude through an online matchmaking website. I have long ago decided that would be embarrassing! I mean, why should I even believe that there is any chance?

Other than the fact that BOTH of the ladies who got married this year met their now-husbands on E-thingstuff?

And also there are somehow not just one but six new matches there?

And also I have this tiny little extra pile of money in my last paycheck?

And…

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Stuck in the middle with EWWW...

I’ve been wracking my brain to figure out how to set this scene and this is what I came up with: The other day I “dropped the kids off at the pool” and it the “pool” turned out to be more like “the elevator from the Shining.”

(other rejected ideas: “a few days ago I had a long sit on the throne and the finished product was way more colorful than normal. And by “colorful” I mean mostly brown and bright red.” OR “recently I was taking a dump and started my period. Out of my butt.”)

Anyway, I went to my doctor and she tends to be very “It’s probably this little thing, but just in case I’m going to also check that it’s not this very BIG THING.” And by “BIG THING” she meant colon cancer. I’m very happy to make sure that I don’t have colon cancer, because I’d like to have no cancer at all. It’s just a decision I made a long time ago: I want to avoid any and all cancer-like-things. However the steps involved in making sure that you don’t have colon cancer involve getting stuck. A lot of sticking. And not any of the good kinds.

So first I got stuck by needles. Funny thing about me: I have a tremendous clotting ability. Seriously, I’ve had to give up donating blood because I’m always clotting before we get the full unit. So Mr. Blood Drawing Dude (or MBDD) stuck me in both arms, and failed to even fill a test tube, and finally resorted to sticking an IV needle in the back of my hand.

This was a first time for that trick for me, so I says to him “hey, I’ve never had blood drawn from the back of the hand. Does it hurt more or less than the arm?”

And he says “Hmmmm. It depends really…”

And I says “No, no, no, that’s not the right answer! You’re supposed to say “oh heck, it hurts WAY less than the arm does!” No matter what, that’s what you say!”

“Oh! Then oh heck, it hurts WAY less than the arm does!”

“Well you can’t say that NOW!!! NOW I KNOW you’re bullsh*ting me! What, are you new or something?”

A week after I got poked in both arms and the back of the hand (oh, and for the record? It doesn’t depend on anything. It hurts more on the back of the hand. It just does. Works pretty well, but hurts super-crappy. I’m just sayin’.) I had to go to a Gastroenterologist. She was a lovely person and very witty and charming and very clear and all of this really doesn’t matter at ALL once she started sticking things up my poop-shoot! There’s no way to charmingly wedge something inside the out-door, know what I’m sayin’? I mean, I’ve prided myself on keeping that particular avenue as an “out only” orifice! (I know that’s kind of a strange thing to pride oneself upon, but you take your pride where you can get it, people! That door goes ONE WAY!)

What I’m saying is that all the parts of my rear that are designed as a defensive line are SERIOUS about it! When there’s any kind of rear invasion all kinds of walls and fences and locks come into play, and they will not be dissuaded! So here’s me, standing pantsless in this brand new doctor’s office, trying very hard to distract my ass from it’s whole job by looking out the window. At the parking garage across the street. And the random stranger there, obviously locked out of their car. Trying to shove their arm inside the little window gap they’ve left. WHICH IS ENTIRELY TOO SIMILAR TO WHAT’S GOING ON BEHIND ME AND PROVIDES NO DISTRACTION AT ALL!!!!

The good news is that all the various medical poking-people reached the same (extremely intrusive!) conclusion: I have no cancer, but instead a pretty impressive case of mystery hemorrhoids. (I call them “mystery hemorrhoids” because when the doctor ran down the list of all the things that can CAUSE hemorrhoids I came up zip for zip. I’m one of those precious few who can just get hemorrhoids. From nothing. Whipdee-friggin’-doodlepants.) The bad news is the treatment: I get to stick something up my butt.

Twice a day.

For a week.

I’m pretty sure I’m just gonna stick with the hemorrhoids.

Monday, October 13, 2008

That's what friends are for.

You know how you can tell that someone is your very best friend? When you’re 38 years old and single and still living fairly hand-to-mouth and they keep saying ‘WHEN you have a baby” instead of “IF YOU EVER have a baby.” Because they know that you’re probably beginning to think it’s just never gonna happen, but that thought bums you out because you really would like to have one, so they’ll have faith in you even though you don’t really have the faith anymore.

That’s totally how you can tell someone is your very best friend.

(of course, if they were TRULY your very best friend they’d break into a sperm bank and steal you some grade-A sperm, preferably from one Mr. Daniel Craig or Mr. Robert Redford or Mr. Robert Downey Jr, (but without the crazy drug addiction genes of course) and they’d help you figure out how the hell you get the frozen sperm into a turkey baster and they’d sit there and keep you company while you lie with your ass in the air for a day, hoping that the swimmers have a good sense of direction and a triumphant spirit and “take no prisoners!” attitude. But the other thing is also totally awesome.)

(Love you, Queenie. Thanks for keeping the faith!)

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Do you get dental with this blog?

My stupid job is ruining my blog.

Because the thing is I promised that I would not write about the job in the blog. (I didn’t promise you guys, but I just generally promised myself. Because even though I’m not religious, I do believe that Heather Armstrong’s job died for our sins. Amen.) But right now I’m working so damned much that I don’t seem to have anything else to write about!! I get home from work and eat and feed cats and then I sit there on the couch saying “I really need to get up and go in there and show my love to my readers! Because love them? Oh yes, I do! But the only thing I can think of to WRITE is either “Gah, my job is all the time all the time and then more and more MAKE IT STOP!” or “Zzzzzzzzzzz…”

And then I doze off in front of some pithy little drama about doctors or cops or time traveler cops or time traveler doctor cops who travel through time and invent “soup”.

Heck, even if I DID have a date I’d have no time to go! (not that I have a date. Don’t get the wrong idea here, I’m not turning down hot date requests because of my super-excellent career. I’m just sayin’…) Or if I went on a date first I’d have nothing to talk about except how stupid-busy my danged job is, and then I’d fall asleep in the soup or salad or mozzarella sticks or mozzarella sticks served with a side order of cheese-fries.

Man do I love cheese fries.

So, to recap: too busy, glad that tv is back, love cheese fries, zzzzzz…

Monday, October 06, 2008

Couldn't agree more

You probably thought that I'd totally forgotten about Desktop Fun, what with two whole months having passed and no such posts. Truth is that the August change of desktoppery happened while I was in the devil's crotch-sweat and the September change happened while I was deep in hecticity (IS SO A DANG WORD!) so neither of them were really honored in the way they should have been.



But now? Now I'm done being so busy (which is a lie -- I'm just done having official excuses for being busy, so everyone is sure I'm not busy, which is a problem because I actually am still super-duper-SomeoneKillMe-busy, but whatever, "here'ssomethingelseforyoutodo'kaythanksbye" and bleh. All of which was just to say it took me no time at all to pick the following as my desktop icon. Because EXACTLY.


Thursday, October 02, 2008

Lefty.

September was my month to "clean" the "kitchen" at work again. Its a joyous thing because I not only get to go through our little mini-fridge and do away with the scores of lost, abandoned and rogue foodstuffs, but I also get to mock my co-workers for their negligent food care-takery.

Here, for your reading enjoyment, is my debrief after the 2008 fall fridge free-for-all:

Hello:

Once again we have a fridge that is so very, very clean that you could actually even store things to EAT in it! And since I had such a positive reaction to last year’s list of “Things learned” from this experience I figured I should share again. Never let it be said that you cannot learn new things even while doing something that makes you wish you were totally, totally dead. Please to enjoy…

-Femtastic

Things I learned THIS TIME while cleaning out the kitchen fridge:
  • There are some exciting new products out there that I had not heard of. They include:
  • Kraft’s Honey Dijon wallpaper paste, guaranteed not to let your wallpaper come off. Ever. (seriously, ever. You’ll burn down this house and the wallpaper will still stand.)
  • Ranch-flavored ice cream, complete with icee crystals on the top and a festive red tint to the edges (which screams like boiled lobsters when you wash it down the sink)
  • Yoplait Blackberry slow-setting cement – just add cold and lots of time.
  • Chunky’s new Petrified Beef and Noodle Soup (chisel not included)
  • Ever still our department’s love for the un-eaten yogurt continues unabated. I believe now that we may have a grassroots “Save The Yogurt!” campaign happening right under our noses, where we flock to the stores and buy yogurt in order to protect them from ever, EVER being viciously consumed!
  • Did you know (because I didn’t!) that there is a flavor of Jello which, if left alone long enough, will eventually smell like a combination of cumin and the blood of a thousand lost souls? True story!
  • The noodles used in Lean Cuisine’s Fettuccini Alfredo can, in some cases, attain a sort of animation, nay even life, and attach themselves to your skin, say if you were unfortunate enough to let one get on you.
  • In such cases the appropriate response is to flail your hand over the garbage frantically while screaming like a little girl
  • Neither action will get the noodle/attack worm off, but it does make you feel a little better about your chances for survival
  • Eventually you will have to have the noodle/worm-attacked hand removed.
Let’s see how long it takes for the box of cold to get filled up this time…

-Lefty McOneHand