Recycling: good for the planet, great for my blog

Best overheard quote from my trip to the recycling center:

“Mom, I found this bicycle wheel that I think we could use to wheel the cradle for the Ark of the Covenant!”

Runner-up (by the same kid):

“OK, so I’ve figured out the deal: you find stuff on the ground and it’s free! Like this rubber band! Or this spring!”

Open Letter to Mr. Hot Cop

Thanks for coming by and being heroic on a day when I wanted to jump off the closest, tallest tall close thing. And also for being hot while you were being heroic. Your combination hot-and-heroic presence was very helpful and also a little “Whew!” (and then picture me fanning my face with a lacey, southern ‘kerchief, like I’m all hot and bothered)

I’m sorry that your possible flirting (and I say “possible flirting” because I’ve lost all ability to recognize flirting unless it comes in the shape of a cheap, crappy drink purchased from one end of a bar and delivered to the other end, along with an offer of a boob-rub in a dude’s hot tub later, whatchathinkaboutthat?, to which I’m automatically forced to reply “tell him thanks but I’m scheduled to have my head bashed in with a wine bottle and couldn’t bear to miss it.”) wasn’t responded to better. There are two reasons for that.

The first is that my Dad was RIGHT THERE and even though I know he knows that I know about sex I still prefer to be pretty much A-Sexual around him. Maybe we could have done flirting plant-style, where you get a third party (such as a bumble bee or butterfly) to rub up against you and then rub up against me, but even so let’s not have my dad be around to see it.

The second is that I was super-busy trying to make sure that I was standing between you and my license plates. My still-expired, still-out of date, still-“hey, shouldn’t this chick get a ticket for these old, sad tags?” license plates. And even though I thought I recognized some flirting from you (like the giving me your card when I didn’t ask for it or anything) it was hard to be sure, what with all the scootching and shifting and messing around and leg-contorting I had to do to block those plates. Also it was a little hard to imagine that you’d be flirting with someone who so clearly suffered from severe adult ADD with all my dashing from the front of the car to the back of the car, three steps ahead of you and your deep, liquid pools of expired-plate-identifying blue eyes. And eventually I was all out of breath and panicky and bug-eyed and just not sexy.

Here’s the deal: my plates are legal now (properly motivated was I!) so I was thinking I’ll just starting driving around town crashing into things, in the hopes that you’ll once again come pulling up, manly in your car-of-many-radios and your macho smooth head and those uber-reflective sunglasses, capable of piercing my very smooshy soul. (hold on, my monitor got all steamed up...) This time I'll be ready and flirty and girlish and much less swirly and spastic and suspicious-acting! I’ll wear girl-clothes everywhere I drive crash from now on and I’ll practice giggling at anything said and I’ll work on my light punch-to-show-I’m-feisty action. Watch for me!

How my email was kidnapped by China.

OK, so I’m just checking, but so far the things I’ve been writing here are NOT in Chinese, right? I haven’t rocked the mandarin or jammed in Cantonese, right? The reason I’m asking is on Friday my correct email password spontaneously refused to be correct, and when I traipsed, la,la,la into the “forgot your password?” part I discovered that my secret question was 母亲的出生地. Which is “where was your mother born?”, which is a secret question that I never, ever use because my Mom was born in Ames, and that’s too few characters to use. Oh, and also that is CHINESE!

That is a moment where you become very aware that stuff is not at all right. Badness has come and camped out in your front yard, smoking clove cigarettes and cooking leftover fish in your microwave oven. SO not right!

I send an email to the loving and caring people at the email help center saying, roughly, “crap, crap, help because badness and also augh because help with I CAN’T GET INTO MY EMAIL!!! And I'm NOT Chinese, NOT Chinese, I’m very un-chinese but my email is all Chinese now, which BAD, help HELP and gibbergibbergibber help MEEEEEEEE!” They replied with first the classic automated reply (“hey, you should totally try to do the “Forgot your password?” thing because that would definitely fix everything, and thanks for asking. Have a super day.”) and then a real person’s reply. Real Dude (because who knows, maybe he’s innocent and worthy of protection too?) said basically that he totally believed me, wanted oh so very much to help me and would even give me a big, squishy hug if he weren’t somewhere on the other side of the globe.

Real Dude goes on to say that they also have to be careful about privacy and security and so before he can help me I’ll just need to answer a question or two. Or 17. (not kidding even a little bit – 17 questions.) OK, that makes sense to me. So I answer the questions (what’s the email address? What’s my birthdate? What size bra do I wear? When was my last bm? If a train leaves Houston, going north, at 4pm and a plane leaves San Francisco at the same time who the hell cares?) and send off the answers, and eagerly await my email of deliverance, saving me from my hacking nightmare. But then I’m thinking “well crap, if Senior CrapWeasel has changed my password and my security information I’m sure he/she has changed pretty much everything else! So how the hell will helpful Real Dude be able to tell anything from my list? Mayhaps I have stopped panicking a little too early?

Long story short, Real Dude was totally THE MAN and he totally believed me and sent me magical links that let me back into my email and ALL IS WELL! Well, all is better. I seriously do not speak, read, understand or remotely grok Chinese, which is only an issue because that’s still the language everything is showing up in. And funny thing: when you ask for help to change the language setting everyone gives you the steps, but they seem to forget that all the buttons are in Chinese. Which (hate to keep harping on this) I CAN’T READ, so how do I tell which button to push or which item on the drop-down menu to select? Hello? Sigh. Wish me 运气.

My road to hell is paved with obsession and pretty, pretty!

So, tomorrow is Easter. Did you get some Easter Candy? Yeah, me too. Did you decorate eggs? Yeah, me too. Did your decorated egg take you hours to complete? Yeah, me too. Oh wait, just me?

So Easter is another one of those holidays were me and my people get super-enthusiastic about the crafty part. Where as most folks think “egg decorating” and get some dye and make some really nice blue or lovely green eggs, or maybe they do a little waxing stuff or some stickers or crayons, my family shows up with boxes and BOXES of supplies. I remember one year there was an easter right after a wedding, and a friend of mine in town for the wedding was invited to join in the egg decorating festivities, but he declined. When pressed for a “why” he finally fessed up that he was too intimidated to decorate eggs with my family. “I mean cripes,” he said, “for me I’m happy when I get a really nice blue! You people are crazy!”

We’ve got crayons, pastels, colored pencils and markers, paints, drafting pens, 3-d attachments… I’m waiting for the year we finally motorize an egg. It’s coming – oh yes it is coming. Also we have these things – I don’t know exactly when we first got them, but long enough ago that I don’t remember us NOT having them, and also long enough ago that the best way to attach them to massive blocks of 4x4 wood was duct tape. (these days we’d have done something elaborate with power tools and high-tech hardware pieces. And then duct tape.)

Anyway, they’re these plastic egg lathes. They’re spring-loaded and you put the egg between the holder-bits and then you can turn it and draw and stuff and you don’t have to hold the egg in one hand while you are being creative. They ROCK! We have only three, and no matter how much time I spend on the internet looking for more of them I’ve never seen any other evidence of them. It’s like we’re the only people who ever thought they were a worthwhile idea. To which I say "just how is one supposed to draw shimmering, symmetrical scales with a forced perspective, to show movement of course,on their blowfish egg without some method of holding the egg still?" I’m just saying!

So beloved are our three egg lathes that we often have creative back-ups when folks are waiting for a lathe to free up. "No, I'm fine, I just need, NEED, to draw a perfect line around the exact center of the egg before I can finish the design. So I'll just eat some more dark chocolate M&Ms (perfect for egg decorating because of the lack of meltage upon one's hands -- nice job, people at Mars Candy!) while I wait for Aunt Whosit to finish painting Monet's Wildflowers."

This year my big plan was to bead an egg, and everything mostly went to plan, except the part of the plan where it said “expected time required to complete egg: not so much, maybe 45 minutes tops, it’ll be cool” and it apparently should have said “expected time required to complete egg: bring a sleeping bag, drink lots of fluids, don’t forget to stretch first, what the heck are you thinking anyway?” Still, at 1:something a.m. I was the happy owner of a lovely, beaded egg.

The whole collection was very cool. We’re just an artsy-fartsy bunch! So I say that if the rest of the Easter-celebrating world wants to spend this holiday with prayer and worship and such they should have a big old blast with that. And pardon me while I work on next year’s egg, which I think will be an aircraft with working propeller, landing gear and tiny air stewardesses. Made from Peeps. (You know you're jealous. Jealous of our madness!)

Not Just for St. Patrick's Day. Or breakfast.

OK, so the plan was to write a post about my best guy friend, the King. I wanted to do that both because Monday was the King’s birthday and also because in the last year and a half I’ve hardly ever written about him, so it’s SO TIME! This was the plan. The plan was also to post this on his actual birthday, and to have it be this cool post that would be all heart-warming and funny and maybe people would read it and get throat-lumpy and tell their friends “I read this post today about this one woman’s friend and it was touching and so I’m giving you my last Pop Tart to show you that I love you like she loves this friend and just… just… wow.”

These things, and so much more, were the plan.

Then again, the plan was also to keep writing regularly and be fabulous and pithy and beloved by all. And be skinny. And make grown men weep and grown women envy. And the skinny thing – did I mention this? Anyway, the point is that I don’t seem to be able to work to the plan recently, and this King post is, painfully, NO EXCEPTION.

I TRIED to write the post. I tried a bunch of times, and all of them were a stupendous combination of lame, boring and painful to read. No, painful to write and agonizing to read. A post that would beg the question: read this or gouge my eyes out with a melon-baller? Decisions, decisions…

This is the thing: The King is naturally cool. Always has been. Has always been the coolness barometer of our group, and all the groups that he’s been part of. He’s funny (officially funny, not just my opinion. He was once voted as the funniest person of all Hippyville) and smart and bright and over and over he’s the guy that everyone else wants to impress.

And I’m no exception.

I have only told a few people that I’m writing this blog. I knew he knew about it, but the day I heard he’d actually been reading it I was floored. Then when I heard that he was some level of impressed with it I preened and glowed and used phrases like “how special am I? Oh yes, so very special!” until a tranquilizer dart was required to stop me. So in trying to write an homage to this friend of decades and decades, knowing that he might read it, I just kept getting inside my own head. (a scary place, full of saber-toothed Smurfs and gravy-flavored jello and the theme from Shaft playing as muzac in a terrible loop.) It has to be as cool as he is, or else I should just bail on the whole idea and instead bake him something made of chocolate and money.

And in the end I realized that my own nerves here were my best homage to the coolest guy I know. Dude, in all the years I’ve known you and known all the people that you and I both know, you’re the only one who’s laughter makes me feel REALLY funny because I know you don’t laugh at just anything. You’re the King of Cool, and its so amazing to me that I keep getting to be your friend, because that means (at least I have decided that it means) that I’m at least cool enough to rate a place in your court. All hail the King – Long may his Coolness Reign!

Validation!

OK, so as still a fledgling blogger (too many g’s in that combination of words – sorry about that) you’re always looking for signs that you’re succeeding; that what your doing is something you should keep doing; that you’re not just flapping wasted wings like a sad, sad penguin. I have spent my time as a stats whore, checking every hour to see “did anybody look in the last 60 minutes? How ‘bout now? How ‘bout now?” I’ve done triumphant victory dances when a comment comes from someone I don’t know. Only to be crushed when I realize that it’s some comments robot responding to some combination of words in my post. Only to be back to dancing when I realize “hey, my blog is worthy of spam comments! The robots know about me! Whee!!”

At this point, in an attempt to seem all cool and aloof and Fonzie-esque, I’ve been only checking the stats every couple of weeks, and I never really GET comments anymore so the dancing has gone way down. (which is actually good, because we all know that Fonzie don’t dance. Eeeeey!) But recently my gmail has become my new-found source of validation!

First I got an email from some industrious woman who has written a book! A novel! An author is she! And she wrote me because her book is “fresh, fun, quirky and hilarious”, and also about a lady looking for love (Like me!) who is desperate to get her ex back (Hmmm, less like me) and decides to learn how to be a fake psychic, in order to give the new girlfriend psychic readings to wreck their relationship! (...aaaaaawkwaaaaard... ) Actually, it could be excellent, and besides I say kudos to her for sitting down and actually writing a danged book. I’m totally going to do that any day now myself, just as soon as that huge tub of Red Vines is gone and I run out of 100% passive hobbies in which to indulge. ANY day now…

But here’s the thing: Ms. Authorette thought I was noteworthy enough to send me this email spam! It included phrases like “…a book I know your readers will be interested in…” which, by association, meant she thinks that my blog might attract readers, AND that my readers might like to also read books, which would make them all edumacated and smart-like! (that’s you guys!! Wave at the nice author-lady! Show her how smart you are!!) She offered to send me a review copy of the book! My blog could now get me free stuff! What says “successful” more than free stuff? NOTHING! She offered to be a guest-blogger, which I won’t be taking her up on, but still, cool that she thought that might even be worth doing! That blogging even momentarily on my space might be a way for her to promote a book. A real, bound, published by a publisher book!

You can clearly tell by my excessive use of exclamation points that this whole thing is thrilling beyond,… well, beyond thrills. But wait. There’s more.

Later, after the cool author email, I got another email from another person that I didn’t even know! At all! She said things like “Oh, you made me laugh!” and even that I brought TEARS! To her EYES! From the LAUGHTER! (At least I’m pretty sure it was from laughter. Hold on, I’d better check… Yes! Laughter tears! Back to the rejoicing!)

Needless to say I’m working on my E-Shrine to the email lady – we’ll call her Email Lady – that will go somewhere over there on the left. And I’m checking my Gmail alla time alla time. Because someone out there liked me! They really liked me! Suck on that, Sally Field!

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

(With apologies to Ziggy.)

So the first Monday of every month I change the image on my computer at work. I have convinced myself that my desktop image is a way that I can further show my co-workers just how cool I am. Most of the time it's a picture I especially love-a-love-a-love-a from Icanhascheezburger.com, but any picture I find online is fair game. And so seriously do I take this percieved opportunity to share my inner-me with my co-workers that I even move the "This computer is locked" box out of the way, to better display my clever and entertaining desktop picture.

And if the people I work for are worthy for sharing then CERTAINLY my best beloveds are! (that's you guys -- I'll be trying out some new nicknames for you, my best beloveds, over the next couple of weeks. If you like one, shout out!) So I give you a new, monthly feature: The Desktop Picture. Enjoy March:

(courtesy of Daily Oliver)

Do it For the Magic

Today is Leap Day! I’m going to post today no matter what, because I won’t get another chance to post a blog post on February 29th for four whole years!

Sadly, for some bizarre reason this day is NOT a holiday at my work. I ask you, if a day which magically appears every four years, and then disappears just as magically, isn’t a reason for paid time off I don’t know WHAT IS. It’s like the calendar equivalent of Briga-friggin'-doon, for dang sake! What I should be doing right now is playing bagpipes and wearing a kilt and eating dang haggis!

Instead I’m at work. But I’m not letting this day go without some kind of festive acknowledgement. So how am I celebrating Leap Day? 6 words:

Free Pepsi and unlimited Red Vines

Someone had a Pepsi they didn’t want (don’t even get me started on the impossibility of having a Pepsi that you don’t want) so they gave it to me. THEN, not more than minutes later, someone else found one of those eleventy-thousand-pound tubs of Red Vines in their office which they ALSO didn’t want!

I left the tub in their office, so as not to seem greedy, but I think they’ve noticed that I come back in there every 8 minutes to get another handful of Red Vine goodness. Yes, they’re definitely on to me. But it really doesn’t matter, because by the end of the day I’ll have made myself completely sick on soda and Red Vines. Happy Freakin’ Leap Day, my people!

What did you do to celebrate???

Take two of my excuses and call me in the morning.

This is just hard!

So my arm, it’s still boogered up. (technical term) And I’ve got nobody to blame but myself at this point, because apparently I just can NOT follow directions. The PT says “ice it twice daily, exercises twice daily, take anti-inflammatory meds and DON’T USE IT.” But I hear “ice it once a week, and if you remember to do it a second time that same week you deserve a Pop Tart. Do exercises whenever you remember. If you don’t remember at all for one whole day you’ll totally make up for it by doing it 6 times the next day, and don’t worry if doing all those exercises in one day makes the arm hurt more. Anti-inflammatory pills are hard to take, so why even bother. Try to use it more than you think you ever used to use it; in fact use it pretty much constantly.”
The hardest one is to not use the arm. Because what that has made painfully obvious (yes, the pun was intentional) is how much I use my left arm. Apparently my right arm is the brains, but my left arm is the muscle. So if something takes dexterity or agility or any other “-ity’s” I use my right arm, because it is precise and careful and has skillz. (with a Z!) That means I use my left arm for carrying heavy things and pushing stuff and punching the bad guys. And it’s not like I can just stop carrying things or punching bad guys! That way lies MADNESS!

Also I just forget not to use it. I remember eventually, but mostly because my using it hurt something and at that point the remembering is just mockery. My day is filled with this:

• reach for big, heavy hospital door with my left arm.
• “ouch, that hurt my left arm pulling this big, heavy hospital door open!”
• let go of door with left hand, try to open it the rest of the way with my right arm.
• somehow get all tangled up in my own arms.
• look like a complete dork.
• rub my arm because it’s too late anyway and now it hurts.
• wonder how I don’t poke my own eye out with forks more often, given that I’m such a moron.
• buy corks to put on the end of my forks for future eye protection.
• reach for the next big, heavy hospital door with my left arm.
• repeat until crazy/crippled.

And then I go to my PT appointment the next week and I lie to her about how bad I’ve been. I lie to my Physical Therapist. How sad is that? She says “how has it been going?” and I start off honestly; I confess that I didn’t do my exercises as much as I should have. But she always wants numbers and facts and details! It’s like the third degree and I panic! All that pressure, people! (I can’t tell – are you buying these lame excuses?)

The end result is that I usually say something like “oh, I only did my exercises once a day several days.”

“Did you ice?”

“Um, sure! Bunches of times!”

“And have you been trying not to use it?”

“Trying. Yes, I’ve been trying that.”

…but I think she knows I’m full of it, because then she does some “massage” which is actually latin for “hurting, hurting, more hurting and if you hadn’t been a big liar this would feel nice!” Sigh.

(oh, and yes I did use both hands while typing this.)

(oh, and I think I completely forgot to go to my follow-up doctor’s appointment some time this week.)

(oh, and Tuesday I tripped on the same stairs. I didn’t fall, but I’m more sure than ever before that they’re out to kills me.)

Not a Morning ANYTHING.

Today I beat the sun to work. The sun. It’s so wrong I don’t even know where to begin. And so now I’m sitting here, and I thought “hey, this would be a good time for me to do a little writing!” and then I LAUGHED AND LAUGHED AND LAUGHED. Because the actual list of things that this would be a good time for looks like this:

1. Sleep.

Notice the distinct lack of a number 2? Notice? Yeah, I noticed that too.

The dude I dated used to try to wake me up early on the weekends (and by early I mean any time before 9:55am, of course) for a little morning nooky. The first time I truly thought he was kidding, and I’m pretty sure I punched him in the side of the head because morning is not a time for jokes, it’s a time for sleeping. And again, the whole thing is foggy because HELLO, SLEEPING RIGHT NOW!!!!, but I vaguely remember staring at him for a r-e-a-l-l-y l-o-n-g t-i-m-e once I got that he was not kidding at all. Because I couldn’t figure out what else to do, and staring was the thing most like sleeping that I could come up with. (Point in fact, I might even have managed some open-eyed sleeping at that point, just because I knew that as long as I was making some kind of eye contact he’d think I was thinking it over and leave me alone.)

This same person (I hope by now you already get how not at all meant to be he and I were) used to tell me that if I just went to bed earlier I’d be able to get up all cheery and happy and full of bunnies and daisies and rays of sunshine. Ridiculous. The day I leap out of bed with vim and verve is the day someone fills my mattress with stingy, bitey bugs. On fire. Carrying switchblades. And I could probably sleep through that anyway.

ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Diablo Cody, you're my HERO!

OK, so I’ve been doing this blogging thing for a while (and I think I’ve mentioned that I mostly do it for me and because I love it, because I’m essentially a selfish person) and I’ll admit that it’s got me feeling more and more like if I actually had a dream (which I don’t – blogpost on that to come soon. Watch this space.) it would be something around writing for a living. I love the writing, even when I’m not doing it so well (sometimes ESPECIALLY when I’m not doing it so well) and I do think that I do it better than the average bear (their lack of thumbs is no excuse!).

At the same time, rarely have I seen the career guide or online class or seminar called “Writing: it’s a totally easy thing to do for a living and a guaranteed source of massive wealth. Ask me how!” Like all the fun jobs, the really hard part is finding a way to be a truly successful professional writer. I’ve looked on this blog as a sort of “step one” – if I can do this pretty well and regularly than maybe there’s hope for me, blah blah blah, theme song to Rocky, sweep the legs Danielsan, It’s up to you, New York, etc… It’s the step two that I’m not seeing from here.

Until last night!

Now, thanks to Diablo Cody and her amazing, now Oscar-award winning screenplay for Juno, I have a plan. It’s so simple, and yet without her guidance I’d have never seen the path! It is like so:

1. Become a stripper
2. Blog about being a stripper (which is a plus for you guys, after reading this blog all about not being a stripper. What the heck was I thinking?)
3. Write a book about life as a stripper
4. Write an award-winning screenplay (doesn’t HAVE to be an Oscar – I’d take a globe all golden and lovely or even something from the people. (Of the people? By the people? Anyone? Anyone?)
5. Sit back and wait for the fame and accolades and money, money, money.

…of course this is just a rough outline of a plan. I need to nail down some of the details, but I feel better knowing that I have a real plan at last. Oh, and in case you were wondering my stripper name will be Dirty Mama Monroe. (I couldn’t make that one up.)

My alternative beverage lifestyle – let me show you it

So I’m a kid and I’m sick and have the classic cough and scratchy throat. That is, to me, the worst part of a cold: cough and scratchy throat. Little kid me is so frustrated with this long-time cough that I’ve decided (in the best example of 6 year old stubborn logic) that I am just NOT GOING TO COUGH ANY MORE! NOT GONNA! I HAVE SPOKEN! And so I hold my breath (because the first step of each cough is the attempt to breathe, silly me), but instead of no coughs I have several long minutes of tiny, stilted, choked off little sputter-coughs. And I also turn blue. And when I finally have to breathe it’s just aaaaaall cooouuuggghhss. Hack. Sputter. Stomp, stomp, kick the wall…

My mom, being smart in the way that moms are and that she especially is, wants me to drink some kind of warm drink for it would be soothing and helpful. The problem is that I don’t like warm drinks. Don’t like tea, don’t like apple cider, don’t like coffee (plus then all you really get is coughy, bug-eyed little me!), do like hot cocoa but only if made w/ milk, which is not helpful in this phlegmmy time. And no matter how helpful something might be, if I don’t like it I’m not going to eat or drink it. Not. So very, VERY not. I am stubborn, hear me roar. (and then coooough and cooooough…)

So my mom, seeing me trying to cure a cough through sheer force of will and having that mom-gene of “I will fix it, for it is my child and I will fix it!”, my mom turns to her Midwestern roots and she makes me a mug of Jello water.

Mmmmm. Jello water.

Jello water, for those of you who don’t put Miracle Whip on your white bread/turkey sandwiches or top your Tuna Casserole with Velveeta, is made with a box of Jello and 3 cups of hot water and only 1 cup of cold water. And you make it in a pitcher instead of a bowl, and you serve it in mugs. It’s hot and fruity and coats and soothes and totally solved every sore throat I remember having my whole life.

OK, now shoot through time with that woodle-woodle-woodle screen shimmer thing from tv and suddenly it’s this week. I have a cold with a whopper of a sore throat (courtesy of cough-cough-hack-choke-cooooooooough!) and I’ve got a big pitcher of Jello water, for medicinal purposes, sitting on my desk. Black cherry flavor. Which, coincidentally, looks just like blood when sitting in a pitcher. Or a mug. Or coating one’s lips. And I mentioned before that it’s warm, right? So here I sit, drinking my medicinal, blood-colored mystery drink. And as each person asks what I am drinking I explain that I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. No, it’s confidential and I don’t want to talk about it, and get away from that! Get away from my,… medicine!!! (mmm, tasty, thick and warm…)

Drinking tea has never been this much fun, people. (cough, cough, cough…)

Sniffle, Snuffle, cough-hack-DIE

I have a cold. I’m not sick, but I have a cold. It’s NOT the same thing.

If I’m SICK I stay home. I curl up on the couch (unless I’m REALLY, REALLY sick, in which case I stay in bed. But I have to be 2 steps from rushing to the hospital because a body part has dropped off or green stuff is coming out of every orifice.) and I keep a bucket, a thermometer and the phone within quick reach. I find things on tv to sleep through because I’m too sick to stay awake too long, so why get invested in something I’m going to miss? I probably take some kind of medicine for at least some of my symptoms. I’m SICK. It’s SERIOUS.

[tangent: one time I was really, really sick. Like I missed an entire week of work because the doctor said “you have to stay home this week.” And I said “I’ll try to come home early a few days.” And he said “no – YOU HAVE TO STAY HOME THIS WHOLE ENTIRE WEEK. HAVE TO. NO WORK. STAYING HOOOOOOOOME.” This was after I’d had a fever so high that I’d started calling out for the nurse to bring me some water, so very parched and thirsty was I, and called and called for Nurse, Nurse, oh NURSE??? for a really long time before the less crazy part of my brain remembered that I was in the house totally alone. And that I hate water. And luckily I was too fevered and addle-brained to be as completely freaked out by the hallucinations until 3 days later. Good times…]

Where was I? Oh yeah, not sick. I have a cold.

If I have a COLD I just have a cold. I still go to work. I do the dishes and the laundry, at least a little. I mutter through life, usually with a box of snot cloths in tow, but I don’t stop doing life stuff. Remember what the experts say about colds: if you don’t take it easy and really work on getting better you’ll have that cold for 7 whole days. BUT if you get lots of sleep, drink fluids, really take care of yourself the cold will be gone in a week!

In other words, no matter what I do, I’m going to have this cold. So I just live life. With a cold. But I’m not really sick.

Now trying to explain this to my co-workers.

In an effort to put a positive spin on this big, stupid cold I’ve used my nasty-looking and ughy-sounding symptoms to good use:

• By coughing LOUDLY each time someone approached I was able to keep from sitting next to strangers in the movies last night.
• Two people at work decided not to give me their latest mindless work for me to do after seeing the mound of Kleenex waterfalling out of my trash can – “what if she calls in sick tomorrow when I’m supposed to have this done?”
• People will not begrudge you the last 2-bite cinnamon roll if you’ve snuffled 16 times in the last 30 seconds.

Still, I’m looking forward to this Friday, when the cold should be moving on. (are you going to eat that? Snuffle? Snuffle? SNUFFLE?)

Look Ma -- one hand!

Previously on a very special episode of “Unlikely In Love”…

[Femtastic trotting down fire stairs, slippy-trips and grabs, grabs, GRABS for the handrail. “Aiieee, I fall! Curse you, gravity, you pushy betch!” she hollers as down she falls. She brags, cocky-like, “oooh-di-oooh, look how very unharmed I am! Look how I fall and walk away without a single scathe! Marvel at my indestructible nature and quake! Quake I say!” and then the next day “whimper, keen, oh woe is me and my poor, poor hurted wrist. Lavish me with sympathy if you please. And also bon-bons and free spendy cable…”A trip to a nurse who says “yup, that’s what happens when you let yourself fall down the stairs, dope.” Femtastic whines on her blog “woe is me, I’m all injured and sad.” The readers boggle at her lameness.]

OK, so the safety nurse said “Ice it.” and I did, and gradually it got some better, and then more better, and now it’s almost all better. And yay! But as the wrist was getting better the pain was creeping up and eventually set up camp in my elbow. But say I “so what?”, right? I just have to keep icing and eventually it will work its way up to my shoulder, and then my neck, and then my left eye (ouchies!) and finally a headache that will float up into the ether. No problem!

Unfortunately the ouchies really liked the view there at Camp Elbowatchatoozie and they’re enjoying s’mores and ghost stories and Little Bunny Foo-Foo and won’t move on! So for at least a month I’ve had this stabby little pain in my left elbow. I have it when I pick things up heavier than about 5 lbs. Or if I twist my arm hardly at all. And also when I scratch my back or open heavy doors or about 6 other simple, everyday things. The pokey nature has had me convinced that it’s a piece of something sharp which has declared its independency from a bigger thing and is now floating around inside my arm, reading Kerouac and sketching passing blood corpuscles. Into the Wild, bone-chip style!

I finally called the safety nurses, who sent me to the sad, sad worker’s comp medical offices out by the Costco. The doctor came in, and I told him my story and the evolution of the stabby pain and my theory of a roaming sharp bone chip. I also told him that I’d tried and tried but could find no specific place where I could push on the arm and make the stabby pain happen. And he reached over and said “What about here.” And poked this one spot and I fell over dead from the fantastic pain. Then he told me that there are tendons that connect to the elbow right at Camp Elbowatchatoozie and I torqued them when I tried to stop my fall with the hand rail, which is, by the way, super-similar to ‘tennis elbow.’ In fact, that’s even what he wrote on my file. So now I have a worker’s comp claim for bad backhand. L-A-M-E.

So to make the stabby pain go AWAY I should do the following things:
· Wear this strap on my arm.
· Ice the arm twice a day
· Go to physical therapy and do exercises twice a day
· Don’t use my left arm.

So far I’ve done the following things:
· Remembered the strap

I never remember to do the exercises and ice is so cold and hate to take any pills (thus dooming my future plans to become a raging Vicodin addict. That and the fact that Vicodin freaked me out with no up-side, so…) and what would be great is if it could just get over it please! Sigh. Bruises just go away. Cuts too. What is the deal with internal strains/sprains/idises/etc. that they just linger and loiter? Ridiculous…

Also ridiculous is the fact that every bit of injury from that fall resulted from my grabbing the hand rail. Which didn’t even keep me from hitting the ground. Basically I just wound up lying on the floor, my hand finally clutching the hand raid 3 feet overhead. (and, by the way, worst hand rail usage ever!!) Next time I’m just gonna fall and hope I don’t die. (too much.)

All of this was to say sorry that I didn’t write more this week. I was supposed to not be using my left arm and hand and stuff. And if I tried to write this without my lefties it comes out “Piouly on y pil pio o “Unlikly In Lo”…” Not so good. Hopefully the week off will be the miracle cure I’ve been looking for. (or I could do exercises and take painkillers and ice things. But probably not and also ouch.)

My lameness – let me show you it.

I get to my desk this morning and it’s been liberally sprinkled with things of a chocolate and/or heart-like nature. I think to myself “oh, how nice! My co-workers left me spontaneous chocolate! This must be because yesterday was such a rough day (which it was, but still) and thought I needed a boost. Big, sloppy heart-thumps!”

I look over at my neighbor’s desk. Where normally there would be a file sorter or box of tissue there has sprouted a great, big bunch of fabulous flowers. I think to myself “Wowzers! I wonder if it’s her wedding anniversary?”

A second bouquet of flowers comes through the door, and as I’m directing the lost delivery girl to the right office I marvel at the odds of two big bouquets being delivered on one day. “I will write this in my diary, so unlikely are the odds!” thinks I.

A third person wanders by dressed in reddy-pinky-rosey shades. I wish I’d worn the red shirt I almost picked out, except that it won’t fit over my arm therapy thing (I’ll tell you later), because then I would also be rosey-hued and wouldn’t that be funny!

I go to start my official list for the day and write “Thursday, 2/14/08” at the top. And then I bonk my head on the desk, because clearly there’s nothing in this big melon of mine to be damaged by head-bonking! Clearly any brains inside this piñata on my neck are ornamental! Clearly I’m as observant as a blind sloth on LSD, because hey, guess what everybody? It’s big, dumb VALENTINES DAY!!!

I return to wallowing in my lameness – I hope you got candies.

The Art of Foamy War

So who was Mr. Nerf? Because that guy? Genius.

My nephew’s official birthday party is tomorrow and one item on his list was a Nerf gun, which I put dibs on. Today I strolled through the Nerf section of the toy store. Strolled and considered how much of my 401k could I divert to Nerf products and still retire before age 90.

They didn’t have this level of cool Nerfness when I was a kid, right? I mean I didn’t miss out just because of the lack of penis? That would so piss me off! But I’m pretty sure that this was a reflection of the incredible progress that’s been made in Nerf technology over the last 2+ decades, right? There are MIT graduates and ex-members of the CIA and science fiction wizards from Hollywood all devoting their time and energy to new foam brilliance.

No kidding, there is stuff that glows and there are Nerf crossbows and bow-and-arrows and big, glowing balls. You can get battery–powered stuff but there’s also technology powered by hand pump (shut up, dirty boys and girls). The one I got for my nephew is the Nerf Rapid Fire 20. Here’s what I loved about it:

-Nerfness
-No batteries necessary
-SHOOTS 20 DARTS AT ONE TIME

Twenty darts. At one time. It’s like the Jackie Chan of Nerf guns, taking on all comers at once! You can shoot one at a time, if you’re being stealthy and planning your attack and are some kind of GREAT BIG NERF WUSSY! OR (and I really can’t stress this enough) you could stand on one end of the room and pump the gun full of all-powerful air and pull the trigger and send 20 tremendous Nerf missiles of soft, squishy death hurtling through the air to suction cup all over your enemies! I mean come ON! How COOL is that???

My nephew is going to be 10 but he’s already Mr. Junior Sun Tzu – he knew enough to specify that he only wanted one Nerf gun, because if he got more he’d be forced by his very fair-minded parents to share with his siblings. He’s the youngest of three, so it behoveded him to request this advantage. With the Rapid Fire 20 I’ve essentially given him two big guys who will travel with him everywhere and rough up anyone who annoys him. Except that they’re big foam guys, with suction cups for hands.

It’s 2:30am, I should have wrapped it already but I’m stalling. Because I’m still a little bit thinking of keeping it all for myself. For home security, of course. (man, I’m just so weak.)

Hello Internets -- Are you Ready to ROCK?!?!

I confess: I have joined the ranks of the Guitar Heroes. I didn’t want to, and I fought it. I tried to be all individual and jaded and “stupid Guitar Hero...” and sneer ala Billy Idol at those playing and bouncing around. This tactic worked great right up until they put the axe in my hand.

Damn you, Pat Benatar, and your catchy-yet-spirited anthym for the every woman telling the every man what’s what! One time through “Hit me with your best shot!” and I was hooked. (picture me jamming, while simultaneously shaking my fist at the heavens)

One of my preconceived notions about the game was that it just shouldn’t be that hard, because after all it’s not like you’re playing a real guitar! It’s 5 buttons and a toggle bar. And people, 5 buttons and a toggle bar does not a guitar make! (not even with the whammy bar and the snazzy, rock-centric stickers.) However apparently 5 buttons and a toggle bar are more than enough to kick MY ass! (stupid buttons)

By the end of the night, though, I’d found some kind of groove and jammed my ass almost 100% through Schools out for Summer by Ms. Alice Cooper (funny-looking girl, but lovely singing voice) in one shot. Lookit me, I’m a rock star! Take that Pete Townsend! Take that Edgey-poo! It ain’t so tough!

(What’s that? There are other levels beyond “easy”? No thanks, I’m good. Also I know there’s bonus points for free-styling and what not, but I’m apparently much more comfortable with my “no-styling” mojo. Thanks all the same.)

So THEN I go to my sister’s house. I wait patiently until those pesky children finally go to bed – then it was the grups turn to rock it hard, my friend. Because the sister, she has Rock Band. Or, as I like to call it, Guitar Hero and his friends Drum Champion and Master of all Microphones battle the evil Doctor Tonedeaf and his minions of no rhythm! And battle we did! Never before have Blue Oyster Cult or Nirvana been rocked by a more style-less, dorkytastic trio! All of the Rolling Stones were spinning in their graves; even though I think they're all still alive.

Now it cracks me up how I’ll hear a song on the radio and I’ll be listening for that awesome guitar line I totally know how to play. Play on 5 buttons. And a toggle bar.

Thank you, and good night!!!

Shuffle, ball, step, whizzz

OK, so I’m taking the tap class which you already knew. I’m so loving it, and I’m super-glad I decided to do it. Even doing the performance class, which does mean that in June my wee little class of 5 tappers will shake our booty on stage in front of something like 300 people. But I’ve been distracting myself from that knowledge by saying “that’s months away, and we have all this time to get it totally worked out in the meantime.”

This system was working really well up until last Saturday. But the stupid dance school had this stupid showcase. Where we had to do our stupid dance in front of stupid people. Big, dumb, stupid people! Also the closest I’ve come to wetting myself in front of an audience for years, so there’s that! (and can I also add “gleah.”)

So the thing that got me into taking the class, you may remember, was watching my 9 year old nephew do his performances the last 2 years. Plus I’d always come to his showcases to cheer him on, and I’d never really thought about why they did these showcase performances in front of people. But on Saturday I so had that lightbulb moment. This is pretty much just to give all us crazy dancing fools a chance to do this in front of people once or twice before we have to do it on the fancy stage. With the fancy costumes. And the fancy lights and maybe props and also the heart-wrenching terror and aneurism-inducing panic and stuff. So really it’s very smart of them. For being so stupid.

I am not a person who has ever suffered from stage fright (shocking, I know – I seem just SO shy!) and I’m not nervous about crowds (because I was raised by a crowd). Despite all of that, about 5 minutes after things got rolling I SO had to pee! Psycho-symatic nervous bladder if ever I’ve had one. I’d already peed at home, so I knew this was my body giving me the excuse to make a break for it! I resisted, though, and sat there and waited and nervoused and got that ulcer started that I’ve been putting off and putting off…

What I loved, though, was watching that young nephew of mine. This is his third year of classes and showcases and performances, so he’s the perfect picture of “whatever….” Blasé by age 9 – SUCH the cool dude. So I’m sitting in my row and we’re giggling and tittering and craning to watch every other group as they get up and do their thing. And each time they announce the next three groups coming up we’re hoping and dreading to hear out name, right? And there’s my nephew across the dance floor. And he’s reading. He doesn’t look up at the other dancers even once. He’s up to his elbows in some book and couldn’t be less worried if I’d paid him! He’s all ‘read, read, read, get up and do his dance without a single mistake, back to book, read, read, read…” Way, way TOO cool for any kind of school, my friend. I so want to be him when I grow up!

At the end of the concert— what? The dance? Oh, it was fine. I made a bunch of mistakes that I’ve never made before even once and felt stupid and afterward my adrenaline had me vibrating like… something that vibrates. Don’t go there. Plus we had to go right after this dance by the tap company which is made up primarily of class teachers and other dancing hotties and oh yeah the OWNER of the school, and the dance was so incredibly cool that I stood there, off-stage, with my big, dumb mouth just hanging open in gawkitude. A proud, proud moment. To be immediately followed by my mess-ups. And thank GOD we’ve got another showcase in April so I can have one more shot at doing this dance, this dance which I TOTALLY KNOW AND SHOULD NOT BE MAKING ANY MISTAKES IN, doing this dance in front of people without messing up. Because every single mistake was just me being flipped out about SO MANY PEOPLE. Like I didn’t know this was coming…

Anyway, after all the dancers were done one of the teachers calls my too-cool-for-school nephew up to the stage to tell everyone that it was his birthday (it was – 9-year old nephew no more, for now you are ten!) and have everybody sing to him. Which he stood and graciously took. And the second the song pittled off he turned to her and said “can I go now?”

Ten years old, going on thirty.

This is Me, Testing a Blue Pen

First, before I explain this other thing that you should know about me, you should know this about me: I love pens. LOVE them. When I’m stressed out at work and need a little pick-me-up I don’t ask for chocolates or flowers. I want a wee trip down to the local stationer to peruse the aisles and aisles of fabulous ink-squirting utensils. One of the things that I take with me to work every day, and bring home every night for fear that if left behind someone will ROON it, is this set of 10 pens. I love that they open up as a stand (an award-winning stand!) and come in such colors, including yellow, which is completely absurd as a pen color but which I love anyway, and I impress everyone at work when I arrive to a meeting with my super-cool pen set. (and by “impress” I mean “they look at me and understand the smallness of my life. And they feel sad.”) Yep, I love pens. LOVE them.

Now, when you go to find new and glorious pens you must first, of course, try them out. You can’t bring home just any pen. It’s got to have good flow, and just the right amount of ink on the line. You need to be able to write smoothly and fluidly, and it has to be able to write both cursive and print. Both! Except nothing less! Fortunately the purveyors of fine pens understand this, and they normally have little pads just for to be trying out your pen choices.

But then you have to decide what to write. What, of all the writable things, will you write with this, your one chance to test a pen before you fill out the papers to take it home!

If ever you’re in the pen department at your local pen emporium (or Penporium) and you find tester pads that say “testing a blue pen” and “checking out a pen of red” know that it was me. I write “this is me, trying out a blue pen.” Or “this is the black pen I’m trying out.” “Hey, look at how this red pen writes.” “this is how this green pen looks when I write with it. Like I am now.”

Today a fellow administrative monkey (we’ll call her Jeans Girl) offered me up a pen from the box of new pens she’d ordered, and so I had to try it out. After I wrote “this blue pen writes like this.” she asked me why I would write that, of all the things to write. I explained to her that otherwise I get completely stuck by the multitude of options!

Otherwise you’ll see me in the pen aisles, stymied! Staring at the blank tester pad with no direction! Should I write my name? Someone else’s name? A famous name! What about a quote, like Shakespeare or Noel Coward. Should I write “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” so I can see how the pen writes all the letters? What about numbers? What if I get this home and find out it just SUCKS at the number 4 and question marks? I could try to draw something, but I suck at drawing, and then I have to decide if the sucky drawing is because of a sucky pen or just me sucking at drawing. Don’t get me wrong, because I love pen shopping, but the choosing of a quality pen should not take several hours.

Now I have a simple system that takes my far too active imagination out of the equation. I should probably come up with systems that do that for the rest of my life too. You SO don’t want to see me picking out underwear.

Me vs. sub-freezing temperatures

We got snow on Sunday. A lot of snow. Not a lot of snow for Alaska, or New York or Denver, or Wisconsin or even cold parts of California or heck even Alabama or anywhere else at all! But for Hippyville it was a LOT of SNOW. It was somewhere between 3 and 4 inches, depend on what news channel you watch. It brought the town to pretty much a grinding halt. You see, because we never, ever get any real snow here we only have a couple of snow plows. And one runs on hemp gas and the other is made of macramé, so you can imagine what a 3rd of a foot of snow can do.

I lived on the east coast for several years, and pretty much every year I was there we experienced The Blizzard of the Century!!!! In the end they weren’t really blizzardy, but they were a nice, big dump of snow. For days, instead of an afternoon. Enough snow so you actually had to worry about driving and all the big parking lots would have mounds of snow in each corner the size of Snow White’s cottage for weeks afterward. So when we get our cute little snow “storms” I just can’t take it seriously. You could say I’m a snow snob. (actually you could try, but you’d find that is much harder to say out loud than you’d expect. Go ahead, try. I’ll wait…)

My snow snobbery meant that the people who couldn’t even get into the office by Monday? I scoffed at them and in my head I called them “wimp!” and “weeny!” I slathered judgment all over them like judgy-butter on a bagel (again, in my head) and pounded my chest in my manly navigating of the lightly-snowed streets!

Cut to last night. I’m hanging out at my sister’s place, and her house is built into the side of a butte. So in front of their place is a fairly steep driveway about 10-12 feet long. And while we’re hanging out in the house it’s pseudo-snowing outside. The wet, slushy snow that doesn’t get anywhere and can’t be used to make anything cool, except maybe a tropical drink (when mixed with the right booze and juice). Time comes for me to leave, and I trek down the driveway with confidence.

About 3 feet from the street I hit a slick patch. This is when I realize that between the end of the slushy snow and right then the temperature did a pretty big dive. Some things have become icy. I check this off in the “good to know” category and I head to a new path. But that one is slick too. And that one, and that one. And not only is that direction slippy, but holy crap I’m having a foot cramp!

I spend the next 5 minutes inching myself in one direction or another, almost losing it entirely and cracking my rump over and over, and occasionally standing around on one foot while I zen-yoga-contort the other one trying to un-cramp it. I’m stuck. Three feet from glory and I’m stuck. I did what anyone would do in that situation.

I called my sister on the cell phone.

“I’m stuck in your driveway.” I say.

“Do you want me to come out and help you push?” she asks.

“No, I mean me. I’m personally stuck. In your driveway.” Looooong Pause… “How do you usually get down your driveway when it’s slick?”

“I normally stay home when it’s slick.”

…-

“I’m stuck. In your driveway.”

…-

“That silence better not be you laughing…”

Finally my brother in law came out with excellent traction boots (for him) and some kind of high-tech scrapy tool (for the driveway) and made me a path. A path upon which I humbly slunk over to my car and manlessly drove myself home. And never, ever judged the snow-challenged ever again.

(Stupid slushy snow.)