a day in the life of...

i'm back! and thus ending my self-imposed bloggy hiatus. i thought about giving a recap of my fantastic family birthday week, but then i was bored with that idea about five seconds later. instead, i think i'll share a story with you today that seems to parallel my life in many ways.

it was saturday morning, september 19th. i woke up a thirty year old woman, wife, and mother, yet i felt no different than i had the day before, or the day before that.

by 8:30 the sunshine was bright and warm, yet kind enough to leave a crispness in the air that, to me, defines a typical autumn day. b was officially on toddler time while monster and i were free to enjoy the perfect weather.

that's right, my birthday present to myself was a day in the woods with my dog while my husband stayed home with the kid.

i'll skip the details about monster's severe car anxiety and tendency to puke in my lap or near my lap, and instead i'll just say that we headed north toward a trail dubiously called silver mine. there may or may not be an actual mine in the area, but there definitely is an old lean-to that's creepy enough to pass for the blair witch's vacation home.

leading off from the parking area is a huge open field, often hosting a few canadian geese lucky enough to have found the well-hidden spot. on one side of the field is a small lake. the trail starts towards the back end of the lake and hugs its side for a short distance before delving deep into thick towers of oaks and maples.

monster and i began to navigate the path of basketball-sized boulders, most likely laid down to hold the loose soil around the base of the lake. we proceeded to follow the small yellow rectangle markers painted every so often on a tree at eye level. i don't know much about photography, or lenses, or lighting, but i took a few pictures with my trusty canon in hopes of capturing some of the beauty to take home with me.




as far back into my memory as my mind's eye can see, i have always been drawn to forests. i imagine the trees standing as tall guardians to whatever mystery lies within their fortress of bark and leaves. the temptation to crawl, push, or otherwise break through their defenses is still so irresistible to me. i can't drive on a wooded road without my gaze being drawn like a magnet to the side, wondering what exists there that i'm not seeing.

that morning in silver mine, i was lost, captivated by such sounds as a sole acorn dropping and leaves rustling high above my head. the view of the lake to my left and an ever increasing rise to my right were made of more riveting material than i had seen in a long time.

i wandered off the trail in my distracted state. i couldn't have gone far, i had just passed a marker. as i paused and looked around, monster suddenly dashed about twenty feet to the side and froze. i went to him and sure enough, directly above where he stood was the next trail marker. sometimes he drives me crazy, but in that moment, watching my dog so proud of himself for leading me back to the trail, all the puke piles and ripped furniture were forgotten.

we continued for a while until we reached the part that i knew led to the creep-shack. i turned to head back to the car. b and i had big plans that night and i wanted to make it out of silver mine for my date.

as we emerged from the mouth of the trail, i turned and took one last picture of the path.


the field lay open before us and monster seemed to have an itch he needed some help with.


i laughed watching him roll carefree through the grass. after a few minutes i called him over to put his leash on as i saw a man with his dog approaching. i reached out to grab his collar and was surprised to feel some foreign matter stuck in between the metal rings.

i saw it before i smelled it. monster's neck and collar were covered in shit. i can't tell you if it was from another dog, a small horse, or the blair witch herself, but it sure didn't come from monster.

looking down at my feces covered finger, my ethereal mood vaporized as if it had never been. i cursed my dog's disgusting bad luck to roll around in a giant field and find the only shit spot. i fumed about my lack of proper cleaning materials. but mostly, i marveled at the irony that for the entire twenty-five minute drive back home, it was i who was choking back vomit as my car-sick monster tried repeatedly to climb in my lap with his shit covered neck.

i respectfully decline the invitation

i love my cousins. and i'm not just saying that because they're the only two that i have, or not because they both read this blog.

i love my cousin laura because she's more of a sister to me than my real sister.

i love my cousin christina because even though we may not talk all that often, i still feel that we have many characteristics in common and can always find something to laugh about together.

so now that i've established the love-fest, it's time to share with all of you quite possibly one of the most disturbing things i've seen in a long, long time.

how many of you know what in the fuckity fuck this phallic looking thing is?


ok, so maybe that's not what they all look like, and i should know because i've just now browsed way too many pics in my google images search and still can't find one that conveys my absolute disgust at this product, but it's called a neti pot.

i can't even get into describing it's function in detail because it bothers me that much. but i will say that there are some sickos out there who deliberately put this mess up their noses in hopes of relieving sinus congestion.

oh yeah, and it makes liquid and boogies come out the other side of your nose.

it's so gross i can't even take it. i'm shivering in my chair this very moment just thinking about it.

i was recently made aware of this phenomenon of self-inflicted torture this past weekend as my extended family gathered to celebrate nana's eightieth birthday. apparently, i'm the only ass who's not only never heard of a neti pot, but who also equates its use to being raped by a horse up your nostril.

laura proclaimed with conviction, 'oh yeah, i love my neti pot. you know what? i'm going to have a neti potti so we can all sit around with clean sinuses and smell things better!'

i asked permission to use 'neti potti' but only so i could burn it up.

this is what i think maybe laura thinks when she says neti potti:


this is what i think when i hear neti potti:


the best way to get out of trouble is to stay out of trouble from the jump. look at how brainwashed those poor cartoon folks are. their eyes are glazed over to disguise the humiliating and invasive nature of it all, as they use a neti pot with a decorative flower etched on the side to distract you from the gory truth. no friends, i can see clearly that no good can come of this.

laura and chris, i will drive hours and hours, with the fuss bitching all the way, just for five minutes with you guys, so long as i never, ever have to see a neti pot in real life.



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for those of you who may have missed it, there's still time to enter my blogtastic giveaway!! i'll be drawing names and posting the winners thursday night the 17th.

things are not always what they seem

this is the view from the park down the street from my house, it's right on the river:


this morning we went early and there was not much of a breeze to speak of and very few boats out. with the exception of the brownish tinge to the water, the river looked so peaceful, so serene. the soft lapping sounds made me think of the rhythm of an old rocking chair, subtle yet constant.


the water rippled just enough to produce a broken reflection of the sun.


there were even some guys fishing and crabbing and enjoying the view.


i hope their view included this:


can you read that part there at the top? no? ok, i'll write out the boldface part:

women of childbearing age and children under 15 should not consume any fish from the hudson river.

now, i've lived by this river my whole life and it pretty much goes without saying that you never, ever even want to swim in that water, let alone eat anything that comes out of it. but for those of you who might be assuming that rivers are freshwater and it can't be that bad, i offer the following:

-for decades new york city garbage has been barged and dumped upriver because of the lack of landfill space in the five boroughs.
-indian point is a nuclear power plant that is situated right on the banks of the river
and lastly,
-for over thirty years general electric dumped over a million pounds of pcbs into the river from it's plants. those pcbs are still found in the sediment and algae.

growing up with this knowledge has made me wary of fish and shellfish in general. i can fillet a three foot striped bass in about ten minutes, which is not fast and not slow, but you will rarely find me eating the day's catch.

i could never seem to get my mind past the part about thinking where the fish came from, what it ate to survive, and what kind of water filled its gills. paranoid much? maybe, but it's too late for me to change now. i will forever be leery of neptune's minions.

i should have been born by the ocean.

there's always a silver lining

despite the fact that i love to throw curse words around like an old sailor (is that really true that sailors curse a lot?), i am an enormous prude when it comes to talking about poo, pee, puke, or any other bodily function/excrement.

this is extremely fortunate for you readers out there in blogland who will be spared the gory details of my battle with food poisoning over the past four days. although, there were definite moments of profound revelation that i experienced in my most harrowing times that i felt worthy of sharing.

the first is by far the most important of the lessons i learned this long weekend; simply that food poisoning is going to be a much more effective diet for me than my previous standby of coffee and air.

this dawned on me sometime in the middle of the night sunday, as i got up out of bed and groaned my way to the bathroom, passing by my open closet door. there, subtly tucked away yet exposed enough to be illuminated by the fluorescent green glow of the alarm clock, was my collection of skinny jeans.


at least a half dozen pairs of those perfectly fitted jeans that go with every motherfucking thing you could ever imagine yourself wearing, somehow managed to migrate to a visible corner of my closet to speak to me.

'psst!! hey, lana! we're still heeeeeerrrrrrreeeeee!!' (that last part was actually sing-songy like the little girl in poltergeist, sneaky ass jeans)

but alas, at the time i was in too much of a hurry to reach my bathroom successfully to stop and make sexy eyes at my skinny jeans. and besides, i know them all so well by now. each pair perfect in fade, wash, length, hem. everything, perfect. except that they haven't fit so well since i grew a baby.

i'm not bitter about it though, changes in your body are a natural side effect of incubating and then birthing a child. i'm ok with that, i don't hold it against you skinny jeans.

that doesn't mean i didn't go back to sleep and dream about wearing each and every pair of those damn jeans and rolling around in a field of daisies like i was in a mariah carey video about being in love except that i was in love with my jeans and not a man.

waking up in the morning, i realized that all the intense pain i was experiencing was really for a great fucking cause. in fact, it even made me question the whole commitment to serving safe bacteria-free food to customers when i'm at work. i'd be doing some of them a huge favor, and if they knew i was behind it all, they might even come and give me a high five.

but that last part came from being dehydrated, so i'll just stick with accidental bacterial intake as being a great diet.

my second revelation that came to me was that hospital nurses sometimes, once in a while, suck at their jobs. while three different nurses had to attempt five times to find a vein to use for an iv, i thought it was a little unusual that they were having such a hard time. then today i looked down at my arms and was aghast to see that in both of my elbow creases i had obscene bruises and puncture holes that immediately made me feel like i had the beginnings of jared leto's arm in requiem for a dream.

(i thought about posting a pic, but it's way to gross for me to even deal with so i'm just going to link to the pic. feel free to look if you have a stomach made of steel, or don't if you're a pansy like me.)

i know being a nurse is a really hard job, and i'm certainly not trying to offend anyone who is, or is thinking about becoming, or ever was a nurse. but come on with this bullshit, i look like a damn junkie! lucky for them i don't have shit to do all week and a kid who can't tell if mommy's using or just has a boo-boo.

and so, in summation, i fully believe that as the fall season approaches, i will soon find myself wearing my skinny jeans and a nice, long-sleeved sweater to hide the iv wounds. thanks food poisoning, you're my bitch!!

not me, no way, no how, not ever

last night b and i went to a reception dinner to welcome the new regional managing co-operative district chief financial directing big boss. so what i made up that title, not like anyone ever really knows what those guys do anyway. the guy seems nice enough though, despite what i initially thought of him based purely on a picture.

the funny part was that the dinner was held at the estate where i work. so there we were, all dressed up in a room of 200 plus white collar, conservative, finance people, and i was busy bullshitting with the waitstaff. although i have to say that many of them didn't recognize me with my hair down and no chef whites on, so i had to have that awkward 'oh yeah it's me, i showered' conversation a few times.

but more importantly, i have to say that last night taught me a very, very valuable lesson. i learned exactly what type of old lady i do not want to become.

to be fair, this lesson actually started on tuesday morning when i was in traffic court. the sweet little old gal sitting next to me, someone's grandmother, seemed so helpless and scared about how to talk to the officer about her ticket. she kept leaning in to ask me what to do next, because i look like the kind of criminal who's seen the inside of a courtroom a few times yet is still reasonably approachable.

maybe she's psychic, but i was happy to answer her questions, hoping to make her experience a little less intimidating.

that is, until she began her relentless onslaught of fart bombs. i think she may have been having flashbacks to the first world war, and her subconscious released her own version of lethal gas to protect herself from any possible attackers.

she shrouded me with her clouds of stink, and still looked me in the eye to ask about when to stand up and talk to the cop.

devious as a black widow, masterful in her craft of luring you in just to poison you while you innocently offer advice, she was a rattlesnake in the grass, coiled and ready to strike. no granny, i do not want to be like you when i get old. it seems you have cornered the market on sweet and deadly, i could never dream of following in your footsteps.

she wasn't even the worst of the old lady gang.

last night i had the pleasure of sitting next to old secretary lady, who's biggest offense was the pearl-sized orange ball of ear wax perilously nestled inside her ear, ready to make its escape at the very slightest of head turns.

i tried not to stare.

it was incredibly hard to make small talk with b's other co-workers while at the same time keeping one eye on the crystallized ball of nasty just waiting to roll out onto my miso glazed chilean sea bass and blend right in with the papaya chutney. it was a cruel game. i knew if i wasn't vigilant i would end up eating the wax and be none the wiser.

so naturally i shoveled my food into my gaping mouth as fast as i possibly could so that i could retreat to the ladies room and wrestle with my spanx for about twenty minutes. i figured in that time old secretary lady would have finished her dinner and maybe gotten up to mingle.

i didn't know what i had inadvertently set myself up for.

in the bathroom stall next to me, as i struggled to get my spandexy undies back in place, i had to listen to oversharing old lady making vag farts and ugghhhhh noises. as i barely managed to keep my dinner in my stomach, she proclaimed 'that's how you know the food was goooood!!'

i tried to wash up and exit the restroom before she emerged from the stall, but alas, that was not my fate. no, oversharing lady had to reach right in front of my face to grab a hand towel while i retched silently.

'even these towels are nice here!!' she said with a grin.

i hung my head and ran out the door, never looking back.

and so, with these fine examples laid before my feet, i now know that i will make the effort to become a very different type of old lady. i will smell perpetually of fresh mint leaves and sit in a rocking chair knitting ceaselessly, even in the summers. i will not threaten innocent people with my bodily excretions in any state of matter.

i hereby do declare that i will be a truly harmless old lady. unless of course you try to talk shit about my driving, then i'll be forced to beat you with my cane.

no gun show today folks

i used to get embarrassed easily, now i just get annoyed and cry.

this morning i had a meltdown in my car. i sat there, annoyed at myself for getting all worked up again. i knew that if i bothered b at work i'd hear 'why can't you pretend you're linda hamilton and you're going to kick some machine ass?! you need to be a little tougher sometimes and not so high-strung.'


instead i called the toyota dealership and cried to the service manager. and now i've come full circle because i'm extremely embarrassed about it.

i don't know about where anyone else lives, but here in the good ol' hudson valley we've had about five straight days of rain. normally, i find the rain to be refreshing, even comforting, as the sound of water drumming the leaves outside my window will often lull me to sleep.

rain takes a turn for the meaner side of irony, however, when your overpriced, gas-guzzling suv has a busted sunroof.

for the past three days i have been battling mother nature to spare the interior of my spacious vehicle. at three am last night i was convinced that my plastic wrap + garbage bag + towel contraption was the most brilliant idea i'd ever had.

and then i saw things in the light (greyness) of day.

i used to love that sunroof. its wide expanse provided me with a fresh, invigorating breeze after spending twelve hours working in a hot kitchen with nothing more than a pair of ceiling vents circulating the recycled air. there was always the issue of the bitchin' rectangle of arm-tan i'd have to work hard to avoid, constantly remembering to wear tank tops for a drive longer than 15 minutes, but aside from that no major complaints.

so now karma is having her fun with me. not only did my ass get sopping wet (through a towel) on the drive to the dealership, but i've been given a death-trap to drive for a week while they exorcise the demons controlling the sunroof positioning. the flashy yaris sport is eerily similar to the smartshitcar that i have bemoaned in the past.

when i installed the infant car seat, i noticed it was wiggling to and fro as if it were on roller skates and the backseat were a slick, polished surface instead of pleathery upholstery. luckily, little miss didn't seem to mind in the least. babies can be so accommodating sometimes.

returning home to find no viable parking and having to lug a twenty pound infant and all of her crap up an enormous hill to my front door was the icing on my day. i gave in and called b, if only to have him keep me from crying again.

he promptly told me that if i wanted a handicapped parking spot right in front of our door he'd be happy to take the yaris and run over my legs, hopefully rendering me a parapalegic and so in need of special treatment. b's always been good at giving me a little perspective on things.

on the plus side, i plan on falling asleep to the sound of the rain tonight.

my long weekend didn't do much for my writing skills

i think google is mad at me. i might have pushed it over the edge when i didn't want to look up the proper meaning of sadist vs. masochist.

google feels threatened that i no longer care about finding out the exact meanings of things and that i can live my life happily ever after with unanswered questions floating around in my head.

you know what google, not everyone needs to search things all the time. so stop letting all that shitty junk mail into my inbox to try and make me pay attention to you, or guess what, i'll boycott your ass. i'll start writing real letters and mailing them to people, through the postal service, to read instead of using blogger. i bet that'll make me really popular, and you'll lose all that potential revenue from the ads on my blog. you know, those little unassuming links in my sidebar that usually talk about bed bugs or chinese thongs (thank god we got rid of that one).

and you know what else, google, if that's even your real name, i'm still kinda mad at you for making me have to be invisible every damn day on gchat. marvin's still stalking me. isn't there a setting somewhere that will let me just be invisible to one person? if not, i suggest you get on that piece because it's getting really old having to go through those two extra steps to open a chat window with b while he's at work.

so guess what i'm going to do now, i'm going to do your job for you, stupid google. i'm going to answer some really important and profound questions that were recently posed to me. because everyone knows that if you post questions on your blog i am obsessively compelled to answer, much like a dictionary with tourette's.

my little becky, who hangs out over at i'll go eat worms, was the latest to test this theory. while we haven't been friends for very long, i can say that her poignant probes into the recesses of my mind are truly astounding. and for that, becky, i made you a special present. and also because you love doggies as much as i do. so before i get to the questions, i want to give you this:



thanks becky, for understanding the ups and downs of being a dog owner, and also for making up your own words all the time. i'll completely understand if you don't like my present, and i may or may not steal it back to put on my blog as well.


and off we go:

13. if you were an animal and you couldn't get that eye goop that gets in your eye corners from everyday living or baby zebra killing would that just totally drive you frickin insane? additionally, would you lick the eyegoop out of your cheetah lovah and cheetah baby's eyes because, you know, appearance may not be everything but eyegoop is juss nast? and would you sit butt to face sistee nine style to flick flys off each other with your tails?

eye goop is quite possibly one of the most disgusting things on this planet. i avoid the ones on monster's face at all costs, and leave them to grow and harden to the size of small pebbles until they either fall off from gravity or b sees them and cleans them for me. so no, i will not in any incarnation have anything ever to do with goop.

14. bonus! what is the name of my favorite freckle?

hairy petunia

15. if you had whiskers would you grow them out or would you keep them at a respectable length? can you tell that i'm watching a nature show while writing questions?

what i am starting to think is that you may have confused me with some other cat loving blogger, because i hate cats and all cat things, including whiskers.

16. don't you hate it when t9 is like being a bastard and keeps putting of instead of me or good instead of home? why can't they fix that?

ok, you definitely have me confused with someone else! how could you, becky?! are all my posts about my smelly dog not enough for you to remember me? i mean, i can see how you might make this mistake, kristine is my friend in real land, outside of blogland, and we do sometimes make cross-references to each other. but since we are in fact separate people, when her kid t9 is being a bastard i really don't give a what because he's not mine and i only see him like once a week.


and that shall now conclude this round of 'questions i answer so i don't have to think of something extraordinarily witty to blog about' for today. i will try to bring the clever/originality sometime soon, but no promises.

eat at your own risk

there's nothing wrong with being sexually adventurous, but there's definitely some lines that i won't cross. the biggest taboo for me is the mixing of food and sex.

these two acts, once merely for survival, have often become intertwined and co-mingled in a way that i will never feel comfortable with. i like to savor the taste of a well-prepared meal, or enjoy a delicious dessert, on a plate. i prefer any sexual encounter to be as far removed from the kitchen as possible.

but there are some folks out there who would call me prude, or at the very least, tell me that i can't knock it til i try it. all i can say to that is you can have your whipped cream bikinis and sushi served on a woman wearing nothing more than lotus leaves, i'm too much of a purist to taint one pleasure with another. and how do you really, really know what you're getting yourself into? humans can carry around some nasty little surprises that may only become visible when it's way too late for you to do anything about it. before any of you guys get too excited, ask yourself, is this thick, rich whipped cream just masking genital warts and maybe some crabs? or perhaps, think twice before using your chopsticks near the sushi woman's too-perky breasts, lest you cause her implant to rupture, spilling boob juices onto your spicy tuna maki.

thinking about eating, licking, or otherwise consuming food from another person's body, no matter how physically attractive they may be, is so repulsive to me that i can't help but shudder and make that 'bleeecchhh' sound.

body shots are right up there as well. you might argue that if the liquor is strong enough, say moonshine as opposed to peach schnapps, there might actually be some sanitizing going on there to make ingesting fluid off of someone's body seem not so bad. and you may be right, but i will not be the one to test that theory.

this whole topic may seem a bit out of the blue for me, but the truth is, it's been prompted by what i consider to be one of the most disturbing advertisements i've ever seen.



there's so many levels of wrong here, white castle. the weird shadowy, smokey lighting, the pig stripper taking pleasure in covering herself in the sauce, and the fact that she knows she's performing for a crowd who's captivated by her sexy dance. eeww. but the part that really gets to me, the part where i have to say 'that's enough of this food porn!' and quickly change the channel, is when the guy licks the sauce off the paper bag from his finger and then nods his head, acknowledging his pleasure.

it's too much for me. i need a hot, steamy shower to clean all the icky off.

first an award and then a game

now i really have to brush up on my paint skills, look what miss.chief did!!!


thanks for the great award miss! how did you know that i've always envied stevie's big beautiful teeth? i can feel him singing his happiness directly to me every time i see his open mouth. wait, that wasn't supposed to sound like that... whatever, YAY for awards!!

and now, because it's thursday, or because it's not raining this very second, i would like to pose a little game of 'would you rather: laundry edition' for some much needed guidance in this matter.

this issue is this, my laundry room, being a good half a mile down a hill, around a corner, in the back of a building, and in that building's basement, doesn't really make me want to do laundry all the time. so what i try to do is pick the day that i see the least offensive of my neighbors out and about, possibly doing their laundry as well.

today i spy with my brown eye(s) two of the more exceptionally loathsome laundry folks.

first there's walking wonder*:


walking wonder can be seen on any given day throughout the year wearing sweatpants, no shirt, and an ankle length leather trench, which i don't think is supposed to be ankle length but it is on him because he's only five foot four. his name is derived from the very technical observation that he walks up and down our (dead-end) street ceaselessly and tirelessly, on his way to no where.

this all might sound harmless enough, but wait, now let me tell you about his rotten attitude. he chain smokes outside of the laundry room waiting for some unattended machine to stop its cycle of spinning, just so he can reach in with his tar hands and take your clothes out in a flurry of curses, throw them in a moist pile on the not-so-clean folding table, and shove his clothes in even though there may in fact be no less than three other machines available.

also out and about, enjoying the split second of sunshine that just peeked through the clouds today, is mr. toothless wonder. his approach is vastly different from my other good neighbor. this guy likes to sit in the laundry room the whole entire time (which, considering what goes on there, i can't fault him too much for) and tell each person who enters exactly how long each machine has been running for, because he's taking notes. oh, and i can't leave out the part where he will eye-fuck me (with his slightly crossed eyes) and grin and lick his lips while i try to put my clothes in any motherfuckingmachine i can find and get the hell out of there as fast as i can.

so, dear reader, i could use a little advice here. would you rather deal with walking wonder touching your undies and leaving them for all the world to see, or mr. toothless making you feel that no matter how many times you shower you're still going to be very dirty for at least two consecutive days?


*this picture is not really my neighbor, but the closest i could find without actually having to get near him to take my own picture.

a post in which i will not use the word 'green' to mean environmentally conscious

i may not be the most active environmentalist out there, or active at all, but i do care about rational and real ways that people can bring about change. although sometimes i can't help myself from seeing the stupid in someone's attempt at being smart.

my most recent pet peeve is this:



this vehicle, known as the 'smart for two' car, has already begun infiltrating our streets. this little fella here, while he tries to look all cute and small, is actually going to bring about the demise of our roadways as we know them today.

i do agree that fuel efficient models and less wasteful factories are a good thing for our society, but this car can guarantee only one thing: getting hit hard = certain death. just look at what happened to this one when a stray butterfly accidentally flew into the driver's side door:



this rolling harbinger of death is a clear example of when you can really say 'what the fuck are reinforced steel beams going to do for me here?' don't even get me started on the assclowns who need to ask about putting a car seat in this piece. and to make matters worse, it's still kind of expensive. the base model starts at over $11,000. a car with wheels smaller than my baby's radio flyer shouldn't cost more than 2-3k, in my opinion.

how about i take my $11,000, buy a pre-owned vehicle of a slightly more solid build, and keep one less manufacturing plant from opening up. at least my 4-runner will protect tax payers from all the civil suits associated with the smartshitcar. i can see it now, the endless pile-ups blocking traffic, increasing road rage, and then riots and fires will take over. all those trees they say they're going to plant for the purchase of a new vehicle will be burned to cinders and we'll be left with nothing but tanks and ashes and devastation.

so if you want to help destroy our planet, feel free to roll in one of these bad boys. i promise i won't make faces at you and get distracted by your retardedness while driving.


note: if you try to tell me good things about this car i will stick my fingers in my ears singing 'lalalalala-i can't hear you!'

a message to the creepy maintenance man wearing a blue wool sweater in 85 degree weather who has treats in his pants

dear lone english speaking tor view village maintenance man, please stop using your whisper voice to try to lure my dog over to you for treats.

sir, not only does my dog has severe sensitive stomach issues that you cannot possibly be aware of, producing mass amounts of doggie vomit and diarrhea from one single milkbone, but your approach is unsettlingly similar to a child molester hunting for prey.

if you were normal and not in any way scary, i might be nice and bring one of monster's special dietary treats outside and give it to you to give to him. but you'd have to really, really convince me that you're not having sick and unnatural fantasies about my dog, which you are clearly not capable of.

oh sir, i see the gleam in you eye, and the corner of your mouth turn in a sly smile when you see my furry friend walking by. even when we're over a hundred yards away, across the street, you follow him with your eyes, one hand shading them from the sun to get a better view, and slowly start walking in our direction. your false attempts to be disarming 'can i give the doggie a trrreeeeaaaaattt?' send chills up my spine. what's worse is that monster knows you as the 'treat guy' and so gets excited, irregardless of his imminent bowel discomfort. poor little guy has no notion of what you'd really do to him if you could get your hands on him, bribing him with dry, crumbly cookies.

no, my monster is way too innocent to be corrupted by your unbridled desire for doggie rape, and i'd like to keep it that way. so from now on, sir, please keep your treats in your pants for another victim and allow us to enjoy our morning walk without your sinister motives clouding the air.

help, i could use somebody...(a real person, that is)

this afternoon, i realized that there a few questions i have that, if answered, i would be able to rest much easier. so i call to you, blogland, to hopefully supply me with some piece of mind:

1. if a bathroom/tub cleaner makes my eyes water and the back of my throat burn, is it unsafe to give my baby a bath in a tub that was just cleaned with said cleaner, or does it just mean that it works really, really well?

2. is it possible that the non-english-speaking maintenance workers at my apartment complex have some kind of special caller id that flashes 'angry psycho' in their native tongue when i call (six times) to get my air conditioner fixed and that's the real reason why they never pick up?

3. is it possible for a computer tard like me to find help on blogger about that stupid word verification that's fucking with comments being posted on my blog? i've gotten several (exactly four) reports of it preventing comments from being accepted, so naturally i spent a solid eight minutes browsing the blogger help links only to become convinced that blogger is totally self-aware and has no real live people involved in any of it's decision making processes. which prompts me to ask, what can i bribe an electronic entity with to allow me to collect comments like the comment whore that i am?

if anyone out there can help with any of the above and at the same time share how you made it past the demon blogger regulator on the comments link, please, please spread your knowledge.

disclaimer: i can only offer payment of one randomly selected, slightly chewed baby/dog toy for any useful information.

any given sunday

for lack of anything legitimately interesting to write about today, i'd like to share the conversation b and i had last night, mostly because i think that anything he says is hilarious so it's nice to let him make the funny for me. the following discussion takes part sunday evening, as we were watching the third game in the yankees/red sox series:

b: OH SHIT! did you just see that?

me: what?

b: what'shisname just fucking STOLE home!

me: (looking up from making grocery list) all i see is pettitte's mouth hanging open like he's trying to catch a fly or something.

b: pettitte's so old he needs a cane to get out to the mound. his slow ass was asking for someone to show him up like that.

me: when is youkilis going to give that poor rat he drapes over his chin a break? i mean, i know he shaved it for his kids charity a few years ago, but unless he plans to do that every few months, why is it back? if he's good enough to bat over .600 (even if it is still april) he should know that not one woman alive actually wants to snuggle up to that thing.

b: i know, i need a goatee like i need a second butthole, which is not at all.

____

b: so do you think it's wrong that i hate on twitter even though i might be the only one?

me: no, you should feel free to hate on anything you want. i mean, i tried twitter and within 24 hours realized that it was way too depressing to sit and type about things that i'm doing for no one to read.

b: yeah, sometimes i feel like 'fuck it, there always has to be at least one voice of dissent, right?'

me: i think twitter is like that restaurant where the servers are all mean to you on purpose because you're supposed to think it's witty and original, when that concept is really only entertaining to a specific crowd.

b: what the...? there's a place where the waiters talk shit to you?

me: yeah, not around here, i think it's in like chicago or something. whatever, i just heard about it somewhere.

b: if a waiter ever pulled that shit with me i'd be all 'who the fuck are you calling me fat for eating greasy burgers and cheese fries and twenty gallons of coke? oh, and do you have cheesecake here too?'

____

me: can the guy from the optimum commercials get with the chick from the progressive commercials and go somewhere to annoy each other to death already?

b: i hope they go to the same place that the douchebags who make car and cell phone commercials will end up. those bastards promise you buckets of happiness and bags of gold and then have 300 teeny tiny words and the bottom of the screen explaining how they can legally lie to you.

____

me: monster, barking at nothing will not distract me from the fact that you just dropped a horrendous stink bomb on me.

b: but what about him compulsively licking his junk and then coming up to give you lots of kisses?

finis.

deep thoughts, way too deep

i love to try new things, and generally, the more spontaneous the notion, the better. i find the excitement and anticipation of experiencing something for the first time is addicting. this however, will usually dissipate entirely after i try whatever it is that i have lined up for myself.

i was probably about ten years old when i was really into horseback riding. and by 'really into' i mean that i begged my mom to take me because it looked like a lot of fun. so we went, once. not only did the mean old nag refuse to walk faster than the rate of the grass growing, but it bit me on my little pencil-sized arm after the ride. i had horse tooth imprints for two weeks. i quickly realized that the horse smell and perpetual fog of flies was not something i'd be willing to put up with if i pursued horseback riding.

next was water skiing. i guess my first mistake here was that it was in the hudson river. big foul. not only have mutant three-eyed fish been caught here, but it has long been used as a through-way to haul excess new york city garbage upstate for dumping. regardless of starting out with such a handicap, i gave it my all, for about an hour. after managing to get vertical maybe twice, and swallowing way more of the hudson than i was comfortable with, i gave up. only i chose the worst place in america to give up, the swampy side of the river with algae so thick that i was instantly enveloped in slime. as i sat there in the menacing goo, waiting for the boat to bring the rope around, my mind filled with images of all the little bugs and critters that called the algae home swarming all over my body. i was near hysterics by the time i was pulled from the water.

move along to sky diving. now this was one that i was really super excited about. it just sounded so brazen and yet whimsical at the same time. i was maybe 25 and for a very dear friend's birthday, myself and our third dear friend decided to jump out of a plane together. oh yeah, and we actually paid an additional $85 to have an extra person jump with each of us to record us on dvd. i don't even need to talk about what it felt like watching my friend disappear into the clouds, becoming infinitely smaller. but i will say that those instructors need to tell beginners that if you open your mouth really wide going 120 miles per hour, it makes it really hard to breath. so hard, in fact, that you can feel as if you're suffocating and convince yourself that you will arrive on the ground in a tragic heap of dead flesh and bones. that information would have been much more helpful than the jokes about my straps being loose. having made it to the ground safely, i vowed to never watch the dvd of my horrifying experience, although i can't bring myself to throw it away.

now i'm at a crossroads.

i am thoroughly intrigued by my cousin's practice of fire walking. it seems to be a challenge to purify your thoughts in such a focused way as to be able to walk across fire and emerge stronger rather than weakened by the flames.

as much as i want to conquer the fire, i don't want it to conquer me.

am i better off leaving this one alone, to let the idea live on only as a fantasy in my head? my track record speaks for itself, but have i come far enough in my life that i can overcome my own self?

this is the point at which my head explodes and i become the universe, as theodor learns in 'the mysterious stranger,' "nothing exists save empty space--and you."

a message to the man riding his motorcycle over the mountain by west point

dear sir, you are obese.

i hope that this is not news to you, but if it is, i truly am sorry to be the one who had to clue you in.

i address you today, sir, because yesterday when i was driving behind you, just past bear mountain, your massive body weight tilting dangerously close to the surface of the road was enough to give me severe anxiety for the next 12 hours.

every time you negotiated one of the many curves in the road, i had to brace for the inevitable event of your massive self no longer defying gravity and wiping out right in front of my eyes, at 60 miles per hour. you must have developed the balance of a ballerina, because according to the laws of physics, as i understand them, you should no longer have any legs left to wrap around your hog. in which case, i must praise you for such an accomplishment.

that feat, however astounding, does not negate the sensation that overcomes me when i see you whipping around curves on the side of a mountain that i'm about to witness a real live death. aren't there laws and weight limits about this very situation? didn't they invent that harley trike just for this kind of thing?

just some food for thought sir, the next time you put on your tiny helmet and climb aboard your toy-sized motorcycle. maybe it's not such a great idea to push your luck so far.

it's not me, it's what you do to me

today i'm going to share what i would say to a 'friend' if i could say anything to her and have her actually listen instead of waiting politely (or not) for me to stop talking just so she could resume talking about herself.

and i say 'friend' because she's one of those relationships that you're almost forced into, to be nice. like say, your sister's neighbor, who always happens to be around enough to know random details about your life and therefore feels it's appropriate to require you to do friend-like things with her.

so i'm going to call this 'friend' marvin, for annonymity's sake.

yes, that marvin, because i'm pretty sure this chick is from mars.

since i imagine myself talking to her in person, and so having to deal with her wacky interruptions, i will be inserting those into this conversation, which in no way is meant to be a dialogue.

"marvin, we've known each other for a few years now, and we've both had some amazing changes happen in our lives, (i know! yeah it's so great that you can come over with the baby just in time for me to break out the new enormous bbq grill we just paid a million dollars for!!)...which would normally connect two people and help to build a stronger foundation for a friendship. however, this is not the case with us.

as we find ourselves in situations that pose similar questions to us, we are increasingly following diverging paths. what i mean by that is that the life choices you make for your family are the exact opposite of the choices i make. the values you esteem, i find meaningless. the traditions you neglect, i treasure and wouldn't give up no matter what opposition i faced. (so i really want to open an etsy shop, should i call it 'made by marvin' or 'shop here sista!'??)

i've always said, and still firmly believe, that each person/family has the innate right to do as they please without interferrence from others. marvin, with you, i find myself wanting to grab you by your ears and shake you into reason. it's increasingly harder for me to partake in your irreverent ways, all the while keeping my mouth shut about how you're totally fucking your life up.

i can't keep up with the charade. (do you like my new drapes? i wasn't so sure about the color, but now i think it's totally the right shade of mocha.)"

this relationship has never been on the level where i would genuinely feel that any helpful advice would be worth the air required to suck in and brace myself for the worthless discussion, nor would it ever be solicited from marvin. and that's the reason why this is all hypothetical. because the message would never get through. i just have to let this one die off into that land of 'oh yeah, whatever happened to her?' we're all going to be better off in the end.

when blogger's block attacks

i've been in a slump lately. somewhere between returning to work for exactly nine hours and then finding out i'm not working again for another two weeks, and making mass quantities of baby food for little miss, i began to think that i've actually run out of interesting things to say.

in the past three days i've had several rejected posts. some have made it almost to the publish button, only to be deleted at the very last second. rather than over think the shit of out every little detail, as is my normal custom, this time i decided to just throw out some of my ideas in list form and see if there are any bites:

1. discuss why people who want to live 'off the grid' really annoy me

2. explain my extreme aversion to 'weird money'

3. share my experience of sheer terror when i thought that i had an old pair of contacts actually fused to my eyeballs

4. talk about how addicted i am to specialty beer and how i've always wanted to brew my own yet most likely never will

5. tell someone (anonymously, of course) about how i can't be friends with her anymore because she makes me into a hypocrite

i completely understand if the consensus is to wait for me to be struck with some other miraculous inspiration. hopefully i'll be back to my true form soon. in the meantime, i won't beg, but i'll ask nicely, don't give up on me yet.

don't let the pineapple talk you into anything

today i'm going to be sharing my deep philosophical thoughts about the vast abyss that exists in my kitchen. it's a wasteland filled with forgotten food items, so depressing that when you gaze into its lonely world you are almost compelled to shed a tear. yes friends, i'm talking about my pantry.

in restaurant lingo, it's known as dry storage, or more commonly, that place to go when you want to raid the pastry department's stash of jellybeans and imported chocolates. in kitchens near and far, large and small, this is the dead zone of food. this is where you will actually find dust bunnies gathering on top of canned goods and bags of rice that seem to sigh if you touch them, exhausted by the effort of attempting to look appealing.

i have ventured forth into this dismal realm in hopes of either a) using some of the miscellaneous crap i have accumulated or b) throwing out (i mean, donating) those innocuous food items i must have purchased while delirious in my immediately post-partum phase.

this mission has brought to mind a certain anecdote about canned pineapple. my husband's sister, bridget, was telling us about the time she was at their parents' house and heard a loud sudden, banging noise. after careful inspection, she discovered that a can of pineapple chunks had mysteriously exploded in the pantry, spraying everything within a five foot radius with it's sticky syrupy bits. at which point in the telling of this anecdote my husband's brother, conor, jumps in with 'it was so tired of living there it killed itself!'

while i laughed so hard i cried a little at this story, i found myself wondering if i too, was driving any of my neglected consumables to suicide. when my eyes landed on the bag of barley, long passed it's expiration date (um, wtf is there an expiration on barley for anyway? it's just a grain, and if you keep it in an airtight container, or in the original bag with a paper clip holding it shut, it should be good for a long, long time, right?), i cooked it up for dinner, mostly to ease my guilt. it helped a little, but i needed to go further.

so far it hasn't been as bad as i thought it would be. i actually made black bean soup * the other night using canned beans. not only did it look exactly like the picture, but it tasted pretty good too. score one for the wasteland.

this small step in the right direction is what i needed to revitalize my pantry. i will make the commitment to keep things current if you, pantry, will promise to take your prozac and not let any 'accidents' happen on your watch. working together i know we can build a solid relationship based on mutual respect. no more will i stuff you with soups i never intend to eat, or 9 out of the 10 ingredients needed to make a recipe, doomed to perpetually being 'almost' used.

pantry, i'm here for you. we'll get through this rough time. and then, just when you're starting to show vibrant signs of life, i'll revert back to my old ways until the next passing moment of introspection strikes.

*note: i did modify the recipe slightly. i added an extra can of beans to the pureed part to make the soup a little thinker, and i think it was for the better. the soup needed it, and i got to use one more can from the pantry, everybody wins.

a message to the woman enjoying her cig on 34th street

tights are not the same as pants.

now, i may not be all up in the fashion industry, or even into new current trends, but i'm pretty sure that no one, anywhere, can pull off pretending that a pair of opaque tights are a sufficient replacement for wearing actual pants.

dear woman standing outside of macy's, even if you had that slamming body that i imagine i used to have 10 years ago (which, i hate to break it to you, you don't), i would still be obligated to tell you that it's just not polite to show all of your crevices to the general public. your over sized, off-the-shoulder tunic was not nearly long enough to conceal your bits, in the front or back.

i can be fairly certain that this ensemble was put together deliberately attempting to achieve that skinny-jean look without actually having to find a pair of skinny jeans to button around your enormous middle. while slightly more uncomfortable, the jeans would have at least hidden your cracks from my field of vision and i would have been able to better enjoy my day, nay, my life, without their image burned forever on my retinas.

so please, please, for all of us who have eyes, wear a skirt or dress over those tights, or just retire them altogether. they've had a hard life so far, it's time to cut them some slack.

hold me when the end comes

have you heard about the latest threat to end life as we know it? this sounds like a lame horror movie, complete with 'zombie computers' and a 'master machine'. we all know how well i deal with that type of nonsense.

but seriously, SERIOUSLY? who are these people that write this shit? what do they get out of it? is it more about the fact that they CAN do it?

i need to know the answer, because if you tell me that i have to jump through hoops to protect my computer from something that wants to steal my personal banking information, i'll just laugh at you.

as we already know, my computer has a mind of it's own, so living with another virus won't really change how i do things on my end. additionally, i hope those stupid bastards wrote something into that virus to target rich people, because they'll be pissed if they even waste a minute opening up my bank account.

not to mention the fact that i'm pretty sure demonic spirits can transfer through wires, so HA, joke's on you assclowns! you think you're coming at me with some big bad virus to make me cower in a corner, think again. i've got shit you can't even comprehend running rampant on my hard drive.

no, i'm not scared of your silly april fool's day virus. you can do your worst and it won't phase me one bit.

what i am scared of is when my computer finds out i've been calling it names. i better keep that knife handy. i'll fight you to the death, computer, yours or mine.