So, I hurt my poor husband’s feelings this morning. He was being funny and nigh unto angelic, when my neurotic side showed up (right on time, as usual). My normal-self side said, “He’s being funny and nigh unto angelic,” and the other side (the Dark Side) of me said, “He’s making fun of me and that’s not so heavenly.” So the latter won over the former and I wound up acting like a little demon.
Sorry baby. I love you and I DO think you’re funny and I WAS laughing. I just wasn’t showing it so well.
First: One of My Current Favorite Songs
Mi Confesion by Gotan Project. Nice, nice, nice.
Second: A Conversation Between My Husband and Son
Beaux: What is that black stuff on the ground?
Rex: It’s tar. It keeps the water from getting into the cracks of the pavement.
Beaux: Did you know that I picked up some of that tar a long time ago when I was four? You know, when I was just a kid?
Rex: Ummm, You do realize that you’re four right now, right?
Beaux: I’m four and A MONTHS!
Rex: (quirks a brow at me, as if to say, “Where does he get this stuff?”)
Me: (quirking back, “Not from me. That’s for sure!”)
Third: My Oops for The Day
I took the van this afternoon and helped my sister-in-law pick up an old roll-top desk to use for Hope Theatre Company’s production of Anne of Green Gables. Everything went well, except for the massively clogged interstate and the lack of air-conditioning when my foot wasn’t actually pressing on the gas pedal. It all went well… until it was time to unload the furniture.
I had this brilliant idea that it would be easier to unload the van if I parked it backwards in Angela’s driveway. So, instead of pulling left into her drive, I turned right until I couldn’t go right anymore. Then I started backing my way in - WAY in - to her trash can. I figured I shouldn’t try to back in any further and turned my attention to the front of my van to pull forward. That’s when I noticed that I had an audience of three cars that hadn’t been there before. I was blocking their way and I think that after seeing what I could to a harmless trashcan, they were a little afraid to try passing me mid-back-up. I turned the wheel right and put the car into D (I figured the D stood for the gear I was going to use and for the grade I was earning from my fellow drivers because of my stunning backing-in technique). I then pressed on the gas, gently at first, until a grinding sound from behind told me I was going to have to press a little harder. I pressed a little harder and felt the van’s back-end settle heavily after an almost sucking sound, which is what told me that I had gotten my hitch stuck in Luke and Angela’s front yard (sorry, ya’ll). I managed to finish the procedure with minimal damage and waved as the only MILDLY irritated drivers passed, shaking their heads.
I swear, that guy in the truck was going to give himself whiplash with all that head shaking! There was just no reason for that. No reason at all.
At all!
As if he’s never seen someone use a hitch to gauge how fast a curb is approaching!
Just for the record, I did shove as many dirt clods as I could back into their spanking new ditch, courtesy moi, before I left. Who knows? Maybe they won’t miss that particular strip of turf.
The Garden by Mirah. Funky beat. Makes me happy. If I could dance, I would totally do a jig to this song.
Remember when being blood sisters was, like, “the thing”? Well…maybe it was never the thing, but I remember when it seemed like it was. Kind of like, when you first learn about some new concept or idea and then you suddenly start hearing it all over the place.
I had a “blood sister” when I was in elementary. We were very ritualistic about it, too. We each located a scab somewhere on our 7-year-old bodies, and proceeded to pick those scabs off and rub our wounds together. We really felt like we had gone through some secret rite of passage.
But, really. Gross! Right?
I can’t imagine picking a scab to make something bleed, let alone rubbing it on someone else! Ewwww!
I thought about that today when I slapped a mosquito on my arm. It was massive! It was dragging so hard from my vein that I felt slightly dizzy. The stinger was like a straw that might come with a Route 44 from Sonic, only it wasn’t really that big. Actually, I think the mosquito itself was kind of on the small side of large. It was mainly tiny. I hardly felt it, really. But! It was large in spirit as it took on the challenge of sapping every last drop of blood from my body.
I think it was pretty much finished drinking when I hit it, because it was one of those bloody kind of slaps. It made me remember when I had that blood sister for, like, a day in second grade. Then I had this thought that I was now blood sisters with some poor slain mosquito. A brilliant light snuffed out in the prime of her life, on a full belly no less!
Later, when I was absently scratching a welt the size of a Route 44 from Sonic, I didn’t feel bad about slapping that mosquito. What a thief! If she was a person, and we were in second grade together and she asked me to be her blood sister, I would tell her no to her face, before I slapped her.
This is Dedicated to Nathan Davis
Hey Nate,
Saw your Tweet about the shroom in your front yard.
Must say, I think that is a mushroom of quite admirable stature.
Later, I was cleaning the grime from the dribble-catching tray in our coffee pot and heard this song. It made me think of you and that thing I like to call “Mother Nature’s Athlete’s Foot” growing in your yard.
My feelings on mushrooms: They are better left in the yard or tossed in the garbage than sucked into your lungs or digested in your belly.
I especially like the lyrics around 1:31…
CRAP!!!
It grieves me to see this. Especially considering that I worked really hard to compile my very own Muxtape. My goal was to do a different mix for each season. Since the weather has been kind of fallish, I was in a fallish type mood and therefore created my I-like-to-stay-indoors-and-read-during-the-fall Muxtape.
Stink!
I guess maybe I’ll have to withhold my true opinion of the RIAA until winter. If those creeps stifle my creative flow when I’m in an I-prefer-to-stay-inside-and-pluck-my-eyebrows-in-the-winter Muxtape… Well, let’s just say, I won’t be in the mood to compile and sing along with HAPPY tunes.
I hate it.
I admit, I only do it because the popular girls are doing it. Well, ok, AND because I decided not to spend the entire summer in jeans again, which means that other people aside from myself and my poor husband will be seeing my knees and shins and ankles.
It was confirmed long ago that I was not meant to handle an actual razor for anything other than my underarms (which I shave religiously whether they need it or not, because I also hate pit hair, but that’s for another post). I always manage to nigh unto amputate something every time I use a Bic, so during the fall, winter and early spring months, I push the “hairy beast begins here” line. Rex might say I cross it every once in a while during the depths of winter when I cuddle up to him with my cold legs feeling like a Christmas tree against his.
Things changed marginally when my brother-in-law got me an electric razor for Christmas one year. I wasn’t losing mass amounts of blood anymore, so that was good, but then I realized that the razor’s buzzing sound kind of got on my nerves. I tolerated it, since it made Rex a little more amenable to cuddling.
About four months into this new phase of my life, I lost the charger for the electric razor, so for a while there it was Bics and sneaking my dad’s electric razor when we visited.
Then, for my birthday about two years later, Rex bought me another electric razor with a charger that would work with both my razors! So now, I have two electric razors; one to stay at home, and one to carry with me in case I have a shaving emergency (they do arise on occasion, you know).
Now it’s summer and I’m wearing shorts, so I tend to keep my ankles, shins, and knees hair-free except for the occasionally missed hair that I only notice when I feel it shifting around in a breeze. That’s when my emergency razor comes in handy! (I mentioned that last night when we had dinner with some friends, but it seems I was the only girl at the table who notices missed spots when the wind blows.)
I’m so glad God brought electric razors into my life, and that I have a brother-in-law who thinks of such things for his sister-in-law. Now I can wear clothes that hit my knees and not worry about causing people to cringe.
Thanks Luke!
So, I’ve been helping Angela with Hope Theatre Company’s upcoming production of Anne of Green Gables. I was soooo excited to help that I pretty much immediately did what I usually do when I start thinking of rearranging the bedrooms in my house: I printed up some graph paper, cut out color-coded paper furniture to scale, and then I started laying out the stage, scene-by-scene.
Before I knew it, Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe had taken up residence in my mind, and my every waking moment was like, “Anne, I’m sore-y. Can’t we be friends?” and since I was playing Anne, I said, “Why Gil, if by ‘friends’ you actually mean ‘in love for all eternity’ then yes, we can be friends.”
I do the graph/ paper furniture thing, because my house is small and moving furniture around is as exhausting as playing tetris when it starts going way too fast and you have no coordination skills.
Well, so now I have these tiny little pieces of furniture that fit perfectly on my tiny paper stage, but now I’m not so sure we’ll be able to find the real furniture to fit our real stage and my tedious plans will be for naught! If that’s the case, I may have to resort to cutting out life-sized paper couches and tables for the stage with instructions to the actors to just pretend to sit on the furniture. In actuality, they will be doing some pretty harsh squats, which might not be bad for their health in the long run.
I could be doing them a huge favor! Acting is good for your health!
I’ll do that. I’ll grab some construction paper and tape and build the best farmhouse-at-the-turn-of-the-century couch ever, and then I’ll say, “Here’s a paper couch for you,” all the while emphasizing the merits of pretending to sit.
The first time I sit down to dinner with someone, I always warn them, “I spill things. A lot.”
The person usually responds with, “Ahhh, well thanks for the warning, but I’m sure you’re exaggerating.” Or something to that effect.
Tonight, it was my sister-in-law who said, “Here, I’ll move this (this being our sketches for the upcoming production of Anne of Green Gables) out of your way so you can eat. I mean, it’s not like you’re going to spill it or anything, but you know…”
I should have said, “You’re right, Angela. I won’t spill it on my dumb sketches. I’ll just spill it all over your very, super, utterly important paperwork for that new non-profit you’ve been working so hard on lately.”
Instead, I just said, “Thanks, that’s probably a good idea.” Never dreaming that just a few minutes later, I would spill it all over her very, super, utterly important paperwork for that new non-profit she’s been working so hard on lately.
Right about now, she has her future drying on her kitchen counter.
I shouldn’t be allowed to drink anything without a lid. It just shouldn’t happen. People always grieve the loss of something important when I’m around. This time, it’s paperwork, next time it will be the world. We’ll have our own Great Flood and that dumb Ark is still somewhere in Turkey, or wherever they parked it.
Stinkin’ inconvenient, if you ask me.
Then, after all humanity is wiped out, I’ll probably be the only one alive, but I’ll wish I had drowned with the rest of you, because I’ll be tormented forever by those words, “It’s not like you’re going to spill it.”
It’s interesting to see that the more tanned someone is, fewer are the clothes they wear. For instance, someone gets a little color on their legs, and suddenly it’s out with the board shorts and in with the Daisy Dukes. Forget about the fact that they had to squeeze into the Dukes with a shoe horn and look a little like a stuffed sausage when they actually get the zipper pulled up.
I must say, I feel a little guilty of that kind of behavior myself. You see, I normally exit summer with the same pasty-white skin with which I entered that season of the sun. This summer however, I’m living on the edge - I actually got a little bit of color yesterday. It’s not actually a tan per se, it’s more of a redder shade of pink accented with thin stripes of the white skin I left behind.
Ok, most people would call it a sunburn, but I’m calling it my new look, and I think the burned look is good on me. I mean, just this morning, I looked in the mirror after I had ironed my hair down and thought, Man! The burned look is good on you! Then I eshewed my typical short-sleeved t-shirt and got a little more daring.
I went sleeveless! I’m calling it my Daisy Duke Sleeves.
