Author Archives: iasshole

Hello Nasty, How You Been

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As per usual, our personal heads here at the Offices of I, Asshole have been firmly planted up the respective owner’s asses. In other words, I’ve been busy.

On Friday, Captain Vimes went in for his ballectomy, which was a success!!! Unfortunately, having him de-balled now makes no difference about whether or not he will pee in the house in places other than his designated poopidor (not to be confused with a humidor, though some cigars have reminded me of cat pee). When we went to Oregon last weekend, we closed every door in the house, except the door to the basement, which leads to his poopidors. So while we were gone, the Captain developed the charming habit of peeing down the heating vent in the kitchen. HORRORS.

Our resident ol’ lady cat-grump is partly to blame, because I happen to know she’s often in his way, growling at him. I think the other part of it is laziness and convenience. To combat this problem, I laid a piece of cardboard about the size of a record over the corner where the vent is, and covered it with loops of sticky packing tape, which of course most cats will never walk on, let alone pop a squat on. We have not had another accident, and I take him downstairs if I see him looking sniffy. Most the time he’s just sniffy, but occasionally he’s like, oh yeah, I gotta potty.

The shaved area around the incision makes his junk look extra-protuberant, just like a porno actor with shaved pubes to add that critical extra inch. Good times. I have to say, the Seattle Pound was mighty affordable, although I’m 95% certain they gave him a case of ear mites. Our other cat doesn’t have them, and doesn’t come near enough to him to transmit them anyway, and he’s still an indoor cat. So, hooray, another thing for my to-do list.

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“Cain and Abel, Break It Up and Get Your Momma Another Beer.”

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We went off to a tiny little dot of a town in Eastern Oregon last weekend and the first day we were back we had an unexpected (but delightful) house guest, so I am just now catching my breath.

Oregon was…hellacious AND fabulous, all at the same time. I like lists, so Ima make one.

Oregon Rules: Pimps Up

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1. I was not at home, cooking and cleaning. Instead, I was cooking and cleaning at someone else’s house. WHAT COULD BE BETTER than the challenge of scrubbing a new toilet? NOTHING, that’s what. Okay, so maybe this one goes into both categories.
2. The house we stayed in has a two-person bathtub, the type with the faucet in the middle.
3. We saw coyote poo in the road, and I forgot my camera. Dammit! It had fur in it!
4. Franny had a good time, despite the fact that she complained about the heat the whole time. Poor Seattle kid doesn’t grok heat or seeing the sun. “Why is it so hot here, Mom?”
5. Companion discovered that he can grill like a motherfucker. He’s only grilled once before, at my mom’s house. My mom was all, “Here, grill these,” and he was all, “But…I’ve…never…done…this…before….” He sort of jacked it up then, but this time was golden. Supa says this skill is built into the Y chromosome, and I’m inclined to believe her.
6. We had Thai food at the only joint in the nearest “large” town, Hood River. I love that joint, it’s actually less of a Thai joint, and more of a Thai bus/trailer thing, and it’s in the parking lot of a former gas station. It’s not the best I’ve ever had, but she’s in a trailer, fer chrissakes. She could hold her own with any greasy Thai spoon in the U-District here, I’d warrant.

Oregon Drools: Hoes Down

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1. The aforementioned heat. Man, I’m not used to, you know, sweating anymore. coughcoughI’mawusscoughcough.
2. The coyotes howled intermittently all night Saturday night, and I kept snapping awake because I realized I’m actually prey. Imagine that.
3. The house was not childproofed, which we forgot, so we ran after Strudel all weekend while she was awake.
4. For a short weekend away, we had to endure a lot of car shenanigans. Said shenanigans included, but were not limited to:
a. Screaming: The Basics
b. Advanced Screaming: Vacillating from a Low-Grade Whine to Ear-Splitting Wails
c. Throwing things
d. Refusing to eat and/or use the bathroom at appropriate times
e. Repeatedly crossing “The Designated Sibling Boundary Line” in the backseat. “GET. YOUR. HANDS. OFF. HER. CAR. SEAT. I WILL EAT YOUR HEAD.”

Finally, a bad thing that deserves its own paragraph: by babies have finally turned on each other. As we were crossing the state line, Strudel was doing some half-assed whining and I glanced in the rear view and saw something flashing in the backseat. I thought Strudel had something and was waving it around. I sat up and took a closer look and realized that Franny was repeatedly hitting Strudel with her cloth headband that is covered in sequins, which was making Strudel disgruntled enough to whine but not cry.

“If I see you doing that again, I will leave you at the side of the road,” I said forcefully, feeling my stepfather’s (who was criminally spastic on vacations) spirit inhabit my body and speak through my mouth. “Do NOT hit my baby.”

I was so torn. My babies are now hitting each other. And my first child, the child of my heart who is so special to me because she made me a mother in the first place…I was completely possessed by the urge to jettison her from the car. “Do I really need more than one child?” I thought to myself. My heart broke a little, partly because it’s super sad, and partly because I was feeling hormonal. I am okay now.

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On the Way Back From the Grocery Store

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At our nearest grocery store, which is independent, and (I hate this word, but it’s true) TOTALLY darling, Franny is friends with half the clerks there. The night manager doesn’t really even talk to me, but will poke Franny when she comes by. A new clerk I didn’t know bounced up to us and said “Hiiiiii!!!” to Franny. “Remember me?” She was really young and the first thing I noticed was that she was incredibly and perfectly brown, which she explained a moment later. “I tan in the park across the street from Franny’s school, so I see the kids at the park all the time when they’re out.” She introduced herself and gave us the name of her building, which is two doors down from Franny’s school.

She was a very friendly young woman and Franny seemed thrilled to see her, so I said quietly to Companion on the way home, “It boggles me a little that people still tan themselves.” Skin cancer runs in my Whitey McWhiterson family.

“Well, not everyone can be naturally beautiful, honey.” I thought he was teasing me, and I gave him a pinch. “No, I’m serious,” he said. “You don’t need to tan, you got booty on tap, baby.”

Only in my wildest dreams did I hope to find someone who would say things like this to me. I spend most of my time being equally delighted and horrified by him, which I’ve discovered I enjoy. What will happen next? I never know, but 99% of the time it’s a good surprise.

The Welcome Wagon

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On Thursday evening Companion and I were standing in the yard necking like the chavs we are while the girls noodled in our front garden, when we heard a shout from our neighbor in the duplex next to ours. Not our duplex neighbor with the new baby, but the next building over, which is also a duplex.

“HEEEY! There’s no kissing on this street!” We laughed and went back to it. “HEEEY! I said there’s no kissing on this street. Unless it’s me and MY man.” She came over with a flower in her hand that she had just grabbed from her front yard. I see her a lot; she looks like she’s about retirement age and shouts thing at me occasionally. I knew that she has lived here for forty-three years and knows our landlady. The moment Memorial Day came she and her husband erected a patio tent with chairs and a speaker set up, which often kicks “smooooth jazz” in the evenings, mingled with raucous laughter and the sizzle of their grill. When she came over to us she looked about three sheets to. “Your kids are cute. You want to come over for a glass of wine?”

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Rated “W” for Wastoid

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“The House of Representatives is full of insane jackasses.” –Jon Stewart on video game violence.

Man moons on live news; anchorman keeps his shit together. (NSFW)

Colbert on animal marriage: “The gays are on the march.”

ASSHAND.

Comcast tech sleeps on customer’s couch.

How to be featured on Youtube. Skip ahead to 00:45, seriously. That’s all you need. You can watch the whole thing, though. I won’t judge you.

Youtube is so swell when you wake up too early. And now I have to pack for our weekend!

Hold Still and I Will Staple Your Ears Back On

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1. I was cleaning cleaning cleaning today. We are going out of town this weekend, and I have discovered that the post-vacation bummer is slightly lessened by returning to a spotless house. A clean house makes your return to the mundane a little harder to hate.

Franny whooshed around after me, and offered to help me clean.

“Okay,” I said. “But I need really good listening ears. You have not been the greatest listener this week.”

“I promise I will listen, Mom.”

“Well, I think I will teach you how to scrub the toilet first,” I said.

“YAY! I get to scrub the TOILET!” Franny said.

Later, I was getting ready to sweep the dust bunnies out of the bedrooms, so I asked her to move stuff off the floor, like the laundry hamper and a couple of Strudel’s toys.

“But don’t move the little rugs,” I finished, “because I’ll vacuum them.”

“Okay, Mom.”

As she went in to the room I could see her pause. The look on her face said What did that lady say?

“What did you say to move, Mom?”

“Everything BUT the rugs.”

A couple of minutes later I peeked in and saw her moving the rugs around.

“What are you doing?” I asked uselessly. I could see what she was doing.

“Moving the rugs,” Franny replied, with a hint of, “Duh, Mom.”

“You know what? I think I will clean by myself today.”

If I said to her, “Don’t go near the edge of that cliff over there,” she’d run towards it going, “What cliff? I don’t see a…AAAAAAAAAHHH!” What a space monkey. It’s like living with her dad all over again, only she has a prayer of growing out of it. It’s probably a good thing we are not visiting the Swiss Alps or a place with shark-infested waters this weekend. “What sharks? AAAAAH!!!”

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I Hail From Nerdport

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Despite appearances, I am usually EXTREMELY behind on things that are cool. In fact, one of my very favorite things to do every six months or so is to go out to the biggie-sized electronics store and rootle through the bargain software bin. I am never happier as when I find something marked down to like, $3.95. Nevermind the fact that the game is so old my computer won’t even talk to it, and I have to find some OTHER no-doubt-spyware-installing software to download that will make my computer (Tyrone) be able to understand toddler language, so to speak. I can just hear Tyrone, “I have a brain the size of a PLANET, and you want me to run Bard’s Tale II.”

So on Sunday, when we were supposed to be looking for MP3 players, I found Elder Scrolls III for TWENNY DOLLA! Featuring AMAZING 2002 TECHNOLOGY. That shiot will blow your doors off, dude. Actually, it’s marvelous, because Tyrone was built in ’02, and I have beefed him up since then, so he says he likes this.

Speaking of the amazing year 2002, I have gotten into the Harry Potter series eight years later. NOW I KNOW what you were all talking about. Sorry about the confusion before.

Seriously, it’s Okay. I can see why I read the first one in ’98, after getting it for xmas, and then losing interest by the time the second one rolled around. What got me into the series this summer is A) Extreme boredom coupled with the inability to go anywhere interesting due to the fact that I have a toddler who’s squirmier than a bag of het-up snakes, and B) Companion brought home Hairy Pooper 6: I Have Killed Off the Best Character (Evil Laughter). Aaand then I could go back and read them all in a big gluttonous two-week orgy.

So it’s actually not always so bad to get things late. Witness: $20 computer games, and two-week reading orgies. THE END!

Next Time on I, Out-Of-It-hole: Have you guys heard about ROLLERBLADING? It’s like skates, but just one row of wheels!

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“I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed.”

Peanut Butter Strudel Time!

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It’s debatable whether or not I’ll get to a PNW’ed today. I am pretty depressed after seeing Britney’s newest Letter of Truth. LE SIGH.

Britney. I don’t know, man. You really let me down. “Mah dad used to drive with me on his lap. We’re jes country.” Well, you can watch for yourself how the accent and the little-girl voice comes and goes. Logic and sanity does not come and go. It’s just gone. Admire Matt Lauer’s restraint and watch how he stifles his self-loathing here. If this video leaves you mopey too, I suggest you look at all of these.

And now, a diverting Friday frolic: Peanut Butter Strudel Time!!!!!

AAAND the grudgematch of the century!!!! Captain Vimes versus Tupperware! Two thingies enter, one thingie leaves!!!