“A “VERY SPECIAL” SE edition of PNW’d wherein I’m a well-hung ocelot . . . something happens and I end up kill’t. Complete with Strongbad/Teen Girl Squad “sound effects.”
–Scot-san, Kamikaze Lunchbreak
Let it be noted that this is the beginning of scanner domination.
If you are feeling especially self-hating towards your eyes today, you may consider more PNW’ed.
When we last left our hero, her temporary-while-her-house-was-being-built best friend was teaching the young and impressionable about rhyming and stealing, and then got pasted by a car. It’s Ratso Rizzo coughing up blood all over again. I hope you didn’t think that ended my career as a tiny hooligan. Once you get a taste of the naughty life, it takes a lot to come back from that.
As I said, I got thrown into the sticks. Since I lacked retail opportunities, I turned on my own. When I was nine, I started rifling my parent’s drawers for anything I could find, after realizing that was one place in the house I had never been. If someone would have told me not to do that, I probably wouldn’t have. Probably. It just didn’t occur to me that it was an uncool thing to do. And the thing was, I knew my stepfather was rifling through my stuff already, because I was always “up to something.” That’s true. I was. Who wants a kid who isn’t, though? Sometimes I think they might have been happier if I spent six to sixteen staring at the wall and drooling.
So I discovered the world of porn then. For some reason, little kid foolishness I guess, I took a couple of copies of the magazines I found back to my room, to be peeped at under covers with a flashlight. I should have just looked at them during the day. I was a little angry then, because I realized at nine there was this whole adult world I was not privy to, or welcome in. I started realizing in a big way that people had secrets, and that anyone I saw around me could have them. Serious, kind of weird secrets. It felt like a blow to the chest to know how much I was being left out of.
I kind of got the porn, though, and why people would want to look at it. I think, in a really roundabout way, it helped me to figure some things out about myself. I had an indication at a really early age that I liked girls (thank you, Bananarama). So instead of just being all, “Ew, vag/handcuffs/goats” or whatever, it gave me some time to think about what I was looking at, and if I really liked women.
The men, however, were another story. That was fairly “Ew, wristwatch/hair/tubesocks.” No confusion there.
I remember when my stepfather confronted me about my appropriation of his porn. He called me down to the basement where he was working on one of his coin-op machines.
“So, um, you know it’s wrong to go through other people’s, uh, things, and um, take them, right?” he said.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Okay, good.”
Wow. Good talk, Dad. Especially good since he spent the next seven years looking through and taking my things, under the guise of “looking for the scotch tape.”
Dear MF Diary,
Now we are totally dominated by pox. We have been alternating between praying and sacrificing virgins. What started as a “light” case ramped up to be one of those in-the-mouth and everywhere else cases. The whining has ramped up to the point that she’s not capable of asking for things nicely, she just increases the volume until we give up the goods.
I talked to someone at my big kid’s school about some auction stuff on Friday, and she asked me how Strudel was doing. “Two more kids out today,” she said. “And they both got the vaccine.” Maybe it’s special Asia Pox, and I personally met patient zero.
I forgot that Teh Draeded Poxe is more than just itchy spots–it’s muscle aches too. Human beings can get some pretty gnarly stuff. Strudel’s new name, just for today, is The Poxtator.
Yesterday we had friends over for a dinner that wasn’t really Easter dinner, but was pretty fancy anyway. We had my kid’s teacher over, some cool perps, and some Daniel. Our friends helped The Poxtator choose colors for her eggs. And this year we actually had enough red to go around, unlike last year. I’m sorry that Franny wasn’t here, but we are going to give her the option to do it again with us after she gets back. What the hell. We likes egg salad.
I was pleased to discover that they were all pretty into dying eggs. I have discovered you can get people into a lot of things they haven’t done for years if you provide the materials and make it so the mess is at your house.
[In a completely unrelated note to myself: stock up on vinyl shower curtains and baby oil.]
Companion spent some time reading about egg-decorating techniques in Europe, and he discovered that wax resist is used a lot. He got out a tea light and started spattering an egg, dipped it, removed a layer, and then dipped it in another color. I like his flame job egg. I declare it the winner.
You may be shocked to learn I made a lamb roast. I wanted the meal to taste very springy. I made a couple of salads: a heartier panzanella with beans, feta, olives, onions, fennel, and fresh croutons, and a lettuce salad with a kick-ass dressing that was three parts cream and 1 part stone-ground mustard. I also quick-pickled some radishes. Please do not come to my house if you afraid of oh noes calories.
I made a carmelized banana tart for dessert, after completely bogoing an apple tart earlier. It looked a lot like this, but I didn’t use this recipe. Daniel, in his usual way of making something hilarious and disgusting at the same time, started referring to it as sausage pie. He piped down after he tasted it, though.
At the end of the night after everyone else had gone home, Daniel ran downstairs to check the bus schedule.
“Heeey, I’m about to get my Vista cherry popped,” he declared as he opened Firefox. I had to get a picture of that historic moment, which made him laugh.
I hope Hester Prynne was gentle with him.
Ahoy hoi, we bring you ass-related frippery. The newest report is that Strudel has Ye Olde Dreded Poxe.
She seems to be in pretty good spirits, though, but all words must be whined. My ears are bleeding. Franny has dodged this bullet because she got the varicella vaccine. But now I am hearing anecdotally that kids are getting it anyway, even with the shot. Thanks a lot, SCIENCE.
My friend Whippet thinks that her little niece brought the pox when she was visiting from Asia, because she had a couple of bumps when she came. Now the whole school is infected!
I’m surprised she didn’t get it earlier, since we exposed her on her birthday. But she’s been in and out of the school with me for auction stuff, so she could have picked it up anytime.
Wonder Woman is having a toast to Whippet today at her house today at one, since Whippet just finished an instructor course she was working on. I think I’m going to be stuck here, though. I hope Strudel goes to sleep soon, because I feel like reheated butt.
I’ll get out tonight though, to grocery shop. Man, my life is so exciting that if I wasn’t me, I would have to kill myself and assume my identity.
Thanks to Squiddy for the rad “Warning I am Two” birthday present shirt. Never has a warning been so appropriate.
When I was eight I embarked on a career as a shoplifter. I was a latchkey kid from the time I was seven or so, but before I was eight it was just during the after school time. That summer we moved to a tiny apartment with our three cats while my parents were building their house. It was near one of the busiest streets in town, State Street, and I was forbidden to cross it.
(An aside: this apartment was the location of my first erotic dream. Oh, Alex P. Keaton MWAH MWAH MWAH!)
At first I had some supervision, in the form of a stay-at-home mom who lived in the building. After I spit in her daughter’s face, I think the adults determined the arrangement wasn’t working out so well. My mom saw that I had made a bunch of friends with the other kids in the neighborhood, so she kind of let me loose. Specifically, she saw that a twelve-year-old girl named Jenny had taken an interest in me. Jenny was pretty, charismatic, and a quick liar, so most of the adults liked and trusted her.
Jenny was one of those kids who was automatically in charge, no questions asked. She was the oldest and the bossiest, and was a master manipulator. She would stage fights for the other kids’ entertainment. I was a frequent participant in these fights and a frequent loser. Jenny was the one who coaxed me into spitting in the other girl’s face, because it was determined that she was a namby-pamby. She was, too, and I didn’t care for her much either.
Shortly, as in a couple of days after I started hanging out with Jenny’s gang, they decided they wanted to cross the busy street that we lived a couple of blocks away from. There was a Stop-N-Go (a.k.a. “The Stop-N-Rob”) that had a motherlode of candy to choose from.
“C’mon,” she said. “I want candy. Let’s go across State.”
This is the point where I should have said, “I’m not supposed to cross State Street,” and walked away.
HA! Yeah, right. For my entire childhood I was plagued with the fear that someone was going to think I wasn’t totally hard to the core. I have been beaten up and eaten disgusting things more times than I can even remember. Therefore, I didn’t say anything except for, “I don’t have any money.”
“That’s okay,” she called over her shoulder, “you won’t need any.” Wow! Was my new friend going to buy me some candy?
No.
Jenny stood at the end of one aisle, acting as lookout, while I hovered over the Jolly Rancher bars.
“What do I do?” I asked on the way in.
“Just stuff it in your shorts!” she hissed.
She gave me the nod and I snatched a bar and crammed it into my waistband. It was pretty close to the clerk, but just then Jenny darted over to the ten-cent candy. He couldn’t keep track of all of us. Jenny bought a piece on the way out.
When we got back across the busy street, we turned out our pockets (and pants) to pool our haul. I was allowed to keep my Jolly Rancher. The other kids had grabbed more than one thing, so the booty was divvied up.
“How does that taste?” Jenny asked.
“Pretty good,” I said, the bar hanging out of my mouth. It was watermelon flavored.
We made many more trips across the street after that. I got busted once by my mom’s friend’s boyfriend, who was driving down the street and saw me run across. My mom scolded me, and I did it less after that, but didn’t really stop. I hated that guy. I stayed at my mom’s friend’s house once when she was out of town, and his daughter narced on me for pretending to use an Exacto knife on a teddy bear while we were playing Surgery. She told me not to do it, but I ignored her; latchkey kids do what they damn want. Then of course he ratted me out. I guess it ran in the family.
When I turned nine the house was finished, and we moved safely away to the sticks, where the hobbies there were drinking, teen pregnancy, drinking, and shoplifting. A year later, when I was ten, we saw Jenny’s teenaged sister, who was working as a bagger at a local grocery store.
“How’s your sister doing?” my mom asked.
“Oh,” Jenny’s sister said. “A few months ago she got hit by a car while crossing State Street. She died on the way to the hospital.”
It took me years to realize that could have been me.
Thank you i-Jerk LM.
This is going head to head for me now with Saddyback. I think every stupid song should be covered by someone who can sing like this. Interestingly (probably only to me), all my JT and Amy Winehouse ringtones got corrupted. I think my tinfoil hat interfered with them somehow. So I’m back to my “My Humps” ring, which is now totally retro.
Also, PS, I kind of want an Iron Hymen shirt.
Hey, Jerks. I am back from Auction Island. I must have been really horrendously bad to have been banished to that place. Imagine a clusterfuck that you have to fix when it’s already most of the way through. And then imagine being blamed for things, even though you don’t really know what’s going on, despite your best efforts. And then imagine someone else taking credit for all the good parts. To quote the poet laureate of Strongbadia, “It’s over!”
Today I reconciled all the files and fixed the night-of fuck ups. It was pretty fun, actually. The last three hours of the auction flew by. My former in-laws were there and they bought a little knitted sweater for Spawn of SeaFed. Sometimes I really miss them. SeaFed’s father is the closest thing I had to a dad. He congratulated me on the auction as soon as he saw me. Next to Franny, losing my in-laws was the biggest consideration when I decided to get divorced.
I need a massage and someone to carry me around in a litter for about a week. What will actually happen is that I will clean my fucking house, which looks like a garage sale threw up in it. There is stuff everywhere. Sometimes I just want to throw it out and start over with new stuff. When I worked at a record store in the U-District, another clerk there told me that he got into a huge fight with his housemates about cleaning and they threw away all their dishes and started over.
I haven’t thought about that guy in years, so I googled him up. It turns out he’s in Kinski. I don’t know if it’s good or not, as my ears can only detect the exact frequency of ghetto tech.
ANYWAYZ, I’m turning in the final files tomorrow so people can get all billed and stuff.
Today they knocked the house down across the street. I kept running out in the middle of reconciling files to snap an update. It was great timing for Strudel to have something to watch out the picture window because I was so busy all day. I told her they were munching the house up and she said “HUNGRY!” I suppose backhoes are hungry, in a way.
cleek
It’s weird. I’ve been looking at that house every day for more than a year now, and now it’s all rubble. We went crazy nanners digging up rose bushes from the yard yesterday, and now, BAM, instant rose garden. We also got some random stuff like a rhododendron, a peony, and a poppy, and a shitload of spring bulbs. Even if some of the stuff dies, it’s better than watching it all get turned under.
Is that selfish of me to be glad they were knocking a house down so my child would be entertained? She won’t watch a fucking TV, I can tell you that much. A week ago Whippet took me to her waxer’s house, where she does waxing on the side for cheaper, so we could swap off with Strudel and get our hairs yoinked.
I let Whippet go first, because Strudel saw that there were little yap dogs and got really nervous. I had to hold her for a while, and the waxy lady turned on a TV in her living room that was so large it could have eaten your soul. Bert and Ernie were the size of real actual humans. I wanted to have my picture taken in front of it, since it will be a while until I get to Stonehenge. Strudel watched for about thirty seconds in a very WTF sort of way, and then got irritated, because the little yap dogs were mobbing us constantly. I have never seen such pesty little dogs.
And then, of couse, because I was there, the lipstick came out. There should be a law that all little dogs should be fixed. Seriously, the dog’s scrabble bag was the size of ping pong balls. No one needs to see that. At least give him little pants or something, or some pixelization. Finally, he had that horny and determined dog look on his face, so I started using Strudel as a cockblock. He didn’t want her–she smelled kind of funny to me, so I’m sure she smelled terrible to Lotharito.
And then there was the girl dog. She was wearing a little dress, but no pants, so I could see her parts on display, too. I’m all for parts, but man, I don’t care for dog parts. Apparently, the owners are breeding the dogs twice to make their money back.
So they were almost-humping, because she was almost in heat, and they were both tinkling all over the living room, which explained the very doggie smell in there. And it was one of those new-fangled McMansions that stretches out to the very edge of the lot, and has a seven-car garage or something. So, ugly as hell, but brand new. And this is what you do with that? Your little yap dogs tinkle all over the living room?
After they followed me all over the room, touching and pawing me constantly for no reason, I couldn’t take it anymore. I kept scooting them away with my foot and they would come scuttling right back. You just don’t want to boot the dogs of the person who is about to wax you. Especially when the only pictures on the mantel are of the dogs. Other relatives were relegated to the side of the fridge; I looked. I glanced at Strudel, who was up on the counter eating the croissant I brought her. “Homehomehomehomehome!” she said, and pointed at the door. “Good idea, kid,” I said, and lifted her up over the dogs’ baby gate and into the hallway, and out the front door.
Strudel played on the tiny lawn. The air whipping down the canyon of McMansions felt so cool and fresh after the peepee smell of the house. Whippet came out front about fifteen minutes later, and announced it was my turn. “No,” I said. “She’s not going to be able to wait anymore.” We fled. Whippet felt bad about me being her ride, but it was fine, really. You have to expect a certain amount of misadventure sometimes, right?
Bonus:
Can’t sleep. Too much caffeine. I will never learn. Or maybe I will, to the pleasant surprise of me. Isn’t it amazing, that day when you can finally stop ripping wiper blades off of people’s cars?
No? Haven’t gotten there yet? Well, back to self-abuse with nasal spray.
Is this for real? I don’t usually call this stuff out, because 1. I don’t usually care and 2. glass houses and all, but this caught my attention. The goofy syntax/grammar, the stagy outrage and maudlinity. I guess I have my radar up to fake and parody blogs since there was that spate of parody blogs last winter.
Okay, you twisted my arm. I’ll summarize. A woman decides that she will not buy her daughter an American Girl doll, but will instead buy a doll from Target that is $30, which is let’s say, 76/48ths of the cost. That was fun saying that, wasn’t it? Did you remember to carry the three???
Anyway, she then takes the Target dolly into the American Girl Place Styling Salon (yes, there is a salon for dolly hair) and expects to have the dolly styled, and is outraged when it refused service. No generics allowed!
Do people really take their store brand dollies into the American Girl Store and try to get their hair styled? Because there’s quicker ways to make your kid cry, and it’s called “serving them ice cream and then knocking the bowl out of their hands into the dirt.” And you can do that at home, no witnesses.
Anyway, when I’m not bogged down in auctionmatown, I am reading this. It’s all about El Buddha. I am only on book two, where he gets all surly youth stylee and freaks out some Brahmans. Which led me to my dumb question of the day. Supposedly the Buddha thought that all people were equal, because everyone suffered and died in the end. It made we wonder how the caste system held on so strongly in India, home of the Whopper. Buddha.
And all of this is making me think, when parents get themselves all horked up into a big bunch about brands, and labels, and status, and how they want to teach their kids to be above all that, I say, “why?” My kids may still just be budding capitalists, but they don’t care about how much things cost. If they like it, they will play with it or wear it. If they don’t, they won’t. It makes me think that, gee, maybe parents are the ones who are so concerned about status.
And you know what? Sometimes you do get what you pay for. For every corny homily I hear that ends, “And Roo-Roo Bear only had one eye and we found him on the side of the road but he was the bestest bear that ever beared,” I see the evidence around me, and it’s telling me it’s worth it to pay more for quality things sometimes.
Oh, and that Target dolly’s just fugly (left). Poor kid. It looks like the distant cousin of an American Girl doll who got forgotten about in the oven for a while. Sorry. Pwned.
In Other News
Tonight I got my hair did. I did my roots and covered my pink hair up with Devilish, because lo, summer approacheth, and summer means red. The senorita perpetrated Baby’s First Blowout, and I have to say I’m currently a fetching cross between Lorelei Gilmore and The Little Mermaid. I didn’t know my hair could be straight. But you could fill books with what I don’t know.
I’ve been having these really disjointed dreams, the kind you can wake up from and wonder for a second if they really happened, like yesterday or something. I’m having that feeling like I’m just kind of existing right now, trying to jump from lily pad to lily pad of tolerable things that I actually want to do.
Companion commented that I “must not but cut out for high stress jobs.” I initially took that as a slap in the face, because children have been (literally, sometimes) been shitting on me for six-plus years now. And he was right there as I went through grad school. I didn’t just print out my degree online, which I used to daydream about in class when people would start arguing about copyright or OMGWATC*? I knew someone when I was in college who had done that, it he was making a fine living as a fraud. (No, it wasn’t my ex-husband, although it’s a good guess. It takes too much effort and motivation to go the fake degree route.)
So I thought about it for a few days, and I think it’s just that this auction bugs. I don’t like coming into things when they’re more than halfway there as kind of a cleanup bitch, because I am one of those way planny types. Maybe it would be okay if I had already done an auction before. People are neglecting to tell me things. My name is signed to letters I didn’t actually write. But it’s over on Saturday, and I will no longer be chair-in-training, I will be chair.
But I am wondering if next year I’ll still be somewhat of a sockpuppet, partially because of this precedent, and partly because my relationship with the school has changed. I know in the past parents have been able to really throw down about stuff, because they were unpaid volunteers. I won’t be an unpaid volunteer next year. Where does the parent end and the employee begin?
I did not expect this to be my first job after grad school, that’s for sure.
Anyway, it’s over soon, and the day after we are dying Easter eggs and getting back to normal life. No more dreams about snowboarding, something I have never done and have no desire to do, and wine tastings, something I have never done and very much want to do.
*”What about the children,” of course.
In Other News: Lifted off the Interwebs
Fastest toilet training method, developed while babysitting.
Take one older child, trained properly.
Add one younger untrained child who is of the correct age and mental development to be trained.
Tell older child that every time younger child successfully uses toilet, they each get a 1/4 cup of M&Ms. If the parents are health nuts, too bad. Explain the benefits of not having to change diapers many, many times a day.
Result: older child watches younger child like a hawk, and sits them on the toilet every five minutes.Fastest successful toilet training: one single day.
Stupidest child took all of four days. (Or this was the smartest child, milking the system for more chocolate goodness. Your call.)I hated changing diapers.
The true beauty of the method is that you know what both children are going to be doing all day and where they will be…and the true obsessiveness of a child hell-bent on cadging sweeties knows no bounds. The younger child may develop bowl butt (unsightly rim ring) but the end result is reduced diaper costs.
Tempting, tempting.
