“Are You a Killer?” “I Don’t Like Labels.”

Sooo, the honeymoon is over here with this new house. I am not sure there was ever really a honeymoon in the first place. Moving into the 80s split level is like marrying a person you find really plain and who has kind of a boring sense of humor and spends a lot of time agreeing with you.

HOWEVER you can take his metaphor to its tragic conclusion and split your boring spouse like a tauntaun and decorate their innards with GLITTER!!

Let’s make a LIST LIKE NERDS, after which will will argue about how we organize our books, ok??

Pros:

Everything is BIGGER. House, yard, storage space, even the dishwasher is bigger. I cannot think of one thing in this house that is smaller. Nietzsche looks smaller in it, but that is an illusion, I suppose.

No neighbors! Our duplex neighbors weren’t bad, in fact, they were very nice, but we always worried about noise. Let me tell you my girls spent 17 minutes singing selected duets from the beautiful modern operetta “NO U” and I did not shoosh them once.

Cons:

There’s a couple of things going on here. We will not mention the complete lack of hot water, which is temporary, of course.

The fridge is kind of a menace. It’s one of those modern side-by-sides with the glass shelves. You would think glass shelves might be a good thing, but using it is kind of like the experience of driving a PT Cruiser.

You don’t have the top down/angle view of the food like you do in the traditional fridge. This has lead me to conclude that I am just not finding things because it is hiding behind the melon or something. I spent ten minutes looking for the leftover chicken the other day.

P. came home as I was rootling.

“Whatcha doin?” he said.

“Looking for the chicken I cannot find fucking anything in the fridge EVER.”

“Ah…I ate it,” he said.

“AHA!” I said. “I CANNOT SEE IT BECAUSE YOU ARE OPAQUE.”

Otherwise the kitchen has a lot of storage and though the stove is electric like the last one, but it works a LOT better than the one at the old place, which was one of those flat top Star Trek bullshit ones where only half the burner got warm sometimes.

Also, something bad happened in this house with animals. Now that the initial carpet-cleaning goodness is wearing off, the small of animal urine is being revealed. I am taking steps with Febreze and whatnot. Now I know what probably everyone else in the universe knows. When an ad says “No Large Animals” this may be a sign that the owner has had a bad experience with large animals.

As a renter, and as the owner of a place where some past dog let it go on the wooden floor whenever and wherever it felt like, and it was often apparently allowed to completely dry in situ, creating giant blackened lakes that are probably great if you think your dog is like the second coming of Helen Frankenthaler or something. And to this point, Nietzsche has not ever once ever gone potty in the corner ANYWHERE. She is being a complete champ here in this medium-stinky house as well, and goes outside or uses the litterbox every single time, so at least there is a finite end to the smells.

One of my favorite things about my room, besides the fact that it adjoins the loo, keeps Imelda and the Bandito together, overlooks the pear tree in the front yard, and has a giant porny closet door mirror, is my SURPRISE VIRGIN!!! hiding behind my two doors in my room.

Note to Self

A very short post to say that sometimes I find notes I have made to myself about things that pop into my head when I am too busy/tired/overwrought to  write.

1. Mother Returns

Kind of forgot about the Father!

L. continues to visit father’s lab for monitoring, testing, and catches idea that his father is still alive (HOW WHY)

They go on the news to ask if anyone’s seen their father??

Wow, just give me the Pulitzer now, dudes. I am kind of afraid to even open that file after this.

2.Flavorofhubris: Kanye

???

3. Normal lady activites

such as

childbirth

flensing +

cheating on one’s taxes

A mental person has apparently commandeered my notebook, I don’t remember any of this.

Note to self about notes to self: Add context and instructions next time.

Beware I Lived

Hi! Move happened. We had a new guy who was dropping stuff, and this sounds crazy, but it was funny. All my stuff is funky boho flea market crap pile anyhow, so MEH, what’s a few more scratches. Less Crate & Barrel, more Waterlogged Cardboard Box & Dumpster. Does it make you crazy when bloggers show off their homes and it looks like there should be an “A. $599.99, color shown: Hunter” in the corner? Maybe I am just a snot.

Here comes the moving truck!

Look at these tough guys moving my chickenhaus.

Anyway, here are my sad sticks in my new split level. Today I think we do the final furniture shifting.

If I had to guess I would say this thing was built in the early 80s. I spent time growing up in split levels and I had my older daughter in one (blood + white berber=thank god for midwives and their bag of tricks) so I am quite fond of them. Other than the fact that this one is a five-bedroom, it’s mostly the same as all the others. The lack of a basement/storage motivated me to send a lot of stuff off to charity, which, I needed that kick in the pants. I don’t think I had done a proper cleanout since everything went cattywampus at the old place in 2008.

Also, I finally have internets today. The technician came out after customer service spent a while dicking me around on the phone, but he was really good. Apparently my signal strength here is very weak, which is worrying since I am working from home now, but I have a backup plan involving laptops and local cafes, if necessary.

I am tired but happy! More later. As I was moving, I discovered what someone did to Rosie the Riveter. :'( I suspect it was Not Me, who is usually responsible for things like this in my house.

WHY DO YOU HATE FEMINISM, OK?

P.S. Heh, Franny walked by and saw the picture of Rosie as I was uploading it and said I DID NOT DO THAT and I didn’t even say anything. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

P.P.S. Someone asked me if I boxed up P. and took him with. A: Yes. Useful babbydaddies are hard to come by. We are getting along like a house afire, ngl.

The End!

So, the end of yesterday was that I ended up at SNOOP DOGG, which I forgot was even happening. It was amazing. I should quit my job more often, really. This week has been great.

Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

Snoop Dogg would like to remind you to do three things every day:

1. Brush your teeth
2. Thank god you made it to another day
3. Smoke weed

They were giving out eye drops AT THE DOOR. Way to know your crowd.

Announcement

It has come to my attention, via me posting it on Twitter, that I am going to be liveblogging my last day of work tomorrow. Expect check ins once per hour. Considering that I took an actual lunch about twice a month that was not just shoveling food between processes and keystrokes, I have no qualms about managing my time this way.

You should also know that I was looking for my phone on the bus today frantically while I was holding it. I am super weird and under-sleeped and I am sure this will make for an interesting evening out at Chop Spewy. I have wangst on top of everything, so I’m sure drinking loads tonight will help with that a lot.

See U in the morn.

In Which I Get My Back Up Off The Wall

LAAAAST Saturday night Ruby and I were gallivanting around and we ended up at Chop Suey, which was very very early in its evening of dance that they give on Saturday nights. So early that no one was on the floor yet. I decided that some dancing was exactly what I needed, especially since it is one of my favorite things and I was kind of a ball of nerves since I knew I was about to give notice at work, which I finally had the opportunity to do yesterday.

But this was Saturday, and I was facing a completely empty dance floor. My legs twitched involuntarily. There seemed to be some kind of gravity sucking me towards it. I decided to have a martini while I was waiting.

“Are you sure you don’t mind if I dance for a while?” I asked Ruby, who did not break the death lock the Twitter has on her to look back at me. An elephant with Elvis hair and chops could be sodomizing Jesus while an orchestra composed entirely of Arctic wildlife accompanied the act, and Ruby would be tapping away at her iPhone. “OMG there are no seats at the Holy Sodomy” TWEET.

After a few more agonizing minutes some brave early arrivals hit the floor, and I joined them. I did my usual thing that I do when I am alone, which is to get a little off the very middle and dance on my own, not too fancy, and not that sad “I am so cool I am just going to kind of apathetically shuffle around a little whatever” move–somewhere in between.

Suddenly the smell of AXE and entitlement filled the air, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I saw the mass of frat boys enter like hyenas, looking for a hottie wildebeest that was staggering and emitting its telltale call of vulnerability, “AMG YOU GUYS I AM SOOOOO DRUNK.”

Fortunately, in frat boy years I am over 9,000 years old, so I assumed I was invisible. Plus I was dressed reasonably for the weather, which is to say I was not wearing something that looked like a small triangle made of puce lamé, like some of my fellow dancing compatriots.

Regardless, some horrifying specter emerged from the crowd and attempted to woo me via dance. I hesitate to dance with people I know and like, because of my balance issues, let alone some jerkass who was gesturing at me to dance over to him like we were in some bad bad very unintentionally-gay 80’s movie. Could this really be happening?

I obliged him for a few minutes because I am like that (not nice, but curious) and he spun me around a bit and tried to make cool guy chit chat with me. I attempted to sidle away and dance by myself. I was in one of those “Hey Guy I Don’t Want Any Trouble Here Ok” moods and just wanted to get back to what I really wanted, which was that awesome feeling of solitude and bliss in a crowd of people moving with you.

Shockingly, I know, he reapproached me. There were so many things I could have done. I could have been firm and said no. I could have stomped off or pretended he didn’t exist. Maybe he wasn’t so bad the first time. “It’s my buddy’s 21st birthday, WOOOO!” he wooed at me. He pointed over at his friend. Why could I not have that one? The birthday one was cute and wearing a tie.

And then it got bad.

We danced together a bit without touching, and he was pretty out there and campy, which was kind of fun. I played along and started pulling out some moves I’m pretty sure I learned on Saved by the Bell. Was he wearing…Z. Cavariccis? What the…can you even still get those?

Then he turned around and started grinding his ass into my crotch. WHAT. Was this really happening? Do people really do this? Other than right then? That’s not a hypothetical question, okay. I think he was gesturing at me to spank him. No. Not okay.

Then he started going for broke. All I could do was back away while his friends cheered him on. Dear reader, I kid you not, he found one of the club’s structural poles and began spinning on it like a stripper.

Since the show had gone solo, I used it as an opportunity to flee back to Ruby. She was completely engrossed in reading Hemmingway on her phone. “Having fun?” she said, absorbed in the terse manly prose. Of course we go to Chop Suey on a Saturday night and read The Sun Also Rises. What was with this night?

“NO,” I said. “I AM NOT HAVING FUN. LET’S GO.”

And we went.

In Other News

This morning at breakfast I made an oblique reference to the fable of the dog that sees a reflection of itself  in a pond with a bone in its mouth, goes for the phantom bone, and loses the real one in the water. Franny had never heard it and asked what I was talking about, so I told her.

“And then the dog had nothing,” I finished. “What do you think the lesson of that story is?” I asked her. Franny thought for a moment.

“Don’t look into ponds?” she said.

Once I stopped laughing hard enough to rip the seams on my pants and was able to tell her what the intended moral was, she added, with a completely straight face, “Well, I like mine better. I don’t like looking into ponds. They are slimy.”

Act Your Age, Not the Size of Those Pants You Wear

I really do need to tell you about the frat boy booty grinding incident last Saturday when I was out with Ruby, especially since someone on the Twitter asked me to elaborate. What do you want me to write about? What do you want to know? I am curious. OK I swear I will stop posting PM convos and make a real post soon, sorry. Also it is important for you to know that all I care about is Longmont Potion Castle and my next husband Dirk Funk and finding a new contract. Mine is expiring!

LF:      and I’m like, this is so unfair
Me:     It is so rare that I am rude like that
LF:     You know what’s gross, fucking ball sack. Do I complain? I do not.
Me:      It is unfair
Me:     LOLOLOL
Me:     Have you ever babysat for baby boys?
LF:     No, I’ve never babysat
Me:     Ah
LF:     …I’ve actually never held a baby before
Me:    Well, poopy diapers are no fun for boys or girls, as I’m sure you can imagine
LF:     Eek.
Me:     You know how nutsacks are like loose and floppy and slide over something firm…
Me:     And they are sensitive
LF:     yes
LF:     heh
Me:     So when babies poop the poop gets all over their nutsacks
LF:     oh god
Me:     It is really really hard to get sticky paste off that surface
Me:     Women say “boys are easier” but I think of that
LF:     these are issues I have just never imagined
Me:      I would rather have my moody girls with their crevices
LF:     haha for sure
Me:      Sometimes when i see balls I think about how they have spent months dunked in their own shit
Me:     And I am like, really, you want me to lick those
Me:     Ok I know they are clean
LF:     I actually just laughed so loud
Me:    Good
Me:       I am in a mood!
LF:     They’re so weird. I’ve always thought balls are weird.
Me:      THEY ARE
Me:      Internal genitalia is awesome
LF:     Hurray!

(Whoa, WordPress won’t let me just drop the link in today, it embeds. Sorry.)

How Daddy Is Doing

Hello, and welcome to this week’s installment of the Bad Idea Pants Club. Longtime readers may know that I was a smoker 4 jillion years ago, before I even started writing on the internets. My affair with smoking was short, and torrid, and very very VERY enjoyable. I think I eschewed harder drugs when I was young for a variety of reasons, but in large part because of the intense and scary lock cigarettes got on me from the start.

In one sense, I smoked for the first five years of my life. I remember laying on the floor of our trailer, fascinated by the dust motes and smoke swirling around in the sunbeams, as I was trapped indoors by many feet of snow and bitter cold outside the thin walls. My grandmother took up smoking at 27 after her divorce (Mores, brown papers, green box), in what was probably a FUCK THIS SHIT moment after my grandfather fled and left her with a tiny baby (my mom) and my two-year-old uncle.

When I was divorcing at 26 I felt some affinity with my grandmother, though I had a three-year-old and was most of the way through grad school instead of being faced with long hours as a checker with an eighth-grade education. I thought of her as I tried to finish papers and read and kept breaking to smoke. I smoked on and off for about four months that time, until my ribs showed from the stress and the not eating and the calls from my lawyer taken in my GA office. Is this being an adult? FUCK THIS SHIT. I am having a cigarette. Of course everyone smoked outside, so on the moments when the wind was still I would watch the smoke curl out of the tip with the sun shining and think of being a very small child and of how everyone else worried about things. All I had to do was lay on the floor and make little smoke tornadoes with my hands.

Before I grew up into a smoker myself, I had a childhood allergy to cigarette smoke, among other things, and I spent a fair amount of time in the hospital as a tiny kid under oxygen, my cold having mysteriously escalated into pneumonia. I had dark circles under my eyes and pale skin, and a nagging cough. This lasted until I moved in with my mother, who uncovered the source of my illnesses and wouldn’t let people smoke around me.

Of course she smoked, too, having her own FUCK THIS SHIT moment after divorcing at 19. Are we seeing a theme here? When I became a teenager, I nicked cigarettes from my mother’s purse (Benson & Hedges, gold box). Cigarettes were part of my tough girl costume. I learned how to spit impressively without getting any on myself, ew (necessary, because since my lungs could not climb out of my body and run away, they did their best to stay clean).

My watershed moment with smoking, when I discovered how truly cool it could be, was when I went into my usual seedy gas station that was sort of on my way to school and was frequented by truckers and bikers. Plus the clerk there never ever ever carded me.

“Camel Regulars,” I said, like a confident legal citizen who was well within her own rights of accelerating her own demise when it was my turn at the counter. The guy had a shaved head and one of those assertive goatees, those ones that look more like some kind of animal has entered into a symbiotic relationship with its host rather than, you know, facial hair.

The clerk plunked down a too-small box of Camels that were a little cheaper than the usual price. I did not want to argue with him for fear of having him demand ID. I casually tucked them into my pocket and randalled out as if everything was kosh. I took them out once I was behind the wheel and packed them by slamming them against my palm as usual, and opened them up.

No filters…holy shit, old school. When I asked for “regulars” I meant non-light. I was not counting on this. Well, I had paid for them, I might as well try them. With no filters on the end, I was just holding a big block of tobacco in my hand and it smelled delicious. I took one out, lit it. At this point I was probably smoking about 15 cigarettes a day, but the unfiltered experience was like a donkey kick to the head. This was it, I thought. I will smoke regulars from now on. This lasted for a blissful two weeks until my cough got worse and to the horror of my vain 16-year-old self my fingertips started turning YELLOW.

Anyway, all this rambling is in service of telling you that after thinking about it for a couple of years, I bit the bullet and bought some snus from Sweden. I still love tobacco and I was hoping to find some way to enjoy it every few days or once a week in a way that will not freak my children out, but now I sit around and fantasize about cigarettes. There is no ” somewhat pregnant” and there is no halfway point with me and tobacco. If I make it to 80 I will resume smoking. True fact.

I, Asshole and Her Pathetic Little Life

Saturday and Saturday means DONCE CLASS. Hear the chup chup chup of the helicopter blades as they swoop over the group of five-year-olds, most of whom are there to have a good time if given half a chance. I hung out for the first class, and now I help her undress, pop her things into her cubby, and watch her run down the stairs and into the studio where she prances and thumps to her heart’s content, something she is not allowed to do at home, because SHUSH the neighbors.

Other parents stay there all the time, every time, hovering, watching, hanging on, coaching, making self-effacing remarks about their daughters’ abilities, and they make me want to vomit.

The pre-ballets come out before Strudel goes into pre-modern. The pre-ballets are strawberry pinkies compared to the pre-modern black leotards, which are more jaunty beret in a smoky club.

“Hurry up,” one mother urged her pinkie. “You have art class to go to next!”

The pre-modern parents are not any better. Don’t let the black leotards fool you.

“OH,” one mother cooed at her daughter as she came out of the studio in front of Strudel at the end. “I saw how you were moving your arms. You looked SO PRETTY OUT THERE. You look SO PRETTY sweetheart.”

My child is the only one with a pixie cut and no bun without five million clippies and headbands and DONCE sweaters and DONCE leg warmers even though it is 60 degrees. My child has a hole in her tights. Oops.

“Well,” I say, as she comes out of the studio at the end. “Did you have fun?”

“Yes,” Strudel says. High fives all around.

I walk to the library and get coffee and run other errands, and when there is about 15 minutes left I come out in front of the studio and watch her caper around through the large window, watching her hold a noodle or a scarf, pretending she is a dog or a flower. She loves her teacher with eccentric hair and a funny accent, which is a prerequisite for DONCE teachers. Strudel looks happy and at the end she gets a gluten-free scone from the coffee shop across the street.

I think we will stick with it.

Confidential to Bobbie: I will begin duplicating videos here on my Flickr page, which is public. If I embed something I did not make, I will try to remember to put the URL.

She Was Looking Like An Erotic Vulture

Hello! Happy New Year’s Eve to you. Do you have the plans? Surprisingly, I am cooking. I am doing some kind of weird wine gelatin dessert with poached pears in and some business with white sauce and there will be oysters, oh yes. I am pulling most of it out of Mrs. Beeton’s cookbook in accordance with the New Blog. It even has a banner now. So in between cooking today I am working on that. In theory we are podcasting tonight, which I would enjoy very much. New Year’s brings out the introvert in me, and I am looking very forward to holing up.

Let’s talk about Tweedle Beetles.

2009 Resolutions: I made two.

1. Drink moar scotch. Yeah, I kind of failed this. I had a good start into February or so, and then I switched to wine, and it was fruity boozy summer, so what are you going to do? Turn DOWN fruity boozy? No. I am making a pretty good showing here at the end of the year, though.

2. Have moar sex. I don’t want to talk about this. I just don’t OK.

Okay, moving on.

For next year I am having a couple of thoughts. I am entertaining the notion of blogging every day, even if it is a snippet or a link, with long posts/essays at the usual frequency. Too much asshole? I don’t know. I am going to start exercising more, especially as my second job is ending soon. It is a mild winter and nice for running. I want to visit USistani friends like Shan and Kaijsa and not just off to Canada all the time, though I like that too. I would like to see Shauna again…it’s been since 2007, weh. Working on it. I would like to meet my wife, but I might have to start playing the lottery to do that. Oh, and I am about to start New Blog, so in theory next year will be more writerly/academicy, ha ha, we’ll see. There will be posts, but perhaps not the correct amount of citations.

Have fun. I will be on the roof. This is 100% improvement over last year when I was asleep at 10:30. Sláinte!