Remember the other day, when I was all “I’ll be back l8r, guyz?” Well, I guess I meant now. I have two things to tell you. One is that I moved Hester Prynne up to the kitchen, so she is out of the range of her internet cable tail. So my computer is now a word processor and a mahjong delivery device. The second thing is that for the past few days I’ve been busy working on a writing project of a different stripe, which is fun, but it was good that I was internetless for a bit, so I didn’t put the “ass” in “procrastinating.”

Yeah, you can have that.

This is the part where if I was a nice person, I would tell you what I’ve been up to, but I want to wait a little longer.It’s not a huuuuge deal, and it’s kind of weird, so hang in there, and keep clicking on my ads. Oh, wait, I don’t have those. Well, I promise this will get interesting soon. Maybe I’ll come down with something vague and tragic, that will make me pale and thin, like Ventricular Dermatitis. Maximus. I will instead distract you with a legitimate online literary publication that asked to republish something I wrote in the amazing year 2001. That hissing sound is all of their credibility leaking out. Just kidding, guys.

Except not.

But thanks for the reprint, srsly.

Currently, I’m squatting on Companion’s Tyrone, who I was apparently talking about just a year ago today. I need to get Hester a longer tail so I can get back to the hott mongoose action the interblort provides.

Speaking of getting thin, I have hit that “okay mah baben’s two, mah muffin top is dissolving a little bit.” WHEW. I was much dismayed that it really took that long to let it go with the first one, and now here it is again.

HOWEVER. Second child, and I am almost thirty, so I have discovered something disturbing. The muffin top is turning into silly putty. I bent over the sink last night and was palpitating my jelly, which I am not ready for, and it was all AAAAAGGGGHH! My twelve year old cat and I now look the same naked. Except she probably has a cuter butthole.

There is an upshot to this. I can form my stomach into little animals to entertain my children with. Just add googly eyes and we’re all set.

Speaking of the children, it is day three of summer vacation, and I am not going to lie to you. I am ready to KILL them. I always try to appreciate Franny, because she’s gone a lot, but they are being total assmittens. Like “stake them out in the yard” assmittens. I told Halo this true fact and she said, “I can just see you marking big red X’s off on the calendar.” Double true.

AND, about my interwebs trouble with the page looking all wonky, what a surprise, it was MY bads. I was doing something codewise I shouldn’t have been doing, so this is a true confession so my webmaster doesn’t look like a chump. Because he’s not. In fact, he is like non-chumpery squared, because I fuck things up and he susses out the dumbassery and fixes it. WOW, that’s some motherfucking service. I love that guy and his tolerance. Also, what is up with Movable Type not having a “center” button in the UI? I tells ya.

So after I am done mourning the death (to me) of html center tags, and my ass reads the Nice Literature Daniel sent me regarding this new invention called XHTML, titled “XHTML and You, Dumbass. Welcome to the Amazing Year, You Know, 2001,” maybe I will post some pictures. Or maybe there will just be some Hardcore XXX Left-Justification. OOOOH.

le sigh.

Dear SJ,

Letters published your blog to a nefarious group of people or the person standing in line in front of you at the bank are played. Just quit it. Don’t do it. No one wants to read some long-winded bullshit piece of bullcrap about what you should have said, if only you were fast enough. The next time you find someone else’s diaphragm in your vest pocket after a trip to the drycleaners, have it out right then and there. Don’t save it up for your ineffectual digital screed.

And why not let it out? Anger applied carefully can be a real aphrodisiac. One minute you could be chucking a slightly cracked birth control device at someone’s head, the next minute you’re hitting it on a box of chemicals. Admit it, you like your drycleaner’s mustache. You like it, even though you know it’s being non-rocked in a completely non-ironic fashion. And look over there, under the garment carousel…you’re all set if you’ve stopped routinely carrying condoms with you.

Don’t worry about the chemicals on the ‘phragm. Remember that they have a sterilizing effect. Perhaps they will neutralize the acids created when you were angry. No one likes an angry, acidy, baby barn. Sometimes I get so angry I think my tweeter could fry up hushpuppies. See, that’s what you should have said to the drycleaner.

Dearest SJ, you have to look at these incidents as life-bonuses. If things went your way all the time, you would become smug and self-satisfied, which would unravel like a house of cards the minute you got a crack in your windshield or rugburn while you were combing the carpet looking for errant crack crumbs.

In conclusion, just let it out. No one likes a martyr.

Sincerely,
SJ

My neighbor’s parked in my driveway right now. This is the neighbor who had the two-day bachelor party last summer, right below my bedroom window. We’ve been on friendly-ish terms since he apologized for keeping us up so late.

It’s kind of a weird driveway–it’s one of those where it used to be a real driveway, but now it’s only a driveway nub that reaches to the sidewalk. I park there when the street is full, and no one else does. You feel kind of afraid to park there–like you’ll get ticketed for blocking the sidewalk or something.

It’s a really little thing. But it kind of makes me want to go over there and pee on his doorstep, right in the middle of the day. And I’ve been drinking a lot of coffee today, too. I think my backache is making me TESTY.

I’m about to go out to lunch with a friend, and I’m sure that due to the people who don’t want to pay to park at the Zoo, I will have lost my street spot when I come back. I will knock on his door then. I can look out my window and see that the parking lot behind his apartment building is almost empty.

AH URBAN LIVING.

I have figured out the secret to all science fiction. Now during naptime I am watching I, Robot, and I am thinking that in the amazing year 2032, there will not be holographic police tape, because it will still be cheaper to tote around the real stuff and set that up. What if the holographic police tape breaks? What if Jensen forgot to being the batteries, as promised?

Also, today I’m wondering if it will be the day when the windows finally rattle out of their glazing, because of what they are doing at the construction site across the street. They are doing that thing where the masher comes down and vibrates asphalt into places. But oho, then we could get NEW windows, windows that would have a slightly better chance of keeping the cold out and the warm in come winter, than, say, a giant potholder weaved out of tampons. (Weaved. Wove? Woven? Don’t care.)

Speaking of things that vibrate, I was at lunch the other day when someone pulled out one of those little seizure bugs that people give to children for their amusement. Mothers pull those out and start cranking them up, which makes us think of other things that vibrate, which may, in turn, lead to more children. I’m on to you, Toy Industry, you fucks. I should have a hat made that says “Watchdog,” because that’s what I am. Perhaps I will include the word “wily” as a modifier. If you know what I mean.

Also, today I am wanting to know why ctl-alt-del exists in the same universe as Penny Arcade. Seriously, I was up thinking about this last night. Was this some kind of anti-trust agreement? “Okay, we have Penny Arcade, now we need an inferior knock-off so’s PA can’t dominate the market.” Because, sorry, not as good. Also, the guy who draws Penny Arcade is cute, so more points for their side. I am guessing that the guy who draws CAD is not as cute, but I am willing to be proven wrong. Because I say, the more cute in this world, the better. Someone bring me some cute!

I should also give you the wrap-up on Egg Battle Royale. BOY, did that day suck. By noon they had, of course, been in the fridge, so I had to bump them in the micro. And then after her nap, I made her some new eggs, because you know, I am not a monster. Those were rejected as well. Then she went to bed hungry and woke up and ate all day long. I went to the Zoo with a friend and her child, and it was the first time we had banged our kids together. Well, I might as well have left her home with the feedbag on, because she looked not so much like a toddler, but more like something else.

I’m sure it will come to me in a minute.

Anyway, we had Egg Battle Royale again today, but it only lasted until 11 o’clock. Progress? Maybe a fluke.

I’m sure that I have fooled you and my PMS isn’t even showing. I am also sure that I didn’t eat almost an entire loaf of taleggio for breakfast.

Now look what you’ve done. All I wanted to do was watch my movie.

I had a NIIICE run-in with a local guy in front of Casa del Asshole this morning. He was watching the backhoes across the street go MMRM MMRM from the foot of my driveway.

Whippet and I were standing around gabbing and he came up to us. For the purposes of this conversation it’s important for you to know he was a blue-eyed man with light skin.

“Do you live in this neighborhood?” he said. “I live right on the other block. Can you believe all this construction?”

“Yeah, Seattle’s really changing,” I said, hoping he would not go into a crazy old guy rant.

“I don’t know how long you’ve lived here, but BACK IN MY DAY a person could afford a house here. I am sixty years old and I am in an apartment and I have lost job after job to these people,” he said, gesturing at the jobsite.

“All that’s happening is that these developers are getting rich. And look at those people! Mexicans! Mexicans are doing the work for fifteen dollars an hour and more money goes into the pocket of the developers.”

Fabulous. My LEAST favorite crazy guy rant.

“I was in Fremont the other day and the whole site was speaking MEXICAN!”

“Well, you can’t tell if someone’s a citizen by what language he’s speaking,” I interjected, when he paused to take a breath.

He rattled on for a while longer, and I suggested that he take it up with the foreman, who was right across the street.

“No!” he said, and started moving off, probably because despite the fact that Whippet and I are both whitey-white ladies of Irish descent, one of us having the further distinction of being of white trash descent (me) we were not agreeing with him. “They just get HOSTILE if you try to talk with them. I’ve tried it.”

Well, he certainly wasn’t getting an audience with us, either. A hundred years ago I’m sure that people were throwing bottles at my great-great-great grandfather and telling him to go home. Now I’m all entitled to be here and whatnot. Life is weird sometimes, and sometimes the weird happens right in your driveway. That is my insipid thought for the day.

FURTHERMORE, I will come out as being for townhouses. I’d rather see three families on a lot than what I saw when I lived in Phoenix–sprawl to Tucson, the temps fifteen degrees higher than they should have been, and the Brown Cloud, in part caused by driving 3,000 miles to get back to your McMansion at night. Yes, the developers are getting rich. I think that’s called “what the market will bear” and some junk.

I hate it when people make assumptions like that about me. Don’t “oh noes foreigners” me, because then I will have to “OH NOES ATOMIC WEDGIE” you. Dumbass.

This morning I was in the drugstore, buying myself some delicious, delicious foamcore. The office/school supplies were right across from the toys (well-played, Bartells). Strudel poked around a bit, and then I came face-to-face with Disney’s Royal Nursery Collection.

Did you know they were always perfectly coiffed and attired exactly the same as they were as adults? I am probably the last to know this important fact. I call plothole, because Snow White’s stepmother hated her, so she probably wore whatever was laying around. But people never listen to me, because on the DisneyTruLuv 4Evah message board I belong to, where dreams do totally come true, I am routinely dismissed because I am a King Triton/Ursula ‘shipper. (Trursula 4-Alwaysz! Sorry everyone, that’s a shoutout to my homie from the board, Goofy69.)

But I digress.

Look at those luscious, pouty lips. The aforementioned hair. The made up faces. Yes, there is blush, eyeliner, heavy eyelashes, and eyeshadow on these little toddler-dollies. They are reminding me of something….I can’t quite think of what it is.

Oh, wait, this is what those sensuous little dollies remind me of. MAH BADS.

This is a request and dedication to anyone who needs one. I am so feeling this today. Not for the ranidaphobic.
(I didn’t make this.)