Not Lazy, Just Saving Time...

I've been tossing around ideas for a blog but I used up all my brain juice on my annual Christmas letter so nothing is coagulating into a coherent theme. "What difference does that make?" you ask. I say "Shut up!". and you say "Make me!" and things get ugly from there. But then I remember that my friend, James, posted his Christmas letter as his blog entry. "Lazy", I thought, "but BRILLIANT!". So I'm gonna do it, too. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas 2010
(Imagine a whispery, golf announcer’s voice)

(Since the year 2010 was pretty mediocre, Lizzie’s Christmas letter will focus on the two bright spots; Betsy, her new puppy, and the World Champion San Francisco Giants who are twelve kinds of awesome…We join her Christmas letter in progress…)

…there was a giant flag, a flyover by some cool jets and the Giants won. In extra innings, but they still won and kept on winning – even Zito! And that was April.

(During May and June, the Giants kept winning and our friend’s female mini dachshund had unauthorized relations with her boyfriend’s mom’s male mini dachshund. This resulted in six little wieners one of which was black and orange – Giants’ colors. In July, Ike and his beloved Carie moved to Iowa so she could take care of some family business… and the Bletz family’s Border Collie, Lucy, died. July pretty much sucked. Which brings us to August…)

… our mighty Giants lost a bunch of games. Plus it was the first anniversary of me getting fired. August was shaping up poorly but then (sound of harps) Jill moved home and got a job and we adopted Betsy, one of the offspring of our friend’s dog. She is black and orange, like Brian Wilson’s sneakers. She’s adorable. Jill’s hair is still orange..

In September we had to have our old lady cat, Beatrice, put down. Nicknamed Princess Roadkill for her ability to impersonate a kitty who has been run over by a semi truck, Beatrice had also lost control of her bladder. Which is a real pain when you’re trying to house train a puppy.

We got to see a bunch of baseball games in October which was weird because the Giants don’t usually play past September, but our guys were GOOD!!! In one five day period we went to THREE games! And they won and won and WON!!! And went to the World Series and won that, too!!! So…

(Although Lizzie was thrilled to see her boys win, she’s not mentioning the extra joy of seeing George Bush’s pouty mug behind home plate as he watched his Rangers LOSE. She felt bad for Laura, though.)

In November we got to go to the Giants’ victory parade. Saw some of the players. It was beyond cool – I’ve never been in the presence of over a million people before. Plus, we discovered that the press was mistaken – the Rally Thong had no sequins or rhinestones – it was a plain, red men’s thong. Kind of weird he carried it in his teeth, though…

(While we wait for Lizzie to evaluate her December experience, and because we’re running out of paper, we pause to give her a moment to clean up yet another pile of puppy poop…this is taking a lot longer than she expected…but she would want to wish you…)
Merry Christmas and a Happy 2011!
…and remember, pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training in February!

Secon Chance

The other day I nearly had an out of body experience while I was in the shower. I was washing the goo off my face when my spidey sense started tingling. I turned around and there was a gigantic spider trying (and failing) to climb up the side of the tub. My initial response was to jump out of my skin and drown him, but then I remembered that I think everyone deserves a second chance so I took a deep breath and opened the window next to me. Then I got a tube of body wash (aka soap) and let the spider crawl onto it.

After the bug was safely ensconced on my tube, I carefully conveyed it to the window where I shook it to the ground. Or the maw of some waiting predator...It occured to me later that the spider could have easily jumped off the tube ( I hate when they do that) and lowered itself on a web. In which case, it could have easily gotten stuck to my wet skin.

If that had happened, I would have run full tilt boogie, stark raving naked out my front door into my front yard, screaming. My neighbor would have called the police and when they showed up, I would have had to explain to the cop what the hell I was doing naked and wet in my front yard with a spider stuck to me. That would have been embarassing. And cold.

Nevertheless, I still believe in second chances. Like this weekend, I was watching football and I actually found myself rooting for Michael Vick. Yeah, the same Michael Vick who tortured dogs and ran a dogfighting kennel. He was convicted and spent a couple of years in prison. I personally think he got off kind of easy, but he did the time he was given and he's out now.

Michael Vick is an athlete and has found himself a job as an NFL quarterback. He's probably getting paid a buttload of cash, but that's what people in his line of work get paid. He shouldn't be given a pass for his horrific crimes and he wasn't. But he should get a second chance. Like my spider.

Here's the deal, though, if that arachnid ever shows his face in my tub again I might have to squash him into a pile of eight legged gunk and wash him down the drain. How will I know its him? Well, spiders are territorial and it takes a lot of spider chow to grow one of them up to the almost tarantula size this bad boy had attained. Odds are good that my spider is the only one of his size in the immediate vicinity. So I'll know if its him.

And if Michael Vick ever gets more agressive with a dog than giving it a belly rub, his football career should be squashed and he should be washed down whatever passes for a drain in the penal system. Maybe he could have to pick the dead, wet spider off me. If that ever happens for real.

Been Around That Block...That One Too!

Last night I was happily sitting on the floor watching TV when the hub said "Your blog is old - you need to write something!" Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, the problem is that I've been just a teeny bit focused on baseball of late what with my beloved Giants becoming WORLD CHAMPIONS and all...Plus, I've been told that my musings might be a bit baseball-centric and I should branch out. So after the next paragraph, I will. I swear.

The hub, daughter unit and I got up early on Wednesday to go to the Giants' victory parade. It was so early, I think heard dawn actually crack. We took BART to the City and, with over 1,000,000 like minded peeps, we yelled, waved and shook stuff at our heroes as they passed by in motorized cable cars. It was cool to see them even though Tim Lincecum was waving out the other side of the car and the freakishly handsome Javier Lopez was in the middle of an interview inside the car when he went by so we couldn't see them. That's OK, they were having fun and we were happy to get the chance to celebrate. Plus we went out to Yank Sing's afterward for some dim sum that was so good I think my socks actually rolled up and down.

I got to thinking on the way home that everybody needs a parade or its equivalent at least once in their life. A few weeks ago, I was watching the Today Show and they celebrated a mom whose kid had cancer. They gave her a special song. That's like a parade. I had a kid with cancer - its hard to watch. The chemo makes them nauseous and they cry a lot. This lady's kid survived, as mine did, but the lady was changed. Me too! I still take Paxil so I don't bust into a cold sweat and start drooling and making grunting noises when I get stuck in traffic.

Once when we were at a Giants' game, there were some people from Donate Life on the field. They got to throw out the first pitch and carry around one of those really cool over sized checks. It was very parade-y. They were promoting organ donation. I know a lot about that since my cancer surviving kid had a heart transplant! Always an over achiever, that one! She couldn't have gone for a downstream organ like a liver or a kidney (she lost one of those during the cancer fiasco...) no - my baby went heart. And she's doing really well now. I'm still on Paxil...

There was also an Awareness Day for dyslexia and ADHD. I totally identified with those parade subjects. That same kid again... Same prescription for me. I gotta say, though, that the dyslexia gave me the opportunity to read some of the books I had skillfully avoided in school. Since she read slowly I got to read some of her texts and literature books to her through high school and college. I don't like to go against all those years of history, but what is the big deal about The Catcher in the Rye? I thought it kind of blew. Also discovered I'm not a big fan of Hemingway. The son unit put it well when he said "He just writes about spoiled rich people who drink too much and think they have problems." Yup. He was kind of a pig. Totally loved Ray Bradbury, though, and Richard Bradford. Maybe its the "Brad" in their names. I like people named Brad. There should be a Brad parade.

Eating disorders are the topic of many parade-ish shows on TV. I have one of those - well, not a diagnosed one, but if you have a mom who always tells you that you need to lose weight - even when you're a sylph-like teenager, you're liable to develop an unhealthy attitude about food. I grew to be a fatty and my mom warned me (almost daily) about the danger to my heart of excess weight. "You could have a stroke or a heart attack" she would say.

So I did. It was an itty bitty heart attack, but a real stroke which knocked me out of commission for a while and ultimately, I think, resulted in me being fired. Actually, I think that my mom made me have the stroke. She passed away seven months before I had it, but I think her spirit continued to roam the earth, unable to complete her journey until she made sure I'd lose weight. I think if you look at the path of the stroke in my brain, it probably resembles my mom's finger (with a red polished nail). I'm skinny now. Thanks Mom. Now I'd look good in one of those awesome red dresses celebrities parade around in for heart health...

Anyway, I think I need a parade. Or a visit to Ellen, who is my favorite celebrity. Or I could throw out a first pitch. To Ellen. Whatever. The person who really deserves the parade is the daughter unit. That cancer surviving, dyslexic, heart transplant survivor. I'd march in it...

Awesome Weekend

It was the best of weekends; it was the worst of weekends - and all for the exact same reason. Some weeks ago, the hub looked downcast because baseball season was almost over. So, being the understanding wife I am not to mention a rabid fan of the game, especially the Giants, I got us tickets to the last game of the season. Plus, the hub had gotten us some tickets to the Giants' Oktoberfest which was last Wednesday.

The Giants won that game and the next one, and as I was re-watching the good parts on TV on Friday, the announcers got me all whooped up about the fact that my Gigantes could become Western Division champs with one win over the Padres who came to town that very night! Ignoring common sense and budgetary constraints, I jumped right online and scored two (sort of) reasonably priced tickets. They were bleacher seats but who cares! I'd never seen a team win a championship and all pour out on the field jumping and hugging, and I really wanted to. And they were bound to win - Matt Cain was pitching and it was his birthday, for Pete's sake!

What I hadn't counted on was that 1. Matt Cain (he of the adorable ginger curls, sweet expression and powerful arm) had a gnarly bad night and 2. It was Singles Night at the park. Because of number 1, the Giants lost and because of number 2, there were large numbers of skankily dressed young women and horny young men staggering drunkenly around in the bleachers trying to score. I'm not absolutely sure they were going to wait til they left the park. There was a kind of sweaty desperation in the air. Plus, the stadium lights are blinding in the bleachers and you can't really see the ball. Not that any of the drunken singles could focus anyway.

There was also some form of ooze on the floor. At first I thought it was dew or mist in the air that formed on the ground, but there was none on the seats or rails which were made of aluminium just like the floor. After the third tipsy single person did a slip and fall right next to my seat, I began to wish I was a personal injury lawyer. I also got pretty good at catching people by the arm and putting them back on their feet.

When I went to the bathroom, something puzzling yet hilarious happened. I was heading back to my seat when I heard a voice from above me. No it wasn't the Almighty, it was a tall, young (really young) man who slurred " Are you a Giants fan?" Well, I was at a Giants game and I was dressed in as much orange and black as I could cram onto my body, and I had an orange rally rag hanging out of my pocket. I thought "Is this larvae flirting with me?" but I said "Yes." And I kept walking. Then he said "That's my girl!" Girl?! Obviously, he hadn't seen my 55 year old face. I lifted my chin so he could see past the bill of my baseball cap and smiled at him. He grinned back. I high fived him and beat feet out of there. Either his beer goggles are in serious need of adjustment or he is kinky in a way I do not want to know about.

We moped around that night and the next morning. I mean, the Giants only had to win one of three games to win their division and they lost the first one which seemed like a sure thing! That afternoon, during the second game of the series, I sent the hub next door to watch and I read my book. I love my mighty Gigantes, but I can't watch their sad faces when they lose. And lose they did. Ugh!

So we went to the last game of the series and the season yesterday. Got new rally rags and everything. Nobody hit on me, The Giants played wonderfully - Jonathan Sanchez was the winning pitcher and he hit a triple! Buster Posey hit a home run!!! Coolest game ever! The lady I sat next to looked like a nun, but talked like a stevedore. Plus, she was older than me and had a mad crush on Brian Wilson - the 28 year old pitcher not the geezerly Beach Boy. Apparently,there's a lot of that May/December stuff going around at the park... And I got to see the players pour out on the field jumping up and down and hugging when they won. They even took a victory lap around the field and slapped hands with the fans. We were in the second level and, though I was tempted to vault over the rail to the first level, I'm a big fat chicken - and didn't want to get arrested.

Now the Giants are the Western Division Champions. They are so cool. And totally worth all the coronaries I've almost had watching them. They have this habit of going right to the edge of the cliff and then leaning back at the last second. In an ordinary person this would drive me nuts. I would avoid them, and yet I pay to watch the Giants...weird.

Anyway, we're going to the first game of the playoffs on Thursday. I hope they just outright win instead of toying with me - and I'm staying out of the bleachers!

Tying Up a Loose End

In my tirade about the crappy state of organized religion, I left a major end dangling and I feel the need to tie it off. Remember several posts ago when I mentioned that the hub would be performing a wedding? You know for the couple who have the world's cutest baby girl? The daddy is my friend's son who was huge at birth and went to Iraq the same time my daughter had her heart transplant. Remember? No? Well, you must be new to my blog. Or you've been in a coma. I hope you're feeling better - now get caught up!

Anyway, on August 20th, the hub, the daughter unit and I went down to Carmel and checked into our hotel. Well, first we stopped at the pub across the street for some refreshment. This would be a recurring theme over the weekend. When we got into our room, we discovered it had a kitchen with a full sized refrigerator! I thought this was standard for all the rooms, but after giving the rest of the wedding group tours of the room, I realized our was the only room with cooling capacity. The fridge rapidly filled with wine, beer, and a couple of bottles of hard liquor which I know don't need refrigeration but seemed happy to be among friends.

The hub wanted to take a walk to bank a few calories because we knew that there was eating on the horizon. And all that booze...We got into our sneakers and opened the door to find one of the other wedding guests about to knock on our door seeking access to the fridge. More people started gathering and bottles started being opened, glasses passed, cigars smoked. It got fun fast. We forgot about the walk and decided to socialize instead. These are nice people and they buy good wine. We made a good choice.

Later that night, after the wine-a-thon, we proceeded to the hotel's conference room where my buddy had arranged the mother of all rehearsal dinners (Oh, yeah, the wedding party had a rehearsal, but the rest of us stayed at the hotel "waiting for stragglers" and sucking down more wine). The dinner was a buffet, and I gotta say, the beef was so delicious it actually melted in my mouth. There was salmon and veggies and polenta, too. And wine. The dinner was fantastic, and the flowers were so pretty I wanted to eat them but there were some delphiniums and those are poisonous so I just took home a bouquet instead. Like their daughter's wedding, we laughed, toasted, cried, and ate like pigs.

The wedding day dawned foggy but not terribly cold and we had high hopes for some sunshine before the ceremony. The day was spent walking around in Carmel, which is the only thing you can do in Carmel that won't require a second mortgage.I did find a pair of earrings on sale which matched my dress so I considered that a major score. When we got back to the hotel, we discovered that there had been some family drama, lots of tears and door slamming. In other words, the usual wedding stuff.

At about 5pm we headed for a really cool little wine bar for wine and hors d'oeuvres. At 7 we all walked down to the beach, shed our shoes and crossed the sand to very near the water. We created an aisle out of seaweed and the hub got ready. As the girls arrived on a cool trolly, the guys met them and escorted them to the assembled masses. The bride's sister is 15 and possesses the voice of an angel. She also plays the guitar beautifully and serenaded us with a love song as everybody came together. I forgot to mention that as we were waiting for the couple to arrive we realized that the tide was coming in so we moved our assembly back. Twice. That water can move!

The bride was gorgeous, the ceremony lovely, and the hub did a great job. There were more tears, hugs, and crashing waves. Plus, just in time for the bride to show up - the sun came out! It was like a wedding in a romance novel! When it was time for their first married kiss the groom picked his bride up and swung her in the air! It was so romantic. Which is kind of surprising since they do have the aforementioned baby, and its not their first time at the rodeo, if you know what I mean...

We walked back to the restaurant and indulged in more delicious food, wine and conversation. when it came time for cake, there was a really pretty three tier wedding cake with flowers on it. It looked like a regular wedding cake but it was CHEESECAKE inside. There was chocolate and caramel sauce an strawberries on sticks. I want to live there and eat that food forever. Yum! More wine later, we walked back to the hotel (probably burned off a whole calorie! Maybe two...).

The next day we went out for brekkie with my buddy and her hub. Petted some dogs (Lots of Standard Poodles in Carmel), talked to some nice people, looked at some really expensive real estate, then headed home. It was a seriously fun weekend and such a beautiful and meaningful wedding.We got to hang with my bud and her hub. Plus we found out their daughter (the June bride) is pregnant!

I told my friend, though, that if her kids don't stop popping out babies and getting married, I'm going to turn into a fat alcoholic. A happy one, though...

Little Boy of Summer

There are only three weeks left of regular season baseball for this year. I love baseball and I especially adore this year's Giants team. They are cute as kittens and very good at the game. Every time they're down, they just claw their way back up.Yes, my Mighty Gigantes are an inspiration, and while I hope they make it into the post season, even if they don't (they will!!!) they have been amazing to watch this season. I'm really gonna miss it when they're done for the year.

I will miss the big Giants, but I will actively pine for the tiny Giant who lives next door. On the front porch of his 5th birthday, the little guy (a newly minted kindergartner)continues his never-ending baseball game which has become background for everything that has gone on in the neighborhood this summer. "Hey, did you hear, Ann has to have a double mastectomy?" ("Now batting - right fielder - Aubrey Huff!)"I'm cleaning out a bunch of crap - wanna have a garage sale?" (Andres Tortoise hits another home run!"). "How's Ann?" (Take me out to thee ball gaaaame...) "Is he going back to Arizona already? Are the dorms even open yet?" (Pablo Sandyball hits a triple!) "We got all his school supplies - I can't believe he's starting kindergarten!" (Now pitching - Tim Linsykim!)

For the record, I know Huff plays first base, but it really ticks the little guy off to see him there so he always plays right field on our street. Also, Andres Torres is a speedster on the bases - nothing tortoise-like about him. I was thinking, though, of putting a Giants hat on our pet tortoise and taking a picture. Don't want to go near Pablo's sandyball with a camera...just sayin'. Plus, Ann is doing very well after her surgery and we made some good bank at our garage sale - enough to afford a bug zapper to cut down on the mosquito population in the nabe...

Sometimes the big Giants win and sometimes they lose, but our Giants usually win. And when they get a splash hit, like Timmy does every third at bat or so, they dive into McCovey Cove and retrieve the ball! OK, I know Lincecum bats about 130 and he's never hit a home run in his life. Don't even know if he can swim, but our little Giant trusts his heroes and I bet they can fly if he wants them to.

In fact, the only aspect of this baseball fixation that could be called remotely negative is the uptick in spitting and crotch grabbing that the little guy engages in. All the neighbors crack up when he does this. His mom - not so much. In fact, during one of yesterday's fourth innings she signaled for a time out, pulled him off third and read him the riot act..."When you are being paid lots of money to play professional baseball, you can spit and grab your crotch all you want - until then - knock it off!" Chastened, he marched back to third, hung his head and waited for Pablo Sandyball to swing the bat.

Next weekend, when we celebrate his birthday at the Giants mini field in the shadow of Giants stadium (where else?) I will hoist a hot dog (We're tailgating!)to my tiny Giant and his grownup counterparts, wish them all a fantastic fall and thank them for this awesome summer.

I'm even gonna miss the spitting and crotch grabbing...

Old, Not Old...

Yesterday I heard a snatch of conversation that got me thinking. A couple of young voices were talking about an upcoming birthday. "I'm gonna be 25!" One of them moaned "I feel so I old..." I remember being young and feeling old. I also remember Watergate, the Beatles coming to America, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. OK, not the last one but I have been around awhile.

I'm still not old, though, but gosh, if you're 25 and don't know if you're old, you've got a long, old life ahead of you! I remember when I was a kid; anytime I asked my mom how old she was she'd just say "I'm old" and the look on her face said she really thought she was! I did some figuring and realized that she was in her 30's when I started wondering about her age. Of course that was in the 60's when the worst thing a woman could do was grow older. The horror!

I think what we need are some benchmarks. That way there will be no question about when you become old, you'll just be there. If people can't do anything about it the debate will end. Problem is, what do you use for a benchmark? What are some commonalities we can use to determine geezerdome? Grey hair? That wouldn't work. We all go grey at different times. Plus, its easy to hide...

Bill Cosby once said your first grey pube makes you feel old but that's a lousy benchmark. Who would want to check? I have a personal set of aging benchmarks that serve me well and I think we should apply them universally. They are universal and unavoidable. Here they are: you are young until you're 30, then you're middle aged til you're 60, then you're old. If you live past 90, you're really old and for every 5 years after that you add another "really". Until you reach 100, and then you add a "freakin'" I think this will simplify our discourse.

You could argue that the weak link of my system is middle age because technically "middle" means that there is the same amount on either side and a 59 year old probably won't live to 118 years old. Possibly not, but who knows, modern science could help us all live to be really, really, freakin' really, really, really, old.

Of course, then I'll have to re-calibrate my benchmarks.

August 10

Today is the 25th anniversary of the daughter unit's birth. Its also approaching the fourth anniversary of her heart's failure and it is because of this that she and I spent today at Kaiser in Santa Clara for her annual big heart checkup. She has checks every three months but those just involve blood tests. The annual big one, though, involves a catheter inserted in an artery and threaded down to take a bite out of her heart.

I know. Ew. I sit in the waiting room, humming Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart", trying not to think about what's going on in the procedure room in the back, when I notice a couple across the room looking anxious and confused. Plus the young man was wearing a respirator - the kind painters wear. I moseyed on over, introduced myself and asked if they were transplant people. They were. He'd gotten a new heart just last Thursday. His experience and my daughter's were very similar. Perfectly healthy, caught a virus that killed their hearts.

We were talking about their transplants and the little old lady sitting with a whole different group (heart attack, I think), kept exclaiming "Oh my!" "Goodness!" and "Heavens no!" at intervals through our whole conversation. She was hilarious - I almost tossed in my uterine polyps and breast lump just to give her more material...


The daughter came out after her procedure, and I was glad my new friends had gone in already because this one hurt my girl a lot. When she came out there were tears in her eyes. She popped a percocet and a short time later got very relaxed. Then she had an echocardiogram, clinic visit and an xray. After only seven hours, we were done.

We toodled along back past home and to the county offices in Hayward. The daughter had to submit some paperwork for a job she starts soon. While at the County office with most of the population of the county, I discovered several things:
1. There are lots of fat people in our county.
2. Most of these fat people wear pants that are too small.
3. Too small pants on a too large body cause the flab to ooze over the waistband.
4. This is unattractive.
5. People who work in county offices don't get paid enough.

If we thought waiting in line at Kaiser and the county offices was fun, we found true joy waiting in line to leave the parking lot with all the other people who were trying to get the hell out of there because it was 4:30 and time to go home! I sang Happy Birthday to the girl just to remind her it was her special day.

When we finally rolled up the driveway, we were overcome with exhaustion and relief. My baby headed for the door and after I finished kissing the driveway, I joined her. I was thrilled to be home but I was mostly happy to be home with her because her life is truly a miracle. Plus I'm exhausted. And my nearly perfect hub made burgers for dinner - with pepper jack cheese.

All in all, not the birthday I'd choose for anybody but we made the best if it. We laughed a lot and gave her her presents before dinner. Then she went out for ice cream with her friends. If you take away the heart biopsy - you might even call it fun! Next year, though, maybe dinner and a show...

In Praise of the F Bomb

When my kids were little, in order to not raise potty mouths, the hub and I decided we needed to clean up our language. Its not that we were constantly swearing, but we realized that the cussin' we did would eventually be regurgitated by our offspring which would be broadcast into the ether at inopportune moments. So we cleaned it up and started sounding like something between a Disney movie and Mother Theresa. We were boring. But very well spoken.

As the kids grew up and discovered that there were cool other words to express anger, frustration, disdain, etc, I explained that - yes, they are just words, but they show a lack of creativity and - no, its not OK to correct Grandma when she uses them. The first time I dropped an f-bomb in their presence I think I made them cry. I even apologized - but I really wasn't sorry - I was f*ckin' pissed!

I discovered along the way that other people didn't share my restraint. Well, maybe around kids but nowhere else. One Sunday, I attended a meeting in my former minister's office. After the meeting ended, I mentioned that something confused me and my minister said "Yeah, that's a real mind f*ck". As I was drinking coffee at the time, I did an actual spit take. The kind you see on TV where somebody drinks something and blows it across the room. Whiles I was cleaning the wall, I said I was sorry, but I really hadn't expected to hear that word in the minister's office on a Sunday morning.

Flash forward to last month. The hub and I were visiting our pseudo family in Las Vegas. They are some of my favorite people and its purely fate that brought us together. The hub's widowed mother married a divorced man after all their kids were grown and everybody just kind of clicked. The sort-of brother has a kinda wife, and they are very cool people. Both journalist types, they are smart, artistic, and well spoken. My nearly sister-in-law also has a mouth that would make a rapper blush. According to her, people aren't dead, they're "tits up in the ground" and f-bombs fly like mosquitoes at dusk when she's comfortable around you. Which, I am happy to say, she is around me and the hub.

In fact, Semi Sis has given me a new mantra by which I intend to structure my whole life. In addition to her other talents, she is a really wonderful and creative cook. All her food is delicious and beautifully presented. One day, she was making a pizza and she was having trouble getting it off the peel (Of course she has a peel - I use a cookie sheet) She ended up folding the pizza in half and turning it into a cobbled together calzone. Ticked off, she carried it to the table, plopped it down and said "F*ck it - its dinner."

This is my favorite new phrase. And its so versatile! Wash the laundry with a red sock?"F*ck it - its clean". Let weeds take over your garden? "F*ck it - its green". Eat a whole bag of chips" "F*ck it - they're gone". I've long thought I needed a personal philosophy and I think I've found it. Thanks to my sorta sister-in-law in Vegas.

I've been thinking a bit about the f-bomb lately. In fact, I've done some research on it. Its an old word of Germanic origin that probably always meant having sex. That's why there's not much information on the origin of the f-bomb; people are shy about stuff like that. Now, though, it means so much more. It adds extremity to things, emphasis...Its a f*cking brilliant word when you think about it!

While writing this, I've kept my friends of tender sensibilities in mind by masking the f-bomb. That's another thing I've discovered - you have your nice friends and your f*cking friends. Your nice friends are people you can have coffee or lunch with, talk about your kids, and shop sometimes. Your fucking friends, you can do all the same stuff with, but you loosen up with these people, and they tend to be a lot more fun. There is frequently chocolate involved with your f*cking friends.

So, I've decided that its OK to drop the occasional f-bomb. In fact, it adds color and depth to my vocabulary. Not in the way Mrs. Metz, my English teacher, would have wanted - but it works for me. And as for this blog entry, f*ck it - its done...

The Last Straw

So, many people know that its been almost a year since a board at the church I attended for more than 20 years fired me from my job in their preschool. They showed me the door without talking to me or getting my side of things. I knew there was trouble, but I had no one to help me because everybody was either sick or caring for a sick person or a nutball. In their termination letter, they said the problem started the year before but they never said anything to me, just tossed me under the bus.

This behavior seemed to be the antithesis of what I felt was the point of going to church, that is: to learn how to exist in the world in a Christ-like way. Jesus is well known to be an advocate of helping and supporting the underdog. He spent time with hookers, lepers, women, children, and nutballs (people posessed by evil). He was supportive of people who were treated unfairly. He wasn't just a really Good Guy, He was the Son of God for Pete's sake!

So when my church treated me so poorly and gave me no recourse, I quit that bitch and began looking for a new place to worship. See, I've always loved church - being in a church gave me such a deep feeling of peace, even if I was just touring a landmark like a mission here in California, or Notre Dame in Paris. When I was a kid I begged my parents to take me and I loved it when they did. Plus, the music was so pretty...

I researched various religions. Tossed out any that espoused idiocy - the earth is more than 6,000 years old, Jeez. After watching the news and reading the paper, I decided not to embrace any religion that put pedophiles in charge of children, encouraged people to kill in the name of God, or put the religion's needs over the needs of people. By this time, I'd rejected almost all of the world's faiths.

The fact is that I like being Christan. I believe in God and I love Jesus. But, to paraphrase John Fugelsang (great writer/hilarious comedian) some of His fan clubs give me pause. Like my friend who finally (after 20 years!) divorced her emotionally abusive douchebag husband and had her clergyman berated her for "not trying". Her hub was not the only douche. And the church that gave a woman in her 30s a hard time for having a baby outside of marriage. She couldn't seem to meet a good man and she heard the clock ticking in her uterus...

Which brings me to this weekend and my last straw. The hub and I were at a party, and also in attendance were my friend's son and his fiance with their new baby. They are getting married next month and they asked the hub to perform the ceremony. I wondered why not a professional? I mean, the hub has been a proud minister in the Universal Life Church since he sent in $5 in Middle School, but he's a park ranger by trade. Turns out they took their 3 1/2 month old daughter to her family's church to talk about christening and the dude with the backward collar said: "It would be a waste of water" to baptize the baby. Let me repeat that..."it would be a waste of water" to baptize that paragon if innocence.

I thought the point of baptism was to welcome a person into the family of God. So her mother wasn't confirmed and her parents rarely attend church, why won't the baby be welcome in God's family? I think Jesus would have welcomed her. I also think Jesus would have welcomed the fatherless baby and his mother. And I think Jesus would have encouraged the abused woman and (in His spare time)I think He would have talked to me about my problem and let me work in a different position at the school if I couldn't adapt.

I thank God every day for all my gifts, including, but not limited to, my awesome family, terrific friends, food, a place to live, good health and my sense of humor. All of which have gotten me through the hard times. I thought I needed church to feel close to God but maybe not. I've always thought that calling a building "God's house" was a little disingenuous since God created all outdoors and churches are built by people. Well intentioned people, but people nonetheless. I think I'll spend my time worshipping outside. Waste of water, my ass!

Bye Bye, Baby...

This past week, the hub and I were on vacation. We spent several days with his pseudo siblings (long, not very interesting story) in Las Vegas. We had a great time, floated in a beautiful pool, ate gourmet food, and generally had a really fun time. Of course, in our typical fashion, it couldn't be a vacation without something weird happening. We were in the Hofbrauhouse in Vegas (Which is an exact replica of the one in Munich) singing, dancing (the Chicken Dance - but it counts...)eating, drinking and generally kicking up our middle aged heels when the hub's phone rang.

He went out into the foyer to answer it and when he didn't come right back I knew something was up. I went to see what was going on and when I found him he looked up and mouthed the words "Lucy died." Then we went back to the party.

Lucy was our 15 year old Border Collie mix. When the kids were 10 and 12 I decided we needed a puppy. The hub and I searched and searched until finally we stumbled upon a baby Coon Hound which I fell in love with and named Lucy. Turns out the hub had some reservations vis a vis the really loud howl Coon Hounds issue instead of a bark.

So we went elsewhere and found a baby Border Collie mix which I fell in love with and named Lucy. This time it stuck. She was 10 weeks old, really cute and shy. The whole family loved her and she was the perfect dog. Lucy was so smart that she trained herself to sit, stay, heel and throw a ball. Heck, she probably would have cleaned the house and cooked dinner if she'd had thumbs.

We weren't sure of her birthday but we decided it was June 18 which coincided with my birthday. That made us Geminis so we understood each other. We had our bitch days and our other days we were warm and fuzzy. Of course on her bitch days, she had the excuse that she was actually a bitch. The other days, well, of course she was warm and fuzzy - she was a dog, for Pete's sake.

When we heard she'd died, we didn't want her to go to the vet where they'd just toss her in the trash and then send me the Rainbow Bridge poem. They sent it to me after Ernie died and I thought "Lame. Nice, but lame". Then I got to the part about him coming to meet me as I crossed the bridge and I dissolved into a blithering puddle of weeping jelly. I did not want to go there again.

My poor, brave sister was the one who found Lucy when she came to feed the pets while we were away. She called and the hub told her to double bag the body and leave her in the garage. We were banking on the weather being cool enough to keep her relatively fresh until we got home three days later.

We reasoned that Lucy had died apparently peacefully in her sleep. She had kindly waited until we were gone so we wouldn't be upset (Yeah, it seems a tad anthropomorphic, but you didn't know Lucy). She also left a whole bunch of little hairs around the house to remember her by. Plus, she was 105 in people years!

I was cool about her death until I got home. I miss her, but there's not the sense that she was too young to die. Still, her absence leaves a hole. And there's nobody to clean the dishes before they go in the dishwasher. Our small dog has taken to giving us the stink eye and peeing in the living room. I sense the possible need for a puppy shrink.

Everybody loved Lucy. I found myself consoling many of my neighbors. We had a wake at 5 Guys burgers. I had fries in Lucy's honor. Lucy would have wanted me to. In fact Lucy would have made them for me. If she'd had thumbs. Then she'd have licked the plate clean after I finished them. I miss Lucy...

Bitches Please

So one of those vampire movies is coming out. Maybe its already here - I don't follow the series but those actors are all over the place so I figure there's something afoot. That excessively handsome young man who doesn't know a vagina from a Swedish car (see March 13) is in the movie along with another kid who recently reached his 18th birthday and women are going nuts.

Here's what's weird. When I say "women", I'm not just talking about females in their late adolescence or early 20's. There are ladies MY AGE swooning like teenagers over these (barely not) children. I have nothing against older women with younger men. I mean my son's girlfriend is 10 years older than he is. She's lovely and their relationship is wonderful. They are also in the same generation. Some of these vampire lover gals could be grandmas to the actors they're slobbering over. Ew.

I was watching the "Today Show" the other day and one of these actors had a body guard to keep people from touching the goodies while he circled the crowd. Lots of the hands they were brushing off were wrinkly and had liver spots. He was polite and gracious to everyone which makes me think he must be a pretty good actor. The body guard looked kind of disgusted. You've got to admit that's gotta be pretty icky duty.

The thing is, do they not realize the people in those movies are not real? In People Magazine a few weeks ago (Yes, I subscribe, it was a gift from the hub...What?)there was an article about a woman who decorated a room in her house in a total vampire movie theme. Including, but not limited to posters,cardboard standups, sheets and movie paraphernalia. I also read where marriages are breaking up over vampire obsessions. Bitches, please...

I hope women who are obsessed with these stories (and ladies, they are just stories) realize that they were made up by a woman. Lots of women write romantic fiction. Our minds just work that way. Once tapped - our romance gland can create ooey, gooey prose that would make your hair curl softly, softly over your silken shoulder. Your satin robe pushed back, while your body achingly awaited his touch.

See, all it takes is a feminine brain and a hormone. I'm not saying men can't write romance, but, ironically, the kind of brooding, manly men that vampire obsessed women fantasize about could probably no more write a romantic sex scene than decorate a powder room. Plus, I've gotten to know a few brooding men in my life and I've discovered that when women think men are awash in deep, romantic thoughts, they're most likely trying to decide on tap or bottle beer.

I hope that when all these ladies who are changing their lives for fictitious young men and scenarios float back down to earth, they have something to land on. It would be depressing to wait for a pale, young stud to bite your neck and find out that he was your grandson's friend from Oregon.

Wedding Week

The wedding I've been looking forward to is in the history books. The rehearsal was last Friday. It was fun and disorganized, as all wedding rehearsals are. There was lots of giggling and running around. Afterwards there was napping and then a burrito buffet and lots of wine. Which might have been the catalyst for the hub and me putting the table decorations on our heads and dancing in the bar. Well, the table decorations were straw sombreros and we didn't dance on the tables. Plus, the band contained one aging and wrinkly Doobie Brother so we felt dancing was in order. And it was my birthday which was cool. I got free ice cream at lunch.

Saturday dawned way too early and after breakfast we spent the day hanging out and annoying people. The girls were getting their hair and makeup done in the bridal suite. The boys were trying to eradicate their hangovers (the girls probably were, too but at least they smelled good). About noon, the hub and I wandered down the street to Pizza My Heart for a slice. Halfway through, his phone rang. It was the daughter unit and Maid of Honor who was having a shoe emergency; as in the ones she had didn't look right with the dress. Or her hair, which caused me to bust out into a chorus of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" when I first saw it. Not my best move and one of the reasons I offered to run out and get her another pair of shoes.

The problem was, I knew what she needed and I was certain we could find them at Payless. But there are no Paylesses in Los Gatos. Google maps located one in San Jose and we zipped over there got the shoes and tried to zip back before the bridal party left the hotel. We would have made it, too, but the hub, who never gets lost anywhere, got lost. On the plus side, we drove through Saratoga which is pretty.


We got back to the hotel about 5 minutes after the limo left. The ceremony didn't start til four o'clock and it was only 1:45 so we knew we'd get the shoes to the daughter in time but we had to catch our shuttle to the wedding site at 2:15. We raced to our room and threw on our clothes. Then I decided I looked fat in my dress so I put on one of the other ones I'd brought(in case I looked fat) tossed some makeup at my face and ran to catch the shuttle. We made it.

The shoes fit, and I realized why the dress I chose to wear wasn't my first choice...I kept having to hoist up the front because my bra kept showing. So I ditched the bra. I still had to hoist it up to keep the girls in line, but at least nobody saw my bra which was, to put it mildly, really ugly. Plus, I had a shawl that could hide a multitude of sins (including, I just realized, my bra) so I was all set.

The wedding ceremony was gorgeous, touching, spiritual and fun. The bride was not beautiful - she was exqisite! The groom was handsome and adorably dorky. We laughed, we cried. There were flowers, trees, birds tweeting, sunbeams, joy, prayers. It was a great wedding. The reception was fun, if a little cold. Great food, good wine, awesome beer (the hub made it). Then we repaired to a large barn for dancing, coffee, more wine and cake. It was so much fun everybody wanted it to last all night, but, alas, we had to catch the 10 pm shuttle.

The next morning, my friend and her hubby put on a wedding brunch with great food and (surprise!) champagne. This was how a wedding should be - three days of parties, wine, family and so much fun! We sent off the new couple with lots of hugs and kisses. They are a great pair and I'm so happy for them. The only problem is that this wedding has been in the planning stages for more than a year. And now its over. Done. Now what?

I think I'll get a puppy.

Tiny Temporary Family

The hub and I went to the ballpark last night. Our Mighty Giants were playing the A's and since we were in Oakland when the A's spanked SF, we were looking for some payback. Since we'd watched the last two games from the nosebleed area, we alerted Tenzig (Norgay - our Sherpa friend) that we could find our own way to our seats. Because we got good seats - not great ones in the field club, but two rows back. So we didn't have waiters, but we did have a great view of the game.

When you take your seats at a baseball game, you have to get to know, to some extent, your seat mates. After all, you are going to be confined together for two and a half to three hours. You will eat together, drink together, and work toward a common goal - trying to avoid having to pee when there are runners on base...


I got to chase some guys out of our seats, which was cool, never done that before. When we got settled, three men came and sat in front of us. As soon as he sat down, the guy in front of me started talking, and talking. This guy looked and sounded like a guy who, if you wanted to cast somebody to play a midwestern minister, you'd pick him. Tall white guy with thinning white hair, kind of doughy, perfectly pressed shirt, well modulated voice and he never shut up. In his favor, he knew a lot about sports, but - damn...His name was Scott.

About a half hour into Scott's homily about Pablo Sandoval's weight problem, I whispered to the hub asking if he had a sock I could stuff in Scott's mouth. He offered his shorts. I considered it. Speaking of weight problems, there was a family of future heart attack victims accross the aisle and I wanted to smack the parents who kept feeding the kids chips.

Right behind us was a guy who I think was on a date with the woman next to him. I caught her eye as he was finishing up a story about hitting a rubber snake on some pole at spring training. We shook our heads. Dude - if you have to preface a story with "This is so funny..." - its not funny. Don't think there will be a next date. Behind him was Crazy Uncle A's Fan who brought his horn and kept talking about the A's as if he was part of the team "We're hitting real well - We had a great spring" etc. Um...the A's don't hire lard butts...well, except Jack Cust.

The game was a nail biter at the end, but they pulled it out for Zito. I was exhausted. Good game, though. Reverend Scott left early, probably to go home and tune up today's sermon. The Fat Family hung in til the end which was impressive because by the ninth inning they'd run out of food and had to actually watch the game. Date Couple ditched in about the seventh inning. The Giants scored - don't think he did...Crazy Uncle A's Fan broke his horn -awwwww. The hub ran into him in the potty line after the game and said he was a nice guy - pretty funny and just enjoying the game. Uh - what if the A's had won?

Our next game is Monday. I can't wait to see who we sit near. Of course, its Halloween in June at the park and we'll be in our Star Trek uniforms (original series) so theres a good chance nobody will sit by us. Maybe we should take a horn...

Leftovers

I have to apologize for last night's post. I was really tired and I so wanted to crawl into my bed with the hub and the dog; plus we'd been to a funeral and I was a little distracted; and the Giants game was on TV and they were winning. So that's why yesterday's post was so egregiously banal (My 8th grade teacher, Mr. Duff, was right - those words did come in handy...I AM glad he taught them to me - dammit.)

There were some thoughts bouncing around in my head and was afraid they would fall out if I didn't get them down before I fell asleep. So I wrote them down. Then today, I read through it again. It sucked (Hey, Mr. Duff - I picked that one up on my own - not fancy, but it works...). Then I got to thinking, I've left a few loose ends dangling, so I'll catch up...

I bought the Spanx! Its a pretty cool garment that, if I was a skank, I could wear as a dress. Its actually a different brand than Spanx, but it does the job. The bra, undies and slip are all one garment and it smooths out all the bumpy parts. There is a thin rubberized strip under the hem so it won't ride up. It also has stitching around the ass part that, if mine was perkier, would make it stand up and salute.

There's another word I found that sounds dirty but isn't. Its "diphthong" which sounds like something a skank (me if I wore my Spanx as a dress!) could wear in a swimming pool. Its actually a two vowel sound in a single syllable. Perfectly acceptable but it sounds gross.

Oh, yeah,aside from tonight, the Giants are winning! Timmy's last game wasn't a winner but it wasn't a loser either. It makes no sense. I think you have to be four years old and a rabid baseball fanatic to understand it. Also - yesterday, our four year old rabid baseball fanatic neighbor who has an imaginary baseball game going 24/7 added the National Anthem to his repertoire. Our across the street neighbor flies her flag nearly every day so he takes off his hat and faces it while belting out the song. Anybody who's out there joins in. Our across the street neighbor thinks we really like her...

Life is improving. Its not all better yet, but its getting there. As we all know, life is a journey, not a destination, and what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and that includes last night's post...

I'm starting to make old people noises. Not the organic pops, creaks and toots that you expect from someone approaching the time to start thinking about when they'll become old; well, those too, but...my accessories are getting noisy.

See, when I was a kid charm bracelets were very fashionable and all the old ladies wore them. A lady was old when she was over 40. Basically, that was time to be put out to pasture or left on an ice floe to be eaten by polar bears. I guess that's why they wore the charm bracelets - those charms clanking together would scare the polar bears away.

All I knew was that if I heard clanking and smelled gardenias there was a grandma in the vicinity. Grandmas also wore shoes that made hollow thunks on the floor. They used old-school cigarette lighters that went clack, shoosh, chwa.

Now, I will never, ever use a cigarette lighter for its intended purpose, but the last pair of shoes I bought are kind of ugly and when I walk on hard floors they kind of thunk. I also have started collecting charms for my bracelet. The new style of charms don't dangle but they're like metal beads which fit on a metal rope-like bracelet.

These charms are silent but when I was cleaning out my garage, I found a silver bangle with a prayer inscribed on it. Its one of those mobius strip bracelets that has a twist in it so it can hold a really long prayer. I put it on with my charm bracelet. When I moved my arm - I clanked!

It took me a minute to recognize the sound but then I located it in the rusty, slightly corroded file cabinet of my mind. It was a grandma noise! If I put on my thunky shoes and walk down the hall while shaking my bracelets I might get so wrapped up in my past that I'll inadvertantly brace myself for a pinch on my cheek.
My transformation is coming together...All I need is some gardenia perfume.

Connections

You know that story that illustrates how everything is connected to everything else? The one about a butterfly flapping its wing in Brazil eventually causing a hurricane in Texas? Its a way of showing that even tiny actions have repercussions. Like that same butterfly flapping a second time and the resulting breeze causes my skirt to blow up into my face just as the picture is snapped and I'm wearing granny panties. I hate bugs.

I like cherries, though, which is why I'm glad I have cats. See, a few years ago I got the hub a cherry tree for Father's Day. He loves peaches and apricots but he likes cherries more than all the other fruits combined and since he didn't get mine I figured the least I could do was give him the ability to grow his own.

We planted the tree at the bottom of a little slope in our backyard so we could stand at the top of the slope and pick the fruit on the top and the bottom branches. It seemed like a brilliant idea when we put it in the ground, but we hadn't counted on the fact that birds like cherries, too.

Every year we saw blossoms on the tree which would start to turn into nice little yellow orbs. As soon as they started to blush and get a teeny bit sweet, the birds would devour them and leave just a pit swinging by a stem. I like birds but this was annoying. I mean, I'm willing to share but there has to be compromise. Those birds were just pigs...

And then we got Wilson, our little striped cherry protector. We'd had a cat for awhile, but Beatrice, our tuxedo kitty, spends most of the day doing her impersonation of roadkill. Wilson, on the other hand is constantly in motion, always looking to play with whatever is at paw. He seems to have eased off on his earbud fetish although that may have something to do with us changing to white ones which match our bed sheets so he can't see them (We listen to music at night to get to sleep).

Wilson loves to play outside, and enjoys climbing trees which scares the birds away. Until Wilson decides that cherries look like tasty earbuds, we're in heaven! The cherries are starting to ripen and I ate my first one today. Almost sweet enough, perfect texture and no beak holes!

I'm so glad Wilson has caused his ripples through our house. The only problem is that if ever a butterfly happens into our backyard when Wilson is out there, the world's weather could change forever.

The Worst of Times, The Best of Times

Ever since I was canned from my job, Ive gone through periods of being OK to periods of being pretty darn depressed. I worked at a school and I suppose its only natural since I spent 20 years at that place, it became rather thoroughly entwined with my life and I got close to the kids. I spent lots of time even on my time off doing things, shopping, writing, for that place or thinking about ways to improve it. I was dedicated.

So when they told my they no longer wanted me to work there, I was poleaxed. After I cried my eyeballs out, I decided to purge the place from my belongings. Every year at that stupid place, we would order sweatshirts to sell to raise money. Each one had a our distinctive teddy bear logo and the name of the place on it. I had about six of them and my family each had one; I had raised a lot of money for that stupid place. I gathered them all up and next time we went to a baseball game I distributed them to the homeless people who ask for money on the way to the ballpark. They were grateful and I felt good.

I'd just start feeling better and then every time a significant date in the past year has come around, I have found myself getting depressed all over again. Since the end of the school year is upon us, there are lots of activities I'm missing,so its been kind of hard. My sweet hub has been doing his best to keep me busy.

We've been going to lots of baseball games and the Giants have been winning like crazy. This thrilled me and raised my spirits. I love my Mighty Gigantes and my favorite player, Tim Lincecum. Plus all the other players in orange and black. For most of the spring, I was getting along rather well...and then the Giants started losing. Whatever buoyed them in the beginning of this year seems to have leaked out like air from a tire, or a whoopee cushion. I started getting sad again.

There's oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, they've hired a permanent replacement for me, and the Giants are losing - how low can you go? Then last night we went to the Giant's game with some college friends. It was fun and Timmy was pitching so we were expecting a win. Unfortunately, Timmy had a really off night. Really,really off. Plus their bats ran out of hits. The Giants lost and Timmy seemed so sad I wanted to hug him and make it all better then put all the bats in a pile for the rest of the Giants and burn them and order new ones with hits in them. So last night sucked, even though it was great to see our old friends.

And then on the way back to our car, we crossed the Lefty O'Doul bridge where its usually a mini shopping mall for Panda hats, ball caps and 'Let Tim Smoke' t- shirts. Last night, though, there were very few salespeople there, just one panda hat vendor and a couple of homeless guys on the corner with a guitar and a harmonica in front of an open guitar case with a sign asking for "beer money - no lie". We'd already handed out all of our donation dollars so we started to skirt around them when my hub said "Look..."

I responded with my customary "Huh?" and he said "Look at the guy with the guitar." so I did. And there, playing a credible tune, was a skinny, haggard-looking man with no front teeth and a billy goat beard, singing "I need money for beer and weed!" And wearing a sweatshirt with a distinctive teddy bear logo and the name of the stupid place that fired me on it. We gave him some money and I kept the laughter to a low roar until we were out of their proximity, and then I really let go. I'm still laughing today - beer and weed and teddy bears.

So I will feel better, Timmy will get his groove back, the Giants will start hitting again and somehow, someway, they'll get that oil stopped and cleaned up. All ya gotta do is wait out the bad times - the good times will return. And as for that stupid place that fired me...what goes around, comes around. Beer and weed and teddy bears.Ha!

Big decision

I'm thinking about buying a Spanx. I know what you're thinking: "OK, go out and get the damn thing". But here's my problem, if I buy a Spanx, which is a piece of "control wear" it will involve breaking a vow I made to myself about 48 years ago, to wit: " I will never, ever, ever wear a girdle of any kind.

See, I come from a generation whose mothers trussed themselves up in larval versions of Spandex on a regular basis. My mom only girdled up if it was a really special occasion, but I had friends whose moms got up and wrestled themselves into their Platex Tummy Control torture devices every morning. My best friend's mom, for instance.

When I was a kid, hugging was not the common practice it is now. Its not that people were cold, but usually a pat on the head was the reward for a job well done. Its a good thing, too, because my friend's mom wore a full girdle contraption every day. Bumping into her was like running into a wall. There was absolutely no give - at all. I can only imagine what a hug would have felt like. "Honey, how did you get that black eye?" "I hugged Mrs. Francis."

I just knew that running into an adult woman by accident or because I felt like they needed to be rammed into was an unpleasant experience. Not that I ever achieved ramming speed, but I had a first grade teacher who was a real pain in my patootie and once I often fantasized about running into her on the playground so she'd fall and skin her knee. I probably would have knocked myself silly on her undergarments.

Not only were women encased in girdles, but on TV there were dire warnings about "midriff bulge", which was a consequence of wearing a bra on top and a girdle on the bottom. The flab had nowhere to go, so it squirted out the middle like a wobbly donut, all the way around. Thus was invented the "long line" bra which met up with the top of the girdle. This created a kind of constricting jumpsuit. In hot, humid Houston, Texas for Pete's sake - its no wonder they didn't hug much.

In any case, once when I watched my mom wrestle her way out of a girdle, I said to myself "I will never, ever, ever put on one of those things. And I never have - not even control top panty hose. Not even when I was fat! But now I lost the flab and I bought a dress. One of those dresses that really emphasizes the hour glass shape of my bod. Oddly, I don't look like that with my clothes off but this dress...it does all the right things to all the right stuff and I really want to wear it!

Problem is that it is really tight and undie lines will show. A Spanx will solve that problem, but I have to break my vow with my young self. Maybe I'll just try one on and see how it feels. Yes, its a control garment, but if control is not my intent, then maybe I'm not going back on my word. I just hope I'm not heading for some kind of slippery stretchy slope.

Multi Tasking

I have always been a good multi tasker. Even before there was a name for it, I could do ten things in rapid succession without forgetting one detail. Those were the days. I haven't blogged in more than a week because I've been preparing for a bridal shower. I never thought I was anal retentive until I started planning this soiree. The bride's colors are pink and orange so I became obsessed with acquiring pink and orange decor.

Did you know Michael's has pink ribbon with orange polka dots? And you can get paper lanterns in tons of colors online for a dollar or less each. If you hang them in bunches they are cooler looking than balloons and much greener because you can re-use them. Also online there are craft stores where you can get organza ribbon for a song! Big Lots has pink and orange plates, cutlery, and napkins.

I have begun to dream in pink and orange. I even see pink and orange when I close my eyes and I'm drawn to anything pink or orange in stores. Just the other day, I found myself in the Barbie aisle at Target, stroking box tops and hyperventilating. The nice lady at Newark Flowers ordered me pink and orange Gerbera daisies which looked great in the stemless wine glasses with pink aquarium rocks in the bottom. Not the neon pink rocks, the dark pink ones.

My finger nails are pink. My Snuggie is orange (with Giants logos on it!). I planted some pink and orange flowers in my yard, but my cat objected to the orange ones so now I have pink flowers and dead plants. About the time my brain returns to normal it will be time for the wedding and more pink and orange. The bride and her mom have got good taste, though, so it will be subtle and classy.

The shower was a success, though, and everybody had a good time. The girls were in the backyard eating finger food while the boys were in the front bottling beer (The hub is brewing the wedding suds). I thought we'd have to chase men away from our backyard buffet table but it turned out that the women kept invading the man-zone. We did take the fellas food to balance out the beer they were swilling. They especially liked the bean burger sliders. So did I. My son's mixologist girlfriend sent some drinks she made (a pink one and an orange one) that we could mix with champagne or club soda. We used champagne. They were delicious and didn't make it to the man cave.

So I can't party plan and blog at the same time. I can walk and chew gum, and I can eat & talk ( I know, I'm supposed to keep my mouth shut when eating, but sometimes I just gotta talk)...But I'm back - until the next fete...

Oh, yeah, here's a party detail I didn't anticipate - The place looked awesome, the food was good, and the place felt festive, birds were tweeting up a storm, but my 15 year old border collie got a toxic case of noxious gas. She can clear a room faster than a smoke alarm and she was in primo form during the party. Bless her heart. Next party maybe I'll send her next door to play...That's a detail I won't soon forget.

Words That Sound Dirty

I went outside today and looked a my garden. Its really pretty and what's cool is that a lot of the flowers that got planted last year are blooming this year. This is unusual in my experience, but since we've added water to the mix out there, things actually seem to be thriving! One of the prettiest blooms in the garden is the lobelia, a gorgeous dark purple flower with an obscene sounding name. This got me thinking about words that sound bad but aren't.

Which brought to my mind the situation some years ago where a low-level government employee used the word "niggardly" and was nearly fired for it. That word means extremely stingy and has no racial overtone (never did - its of Scandinavian origin and predates the "n word" by several hundred years) but it sounds evil. The guy who used it was not guilty of anything but stupidly using a word that is not common and sounds really bad.

My best friend in college and I used to crack up over the word "uvula". Its that hangy thing in the back of your throat, but it sounds like something located much lower on the body. "Hi, how's your uvula?" would get us laughing harder than Betty White on Saturday Night Live. We were weird. We also had an imaginary friend named Eunice. Sometimes her uvula would act up and we'd laugh so hard it would hurt. Makes me understand why people never came to our parties.

Some words that seem bad come from church. The first time I heard the word "genuflect" I was shocked. Shocked! They do that in church?! Then I found out it was a sign of respect and reverence so naturally its done in church. OK, well what about the word "rectory"? Do they genuflect in there? Well, yes, they might since its where the priest lives. But those words sound so...well, dirty.

These questionable sounding words have filtered into all areas of my life. Specifically, my garage. My hub brews beer out there and when the brew is fermenting, it flockulates. Right there in my garage! Well,yes, since flockulation is the process of yeast cells clustering together and settling out of the raw beer. Its actually a good thing and it has nothing to do with procreation. But it sounds like a variation of the f-bomb.

I continued on my walk and decided to call my old roomie this weekend. We need to catch up. Her husband had cancer surgery and I need to see how he's doing. Plus, I need to check up on her uvula. Also, its been months since we chatted about Eunice!

Musings on Motherhood

I was thinking about my kids the other day. Actually, I think about them every day but most of my thoughts are kind of gooey. This time, though, I was thinking in the context of Mother's Day. People call Mother's Day a Hallmark (read: fake) holiday, but I don't think it is. As a mother myself I'm not sure that one day of honor a year is enough. They have a lot of stretch marks to atone for...Just kidding (kind of).

Mother's Day originated in either ancient Greece, 15th century England, or 1914 America depending on how invested you are in reading all about it (not very). I choose to believe it was invented here in its present form, but that its roots go back in history. Yes, I'm riding the fence and no I'm not proud.

When my son was two he got me deodorant for my special day. I cherished that gift and the little boy logic that precipitated it. After all, I used it every day and it smelled pretty. I also love the Fashion Star Filly my daughter gave me when she was four. Not quite as logical as my son, but it was pink, had lots of hair and she could play with it.

When I was a kid we used to go to the dime store and get a Hummel figurine for my grandma. She loved those things. The weird part is that when we were in college, she lined them all up and had us point out our favorites. Then she took a Dymo labeler and put our initials on the ones we picked. Felt a tad ghoulish. On the plus side, they look terrific on my hutch...

My mom liked Royal Daulton Toby jugs and when we lived overseas, that's what she got every year. They were not expensive and there were lots to choose from. After my mom died, my brother, sister, and I took a page from Grandma's book. We lined up all the Toby jugs and took turns picking the ones we wanted. They'll look cool next to the Hummels when I finally get them out of their boxes. Its only been two and a half years.

I don't collect anything really so deodorant and plastic horses are right up my alley. And Giants tickets. But I've told them they are not to get me gifts this year since nobody has any money. Someday, though, they will have cash and I will release them to spoil the heck out of me. Its the least I can do.

That's My (Surrogate) Grandson!

When my kids were little I loved playing baseball with them. Today the hub and I got to pick up our surrogate grandson from daycare. He greeted us with smiles and hugs then put his booster in the back of our car and I buckled him in. On the way home we discussed the Giants game and answered questions. Lots of them.

The little fellow's daycare is in Glenmoor and we live in Newark, so the trip was short, but highly informative. His favorite team is the Giants (mine, too) and his favorite player is Tim Lincecum (he could have been my biological grandson!). I told him that Timmy pitched really well today, but he didn't win. He also didn't lose and this was confusing to him. I have a hard time with that, too and I'm a geezer - he's only 4. But he accepted it a lot better than I did. Timmy probably did, too. I was a yelling, screaming mess.

Then my little nugget of cuteness asked "Is Timmy a boy or a girl?" I said "A boy" Then he said "Are there girls in baseball?" I may have droned on a bit about women in sports and Title Nine, the unfairness of the Old Boy's Network, corruption in college sports and a few other things. He said "Oh." Then "I'm never gonna cut my hair again"

I asked "So you can play like Timmy?" He said "Yes, I wanna pway wike Timmy" Me: "So you want to be a pitcher?" Him: "Yeah, an I wanna hit the ball and get home runs" I thought to myself "Well, Timmy's good but..." but I said "Cool, you'll be awesome!"

So we got home and while waiting for his mom to get home, the hub played baseball with the little guy. I sat on the bench and pretended I was in the dugout reading a baseball book which looked a lot like Sunset magazine. Then they got tired of shagging flies (the kid can hit!) and they recruited me for the outer limits field.

Oddly, that's the same position I played all through school. Its past the outfield and sometimes you have to take the ball away from goats which makes your mittens stink and the snow is real deep there. On our street there is no snow or goats but a couple of pit bulls that can keep the ball if they get hold of it.

Anyway, he won 12-9 and then his mom got home. Unlike Big Leaguers, he went and kissed her hello. I'd pick him up every day if we could talk baseball. And watch him run the bases with his stubby little legs. When he makes a great play, he reenacts it in slow motion and announces for himself. "...and he swides into fird!" I spend a lot of time fixing my shoe so he doesn't see me laughing.

Really, though, if I had to choose a kid to glom onto for a surrogate grandkid, I sure picked a winner. And if I ask him to, I bet he'd reenact our whole friendship in slo-mo with commentary. And in a year or so he'll do it with his hair flying. Just like Timmy.

They're On My Head....Again

This morning I spent about 10 minutes trying to find my glasses which were parked on top of my head. See, I hate bifocals because I don't need reading glasses, but I do need them for distance so half the time the glasses are on my head. And I look for them. Which has caused me to run through a list of truisms that I find handy:

1. Any amount of time spent looking for your glasses when you're wearing them is too much. If your glasses are missing you can save a lot of time by taking just a second to think about where they might be, logically. Can't find your glasses? Where were they last time you lost them? Your head? Your face? You were sitting on them? Look there first. You know as oldsters we develop patterns of behavior and you can save a ton of time and frustration if you just accept that you do weird things sometimes.

2. Life is like a roll of toilet paper - the closer you get to the end, the faster it spins. How many people have lamented that time flies by so fast? Fact is, time does fly, and it flies whether you're having fun or not.

3. Sometimes people you trust will crap all over you. And you'll never see it coming.

4. "Because it fits" is a bad reason to buy clothes. If that's one of your criteria for wardrobe choices, re-think your diet.

5.Confidence has nothing to do with intellect. Look at my house. The dogs seem like drooling idiots and the cats look suave and cool. And yet, only the cats have fallen into the toilet...

I'm sure everybody has aphorisms that they've learned through life. If you have a great one - pass it along!

Oh yeah, the other day the hub and I stopped for coffee at 7-11. The coffee's good there and its waaay cheaper than Bigbucks. Anyway, as I got out of the car I heard a man's voice say "Excuse me" I turned and I must have looked terrified because he started stepping back as he said "I just need some money for a piece of chicken" (We were standing next to a KFC which smelled amazing)

We gave him some dollars and some change and when we came out he was eating. He saluted us with the chicken and we felt like a million bucks! There's that saying "From whom much has been given, much will be expected". Well, I may be unemployed but we have a house, food, and health insurance so we have a lot. Way more than a guy who has to ask for chicken money. And plenty to share.

Moments Of Grossness

I haven't written on my blog in a while but nothing has been bothering/delighting/befuddling me lately so I've been laying low. Then today I was totally grossed out. Now, being grossed out is not unusual around our house since we share the place with two dogs, two cats, a bird and a tortoise. In fact, if something disgusting didn't have to be mopped up around here on a daily basis, it wouldn't seem like home.

There was cat barf in the kitchen today but that wasn't the gross thing. No, the gross thing happened at the grocery store. We put one of those net bags filled with little tangerine-like citrus fruits called clementines in our cart and proceeded through the store. Since we were there just to buy almonds and bananas, we only got about 20 things and headed to the checkout stand.

Upon unloading the cart, I noticed that one of our clementines looked a little iffy so I went to get a replacement bag. The first bag I grabbed was wet on the bottom. Upon inspection, I discovered that my finger was embedded in a rotten tangerine and the pulp was sqishing almost up to the knuckle. Ew squared.

I suppose decomposing citrus fruit is relatively low on the yuck scale. I mean, I was reading last week that the avarage computer keyboard harbors more germs than a toilet seat. Now that I think about it, it was right after I read that that I took my recent blog break. Hmmmmm, maybe I was in shock...after all, I spend much of my life poking away at this thing. It would probably be cleaner to play tiddlywinks on the potty seat.

Somehow, grossness is less gross in your own home. Its like when we got our new refrigerator. Messes in that one seem less disgusting than in our old fridge. Even the messes in the vegetable drawers, which, believe me, have seen their share of science experiments. Including, but not limited to, squishy clementines.

...And I'm Not Gonna Take It Anymore

Today somebody asked me if I ever get mad. I admit, I have a relatively cheerful demeanor. But yes, I get mad from time to time. I think, though, that as one ages it becomes easier to compartmentalize things like being pissed off. I mean once life gut-punches you enough times, I guess you just learn to not let your emotions run your life. Yes, life has mostly been kind to me, but when the hits have come they've been doozies.

So I keep most of my emotions in the closet. I take them out and massage them now and again if I feel like it, but, really, why bother spending a lot of time with the negative ones? Its more fun to hang with the positives. For example, it really fries my bacon that the sweet girl down the street had to go through the trauma of being attacked on the street outside our house this morning. I could dwell on that and get really scared - he had a gun...

Happy though, because she's physically fine and some of the neighborhood ordinary Joes ran the guy off. Mad because that's how we know the rat bastard had a gun - he fired at one of them. Three times! Happy again - the guy's a lousy shot - nobody was hurt. Mad because he disturbed our peace.

I get mad when I think about the idiots that fired me from my job of twenty years. It would be easy to wallow in that anger. What would be the point? I already had one stroke - don't need more...Apparently, I had a (tiny) heart attack when I had my stroke. Don't need any more of those, either.

The doctors who prescribed Yaz to my friend when they knew she shouldn't take it make me mad. Her stroke almost killed her. Incompetence of any kind is irritating, but that seems downright criminal.

Bureaucracy is annoying. Sometimes it seems like they make paperwork for the sake of paperwork. If I really got chewing on it, I would be really sad 24/7 because my daughter has to take anti-rejection drugs her entire life. But my sadness would have nothing on the grief of the people who's son gave her his heart.

I could spend my days agonizing over that same daughter's loss of a kidney to cancer when she was a baby. Or I could rejoice in her life. Same kid...Her dyslexia could make me sad...but I love that I got to spend time reading her books that I never read in high school. And over the phone in college. I am also glad we have a good phone plan.

The fact that aside from beautiful blue eyes, I gave my son my chronic anxiety could depress the hell out of me, but I'm just happy he is finding his way and he has found someone to love who loves him back.

The thing is, I have every reason to wallow in a gooey pool of mad, sad, depressed ick. But I would get nothing out of it and it would irritate everybody around me. I think a person has to live the best they can for themselves. But you also have to be aware of the effect you're having on those around you. You choose your mood. I choose happy. If somebody doesn't like it, they can sit on it. And spin.

Take Me Out

Yesterday was Opening Day at the Giant's stadium. Not for the season, but for the ballpark. We went to see some baseball and recover from the glut of basketball we've been subjected to of late. We went to eat a hot dog, drink a beer, and check out the new Giants. Plus, some jets always do a flyover on Opening Day, and there's the biggest American flag in captivity. Yes, the Giants know how to celebrate. But, really, what do you expect - it is San Francisco.

The newbies that have been getting the most press have been Huff and DeRosa. We saw them both play and I have some thoughts: Aubrey Huff. Sissy name. Nice butt. First base. Didn't hit yesterday. Mark DeRosa. Manly name. Nice Butt. Left field. Good arm. Also didn't hit yesterday. Ahem...these two guys were hired for their bats - they better get them fired up...They do look good in their Giant's uniforms.

We got to see the entire bullpen which is not necessarily a good thing. The fun one to watch is Brian Wilson who is a really good closer with a nice butt. He also wears really tight baseball pants so you can view said heinie. Plus he's a dangerous pitcher and he looks like he'd win a bar fight. I like him.

The home plate umpire had a variable strike zone which is really bad because you never know when to boo. You always have to be ready to boo the umpire, but the weird strike zone can lead to over-booing. This makes my throat hurt. The Giants weren't playing very well until halfway through the ninth inning when they woke up and decided to show us something. Long story short, they won. It was really a fun game.

Only thing is, when I go to a Giant's game, I like my Giants to win and I like the game to end after nine innings. I have nine innings in me, after that I get twitchy. This game went 13 innings! By the top of the 10th I don't want to sit in my seat and I start wanting to eat stuff. Fortunately, our friends had a four year old with them so I shared his cotton candy. Then we stuck out our tongues at each other until his parents told him to stop. So I went to the bathroom.

After we got home, I had trouble going to sleep. All the excitement. You know. Plus the sugar high. But I got to eat a hot dog, drink a beer and watch the Giants win. I think I've successfully purged basketball.

5 Days Old

On my next birthday, I will be 55 years old. That comes to 20,075 days. Yesterday I got to hold a baby who is 5 days old. I forgot how itty bitty, teeny tiny people are when they're only 5 days old. This is the daughter of my friend's son. The one who was gigantic at birth. His fiancee had the good sense to limit the size of her child to 7 pounds 6 ounces. My friend and I, who had our babies together, weren't that smart. We had massive kids.

The thing is, though, that most people who haven't had babies (men) think that the most painful part of the process is the part where the kid comes out the hoo ha. They are wrong. In my experience, (I had my first kid all natural) the really hurty part is when the baby is being shoved out of the uterus and down the birth canal. The hoo ha part is kind of a relief.

The other thing that I remembered about birthin' babies is that sometimes there's doody involved. You push with the same muscles to shove out an infant as you do to doo doo so sometimes both things happen. Gross, but it happens. Um, not to me - but to some people. I've read.

I was nearby when this little love nugget was born. Not in the room, just the grandmas got to be there, but there were a bunch of us in the waiting room and we listened on speakerphone and cheered when our little niece, granddaughter, great granddaughter, surrogate granddaughter was born. We also heard my buddy sobbing but she cries a lot so nobody was surprised.

The other cool thing was that they took pictures of the baby right away and sent them to the waiting room.As much as I bitch about technology, it has its uses and one good one is letting people in on events they'd otherwise be left out of.We all got to meet the little newbie before we went out for dinner. She was beautiful at birth and 5 days into life she is even more so.

I fully expect her to keep getting more and more gorgeous.She has the makings of a real beauty. Plus her mom and dad are good looking people. I met her parents as kids and now they have a kid. Five days old. Well 6 days now...they grow so fast!

They're Baaack!

Good news today! The job market seems to be turning around (not for me)...I heard that 160,000 more people are employed this month than last month (not me). This is such good news especially for people like my children (but not me)who were chewed up by the last presidential administration's "support" for public education and vomited into this non-existant job market.

That means that young people(not me - I'm old) will, within the next few years, probably be able to establish careers in fields which interest them and which can support them and their families should they choose to establish them. Whew!This has been a large concern for me since I (got fired) realized that giving birth to a child in the 80's, while certainly joyous, had doomed them to try to find meaningful employment in the aughts and teens.

I raised terribly brilliant children, though (not me - I got canned), so I'm sure they will succeed in some field or another. Not stripping, please...Although they are beautiful,too.Hmmmm. I was just thrilled to hear this job news today so my mind started flying around. As it does when I get news (when I got fired it froze)

Even though lots of people are still out of work(like me!), Careers are beginning (had one!), people are earning pay checks(nope!)and life goes on(well,yeah)and the economy continues to be stimulated (uh, ok I still shop but not as much...)

As an unemployed American who was chewed up by stupid people and vomited into my recliner, I am happy for my kids and their friends and while I don't exactly pity myself, I do have daydreams about leaving flaming bags of poop on certain doorsteps. And I fantasize about pooping in the bags myself!

Cigarette Burns

The daughter unit went back to Seattle after a six day visit. It was sad to see her go and it put me in mind of the first time I sent her off without a parent. She was 14 and she and her 13 year old cousin went to Salt Lake City to visit their grandma (my mom). I only worried a little about the flight - what really made me fret was that they were going to spend a week in Smokeytown. My mom was a very addicted smoker.

She also used to burn me with cigarettes. Not on purpose, she was an inveterate puffer and she was also a serial gesticulator. During my childhood, I ran afoul of the business end of many "ciggies". Most of the time I happened onto a conversation in progress and got bumped by the glowing butt that was always clamped firmly between her fingers. She always felt really bad, but I felt worse - it hurt like Hell!

Sometimes she'd leave a hot butt on the counter while she was cooking. I'd come in to preview dinner and lean up against the burning tobacco. Shreiking, I'd then stick my burned part under the cold faucet. Cigarette burns are weird - they hurt a lot but I think that's partly because tobacco burns at temperatures slightly less hot than the surface of the sun. Also, the burns are little and round and white in the middle. Did I mention they hurt? A lot?

As dangerous as living with one effusive smoker was, it was worth my life to negotiate my way around my mom, my grandma and my aunt when they were chatting. It was like being surrounded by a swarm of kamikazi fireflies...There were glowing butts everywhere. And not just where mine got singed if I was in shorts or a swimsuit. Yowie! I found it prudent to stay sitting in a corner during these gatherings. Or another room.

The problem was, my mom and our relatives were a heck of a lot of fun. They all loved to tell stories and we'd all get to laughing. Then they'd start flapping their arms (and attached tobacco delivery systems) and I'd get burned. It was OK, though,I had fun and got to know my family. Plus I didn't scar, probably because the cig was always pulled away at the beginning of my shriek so the burns weren't very deep.

So I sent my baby off to visit her granny and possibly get burned. I hoped she wouldn't, but I knew my mom and her tendancy to flail her arms when smoking. I told my baby all about it and warned her to watch out. I also taught her how to treat a burn. Just in case.

The daughter and her cousin came back unscathed. That is good because they are both pale skinned redheads who scar easily. I suppose if she can make it there, in the words of Liza Minelli, she can make it anywhere, and she knows how to treat a burn.

I Tought I Could

I went to a birthday party today. It was a fortieth birthday party and it was in this cool little community center building in San Francisco in Glen Park. I'm used to the Financial District, Embarcadero, Union Square, Chinatown, the Zoo and a number of See's candy stores, but I'd never been in Glen Park before today. Its a really cute little neighborhood.

There was good beer, great barbecue, delicious cake, nice people and my contribution was...really crappy dancing. I have always loved to dance. Not in any organized or performing capacity, I just like to move to music. I have good rhythm and all through school I looked pretty good on the dance floor. There are even times I've ballroom danced and I took ballroom and folk dancing in college.

My point is, I have known dancing and loved it. I've known how to dance properly - I got A's in dance class for Pete's sake - now I suck. This dancing suckage first surfaced on a cruise the hub and I took about seven years ago. We went into the bar where they were doing line dances. "This will be easy for my dancing impaired hubby", I thought. We lined up on the floor and took our places for the Boot Scootin' Boogie. Step, step, hop, step.

I stumbled, got lost, looked around and there was the hub, merrily hopping and stepping away. He smiled at me - I nearly hit the floor. I had officially begun to suck at dancing. Today, I got on the floor and began undulating in time to the music. The music was hip hop which, love it or hate it, is easy to dance to. I was boogieing away and suddenly realized that I was boogieing away in front of people. Horrified, I boogied over to the cake table to see if there were any big crumbs I could nibble on.

I have several more dancing opportunities coming up in the next few months. I really don't want to appear on anybody's blooper reel so I'm going to have to address this problem. Watching videos seems like a possibility but nobody really dances like that. Maybe I can volunteer to chaperon a prom. I wish Soul Train was still on, I could totally learn to dance from that show. Or American Bandstand those were fun shows. But I digress - and date myself. Oh, hell, you already know I'm about to turn 55...

Maybe Ill pay some teenagers to teach me to bust a move. My niece is 18 (she turns 19 a week before I turn 55) and I bet she could show me something. When she gets back from Disneyland ( Jeez - it'd be great to be a kid. ) I'm gonna ask her. It can be my birthday present! She'll help her poor, old, creaky Auntie. I just hope she can control her natural mirth. She'd better, her birthday present might be riding on it.

I Have a Dell P.O.C.

So my computer is misbehaving again. It has taken to deciding which letters it wants to print and which ones it won't. Piece of crap. The irony is that I'm writing something which, when posted, will be able to be read all over the world ( I'm not saying it will be, but it could). And I'm dissing this machine that makes it possible. That's kind of like yelling "Hurry up!" to a microwave.

Or like getting a snow blower after using a snow shovel for years and getting all mad because it left chunks of snow behind. But really, all I'm expecting this damn thing to do is what it was designed to do. Like I expect my car to go and my dogs to bark. I guess the more complicated the machine, the madder we get when it doesn't work.

Or maybe it has to do with cost. Computers are pretty expensive to suddenly turn into large paperweights. And they are too complicated to fix at home. Plus, if you lose your computer access, most people lose a lot of their social contact, which is nerdy and sad but the way the modern world works.

I am not a typist. People who are typists can pound away on a keyboard for hours without looking at their fingers. I enjoy watching a good typist at work. I am awestruck by that skill, its like watching a concert pianist. My best speed is about 10 words a minute. Not exactly light speed...

My husband's secretary at his last office was an amazing typist. She could type 5,000 words a minute with no mistakes. I frequently expected her keyboard to burst into flames when she really got going. Ironically, her hobby was calligraphy and her name was Betty. Her name isn't ironic, but its a great name - especially for a secretary.

So I'm plugging away on my stupid Piece of Crap. I have to keep checking and rechecking to make sure all my p's and q's are present and accounted for. I have no problem with proofreading my writing, I just hate it when "proofing" becomes "poofing" or, worse. "pooing" when I didn't want it to. Piece of crap.

A Bunch of Reasons March Pisses Me Off

March is quite a beautiful month. I've always loved early spring; the birds are back, flowers are blooming, its my son's birthday month (this is something that also pisses me off - more in a minute), there's also (shudder) March Madness. People who've read my blog since the beginning will remember that I have a deep and abiding loathing for the game of basketball. With the sole exception of a Harlem Globetrotters game I went to with my brother in high school, I have had nothing but negative experiences at b-ball games. Usually they involved my rear end keeping the bench company throughout the whole game. Sometimes I got sweated on and even took a ball to the gut on occasion.

Beautiful flowers are nice and now that we water them, they die less often. They still make me sneeze, though. Birds are pretty, too, and last year I learned not to try to see their nest in a tree, because I tend to gape at things with my mouth open and stuff could fall in or near my oral orifice. Ew - no, a bird didn't poop in my mouth, but it tossed an acorn really close. That poop thing could have happened, though.

Easter annoys me, because sometimes its in March, sometimes its in April - you don't know for sure unless you are a member of the clergy or a lunar devotee. What gives anyway, forty days past the first full moon after my dog gets her first flea of the season. Or something. I mean, they established a specific date for Jesus's birth, so why the lunar influence with Easter? It seems kind of pagan and according to people who are really Christian and don't like people who aren't, that's bad.

Then there's my son who I love more than chocolate, puppies, kittens, pretty dresses and Mexican food combined. He will be 27 at the end of March. I was 27 when I had him. For some reason, 27 years after he took 46 hours to extricate himself from my uterus, my son has decided that he knows how I should live my life. Since we're now both adults, he feels duty bound to inform me of everything I say, think or do that he feels I shouldn't. My daughter does the same thing. I think I must be the best mom ever because I raised kids who know everything!

Maybe this March Madness thing doesn't have to refer to the hated game of basketball. Maybe its about early spring making people nuts. Especially me. Especially during all those b-ball games which are sweaty and gross to watch, so I avoid them which is kind of hard to do since they're all over TV. That's OK, though - April is coming and baseball starts again. Hot dogs and beer! Plus our anniversary is in April - like I said - hot dogs and beer...

Swedish Cars

I was reading my scandal rags a week or so ago and something caught my eye. There's a young actor named Robert Pattinson. He's a really handsome fellow well known for playing a vampire in one of those unrequited love young adult movies. And also for starring in the fantasies of middle aged women (not me - I like grownups). Anyway, this kid was doing a photo shoot for Vanity Fair magazine and it involved him and a bunch of naked female models. He said that he hadn't realized that the women wouldn't bother to cover up between shots until a few hours into the eight hour shoot. As a result, this charming, well spoken young man said he thinks he's developed an allergy to vagina.

There are those who would sarcastically say "Oh boo hoo" and play a tiny pretend violin, but I feel sorry for this kid. He's 23 years old and he has no idea what he's talking about. Especially women's bodies. There are a lot of people who are equally misinformed so I feel the need to set the record straight. When that vampire kid was getting his picture taken, he wasn't looking at vaginas. Vagina is a beautiful word for a part of a woman that is inside of her.

The part he was looking at also begins with the letter "v" but its a much less attractive word. The word is very reminiscent of a Swedish model of car. I was at my gynecologist yesterday and while sitting there waiting for him, bare butt nekkid ,wrapped in paper, I looked around the office and scoped out the pamphlets and fliers in the holder on the wall. One of them was called "Care of the (Swedish Car)". I really hate that word... there's got to be a better one. I've heard "cooch" or "cooter" which are better than the other "c" word, but they sound itchy.

Whoever named our...(Swedish car) really messed up - I mean, why did they give the part you can't even see the pretty name and the pretty part that shows the industrial name? Once when I was working with little kids, a four year old girl needed help in the bathroom after going "big potty". I wiped her heinie then left her to finish up. She followed me to the sink, pants around her ankles, and snarled "You didn't wipe my vagina!" I told her that was her job.

Yeah, she was a pushy little person and she was also wrong. I knew, though, that explaining her mistake would be unacceptable and could get me arrested. So I told her mom what she said - in the guise of "isn't that cute". That way she could set her straight if she wanted, but apparently the mom was just as misinformed because the kid kept calling her (Swedish car) her vagina. This kid was a little fixated on that part of herself. Not odd for a four year old but sometimes she just wouldn't shut up about it. I wonder what she's doing now. Actually, I don't...

I really hope somebody explains womens' bodies to that young actor guy. He's good looking, charming and talented but he needs to look through an anatomy book. A man needs to understand where stuff is in order to learn how to make it work properly. If he thinks the inside is the outside and vice versa his charm and good looks will go to waste All because he couldn't find the (Swedish car) and take it for a spin.