Shopping HELL

The main reason I don’t like shopping is because I’m not rich. I see tons of stuff I like but I can’t afford to buy most stuff and I end up feeling sad so I’d just rather not go shopping. That way I won’t feel bad. When I do shop, I’m very selective about who I will shop with. I’m what I call a skimmer shopper. I look over the tops of the racks rather than pawing through them. If I see a color or pattern I like, I’ll slow down and examine the item. If I don’t, I keep right on moving. This means that I shop speedy quick. And nothing drives me crazier than shopping with someone who looks at every item on the rack.

I went shopping with someone recently who is the slowest, most thorough shopper EVER. No, it’s not you Mom – you can roll with my idiosyncrasies, you’re cool. Not only does this person look at every-freaking-thing, they can’t make up their mind. They’ll over think their purchase until the garment in question purchases itself just to end the pain of decision!

Here’s a little bit of back-story on this particular shopping torture trip. My shopping companion looks at the ads in the paper every day. From 3 different papers. Each ad is read an average of 4 times. Out loud if anyone is near. On this particular outing I was looking for one item. A bra. But we had to look through about 4 fliers for the store. About 3 times. We finally got to the store and I made a beeline for the bras. We were in a small town so this store had about 4 small racks of bras, meaning it would take me about 37.5 seconds to make my choice and head for the dressing room. My shopping companion was blissfully combing through the sale racks in pursuit of a shirt that had been advertised in one of the 4 fliers. I tried on 2 different bras, determined that I was fatter than I thought and headed out to find larger sizes. My companion was in the same section of the same sale rack that she had been when I left previously. Uh oh, this was going to take longer than I had expected.

 

I managed to find a bra that would do for the time being, out of the shitty selection the store had and I was prepared to pay up and head out but nooooooooo. My companion wanted to find a style of shirt that was available in the FALL and this is SPRING. 40 minutes later I had tried on 3 shirts and 2 pairs of shoes and had paid for my items. My companion was still trying to decide whether to purchase the ONLY styled shirt she desired that fit and was it was only $9.00. Oh, and we had coupons for 20% off. 20 minutes later she was still trying to decide. In order to keep from being rude and screaming at her and flogging her and yanking out my remaining hair I elected to walk outside for a smoke.  After another 10 minutes she came out and told me that she told the saleslady to hold it for her until she decided. I unfortunately snapped and told her that no, she was going to buy that shirt right then and that I had to go and couldn’t wait any longer. She went to the counter, used her coupon and ended up getting the shirt for about five dollars. I went home, threw up, drank 46 beers and tried to kill myself. If I manage to succeed in killing myself, because I might just try again later on from thinking about it again, bury me in my less than a minute bra and shirt. And make sure to do it quickly!!!!

Blood, Sweat & Tears

I am well aware that my attention span rivals that of a gnat. I've mentioned before that I usually have about 75 projects going on at once because I can never stay focused on one single thing. This is the story of my home office.

I've been in the process of revamping my home office for at least 3 months. It started a couple of years ago when my oldest kidlet lived in that room. She didn't like the wallpaper that was in there (none of us did) so she began peeling pieces of it off a little bit at a time. She decided one day that she wanted to move her bedroom to another room in the house so her old room became the office.

We lived with the office having torn wallpaper for almost 2 years before it started driving me crazy. One morning I woke up and decided that I couldn't live for another day with the horrible wallpaper so I marched in there and started ripping. I began by taking down the border at the top of the walls. It was slow going and I drug out the job for a month or so. When I got to the full wall that was papered the work went a lot faster.

I got all of the paper off within a week or so. The paper must have been up for a long time because the paper came off just fine but the glue was stuck for life. Since the wall had been papered, there was no texture on the sheetrock. Fine, I thought, I'll just texture it. it couldn't be that hard. I researched techniques and products and finally committed to getting the job done (after thinking about it for a week or three).

For this job, I made SURE to consult my wonderful Manchild because he used to be an auto body man so he's great at detail and he does thing right and I knew he'd make me do things properly. I showed him the sheetrock mud I had purchased and the texture brush I had on hand and was so dang proud of myself. Can you believe he had the audacity to suggest that we practice on a piece of cardboard first before we tackled the wall??? We practiced and I hate to admit that the brush I had was the wrong one. And I hate to admit that I couldn't just slap the mud on the wall and start smearing the stuff around and get the desired effect.
I forgot to mention that the only type of spreading device I had was a 1" putty knife and I was doing a wall that was 14' wide.

I made another trip to the hardware store (tail tucked between my legs) to get the proper spreading tool and the correct texture brush. At last, I was fired up and ready to texture! But no! Mr. Man noticed all of the flaws in the wall and suggested that I fix them before I textured so that the wall would actually look...good. He kept ever so gently reminding me that prep work was 90% of doing a good job.

Ok, he was probably right, prep was important so I got my (correct) tool and used some mud to repair the wounded spots on the wall. For your information, I am pretty good at spreading mud and feathering it out! But that wasn't what I really wanted to do which was texturing dad gummit. The mud dried and I was feeling pretty smug because I just knew that I was ready to get to the meat of the project but nooooo. Along came Mr. Man the flaw finder and he saw places I had missed like the big cracks in the corners of the walls. And he saw the ridge where the border used to meet the wall. Arrrrrgh!

Back on the ladder I went, sanding and cussing, cussing and sanding. I sanded until my back and arms were screaming in protest but I got that freakin' ridge smooth. Ok, I was ready to texture! But noooooo, Mr. Perfect pointed out that I had not addressed the cracks in the corners yet. He also gently reminded me that proper prep work was 90% of doing a good job. Dammit!

I went to work on the cracks in the corners, cussing and cleaning, cleaning and cussing and even crying a little bit. Dammit, I could see where he was right. I didn't want to admit it but he was right. There was a little bitty bit of loose paper so I pulled it off and ended up tearing off a 4' piece of textured wall! Dammit! Now there was another area I was going to have to fix!

I think that Mr. Man felt my pain because he started applying mud and basically finished out all of the flaws. I still have to sand everything down but he saved me hours of work. With any luck at all, once I get it sanded, I'll finally be ready to texture (cue the sounds of harps and angels singing).

Update: It's been over a week since I wrote the previous part of this post. I hate to admit that I haven't touched that damn wall. I've done everything BUT work on it. I hate it! Maybe I'll work on it this weekend. But I'll have to take a Valium first because I know that I'm going to want to get the sucker finished and I'll be doing it by myself and I'll have to do it correctly. And Mr. Man will probably hear me screaming even though I'll be up in the wicked city and he'll be in our little house in the woods over an hour away. I might as well order a straight jacket because I'll probably need it. Wish me luck yall.

Bunghole? Really?

I keep a running shopping list at home because my brain is Swiss cheese and I can't remember nuthin'.  My oldest kidlet always puts random items on the list like 'large chunk of crack' just to mess with me. We're goofy that way.

I had to stop by the store yesterday and I grabbed the list as I flew out the door so I didn't really look very closely at it. When I got to Wally World I was perusing the list and I saw the following words: TP for my bunghole . This caused me to blow water out of my nostrils and bust out laughing. BUNGHOLE????? I didn't know my delicate little princess used that word!!!

I got her some TP all right. I also put a little love note on the package for her.

I love my silly family. Let the Cleavers and the Waltons and the Bradys and the Petries be the normal families. I'd rather be like the Addams or the Munsters or the Bundys any day.

By the way, when I was at Wally world, I didn't see any strangely dressed people (darn it) but I did see this:

If I didn't love my Charger so much, I'd drive this. At least it's orange!

The one hour trip that took me three hours

Normally it takes me about an hour to get from the wicked city down to our little house in the woods if traffic is flowing and all that. This weekend I decided to go down and was happily surprised to see that traffic was flowing at an unheard of pace for 4:30 in the afternoon. I was all braced for sitting in rush hour in the downtown bottleneck but I glided right through. Hooray!

As I got a little bit out of the city I came upon a guy driving a purple Challenger which as you may or may not know, is the cousin to my bright ORANGE (only 1,650 made in the ENTIRE United States people!!!!) beloved Charger. I think his Challenger was only sporting a V6 as opposed to my HEMI V8 but being car cousins and all; we were destined to challenge each other just a bit (no pun intended).

To appreciate this you have to understand that for the most part, I drive like a grandma. Sorry to all of the grandmothers out there, I don’t mean to offend. Actually, I probably drive slower than most grandmas do. Even my own beloved MOTHER teases me about the snail’s pace of my driving. I know, you’re probably asking yourself why I would want a car that has a HEMI V-freakin’-8 in it. That’s simple…it’s bright orange, it has special orange stitching in the upholstery, and because it’s numbered – there were only 1,650 of them made in the whole entire United States (because it’s the Daytona version – there’s even an official number plate on the dash) and because it growls. Mr. Wonderful appreciates all of the engine stuff. And I do too. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great when I want to get on the highway or pass a car and I give it a little bit of gas, and look at the speedometer after I’m done and notice I’m going 95. Then I have a heart attack because I’m scared at going so fast and have to pull over and suck my thumb and cry.

Sorry I got off of the story a bit but I just love my car so much. So there I was, going down the interstate doing about 70 as I buzzed past the dude in the purple Challenger. I stared straight ahead as I buzzed him but my eyes were cut as far as I could cut them to see if he was looking. And of course, he was. How could he NOT? Hot girl, hot car, I mean he’d have to be dead not to notice. And what red blooded man can resist the challenge of a little road game against a muscle car? He sure couldn’t. We spent about 15 minutes taking turns being in the lead but I got hit with a thirst that was so bad, I couldn’t ignore it so I barely pushed on the accelerator, shot up to 90 and left him in the dust as I exited the interstate (and so I would avoid getting a ticket).

I managed to get into the gas station, get my beverage and make it back onto the highway in record time and you can bet yer britches that I was going as fast as I dared go, in the hopes of picking up the game of “smoke the older guy in the V6 Challenger”. I never did see him for the rest of my trip but it’s just as well. Those bursts of speed above 70 mph were about to make me pee my pants!

I finally made it to my exit and was tooling along the farm to marked road when I noticed how beautiful and green everything was. The trees were budded out and the bluebonnets were going crazy. I pulled out my super cool new super awesome digital camera I got for Christmas from Mr. Wonderful and started getting inspired. As I was zipping along I spied an old cemetery so I skid/turned into a church parking lot to turn around. I got a strange look from the caretaker who was mowing the lawn but I just waved really big at him and flashed him a wicked smile.

I followed a dirt road trying to get to that cemetery but it kept winding away from it. Finally I came upon a dude in a car and I flagged him down so I could ask him how to get there. He happened to be a black man and his question to me was ‘do you want the white cemetery or the black cemetery’? Now, I’m the kind of girl who doesn’t really see any difference between colors of people. And I certainly didn’t think about there being a difference  between where white people are buried and where black people are buried! I think I actually answered him by saying ‘what’s the difference’? I meant, who cares but I don’t think he took it that way because he gave me a really strange look.

I explained to him that I like photographing old tombstones and it didn’t matter to me what color the people who were buried, I just wanted to see tombstones so he directed me to the cemetery he and his dad cared for. Some of the markers were just rocks. Some were fancy. One was just a stick.

 It was amazing and I’m glad I went to the black cemetery. I didn’t even try to find the white people one I had originally seen.

I got back onto the farm to market road and was tooling along when I spotted some wildflowers that were just calling out to be photographed so I stopped right there in the middle of the road and went to snapping. Then I started up again and went a mile or so before I saw some cows among the flowers and I had to stop again. Then I saw some trees silhouetted against the setting sun and had to stop, then I saw more cows and more flowers and well, you get the drift.

I managed to turn that one hour trip into three hours and I haven’t enjoyed myself so much in a long time. My mind was overflowing with creative ideas and stories. So much so that I couldn’t write them down fast enough so that I could remember to write about them later! Eventually, I calmed down enough to help Manchild grill a fantastic dinner and I started my usual bonfire. At one point the flames were going pretty good and I wanted to get a picture of them, then I got the bright idea to get my camera and take our picture so yall could see the scale of the flames but I had to run to the car to get the tripod then I had to figure out how to make the timer on the camera work, and by that time the flames had died down considerably. I was so pissed because I’m always bragging about the bonfires I have down here and you can’t tell.

The next time I write about one of them I’m going to try and plan ahead and set up the tripod and figure out the camera timer THEN stoke the flames and pose for you. But then again, when I’m struck with a fit of creativity, it just happens. It’s spontaneous. Like being hit with lightning. And because I’m so horribly ADD, ROTFLMAO, ADHD, PMS, COPD, PTSD, OMG, RSVP, IBS, BYOB, GTG, STAT, PQRTDTPFG I’m never prepared. But I promise to try because you guys have got to see it.

The Dude's got GAS!!!

Aah, Manchild…my pal, my buddy, my…what the heck was that??? It’s about 8 am and I’m at the little house in the woods. Upstairs in the loft my beloved is snoring away, enjoying his beauty sleep. I can hear all kinds of birds chirping outside and I can hear the clickety clack of my fake fingernails on the laptop keyboard and I can hear…rat a tat tat, rumble, boom boom, putter putter putter, putter. Yep, Mr. Man is sounding off. His body is giving the old Bronx cheer, the bear’s bellow, releasing multiple air biscuits…he’s pooting up a storm.

I guess I’m grateful that his body is working well enough to get rid of all that noxiousness but DANG! And it’s not only happening when he’s asleep either. He seems to take great delight in leaning to one side of the chair and letting one rip right in front of me. He especially likes to do that in front of kidlet #2. That’s probably because she’s the world champion in the 13 year old and under class of air biscuit poofters. They challenge one another in categories such as volume, butt cheek flappage, length of release and of course, stench factor. They have choreographed special hand waving techniques to fully steward the stench towards one another. Manchild calls it the hand wave of death.  They grin, wave their hand and wait for the other one to go “oh my GAAWAD!” They are sick-os!

I must be a sick-o too because sometimes I laugh at them. Listening to my guy up there in the loft, pooting away put a little grin on my face. It’s sort of like an endearing thing he does – it’s what makes him…him. He’s been doing it all of his life. I saw him doing it with my brothers when we were kids, I heard him doing it when he was in high school and now that we are married, I get to hear him do it every day. Dang, that dude has some GAS!

Creative Mania

Because I tend to operate in manic mode my creative streaks happen that way, too. I’ve had quite a dry spell in the creative realm so I’m really happy that the creative juices are flowing once again. The more I think about things, the more convinced I am that some meds I was taking were the culprit. I gained 50 pounds while on them, my creativity went flat, my sex drive was kaput (oops, TMI), I had NO energy and I craved sweets. In my life, I haven’t really been one to crave sweets except when I was on that medication. Of course, just like everything else to do with my body, I didn’t notice it until things were drastic.

Sort of like me not knowing my arm was hurt until it almost fell off, or not knowing my back was in trouble until it was discovered that I had NO cartilage left and the bones were just grinding against one another and I could barely walk. Oops, as usual I sort of got off subject.

Anyhoo…I’m happy to say that my creative mania streak is back in full force. I’ve been writing stories just as fast as I can get them down. I’ve been snapping pictures like crazy. I’ve been drawing illustrations for my stories like Picasso – only mine are much uglier and more poorly done because I suck a drawing. For my weekend at our little house in the woods, I brought a sketchpad and markers, my camera, a notebook and a laptop because I wanted to create some major stuff! And create I did!

Mr. Wonderful fired up the grill, which is usually something that’ll bring me running so I can play in the fire. And cook stuff but mainly, play in the fire. I kept my fanny planted at the picnic table 5 feet away, furiously typing stories. I didn’t get up once to poke at the flames. Gasp, shudder… Next, he started piling up wood in the fire pit. He must have had a pile that was about 4-5 feet tall by the time he lit it (which is usually what I do by the way) and still; my fanny was planted at the table. I was a typing fool people!

I must admit that the lovely scented tendrils of bonfire smoke worked their magic and I was torn away from my maniacal typing. It was probably a good thing because my eyes were starting to dry out and shrivel up because I was so busy with typing, I couldn’t be bothered with blinking. 

I made my way over to the fire….aaahhhh, lovely beautiful fire. So pretty and sparkly. So intoxicating in it’s beauty, drawing me closer and closer and

c l  o    s     e       r. Oh snap! Ember in the hair – oh the stench! I was snapped out of my trance and instantly inspired to snap a picture of the flames with my cellie and send it to special people in my phone book list. This in turn inspired me to get my camera and snap pictures first of smoke tendrils, then of the cool little glowing embers as they floated up into the sky.

Manchild and I played with photographing embers for an hour or so until we were forced to stop because the dinner that was cooking on the grill would be incinerated if we didn’t tend to it. I didn’t want to stop to eat! I wanted to keep playing with the fire and taking pictures! By the time we scarfed down our feast, we were full as ticks and couldn’t get down into the beach chairs by the fire because they were too low and our bellies were too fat and full. Instead, we wound up on the couch watching Alfred Hitchcock. Since my mind was still overflowing, I decided to get out my trusty sketchpad and scratch out some more shitty illustrations for your viewing pleasure.

I think I went to bed at about 1:30 am and as usual, as soon as the sun started rising my eyes popped open. Here I sit, typing like crazy, drawing like crazy, snapping pictures, drinking iced coffee at the lovely hour of…let me look……7 am. And you know what? I love it! I’m so happy my brain is overcrowded with ideas. Picture Snoopy doing his little happy dance with that cute little smile on his face and that’s how I feel. I’m so glad I’ve got my creative mania mojo back.

I’ll probably drive my beloved insane because I’m like a hummingbird on super nectar – WAIT! SHUT THE FRONT DOOR! He might actually be happier because I’m so twitter pated because this way, I’ll be out of his hair! As long as he steers clear of me and hides the sharp objects, I can ricochet all over the place and won’t be climbing all over him every 15 seconds asking for hugs and kisses. I’ll only rocket by every 7 minutes and climb on him asking for hugs and kisses. Which he always gives me, no matter how many times I want them thankyouverymuch.

Thanks for reading but I’ve gotta go now. I just saw some mayflies and I want to take some pictures of them. No, wait! There’s a hawk I spotted! I’ve got to photograph him! Or I could draw him! Or I could write a story about him! But first I want to plant some flower seeds I just found which might look good with this blue nail polish I just discovered that could look cool if I painted that rock over there with it but the grass needs to be trimmed just a little first so if I took a picture of it, it would look really cool……

Share a waffle, get a soda

I'm baaaaack! Yesterday was the day from hell body-wise and I bitched, cried and moaned (sorry you had to hear me cry about it) but I'm back in the saddle. With a seat belt on, but I'm back in the saddle.

I always bring breakfast with me to work and eat at my desk and this morning I just couldn't handle eating the two waffles I brought so I gave one to a co-worker who was hungry. I was happy to be able to share. Then I decided that I wanted a diet Dr. Pepper so I tottered to the vending machine, fed in my dollar and was disappointed to discover that the machine was out of my desired drink.

No problem, my building has vending machines on every floor so I went down to another floor. The 60 cent machine did not carry diet Dr. Pepper but another machine had them in the plastic bottle style only that kind cost $1.25 and of course, I only had a dollar on me. There was a lady in the area and she gave me the extra quarter so I could have my drink. I asked her name so I could give her the quarter back once I got back to my desk and she told me that it was only a quarter and not to worry about it! How cool is that?!?!?!

So you see, you give a waffle and you get a soda! Share people! You never know what you might get in return. Karma baby, it's cool.

Bad Hands

I'd really like to amaze and astound you with my witty words but I just can't do it today. Sorry to complain, but I'm so dang sore I can't hardly move. My fingers are swollen like sausages, and every joint in my body is screaming.

I f#*king HATE arthritis!!!!!

Maybe tomorrow will be better and I'll be back, apologizing for feeling sorry for myself and for bitching a blue streak. Wish me luck. I think I need it today.

Living with constant discomfort/pain/agony for an extended amount of time has taught me many things. I’ve learned that complaining gets old and doesn’t accomplish anything but to make a person appear grumpy. I’ve learned to smile when I’d rather laugh. I’ve learned how to take high doses of painkillers and still function. In a strange way, bearing the burden of constant pain has made me a much stronger person.

I was diagnosed with arthritis when I was in my teen years. Being young helped because I was able to ignore the discomfort more easily and it wasn’t as severe as it is now. I was busy with school and my social life and my body was stronger than it is now so the pain was easier to push to the back of my mind.

In my 20s my disease began to show itself more and began to do more damage to my joints and so the joint replacements began. I went through some pretty miserable times but I like to think that I still tried to keep my sunny disposition. Heck, I managed to make jokes about having my jaws wired shut for six weeks at a time…twice. I looked sort of funny and I definitely talked funny. I had a great time laughing at myself. I had to use a contraption that forced my mouth open once the wires were off so that I’d be able to eat a sandwich or anything taller than a cracker later in life. I looked really stupid sitting in front of the mirror with a huge white plastic mouth spreader in my mouth, forcing it open and crying because it hurt. And yet I was laughing at the same time because I looked so dumb.

In my 30s, I rolled along fairly well because those were the days of being barefoot & birthin’ babies and I was all wrapped up in that and didn’t have time to give in to the discomfort. I had painkillers that I used regularly so for the most part I was a high, happy new mom.

When my 40s hit I became more aware of my body than ever before. When I fell I felt it for days rather than hours. The level of pills I was taking was steadily increasing. I remember one day in particular just before my back re-build. I was attempting to walk some papers through the office to a coworker when the pain became so severe, I had to sit down right then. Not at the end of the hallway, not in 5 steps, right then! I sort of stumbled/fell into a friend’s office and into a chair and just burst out crying. Imagine working at your desk and someone sort of fall through your doorway, gripping their leg, sobbing. Kinda strange don’t you think?  I took so many pain pills, I finally told my boss that I did not go out every day at lunch and drink 7 martinis – I was just on heavy doses of drugs.

I took Vicodin tablets by the bucketful for at least 4 years. Once I got my back fixed I was able to reduce the amount of meds I took by about a thousand percent. Thank gosh! When I visited my shrinky dink last week I told her that I was feeling a bit off. We talked about how I was feeling and she celebrated with me about the fact that I wasn’t the Vicodin Queen any more. It was at that time that she told me that the decrease in drugs was more than likely why my brain was “off”.  It had gotten used to being high all of the time! Who would have thunk it?

I’ve been told that it will take a while for my brain to get readjusted. I think I’m going to use that excuse for at least 10-12 years if I do anything screwball which will pretty much be every single day. ‘Oh, I forgot to feed the children dinner for a week? I guess my brain is still readjusting’. ‘Oh, I bought $500.00 worth of clothes even though I only earn $49.95 per month? I guess my brain is still adjusting’.  ‘Oh, I danced naked center stage at the blues concert? I guess my brain is still readjusting’. You get my drift. This is going to be great. I can get away with all kinds of shenanigans!

Puppies

Warning: I'm going on a rant so spare yourself if you want to.

Do you see these adorable puppies? Some lowlife, scumbag, puppy hating, degenerate (who I hope dies a slow, painful death) dumped them way out in the country with no food or water. These little guys are young enough, I'm sure they would have become coyote food pretty quickly had my bro in law not rescued them.

Over the 4 years or so that I've been going to our little house in the woods with Manchild, I've seen too many abandoned critters for my taste. Of course, I've wanted to adopt every single one of them. Mr. Man has a very tender heart and he loves, loves, loves animals (way more so than humans) so he always feeds them and tries to find them homes. A couple of cats stuck around long enough to start to feel like pets but eventually, the fateful day came when they didn't return. I'm sure the coyotes or bobcats got them. It's so dang sad. I know the other critters have to eat but still!

We had a very emaciated dog turn up one time and while he looked kind of scary, he was sweet. It was heartbreaking to see how thin he was. When we gave him water, he drank it like he hadn't had any in weeks. We gave him some food and the look on his face nearly made me cry. He looked so grateful. He stuck around for a few days and regained some of his strength and of course, he disappeared.

I'm learning that I have to be careful not to become too attached to the critters that wander up because so many of them don't make it. I guess if we were down there all of the time they'd stand a better chance. Maybe when I retire and we move to the woods for good I can start my makeshift zoo. Until then, I guess I'll have to settle for enjoying the precious moments we get with our temporary friends.

As for the puppies? For now they're safely tucked into a large outdoor pen until we can find them a home. I've posted on Facebook, my company's "garage sale" site, e-mail bombs and I've printed out pictures and hung them everywhere. I'm doing everything I can to help them.

As for the people who dumped them on the roadside...well, I hope I catch them one day because I want to beat the living hell out of them. Then I'll blind them and leave them out in the middle of nowhere - naked and see how well they fare. They deserve every bit of bad karma in the world. I hate those f*&%kers! By the way...anyone want to adopt an adorable little puppy? I have two.

Gangsta and other vocabulary styles

Sitting on my back porch one day, watching it rain I was listening to my 12 year old trying to talk"gangsta." She was playing 'kick the ball over the fence' with her friend and they were both trying out a new vocabluary. It was so funny!

They're so "white", they can't even pull off an accent. Of any kind. Both of my girls have gone through a "gangsta" phase. It cracks me up to no end and I'm going to try to give you a visual. Picture a skinny little girl with her hair in pigtails, wearing an Aeropostale t-shirt and cute little capri pants. She's got porcelain skin and weighs about 95 pounds soaking wet and she's trying to talk the talk. It's crazy!

Seeing as how I was raised in the country, I developed something of a Texas twang and I hated it. When I moved up to the wicked city, I tried my best not to sound so hick. I ended up sounding like a yankee according to my dad. Mr. Manchild sounds really country but that's because he's lived in the country for the past 52 years. We have a running battle over the pronunciation of certain words.

Here are a few: 

I say "oil" and I pronounce it like "oyl" (2 syllables). He pronounces it "oul" (1 syllable). I say tire like "tyre" (2 syllables)and he says "tar" (1 syllable). I say fire like "fyre" (again, 2 syllables) and he says a one syllable - "far." We go around and around over these words. 

He also has some crazy sayings. How about this one...'that's hotter than two rats in a wool sock?' I have never ever heard that one. One day I said the saying "the early bird gets the worm". His reply? "Yeah but the second rat gets the cheese".

I find language fascinating. Even people who live in the same state within the same country will talk differently. That's pretty evident when you hear Mr. Man and me talking. Throw two young girls who are speaking "gangsta" into the mix and you've got a whole other dynamic. Try this...sit quietly and just listen to people talking. You'll be amazed at how many dialects you'll hear even if all of the people are speaking English.

See ya' later, sayonara, adios, a-reeva-dirchee!

Get...in...my...belly!

This is Pork Chop. The critter in the green ball is Alfred. Alfred is a miniature hamster. Kidlet #1 showed up with her one day and she's now part of our zoo. Alfred doesn't take too kindly to people holding her. In fact, she'll bite the shit out of you if you pick her up so we just gently nudge her into her little ball and let her roll around the house for exercise.

Our cats are totally fascinated by Alfred. Since she's an incredibly cute, furry little rodent I'm sure the cats just want to eat her. It must be intimidating to be so small and have your natural predator inches from your face, licking their chops, wanting to eat you. Our youngest kitty, Schwayze is still a kid so he's too stupid to know what's right in front of him. He just likes playing with the ball. But the other two cats know Alfred as the snack that she could be.

The other day I wanted to pick Alfred up to clear out her cage and I knew she'd bite the shit out of me with her tiny little teeth so I got smart and put on an oven mitt for protection. You should have seen the little girl attack that glove! She gave it her all but my fingers remained unharmed. It only takes one or two bites from those razor sharp teeny teeth to learn not to pick her up. I don't blame her for biting. I'd bite a hand that was 36,000 times larger than I was!

Anyway, that's the story of Alfred and the hungry cats. The first picture says it all. Pork Chop is telling Alfred "get in my belly"!!!

Stalagtites, Stalagmites and Potatoites

In my quest to get back to looking like a svelte sweet young thang, I've been trying to lay off the starches a little bit. Being a Texas girl, I love my steak and taters. Actually, it's the taters I love the most. Taters and beer to be exact. Hey, at least I'm giving up one of them!!!

I ALWAYS keep an ample supply of potatoes in the pantry so I can eat them for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Yes, I eat potatoes for breakfast. Don't you? I like them fried with milk gravy for breakfast. Lunchtime, I can eat them any way. The same goes for dinner. Anyway, I was going to fix dinner tonight for Mr. Wonderful and of course I planned on adding a course of potatoes. I went into the pantry to grab a few and I was shocked to see that they were growing! I guess I haven't paid them much attention since I've cut back and those spuds were a sproutin'!

Oh horror of horrors! I couldn't be out of potatoes! Upon closer examination I determined that they were still edible. I knocked the sprouts off and went about my merry way, slicing and dicing. I guess since they're sprouting I'll have to have a tater fiesta for the next couple of days - hooray! Mr. Man won't be too happy about that because he doesn't share my love of the spud but he'll get over it.

Let's see, tonight we're having oven roasted potatoes with a dash of soy sauce, anchovies and rosemary. Don't turn your nose up! I see you! Try it sometime. It's good. The trick is to only use a few anchovies. I don't know what it is about them, they just add a really nice flavor and I don't even like the things! Tomorrow we can have twice baked taters. And the next day we'll have home fries. And the day after that I might just have some for breakfast since it'll be Saturday.

Bon appetit yall!

Creative Editing

I hate to admit it but I'm sort of addicted to a few reality shows. I absolutely love, love, love "My Big Redneck Vacation". It's absolutely hilarious. The people on the show are so crazy, they're absolutely believeable. I've even recomended that show to friends! Check it out, you'll laugh till you pee your pants.

One show I always end up getting sucked into even though I hate it is the Bachelor show. It's so freakin' corny and predictable and it's always the same thing over and over and over and yet I'm glued to the TV on the final night to see which girl is the true love girl. Hell, I'd be a true love girl if I got to to travel to 20 exotic destinations and do fabulous things and drink all day every day and be given a gazillion carat diamond ring at the end!

This season was particularly interesting because one of the women was horribly horrible. She was a 'put an iron collar around your throat while you sleep or she'll slit your throat' horrible. And the doofus bachelor was just plain dumb as a stump. Actually, he seemed like a nice guy (with a 1970s hair-do) with some decent morals (except that he allowed himself to make out with 25 women all at once). He was just stupid to the fact that all of the women warned him that his chosen honey was a viper and he chose her anyway.

Now, I'm aware that what you see on TV isn't always exactly what was really going on. Creative editing can make the worst person look virtuous and the best person look like a villan. Just look at politicians! In the case of the Bachelor I think that the chick he picked was pretty much unedited and that's kind of scary. I can't believe the firestorm that this season has caused. I guess the TV execs are estatic because they had huge ratings. Everyone wanted to watch the train wreck that was Ben and Courtney unfold.

Mr. Man hates all reality TV with the exception of Redneck Vacation and Doomsday Preppers (because we need to know what to do when the world ends, yall). I guess we'll keep tuning in together to the shows we can both stomach and I'll keep giving in to my guilty pleasure of watching girls fight over guys and vice versa. It's better than real life.

Riding Fury

When I was a kid I used to love the show Fury (or at least I think that's what it was called). It was about a beautiful horse named...wait for it...........FURY. I remember sidestepping my way down our long hallway clopping my feet together so I'd sound like a galloping horse.

My family lived on a farm from the time I was 8 until I was about 13. When the Fury show was on, I really wanted a horse of my own. It didn't matter that I didn't know how to ride and didn't know anything about horses other than they were big and beautiful. My ever loving parents finally gave in and got me a succession of horses.

One of them was black like Fury. My Mom had to ride him and tire him out before I could get on him since I didn't know what I was doing. I think it was that horse (named Fury of course) who knew I didn't know what I was doing so he would walk into our pond and basically float me off.

Pretty smart horse. His going into the water got me off of his back every time. I'm not sure how long I had Fury before my parents figured out that he was too big for me and that I didn't know how to drive a horse.

Some time later my parents rescued/adopted a Shetland pony for me. There was one small problem though. The poor little guy had been put up in an area that was muddy and his hooves had grown way beyond the length they should be. It looked like he had water skis on his hooves and I think it was somewhat painful for him to walk.

That didn't really matter because I didn't know how to ride anyway. And he knew it, too. Later on in life I learned that Shetland ponies are MEAN! They will pick on anyone who messes with them. They're the bad asses of the horse world. Maybe they have a Napoleon complex since they're smaller than all of the other horses, so they make up for it by being giant assholes.
All I can remember is that he was there for a while and one day he was gone. I don't want to think about what might have happened to him.

The next horse was a retired race horse. There was no way in double hockey sticks I'd be able to ride that one! All it knew how to do was run. Fast! Even though my Mom knew how to stay on a horse, I think that one was a challenge for her.

By the time the race horse came and went I had pretty much decided that mechanical horses were going to be my forte. They didn't bite or buck or take me into a lake. I was the master of my own destiny. I started out on a mini bike and over the years progressed up to a real bike that looked demure, but was a screamer. On occasion I still tumbled to the ground but I had caused it. Not some crazed, wily horse. These days, I don't even ride the motorcycle any more. I'm afraid that if I were to crash, all people would find would be a pile of metal joints and a puddle of blood.

I still say that at least motorcycles don't have teeth. Just sayin'.

Seam Hater

I'm a seam hater. I hate seams on the insides of my clothes. Especially socks and hose. They get under my toes and the ball of my foot and it hurts! I hate labels, too but that's another story. I decided to dress up a little more than usual for work the other day and I made the mistake of wearing hose/tights AND high heels.

Since I've had my back welded together into one piece, wearing heels is sort of tricky. I tend to pitch forward and when I walk, and it looks like I'm about to topple over (which I sometimes do. Sort of like a Weebil. Weebils wobble but they don't fall down - except I do).

I'm not a graceful hose/tight wearer either because the dang seams get under my toes or under the ball of my foot and I try not to put my weight on that area of my foot when I'm walking so I look dorkier than normal. That and I pull off my shoe every 15 minutes to move the seam back to the ends of my toes. So everyone gets to smell the lovely scent of my plastic Pay Less shoes that have been worn for hours. And I'm constantly trying to hike up my hose/tights because the crotch is forever positioned more at my thighs than my crotch. (Thanks to the wonderful author and artist of http://www.lifeinthepitts.com/ for this awesome depiction of hose hiking!)

It's hard hiking your hose/tights in a building which has security cameras everywhere! Check me out, Mr. Security Guy!! I'm lookin' HAWT yanking on my hose!

So, here I am in my skirt and tights (I couldn't get my shoes in the picture). I'm not sure what's up with the snarky looking smirk on my face. The seam is probably digging into the ball of my foot, or maybe the crotch of my tights is about to become visible at my knees. And look how I'm hanging on to my chair. That's because I have heels on and I'm probably about to topple over. I am one fine specimen of a woman, let me tell ya. I have the grace of an antelope (one that has 3 broken legs), the poise of a ballerina (who is stone drunk on scotch), and the fashion sense of the most famous designer ever (who is blind and crippled in both hands). Look at me. Bathe in the glory that I emit. Hope and pray that one day, you can be as awesome as me. And if you're lucky you won't be near me the next time I rip off my Pay Less shoes and adjust the damn seam on my hosiery.

Sign Readers

Manchild and I seem to notice goofy stuff in the world around us. We are continuously laughing at people and things. He notices people's character traits like, how old people look when they're driving. Lower lip hanging down, head thrust forward, staring blindly.

One trait I noticed about a particular friend of mine (and I love her, I really do!)  is that she reads signs. Road signs, restaurant names, advertisements on the sides of 19 wheelers, billboards, building names, license plates...you name it - she reads them out loud. It used to really bother me until one day it struck me as funny and I've been OK with it ever since.  I introduced Manchild to her and beforehand, had warned him about the sign reading. Sure enough, when we all piled into the car and started driving, the sign reading began.

Here's an example of things we might have heard:

"Oh wow, look at that! I wonder what that is for?
Hmmmm, danger. I wonder why it's dangerous. Danger ahead. Fasten safety belts and remove dentures. Why would you remove your dentures?
Gavaar voor maak gordels vas en verwyderkunstande. Wonder what that means? Do you know why that sign is there?

                                                                                   "Wow, two cars crashing. Why are the cars crashing? Have you seen that before? Why I wonder. "

"Baghdad 89 kilometers.......look at that. There's a bomb on that sign. And a plane. And a guy with a gun. Why do they have that on there? Have you seen one of those before? It must be dangerous. Well, Baghdad is in 89 kilometers. Guess we'll find out."

"Lowe's. We have a Lowe's back home. Do you shop at Lowe's?"

 "Sheffield Forgemasters. What do you think that is? Sheffield Forgemasters. How long have they been there?"

"Chicka Latte, beautiful coffee. Would you look at that? That's really cute. Chicka Latte. Hmmm. Have you been there? I've never seen one."








Of course, I'm sort of blowing the statements way out of proportion but you get the idea. By the end of the visit, Manchild was probably digging his fingernails into the palms of his hands but he stayed nice. He and I laugh about it now, in fact on occasion, we read every sign we can see aloud, on purpose.

Maybe because I live in the city, I've become immune to all of the visual stimulation out in the big wide world. The only thing I notice is when the signs are done poorly, or the company has used an interesting font, or if the type on the sign isn't kerned correctly. I'm a type woman so it's my job to notice those kinds of things. But I must admit, I do not have the desire to read everything out loud. Heck, I don't even like to read them out loud inside of my head where only I can hear it. That's because the other voices make so dang much noise, it's hard to hear myself reading out loud. Maybe my friend is better off than I because she does read the signs and she sees everything we pass by. I on the other hand, am dreaming about where we'll end up, or looking at birds, or singing to the music on the radio, so I miss stuff she notices. Who knows. It's just a funny, endearing trait of hers that I find amazing.

Try it the next time you're out driving around. Read every sign you see out loud. Ask questions about the signs. Really run the subject into the ground. I bet you'll end up chuckling to yourself. It's actually kind of fun.