Sunshine, on my shouders, makes me freckly

There’s a bit of a glow about me these days, a gift of the first sunny day in heaven only knows how long and 4+ hours spent at the NC Renn Faire yesterday afternoon (as described aptly over at Spiffytown (stupid blogger isn't working well enough to put in links here, grrr (UPDATE: the home computer loves me, so here's your link)).

Whoever said dressing up in period costumes and parading around playing at swords and lords and ladies is strictly the baileywick of uber-dorks is a liar, for there were many MANY fine lords n’ ladies and wenches and armsmen in attendance, none of whom looked particularly dorky to this ol’ gal.

(Note to self: before next year’s faire, get one of those corset thingies. Renn Faires are, perhaps, the ONLY place left where nearly-full frontal boobage is not only accepted, but encouraged. No fair letting all the other well-endowed ladies get all the stares.)

Question though – when did FAIRIES enter the standard character list at the Renn Faire? Aren’t they something best reserved for other types of “cons,” like Dragon Con or something? There were fairies aplenty yesterday, with wings of various sizes and bells adorning all available appendages, and yes, they are cute, but what FUNCTION do they serve? Why not substitute witches and wizards for a marginally more relevant magickal role-playing opportunity! Oh! I know, there could be a witchy dunking booth, and a burning at the stake! There could be a TORTURE chamber, and a “Potion Station” where people could mix n’ match different kinds of slurpables. Hexes could be placed, and incantations chanted. It would be AWESOME, and yet nobody’s gone there yet, as far as I can tell. All the damn fairies do is go around sprinkling glitter on people and having their wings get in the way of where folks want to be walking. Enough with the fairies, say I, bring on the WITCHES!

Witches with corsets. And thus my new costume idea is born.

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So, Thing 1 got himself a shiny new sword yesterday for the price of having to take out the garbage and recycling, unasked, for the rest of his life (or at least until he goes to a higher-education facility).

I think he got ripped off, but when a 13-year-old boy wants a sword and only has 4 dollars, it’s obvious that he’ll agree to just about anything to get his hands on one.

The sword (which is disguised in a staff) was 25 bucks. Twenty five dollars worth of sword, for which he’s going to take out the trash and recycling approximately 200 times over the next few years before he goes of to college. Freaking cheap labor, that kid is. And desperate.

One wonders what we can make him do for us the NEXT time he really wants something for…nothing.

Heh heh heh.

I could be sanguine, and in fact am in a manner of speaking.

A couple of days ago I remarked on how I had a gorge-fest in front of the refrigerator as soon as I walked in the door at home. Wild animals couldn’t have torn be away from the luscious banquet of nommables held within, I was out of my head with a nearly inexplicable hunger. Threw me for so much of a loop that I had to write about it, for Pete’s sake.

Well, it appears as though the inexplicable has been explained, and for that I have but one thing to say:

Fuck you, uterus.

Can I be frank with you, dear readers? It has been 10 MONTHS since I last had to deal with the lil’ gift of Mother Nature to her fertile daughters. That’s enough time to conceive a child, incubate it to full term, birth it, and get a month’s worth of really shitty sleep. In other words, A.Very.Long.Time. In that time one can easily get used to not having those hormone-laced behavior swings, the unnatural craving for grilled chicken, the 5-pound overnight weight gain, the lightweight’s susceptibility to the sweet sweet effects of Jim Beam….

Get used to it I did, as well as get used to not carrying around supplies for such an occurrence, as well as not getting zits, as well as not having painfully tender boobies, as well as a whole frigging HOST of other symptoms that come with the curse.

I was happy as a menopausal woman. HAPPY! And NOW look at me, no longer menopausal, no longer enjoying the benefits of a stable lifestyle brought about by the absence of hormone cataclysma, no longer smug in my ability to just get up n’ go each and every day. It’s back to the same old shit that I’d been doing for the 35 years prior, including the God-awful farts, the intestinal gurgling, the general tiredness, the overwhelming desire to suck down a brick of dark chocolate.

Dudes (and by that I mean MEN), you simply have no idea what your women are going through. Why, I’D forgotten, and I’m a girl of long-standing! It’s miserable, this thing is. Backache and malaise and trips to the bathroom to check on ‘status’ and circles under the eyes and a lust for crunchy foods that nobody seems to have invented yet….

I can hear one or two of you out there saying ‘yeah, well at least this means you’re not pregnant.’ Two words for you jokers: SHUT UP. I’d almost rather BE pregnant than this. I mean, at least with pregnancy you get to glow and people are happy for you. With this ‘thing,’ you are simply angry and bloated and pimply and gassy, which nobody is happy about.

Note to self: investigate if non-medical elective hysterectomy is covered by insurance. If it’s not, investigate investing in a backyard distillery.

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I followed a guy yesterday on my commute who I think may have been having a stroke on the road. Brakes on, brakes off, weave to the left, weave to the right. Slow down, speed up, then start all over again. He was a lane-crossin’ fool, an artist of the brake pedal, a slow stroll in the fast lane, and a complete menace to everyone around him. In response to his macadamecal meanderings, I may have experienced a tiny dab of road rage. I may actually have flung an epithet or 80 in his general direction, my mental monkey may have chucked spleenloads of verbal poo at the inept auto operator, and indeed my face may have turned a shade of red normally reserved for very ripe slicing tomatoes.

And it? Felt so very very good. Oh random anger, how delicious you are.

Also delicious was the moment that menace turned right, and got the hell out of my way.
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My time here is up. I need to go count the new zits I’m sure have sprung up since I tallied those two new ones an hour ago, and check ‘status.’ Y’all have your selves a wonderful day for me, won’t you?

(also, go check out the Wordsmiths at wordsmithsunlimited.blogspot.com. There's a pretty picture that needs YOU to write it a story. By Tuesday. See? Plenty of time)

Call me Kissinger

Um, yeah. That's me all right.

You Are 9: The Peacemaker

You are emotionally stable and willing to find common ground with others. Your friends and family often look to you to be the mediator when there is conflict. You are easy going and accepting. You take things as they come. Avoiding conflict at all costs, you're content when things are calm. At Your Best: You feel connected, trusting, and fulfilled. You feel at peace with your place in the world. At Your Worst: You compromise your values to make sure peace is maintained. You give in to bullies. Your Fixation: Harmony Your Primary Fear: Causing conflict Your Primary Desire: To preserve things as they are Other Number 9's: Marge Simpson, Ronald Reagan, Audrey Hepburn, Jerry Seinfeld, and Abraham Lincoln.

What Number Are You?

Question: How the double-dutch HECK do they know about Abraham Lincoln? Was the ASKED about this? I highly doubt it. Highly.

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I'm intrigued by the idea of learning another language. The 5 years of German I took in highschool aren't really doing me any good. Surprisignly, there simply isn't a huge demand for it. I'm thinking Spanish might be a good idea, given that all the signs at the Home Depot are already in English and Spanish, that there's rather the influx of Spanish-speaking epople in the area, and perhaps most importantly, I want to know what those people are saying when they're ripping along in conversation at a thousand miles an hour!

Anybody learned another language as an adult? If so, how'd that work out for ya?

And tell me, WHAT are those people talking about, really?

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There's a store in a strip mall around here that just went out of business. It was 'the peanut roaster.' Yes, really. Peanut roaster. They apparently roasted peanuts. Is it any surprise that the store didnt make it? STRIP MALL does not scream out foot traffic by that thousands, which I should think is really the kind of traffic you need when you're runing a peanut-roasting business. You know, the wafting smell of roasting goobers catching the salivatory imaginations of wanderers about town.... However, this store had no wanderers, seeing as how it was situated on the road that the Staples and PetSmart and HDepot are on, was next door to a steak place, across the street from a Chick-Fil-A, and kitty-corner (catty-corner?) to a frozen custard stand (oh, Goodberry's!). People were certainly AROUND, but not to nosh on roasted peanuts, to all appearances.

Sadly, the gourmet store next door that's been open a grand total of 5 months is going out of business as well. It's a loss. Why, the ONE time I was in there I sure wished I had a thousand bucks to blow on super high-end merchadise. But hey now, everything in the store is 70% because of that whole 'going out of business' thing; maybe I can pick up that set of Calphalon after all! One man's pain and all.

Yep - pretty soon there will be aanother small shopping center with no stores occupied in this town. Methinks ye olde economy is iting more than one ass, even on Escalade alley.

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Time to run. The Things are awaiting for their mama, who doesn't like to keep 'em waiting especially when I haven't seen them in a week. Y'all enjoy your evenings, and we'll talk again soon.

980, get yer peanuts

Dudes, how's it going? Have you been enjoying your hump day? I have been enjoying mine, very much. Indeed, from the moment I turned off the snooze alarm at 6:30 in the freaking morning until right now, almost 12 hours later, this day has been very nearly nothing but Xtreme enjoyment!

The very best hour of the day so far has been split between the 45 minutes of sleep I had AFTER the alarm was turned off, and the 15 minutes spent on arriving home eating things out of plasticware dishes straight from the refrigerator because I had a BURNING hunger that could not wait until some manner of fresh food could be slaughtered and charred to a crispity crunch. Oh no, no charring required or desired!

Did you ever do that? Come home from work, fling your shit onto whatever horizontal surface is closest, open the fridge door, and just start EATING? It's a pretty sure bet my fork was glowing orange, the wind was whistling through its tines and I almost burned myself licking the last bite of garlic chicken offa it. Holy cow.

I was a good Shrinking Piggie though. The feeding frenzy only lasted for 8 bites of whatever I could find to jam in my maw before I forcefully threw down the fork (which by this time was burning my fingers anyhow) and stepped away from the cabinet of chilly nummies. It hurt me to do so, becasue there are some fairly awesome leftovers in there in their pretty little single-serving size tubs, just right for a nice lunch or maybe half a ravenous after-work snack.

Speaking of which, does Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing make just about everything you put it on taste better? I submit that it does, especially the rice mix that was left over from making stuffed peppers this weekend. Mmmm, stuffed peppers. Wish I had one right now.

This hunger is crazy, man. Here's the dealio-ee-oh: I'm eating less during the day, being as how my ass doesn't really budge much from the ol' office chair for several hours and so caloric intake isn't all the necessary, and yet, even though I'm not metabolizing much more than a gnatsworth of energy while at work, my stomach seems to think that SOME amount of food in it is a must, and so growls and groans at me for MORE, MORE! until I find myself snorkeling down chow from a plastic tub with a utensil that's glowing from the whipping friction set up in the tub-to-mouth maneuver.

But...8 bites. Just 8. That's gotta count for SOMETHING, right?

*Sigh*

Yeah. I KNOW.

Things I would like to say to the people who work around me.

Dear coworker with the perpetual throat-clearing thing,

STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT! This throat-clearing thing every 10 seconds is surely a sign of a horrific illness for which you must IMMEDIATELY rush off to your doctor to have diagnosed, beause my GOD if it's not I'm going to have to come over there and rip your 'eh-hemming' throat out by its roots and stuff it down your bloody larynx.

Oh, it would be lovely to do this, to stomp like Paul Bunyan to your desk, to glare at you with the ire of a thousand drunken Welshmen, to slooooowly reach for your drippy nasty air-pipe, watching your watery eyes wideen in horror as the realization that you're about to EAT YOUR OWN ESOPHAGUS hits you.

Keep it up, sister, and I shall do that very thing. YOU? Have been warned.

Tiff.

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Hey, Farter!

Even though you might THINK you've magically erected a cone of silence around your chair when you need to pass wind, I can still hear you, you incredible gas-bag. Yes, I can HEAR you, but will no longer cower for fear of your stenchly reprisals. No, I thus counter with my intestinal rumblings of DEWM, which you will marvel at and wonder just how long it will be before I blow off such an insane amount of swamp ass that you're forced to take your own febble air biscuits and leave town like the shamed cur of effluence that you ARE.

Why, your rapid-fire pops of buttal explosion cannot stand up to the day-long brew I got going here. Oh, how sweet it is to KNOW you can hear my transverse colon stirring up a rank cloud of Phart, are you not afraid to be in the same room with me? You should be, and if I were not so much a lady as I am I would turn that puppy loose on you in a oily gas-cloud of gaggery.

But I am a lady, and so cover my internal music with sniffs and seat-shiftings and other noises so as to not overly offend or alarm you. Could you not do the same for me? COULD YOU NOT at least COUGH when you're expelling the fermentation of your crunchy lunches??

I submit that you could, or pehaps even go a step further and get to the frikking MEN'S ROOM to 'blow off some steam' Your day is coming, sir, and I would be a liar if I said it was one to which I wasn't looking forward.

Tiff

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Hey, team lead who decided that it would be OK to tell us that they need a protocol 6 weeks from now that hasn't even been the topic of any discussion and who I'm sure knows by now that it takes at LEAST 8 weeks to get something like this done even WHEN there's a really robust synospis and stat plan,

Sod off, and find someone else to rise to your panic-scented bait. You will not get me to acquiesce to your idiotic demands, to assume your sense of urgency, to believe that I can fix what's wrong. OH HELL NO. Not this time.

And get off my lawn.

Tiff.

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Dear God,

I'll take several more days like this one. Holy crap it's gorgeous outside. Also? If you could do that and make it so that I could maybe actually ENJOY it instead of just WATCHING it through my stupid cube window? Would be awesome. Hey, you're God, you're awesome, so it should be no problem for you. Right?

Thanks much,
Tiff.

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Yeah. I'm in no mood to work these days. None. Don't you LOOK at me like that or I'll write YOU a letter next. You don't want that do you? So git, and have a lovely evening. I have things to do.

Mmmmm, brains

So, I'm all on Facebook, and, like, took this quiz? And it was supposed to tell me when I'm going to die? And so I did it? And it told me this?

Tiff took the "when will you die??" quiz and the result is: result is 31st october , 2008.

Dudes? THAT WAS LAST YEAR! I am TOTALLY DEAD!! Do you know what this means?

I'm a freaking ZOMBIE, man! ROCK!

What sucks is that I bit it on the night of Tiffowe'en and nobody told me, and I've wasted all this time doing ordinary people stuff when I could have been lurching around the neighborhood moaning for brains!

Man, that sucks. I'm totally not even WANTING brains anymore, which is dope, 'cuz it would be awesome to rip the heads off of a bunch of people around here and start munching on their corpus callosums (learned that in AP biology) or their medulla oblongatas (also AP bio, which my friend Mandy had to take twice (once in summer school) because she didn't turn in her ocular system project on account of her mom had a baby and Mandy had to take care of her little brother for 8 weeks while her mom did NOTHING but feed the new baby and cry. Hey Mandy's Mom? Grow up! Mandy had to go to SUMMER SCHOOL because of you, which is, like, totally unfair to Mandy because she had a sweet job as a booth girl set up at the town pool, and could have hung out with the lifeguards all summer, but no, she had to re-take stupid AP Bio because YOU decided to reproduce then get all weepy about it!). Wouldn't it be trippin' to snack on someone's pituitary? Nom Nom, protohormones!

Totally missed my chance though. I guess if you die and don't know it, then you can't turn into a zombie and scare the pants off losers like Shelby Knackwise, that zitty chick in AP Bio who always got like 100 perCENT on her stuff, or Janque Hollister who is so ugly but who is dating Josh Blivens, my crush. I could totally go for killing them dead with fright and then cracking some skullage.

Man. Could I ever.

But NnnOOOOO, I can't because aparently if you miss your chance at being dead? You totally cannot go back and ask for a do-over. Sucks. Totally.

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Anyhow, I think I'd rather be vampire than a zombie anyday if given my choice of what variety of 'undead' I could be. Vampires are cool, man. Capes and fangs and sweepyness and turning into mist or bats or whatever, and the BITING of people to suck their BLOOD and the IMMORTALITY thing? Schweeeet. I could go without sunlight too; as an Irish-German girl I have plenty of practice.

Plus which? I already HAVE a widow's peak. Watch out! Vlad Tiffula is on the MOVE.

At the top and bottom of every hour, do a station ID

RIPPED (OFF) FROM THE NEWS!!

Dodd draws fire for tortured tale

Conneticut Senator Chris Dodd is joining other political notables and creating artworks for a new book on acceptable interrogation practices. "My Little Iron Maiden" is due out in time for Hallowe'en '09.

Ski helmet law mulled after Richardson death

The unfortunate passing of actress Natasha Richardson has caused some lawmakers to steep a possible new helmet law in a potent mixture of cloves, lemon, and port wine. What this has to do with passing new legislation protecting us from ourselves is unknown, but it certainly sounds delicious!

Private inspections of food companies seen as weak

"The food companies that are seen as strong do not need to be inspected," says Ginny Mustardtumble, chief administrative Poobah of Crop Sciences in the Name of Justice and the American Way of the FDA.

(Enter one of this writer's pet peeves - a quote of 5 words followed by a 30-word description of who said those words. Why, oh WHY, can we not use footnotes?)

African Union suspends Madagascar

In an effort to garner more international attention to the plight of the downtrodden in Africa, the AU consulted with top illusionists and has sucessfully plucked Madagasacar from the Indian Ocean and positioned it over The Hague. "Nothing says 'pay attention to us' more than a million or so frantically screaming people hovering 100 feet over your heads" said Mkembe Utumo, Chief Resident Consult of Publicity for the AU.

NFL players promoting improved physical education

This might take a while.

Melting snow threatens spring flooding in north

Hikers in the Mashapacket State Forest reported that they heard muffled shouts coming from a snow-covered hillside. At first they thought another hiker had been trapped in an unreported avalanche, but were shocked to discover that the snow itself was screaming. Belle Gustfmacher, one of the 16-year-old hikers, reported that "the snow was yelling 'MFGRBL Flood - you GOIN' DOWWWNNNNGRRRRBLL'." Her hiking partner, also 16 years old and named Bucky McFinster (after the famous 16th century bare-knuckle boxer) offered that the snow also may have said some swear words, but that he wasn't going to repeat them in public because "swears are something you do in private, not in front of people who might not care to hear them." This reporter went to the scene of the alleged threatning activity, and heard nothing untoward except a bit of soft muttering from a few patches of slush.

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And now you're all caught up on the news. Have a wonderful day.

Nobody told me about Ron Silver

The gossip world is abuzz with the sad news about Natasha Richardson,and that's perfectly understandable. She was half a golden couple (being the lucky lucky wife of the perennial hottie Liam Neeson), heir to Mama Vanessa Redgrave's acting dynasty throne, etc etc. Very sad, of course.

But hers was not the only significant actorly cackoff recently. It must be noted that someone else passed on over the weekend - Ron Silver. When I read that bit of news, at first I had no idea why it should matter to me that people are aware of his death at least as much as they are of Ms. Richardson's. It's not like I've even THOUGHT about Ron Silver in years.

Doing a bit of research into why THIS name should resonate for whatever reason has illustrated to me once again how powerful memories made in childhood can be, because my 'a-ha!' moment came with this little snippet from Wikipedia:

From 1976 to 1978 he played downstairs neighbor Gary Levy in the series Rhoda.

Bingo! Ron Silver was the sexy downstairs guy with eyes that could burn holes through a young teenaged girl's psyche! I had such a crush on him (along with David Groh AND the voice of Lorenzo Music's, it should be added).

Oh sure, he got some Tony Award blah blah blah,and appeared in like a thousand other things (like The West Wing), but damn - the open-neck shirts and chest hair of the '70s MUST be what planted the first memory seed where ol' Ron Silver is concerned.

Two snaps up, 'downstairs neighbor Gary.' Here's hoping eternity is everything you could wish for.

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Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and realized that nearly every single word out of your mouth sounds asinine, and you're powerless to stop it?

I was just talking with the new admin about what she can do to help us out, and I was going on and on about some stupid task, making it sound important and 'value added,' and I HEAD MYSELF TALKING and I sounded so VERY patronizing. In fact, it was so bad that I felt it necesasry to CONTINUE to talk up the chore, building it into some pivotal process necessary for the continued well-being of the company and quite possibly the whole nation, under God, when in truth what it really is is about 20 hours of work per report that I hate doing and want desperately to foist off on someone else so I can return to racking up wins of freecell.

Asshole much?

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M&Ms are, quite possibly, the most evil and delicious candy ever invented. One of them is too little to eat all alone, and a few of them at once taste so good you want more, and pretty soon the whole bag is gone, even when one promises onesself that one is going to only eat a few and save the rest for later. The crunchy candy coating! The velvety chocolate innards! The wholesome and festive array of colors exploding with each mastication into a cataclysm of oral deliciousness! Oh! Yes!

And then, a mere few minutes later, they're done fer and life proceeeds apace, as if such supple joy had never been.

Oh, M&Ms, I will remember, and smile.

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There you have it. Actors, assholes, and candy. Your Thursday topic trifecta.

Y'all have a good day now, y-heah?

I'll wave at you as I pass your exit

Hey y’all.

If you haven't seen me around your home on the 'net recently, and wonder if I still love you, the answer is I DO, but that lately life has been...complicated. I may not be up in your face with visits, but please don’t forget about me, mmkay? My typical semi-lengthy excursions around the interwebz have, by necessity, been cut rather much more short than normal, and far shorter than I would normally PREFER. But duty calls. And calls, then texts me repeatedly, then jabs me in the side with a pointy finger, then screams in my face like a drill sargeant on a dusty hot summer day.

It’s nearly impossible to ignore duty when it does shit like that.

Quite frankly, I’m overwhelmed with ‘life,’ and until I get my poop in a group in regard to work and financial crap, I have lectured myself that I am NOT ALLOWED to retreat into the safe warm arms of the world-wide weave. It’s time to stiff-upper-lippit, I’m afraid.

I’m still around. Just not….around. See you when the storms pass.

Is it not always something? I submit that it is.

I'm noodling while the potatoes boil. Or get ready to boil. Whatever it is, I'm NOT WATCHING THE POT, because that way lies insanity and a decided craving for ancillary hasenpfeffer.

God, it's been crazy around these parts. Work is all farked up, the schedule is blown to smithereens, there's the small matter of a new furnace arriving tomorrow (And attic insulation! And new insulated ducts! And a new monthly payment! Joy!), The Busted Foot Boy's appointment to remember to go to tomorrow, also SOMEONE'S got a dentist appt tomorrow that I fear will result in pudding for dinner, and my goodness would you look at that, it's almost 7 p.m. and there's no post for the day.

Not that there NEEDS to be a post, but man, if the words don't get out of my head and quit their carousing around my medulla oblongata then there will be blood. BLOOD! And blood is notoriously difficult to clean out of velveteen davenports, which, sadly, pretty much means that there shall be no rousing spate of bloodshed tonight, for there are many many other things to do besides fire up the Lil Green Clean Machine and suck hemoglobin.

Stuff to do like, sift through the pile of dusty dirty filthy CRAP (not. literal. that would be gross) we hauled out o' the attic yesterday, and is now sitting on the kitchen table. Other people's dusty dirty filthy crap, might I add. Most of it for Holidayz. With sparkles. Most of it utterly useless. The people who lived here before us did not have the good sense God gave them to hide precious object d'art in the attic, oh no! They, the ingrates, only stuffed shit like EMPTY BOXES all up in there, and SPOOLS OF OLD CHRISTMAS RIBBON, and oh yes, let's not forget THE GIANT FISH TANK.

Giant fish tanks and empty dusty dirty filthy grody-ass boxes are not going to make me suddenly wealthy and a lifelong re-run on the Antiques Road Show. All them boxes are going to do is make me hate the former residents of the Tiny House one smidge more.

The most inexplicable thing retrieved from the attic? Inside-out little girl's pajama bottoms, with a set of stained cotton panties still attached. The EFF? What the baboon-butted hell went ON up there?

My finely honed skill of 'ignore it and maybe it will go away' seems to be working though. Why, at this moment dear Biff is resolutely unpacking the nasty-azzed boxes, relieving the poor Tiny house if the wretched refuse of former denizens of it's hallowed halls. I, on the other hand, continue to be ready to call the Salvation Army and have them come haul all that garbage off, even if there IS a Monet hidden in the mess.

For I? Am a quitter. And I'm OK with that.

Hope y'all have had a wonderful day. We're still involved in heavy gloom around these parts, and that's just ONE MORE THING that chaps my sizeable white netherbits. But hey, I can still be a little ray of sunshine on the internets, eh? ;)

Stuff I no longer need to write about, but somehow will take credit for.

Is it really, truly a bad thing when the fire department shows up at your house before the sun comes up?

Not really, for the reasons below.

1) Good news is that the fire department came, and FAST.

2) Better news was that the house was, in fact, not on fire.

3) Best news was the that awful smell was due to something outside the house and nothing inside the walls (visions of flames creeping up long-unused chimney walls? yeah, I had 'em).

4) Bestest ever news was that the Fire Dept didn't feel it was necessary to come into the house with axes and firehouses fully chocked and ready to deploy. Hooray for not having to file an insurance claim!!!

4a) Sorta kinda bad news: we need a new HVAC unit. Something innit is going 'brrrrzzzzz' when it shoud be going 'hmmmmm', and that? Is not a good thing. Somewehere, somehow, we need to pull 7K out our asses. If we were talkng about butt hairs, I'm pretty sure between us all we'd have the job done in an hour. As it is, some creative license will need to be taken.

Overall though, the news couldn't be better for us, and worse for the overnight news team. Nothing to see here, please move along.

And have a nice day.

Bye Bye, little boy

Between late morning dropoffs at school, meetings to talk about who to bug for what materials for report appendices, hour-long trainings, a very nice lunch with the guy who performed the training (normally reserved for global directors, but my boss [the global director of my group] delegated the ‘responsibility’ to me, WOOT!), a hallway conversation with a colleague about how hard it is to have a kid when a broken foot that needs to b carted around pillar to post, and then a quick rip through e-mail before driving BACK to the school by 2:30 to pick the injured kid up before then having to wait another half an hour to pick up Thing 1, and only THEN getting home to fire up the computer to see what bits of flame from today’s white-hot fires had crept out from around the edges of my grasp, I pretty much didn’t have time to post today.

It was, um, pretty busy.

And rainy.

And, truth be known, I think I’m still stunned by the inadvertent peek I got at Thing 2’s junk this morning when I was helping him into the shower (busted foot, let's recall...). Poor boy needed a hand, and even though I TRIED to cover him up and look away while holding him steady as he got into the lawn chair set up in the tub for the purposes of scrubbing down his adolescent ass, there was….that moment.

Friends? He’s all grown up, if you get my drift. Isn’t it too soon?

Now, at last, I know how my parents felt when I, at 11 years old, had a figure that belonged on an 18-year old and had been shaving my legs and enjoying the joys of ‘being a woman’ for months already. I suppose, if I was fully reproductively capable at 11, then why shouldn’t HE be?

Still, if I never have to get an eyeful of that ever again? Fine by me.

Now any crusty sock or washcloth found in the Things’ room will be handled with TONGS. I swear to God they will.

Bye bye, my little boy. Hello, my young man.

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It’s very much a good night for homemade pizza and a nice cocktail or three. The rain and colder temps have caused an outbreak of ‘cozy,’ and because I know I’m going to have to work this weekend (see the whole weird schedule thing in the first paragraph, please), it’s time to shut down this pup and commence to relaxin’.

Y’all have a good one, y’hear?

Things I did not know, until this morning

This morning, I had the following things in my mouth, ALL AT THE SAME TIME:

a cigarette filter-sized sponge thing
a cottonball-sized sponge thing
a water squirter tube
a water sucky-upper tube
a lil' mirror thing
a drill/goo squirter/UV light (Pick one)
my dentist's fingers

At one point, while the hygienist was hardening the filler goo with the UV light, the dentist was CRAMMING my tongue back into my throat, choking me almost completely dead. No, really. Very nearly completely. Between the practically upside-down position in which one is placed in the fancy-dan dentist chair, the plethora of crap shoved in my mouth (a 'juicy mouth' my dentist tells me, which I hope to heck is a good thing), and the sudden outpouring of snot that washed into my nasopharynx, there was no breathing to be done through either mouth OR nose.

Not a terribly happy position in which to find onesself.

I did, however, survive (as evidenced by this here post), and am now the happy owner of about a third of a new rear molar. No longer shall my tongue catch on the rough edges of the break, getting irritated for several days every once in a while. Nope - that's all gone. My first filling ever, complete.

Sigh. How quickly they grow up.

Sure hope y'all have been having a wonderful day. If so, keep up the good work. If not, won't you please start?

Thirty more to a thousand. Hiphip!

I wish I could fly. Just thought I'd put that out there.

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Albert the cat snores. It's rather charming. Also charming is how he kneads his lil' paws when he's a happy purr bucket. There's almost nothing more utterly blissful that a biscuit-makin' cat. It as a shame to have to stop him this morning, but the value of his bliss was nothing compared with thvalue I assign to NOT wetting the bed.

Full morning bladders and happy cats do not mix.

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Some dudes from the town came by this morning to hook up the Tiny House to the town load-sharing system. Say hello to outside control over heating and cooling, and a big HOWDY to reduced energy bills! Heck yes.

Yep - they just came on-a by, right as I was about to get in the shower. Showers being an operational positive prior to going to work, you know.

So, no shower, because the first and truly ONLY thing they asked of me was to flip the switch on the water heater. Right then. No hot water means no shower. Yes, yes I KNOW there's very likely enough hot water in the water heater to last one shower, but the thought of taking a shower while two worker-dudes are in the crawlsapce right UNDER the shower creeped me out.

What if suddenly the floor cracked open and I plunged, dripping wet and totally naked, right on top of their baseball-cap-wearing heads? Could happen! What if there is some heretofore unknown peephole from the crawlspace into my SHOWER and they could peer straight up into the ol' cootchal area? Might be! Plus which? The whole time they were under the house they were joking around, and you cannot tell me that taking a shower DIRECTLY above two men who are joking around in your crawlspace isn't creepy.

So, yeah. No shower until the fellas left. That put the first available opportunity at around 9:45. OK then. Shower and prepare for work = 30 minutes, with a 45-minute commute added on would put me to work at, uh....11 a.m. Right. Not gonna happen.

The beauty part of my job is that with a telephone and a computer, I can pretty much work anywhere that has internet, as long as I'm not running a meeting. Today? I'm hanging' on my couch as a light breeze blows through the living room window, stirring up the cat and dog hair, cascading clouds of dust from table to floor to God knows where. Just lovely, I'm sure you'll agree. Still, even with the visible reminders that the floor needs yet another vacuuming, working at home beats the everloving SNOT out of hunching over a hot keyboard in a cubicle, no matter what.

Plus which, there's the whole 'pajama' aspect to consider.

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In recent weeks I've not been listening to the radio or watching teevee news at all, as part of an effort to 'power down' the noise in my life.

Not only has the exercise illustrated that I had a LOT of noise in my life, but that the noise that I THOUGHT was useful was in fact more toxic that simple white noise. The news, that purveyor of doom and gloom, was bumming me out in a rather insidious manner. I had become almost too well informed, beginning to care about obscure things like the Zimbabwe elections and the plight of Cambodian monks and the future of the textiles industry on Bhopal.

You know what? I do not need to care about these things right now. I might not ever need to care about them, to tell you the truth. Not that I'm shuttering my windows and choosing the remain completely uninformed, because that would be ignorant and isolationist, but I do NOT have to suffuse every waking moment with 'news' over which I have no control and the impact of which on my life is almost nil. Especially while driving, or trying to relax over a nice dinner or whatever.

From now on, I'm getting my news from printed media, and letting the silence play nicely with the new peace of mind I've found.

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This is getting long, so I'll leave it at that. I hope all y'all are having a wonderful day. Oh, and please go visit Rennratt, who is starting the long process of helping her husband heal. She could use some kind thoughts, I'm sure.

Bust a move

Got a call yesterday afternoon from the ex. Seems Thing 2 has busted a toe bone as a result of horsing around on the playground at school. Seems this broken toe bone is going to require 2 to 3 months in a post-op shoe (not a cast), and that ol' Thing 2 is excused from phys ed for that period of thime. Also excused from tae kwon do. Also excused from anything weight-bearing.

Well, there go my plans for using him as my personal pack mule for all those shopping trips I can't afford to take now that he's broken his foot...some sense of responsibility HE'S got, huh?

Also? The doc who examined him gave the ex a peek at the boy's x-rays, and apparently there's a whole shitload of growing left in the boy if growth plates blah de blah are to be believed.

Please note: this is the child who is not yet 12 and is already 5 foot 10 inches tall. He's done plenty of growing already.

I began to wonder just exactly how MUCH growing he has left to do, becuase I am curious like that. So I hove me online and searched out some neat gizmos that purported to tell me just that very thing.

Oh dear. I shouldn't have. Should NOT have.

According to the results of one 'forecast your kid's height'-o-meter, it looks like he'll quit when he gets to about 6'10". Another says 6'8". Potay-to, po-tah-to, says I. I'm pretty sure there's no real difference in height once you get past about 6'5", unless you're going to be a basketball player. Really, once you've reached a ceratin height, all most folks are going to see of you is your chest and is chin, am I right? This is my future then, to be able to identify my baby by the pattern of facial hair on his neck. Cripes - I'd best get a good look at him now before he gets so big we'll have to raise the ceiling in his room (and take down the ceiling fan. and raise the door frame).

As if that wasn't enough to induce a fine bout of hand-wringing, and because I am maybe a glutton for punishment, I took a gander at what Thing 1 is suppose to end up at, height-wise. He's 13.5 years old, is 5'9", and weighs about 115 pounds (I KNOW. Can't feed him enough to fill out his jeans, while Thing 2 can sniff a carrot and add a pound. Life may be lots of things, but fair ain't one of them). This info, combined with my height and his Dad's (5'10" and 6'4" at our tallest) gives out a final read of between 6'6" and 6'7" at full height.

Think about that one. Really. How many people do you know who are that tall? That's fucking TALL, man, but still seems so much more do-able than the magnificent 6'10" or thereabouts that his younger brother is going to, quite possibly, achieve. I could live with 6'7" of son, but that 6'10" is truly astounding.

I'm sort of freaking out here, because the Things are lovely young men and I'm envisioning a lifetime of them feeling awkward about their height. If they're going to end up almost 7 feet tall, then nothing will 'fit' them, not roller coaster seats or airplanes seats or shoes or pants or houses or cars or NOTHING, and I do not want my babies to be FREAKS! They're not even interested in sports, so making money off 'em as pro ball players appears to be totally out of the picture, which sucks royally but what can I do? I can't MAKE them want to play football. NO, these soon-to-be giants among men like CHESS, for God's sake, and the trombone...

OK, deep breath. The docs told my folks that I was going to be 6 feet tall, and they were short of the mark by a cupla-too-tree inches, so maybe these newfangled height predictors will be all wet too. Maybe the Things will stop growing at a respectable 6'5" or so. Maybe we won't have to buy them special beds so the bottom half of their legs don't stick out the bottom.

Y'all, cross your fingers for us, throw a 'stop growing already you hulking mass of adolescent' their way, or at least pray that I find some kind of peace with these predictions. Because honestly? It's about to kill me dead.

Oh, and think kind thoughts for poor Thing 2's busted 5th metatarsal, if you have a spare. He's going to need it to heal up REAL GOOD if he's going to sucessfully carry around his monstrous frame in a few short years.

Then have a wonderful day.

It's quite possible that by this time next week I will have lost my mind

The Tiny House's front yard is a hella mess right now, but even so, looks far better than it did at this time yesterday.

How could that be? Well, as a result of a surprise rototilling later yesterday afternoon by a finally fed-up-with-it Biff, the entire yard it is now a clumpy mass of earth chunks, snake grass leavin's, and wild onion funk; which is, as you might understand, highly preferable to the swarm of dead snake grass, wild onion sprouts, and swathes of indeterminate weed matter that had been there.

The problem at this point is not so much that it LOOKS awful,the issue is that all the dead and dying biomass needs to be raked OUT of the upturned earth and removed before any seeding can commence, which is proving to be a matter requiring much patience and intestinal fortitude to complete.

Therefore, due to a distinct LACK of gut strength, the raking-out-of-dead-crap is not complete. I have discovered that manual labor is not my actual real first love after all. Not that I ever thought it WAS, mind you, but I've never really been afraid of hard work and so thought that raking the yard and removing the undesirables would be far more satisfying than it's turning out to be. After about an hour, and a fifth of the yard properly raked out, I was so.totally.ready to call it quits and commence to relaxing.

Which, happily, is what happened. It's nice to have a partner in projects who accepts my overall level of TOTAL WUSSINESS.

Besides which, there were steaks to cook and happy funtime drinks to quaff. On a gorgeous Southern Spring evening, one must make the most of sunset, knowing full well that in a couple of months the only real operative word for conditions outdoors will be 'swelter.'

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Got a call from a Doc here at work just a little bit ago. Apparently there is some kind of emergency writing exercise that must be undergone, and I'm the one who is being doniked on the keyboard to do it.

Nevermind that this project's been on the back burner for over two months while we waited for OTHER PEOPLE to get their shit together and decide how they want the study run....it's now MY emergency. Sweet! You're jealous, right? Never mind that that other dozen things I'm doing are also important. Nossir - this hot potato has landed square in my cube and there's nobody else to throw that bastard to.

Oh yeah, and my boss asked me an hour earlier to take charge of another 'everything old is new again' hot topic project.

I had held out some vague hope that this was the week I'd actually be able to catch up on projects and put my professional feet firmly under me in order to climb up and over the mountains of 'to dos,' but I see now that this is not to be. No, instead that mountain will continue to slip under my scrabbling hands and feet as I try to keep it from all crashing down on me.

Yes, jealousy is the correct emotion you should be having when you think about what it must be like to be me.

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In other news: My mother had a pacemaker put in over the weekend. Apparently this is now so routine that for most people it's considered an OUTPATIENT procedure.

Can you imagine? You get all Borgified in the morning and by dinner you're at home, planning out how to contact The Cube to let the leader know you're ready for your Regeneration Chamber to be activated.

(a variant of this joke did not go over well with my Mother. Seems she doesn't much care for being likened to a cybertronic being, the spoilsport. (Hi Mom!))

It's projected that this new addition to her armament will go a long way toward keeping her heart ticking along at a much more steady rate that it has been lately. Between bouts of racing heartbeat switching up with a pulse of 40 beats per minute, it's been something of a wild ride in Cardiac City for her. Here's hoping that the long nights in the ER, waiting for her system to moderate, are over.

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It's another stunning day in the Triangle. I'd best go get my work done so I can go home at a decent hour to enjoy a bit of it.

While raking, of course.

Quitcher sniggering, and have a great afternoon.

Pains and waiting for 4:20

10 Push-up and 39 sits ups yesterday = sore muscles today. This is SO not a good sign. As a matter of fact, it’s a very bad sign. I mean, I’m taking my vitamins and EVERYTHING, so I shouldn’t be sore from such a stupidly small amount of actual physical effort, right? I can play racquetball and tennis for an HOUR and not be sore, so why is it that 5 minutes of stupid wuss-ups make it so that I cringe when there’s even a thought of raising my arms above my head?

Gah.

I did more wuss-ups this morning, just to prove to this body that I’M VERY SERIOUS, which of course might well have something to do with the overall level of ache, but damn. Still. Why can’t the net result of starting a workout program be something more pleasant, like farting rainbows or feeling pleasantly inebriated? This pain thing is rather more of a deterrent to further out-workery than an invitation to do MORE.

However. I am a bull-headed thing when it comes to these matters, and once faced with the REAL AND PAINFUL reminder of how badly off I am in the Phys Ed department, something in my head goes ‘poing!” and that’s all it takes for me to want to beat my body back into shape.

I’ve done this numerous times before. I know how I am.

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There’s a woman I work with who has a very curious habit of sniffing me each and every time she sees me. She, apparently, likes my body spray (don’t call it perfume. It’s really meant to de-stink smelly bafrooms, but it’s essential oils and even on the label the manufacturer says it can be used to un-odorize people, so I do), and the variety of smells they convey.

Patchouli is her favorite. As she says, ‘it reminds me of my mara-who-wanna schmoking days.’ It should be noted that my colleague is not a native English speaker, so this is exactly how she pronounced it. Took me a minute to decode…

This sniffing is kind of adorable, I must admit. Certainly it’s nothing threatening, but it does lend an air of interpersonal closeness to a business relationship that I have not heretofore experienced. Being sniffed by an Associate Director while fixing a cup of coffee is one of life’s more unique experiences.

----------------------------------------------------

This same patchouli-loving AD also used to work for the same company I did, many moons ago. She was in the U.K. office, I was not. However, she, by dint of the group in which she worked, became very good friends with a woman I knew peripherally. This woman was…noticeable at work because of the manner in which she presented herself.

She’s an artist, you see. As an artist (stuck in a pharmaceutical company – incongruous yes, but one does have to pay the bills somehow), it is incumbent upon you to dress in remarkable ways, such as long velvet dresses with Stevie Nicks hemlines, brick red lipstick, and very long flowing hair. It also helps to smell of Cinnabar and wear something jingly. This was the code of J, who worked that look to within an inch of its life. Everyone, me included, thought she was pretty cool.

I found out just HOW cool, when I gave her some of the Things’ cast-off baby videos in response to an ad she posted on the company intraweb. She wanted some for her daughter (the father of whom was a total mystery to the general populace, but who, as she grew, began to look remarkably like one of the group directors with whom it was known J had had a fling) and because the tapes were just cluttering up my very small home it made sense to turf them to someone who wanted ‘em. I thought that was that – a couple dozen tapes handed over to baby A, and a neater living room – fair deal.

But J wanted to thank us for our generosity, and so offered to take a portrait of the Things at her home. Artist, remember? Who wouldn’t want that done (even though their Dad is a professional photographer, but nevermind)? So on a very hot New England day we trooped down to her charming home, tromped up the steps to her tiny bedroom studio, and sweated our asses off while she adjusted lights and directed shots and such. I don’t remember much about the results of the shoot, but I DO remember that she had decorated her living room with self-portraits.

NUDE self-portraits. Unmistakably self-portraits on an unclothed J, before, during, and after her pregnancy.

Thanks to those pictures, I had a very clear idea of what she looked like under her clothes. This? Made me uncomfortable. Her boobs were perfect as scoops of ice cream, her skin as clear as snow, her glossy hair cascaded over gentle shoulders, framing her face in some shots and caressing her baby daughter’s nursing mouth in others. J was more gorgeous in those photos than she was in person, which was saying a whole hell of a lot. I was instantly horribly jealous of her. I wanted to be her – the mysterious child, the wild outfits, the artist’s circle of friends, the seeming freedom, the pursuit of art even while making a life built on the paycheck of corporate life. In the presence of those pictures I felt blocky, stuffy, large and awkward, clamped tight into a mould I wasn’t made for. Not a good feeling at all.

Years have passed since that ime, and I had pretty much forgotten about J until my new buddy the Sniffer mentioned her as we flipped through a mental catalog of people we might have both known while employed by the Behemoth. It doesn’t surprise me that the Sniffer and J are good friends. They have the same sense of style, some kind of barely-concealed sensuality that leaks out around the edges of the corporate box in which they spend 8 hours a day. Some may scoff at outrageous thigh-high boots worn to the office (scandal!) but I rather like the outliers in this business, the people who keep things interesting by reminding us that we’re not ALL about work and that maybe it’s OK to wear gauze shirts and prayer bells to the quarterly meeting…

Know what else is kind of cool? When the Sniffer and J had a girls weekend last month, my name came up, and J remembered me. Somehow that makes me feel really good. Perhaps I’m not just a taupe soul in a mauve cube after all.

Patchouli for everyone, man, and have an awesome weekend.

Two things that will make you feel better about yourself. You're welcome.

Had a dentist appointment this morning to fix a tooth that I’d cracked hunk off of a few years ago. It went spectacularly well! Completely painless, and I can’t even tell that the doc did anything at all to that tooth, which is a nice surprise. I expected to be in some discomfort from the jaw-stretching and tooth-spackling, but there’s no sign that anything went on at all.

Because, in actuality, nothing did go on.

Nope. No dentist. I pulled up to the door at 10:03 (just 3 minutes late! Perhaps a new record!), full of determination to get this thing over with, and was a tad surprised to see a ‘closed’ sign hung thereupon.

Wha?

Not being one to believe everything she reads, naturally I had to test the door to see if it was indeed locked, or if perhaps the staff had simply forgotten to flip the sign and open the blinds. Gave that door a good jigglin’, in case maybe someone was in the back washing out dental prods and couldn’t hear my initial gentle rattle. Alas, no one came. And I was so CERTAIN that my appointment was for 05 March at 10 a.m.!

What had happened? Had the been some kind of office-wide emergency that had taken them all so violently ill that none of them could call me and let me know not to scurry on over there (mere minutes late!)? Well now, if that was the case, I’d be disappointed, because I do like the all-girl staff, and would hate to have anything overly untoward happen to them.

Thinking quickly, I dug the appointment card out of my purse to double-check the time and day, certain in the knowledge that I was at the correct place at the correct hour, about to glory in my responsibility and ability to be where I was supposed to be, when I was supposed to be there.

Alas, my confidence was short-lived, for the appointment card with its very helpful little ‘peel n’ stick to you calendar’ tooth-shaped reminder thingie CLEARLY states that I am to be at the dentist….NEXT Thursday.

At 8.

I’m welcoming any and all possible explanations about how I could have gotten it so terribly wrong.

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In the ‘ways I can prove I’m certifiably insane’ topic category, there’s this:

Not only have I decided to do the ‘hundred push-ups in 6 weeks’ challenge, I have also unofficially joined the ‘200 situps in 6 weeks’ plan.

Yessir, by the end of April ’09 there’s a fair chance I might be able to pump out throat-swellingly large amounts of displays of physical prowess, much to the amazement of me, myself, and I.

Of course, to begin, one must determine one’s current physical fitness level. It’s helpful then that each challenge has a means of assisting one in the determination thereof, and provides useful graphic representations of ‘the perfect sit-up’ and ‘the perfect push-up.’ All one needs to do is to do as many of these perfect exercises as one can, then consult a chart that will tell one at what level one should being the challenge. What could be easier?

Off I went then this morning to assess my fitness level insofar as these two items were concerned. Getting into pushup position was easy! Dropping down to the ‘perfect pushup’ base position was….not so easy. Seriously. I had trouble letting gravity work. Uh-oh. My arms quivered just getting my torso down to a level halfway to the ground (the ‘perfect pushup preferred penultimate position’ being FULLY on the ground), and so I felt it would be a good time to take the bod back up to the starting point.

I did 8 half-perfect pushups in this manner. 8, and each one was harder than the last one. Disheartening, to say the least. While I’ve never been big on upper-body strength (having failed the ‘bar hang’ every year in the Presidential Fitness Test), I’d thought that at LEAST I’d be able to crank out a dozen wuss-ups. Consulting the ‘status chart’ on the website was the bitter icing on the cake of disgust, for I, with my abysmal performance, am rated a ONE. On a scale of 7, I am a ONE. There is nowhere lower to go. I lose. As a ONE, it is suggested that I start off with girlie pushups, in which one decreases by 50% the force necessary to execute good form in the simple act of doing the pushups on one’s knees. How terribly degrading.

But necessary, because as a ONE, the number of perfect pushups I would need to execute in the first sets start at 2. Let's recap: Two perfect pushups is more than twice the number I can do in the full-on pushup position.

My soul sags at this news. My determination; however, is blazing. This thing will not beat me. I shall NOT go into later middle age a slowly weakening ball of blubber. LIFE WILL NOT DEFEAT ME! Doesn’t help that my wonderful lovely partner in crime, Biff, did 25 shockingly perfect pushups in about 10 seconds, stopping only because his sternum hurt (or some such bizarre reason). Read that again: 25, and he wasn’t even out of breath. To say I was jealous would be to liken a moth to a dragon, baby.

Oh, and the sit-ups? I’m barely out of the ‘poor’ category, having done 39 ‘perfect crunches’ using every last little shred of willpower and sphincter control I possess. I’m hoping that somehow Biff gets an attack of ab paralysis and totally flames out on this one, because manohman it’ll be tough to live down his dual superiority.

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And now you’re up-to-date. Have a grand day.

Oh Dear Lord, here we go

At the beginning of the year I foolishly eagerly agreed to rejoin the Shrinking Piggies with the idea that losing some extra weight was a lovely shiny notion that I would take out of its box, lovingly caress and fuss over and not be able to stop admiring.

What ultimately happened, as should be no surprise, is that I took that gleaming notion seriously for oh, about a week before losing it behind a figurative couch one day while idly flipping it around trying to look like a drummer weaving his sticks between his fingers during a particularly flashy solo.

By that time, my poor notion had been deep-fried, coated in chocolate, distilled into a potable refreshment, then the dry leftover husk was BURIED in the lint-filled cushions of the figurative couch of my lack of motivation and a General Desire to Enjoy Life.

Thus? I have lost only 2 pounds since the beginning of the year. I think we can all agree that this amounts to a big pile of steaming NOTHING, really, because that is about, oh, 1 percent of my weight and in all likelihood a reasonably good poop would be the equal of my total loss thus far (ending the whole 'steaming pile' metaphor on a high note, might I point out.).

This barely-there weight loss is not good news. Fortunately (here's the silver lining!) there are other piggies who are struggling over the Hump Of Despair with me, and so a new challenge has been thrown out there to all of us who aspire to shrinkly their pigly a bit more swiftly. To wit: we must all do three things toward our goal this week, and BLOG about them.

Blogging? I can do THAT! Woohoo! Therefore, I will use this here page to declare to all and sundry what my three things are, because dude, if I don't I'm going to be forced to TELL you how I know the weight of a good poop, and I'm betting that's a dark place you'd prefer to never go, even with a best friend and a flashlight.

Therefore, my three things are as follows:

1) Drink at least 2 liters of water a day (that's 'litres' for all y'all what as speak the Queen's Engrish)
2) Get up and walk at least 200 steps every hour. Do not laugh. DO NOT. Those measly 200 steps an hour will be approximately 8 times more than I walk now, especially at work, where I can plant my ass in my oversized rolly chair and not get up for hours. (See #1 for a reason I might be getting up more often...it all makes sense, doesn't it?)

The last thing is a thing that doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense, but if I don't exercise my right to be completely off my rocker about certain things, then it's going to be quite the shock when I start acting bizarre once I reach the Old Folks' Home, so here goes:

3) I'm going to start the 100 Push-up Challenge. Hey, I KNOW it's insane, but have you SEEN what menopause does to a woman's upper arms? HAVE YOU? If you have not, you do not want to. If you have, you KNOW what I mean. Flabby doesn't begin to describe it. Batwing is apt. Totally 'ew' is yet another perfectly acceptable adjective, and while I'm not terrifically vain, I would like to stave off looking like someone's Gramma for a few more years. It should be noted that I've never ever had great upper arms - they've always been big, in large part because there had been a substantial amount of muscle under the skin, but now? Not so much with the muscle, I'm sure, and oh so MUCH more with the flubbity swingy smooshity ick. Bleah. Double bleah, one for each arm.

That's it then. Three things I can do without spending a dime. Drink, walk, pushup. Lather, rinse repeat. Crying and bitching are optional.

Now if you'll excuse me, the first half-liter is looking for away out. Have a lovely day.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WORDNERD!

(Mr. Alan Rickman did not write this note, but he is here to lend hunky credence to the sentiment...)


To my friend Wordnerd:

I almost let this day slip by without sending best wishes to you on the anniversary of the day of your birth. This would be an egregious error, for you are one of the first internetly friends I ever made AND one of the most engaging insightful charming people I know. When we first met, I was THRILLED that the Great and Powerful Wordnerd from the WVSR would want to talk to a nobody like me? What a charge I got out of that, and how glad I am to have that acquiantance turn into real friendship. :)

We've seen each other through some interesting times, and though communication ebbs and flows, I know that you're the kind of person who appreciates small slices of life without being disappointed that they might not be getting the biggest piece of the personal interaction pie.

(That? was a metaphor crafted just for YOU, buddy).

You are an astounding piece of work, "Nerd. I am honored to call you friend, and truly honestly earnestly hope that in the near future we'll meet in person over beignets and coffee perhaps, and share some face time. Even if that never comes to pass, it doesn't rob my esteem for you of any glitter, for you are a rock star in this e-world and in the real world too.

Many happy returns, Wordnerd. And many many more.

Love, Tiff