smile if you're lying

House Of Cards

2010-12-08T08:23:00.005-05:00

Well, I suppose I should get a move on sending out all those Christmas cards. It's really not that difficult to peel a self adhesive stamp and slap it on the corner of an envelope. It's easy enough to swipe the glue strip with a damp sponge and avoid the horrible aftertaste of what I am sure is a poisonous form of freeze dried mucilage. What's really got me procrastinating is the addressing part.

Handwriting all those addresses with my poor penmanship is a small form of torture for me and post office, I've been told. My hand cramps up just thinking about it. To make matters worse, I've run out of return address labels. I know, I know, there's a way to print out your own address labels. I'm lousy at it and I don't want to, so there. I ordered more labels online, but they haven't arrived yet. I'm really in a pickle, people.

I'll just need to give myself a kick in the pants and do this. Only I know the moment I shove that big wad of cards into the mailbox a FedEx truck will pull up with my labels. I'll be handed a fresh package of address labels and be forced to sign for it with my crippled hand.

I actually do enjoy the whole exchanging of Christmas cards. It's nice to see how many friends you have in the tangible form of pictures, handwritten notes, and fancy foil-lined envelopes. We like seeing all those cards pile up on the piano where we display them until they spill over and we have to keep propping them up every time we walk by. "Look at us! We're so popular this time of year," the bountiful mail seems to say and yet, we have some seriously small plans for New Years...

There's also a few cards that stir up a bit of controversy. "John? Who are these people? I'm sorry to say that I don't even know who half of these kids are. Do we know the kids or the parents? Ooh-did we send them a card?!"

It sure is a lousy feeling when you get a card just days before the holiday only to realize you forgot to send one to them and then race to get one out and pray it gets there in time hoping they'll never know your faux pa. Even worse, is when you send one out and get one back at the midnight hour and it hits you: this person sent you one out of pity and guilt since you'd been cut from their send out list.

I look forward to all the mail, the pictures of kids (most of which we can identify), and the letters telling us the story of your life's events over the past year. I hope I get all my intended mail out, but I promise I won't take it personally if you accidentally forget me if you won't get your panties in a bunch if I slipped up and accidentally forgot you.

Debbie's Hand at Voodoo

2010-12-03T04:43:00.013-05:00

First of all I'd like to extend a big old "Thanks for Nothing" to my cat, Lucy, who belly flopped her giant ass into bed at 3:44 am just to say she loves me. All that extremely loud purring and turning in circles until she found a suitable spot to sleep on left me squished and picking loose cat hairs off my face. As an added bonus, she woke me up enough to realize that my migraine was and, still is, lingering.

This headache business is a pain in the head, literally! (boo!) Aw, but seriously folks... I started getting these sons of bitches when I was 19. I'll be 35 this month. That's a lot of head pains. I'm really beginning to wonder who I've wronged out there. There's got to be someone who's got it in for me like the city of Cleveland for LeBron James. I'm convinced there's a voodoo doll with an non-photogenic face, mild to severe acne, and a limp hairdo with a pin shoved in it's left eyebrow. And some sadistic mothertrucker is out there turning that pin around like an evildoer stirring tiny cup of tea with an even tinier, more evil, spoon.

I really can't think of anyone I've tripped up so bad that they'd be holding long burning grudge for me. And if that was possible, rest assured, it was done by a combination of dumb luck, my foot in my mouth, and an extra dose of moronic behavior. This is especially the case if I messed up this person's life when I was between the ages of 5 and 21, a time in my life that I lived for me and me only, as most people aged between five and twenty-one do. When in Rome, do as the self-serving adolescents do.

A jilted lover from my past, you suspect? Oh, I don't think that's possible, my friend. I'm not going to grow a swelled head about my minuscule love life of years gone by, quite frankly because there isn't enough evidence to support that I ever had one- even with all that new internet-searchy stuff. Let's just say I was on the receiving end of well more than half of the dumps. Oh boo hoo, don't cry for me, Argentina. If anything, I should be the one holding a a pin to a poorly constructed doll and chanting curses in the name of ex-boyfriends. The only thing holding me back from carrying out my revenge was the feeling I'd be caught in the act like when you call someone, hangup when they answer, and that blasted caller id gives you away. I offer you the following scenario of what might have occurred if I had gone through with such a thing (names have been changed to save actual ex-boyfriends from complete humiliation of being associated with having ever dated me)

Picture some teenage boy with another teenage boy playing Dungeons and Dragons in a basement that's trying to be a rec room-

Friend: Joe, pray tell, why are you rubbing your buttocks and grimacing?

Joe: Dude, my ass is on fire! I swear, it actually feels like someone's holding a lit match to my anus!

Friend: My dear Joe, what a silly thing to say! Why, anyone knows that it would be highly unlikely that someone could be holding a burning match to your anus without you knowing it or get away with it without me seeing it- Unless...

Joe: Unless what? Unless, what you pompous asshole?!

Friend: Oh, nothing. It's completely far fetched poppycock. Poppycock, I tell you!

Joe: You better tell me what the hell "poppycock" means or I'll do to you what I think it means! And I'll tell you right now, it won't be pleasant for either of us!

Friend: Oh, alright Joe! There's no need for that kind of hostility. In fact you should save your seething anger for the one who it is due...

Joe: Stop talking like a British Yoda and get the point.

Friend: I can't believe I didn't think of this the last time we played Dungeons and Dragons in your parent's pathetic excuse for a rec room and you complained of a burning anus. Don't you see, this is just your garden variety ex-girlfriend voodoo doll revenge tactics.

Joe: (blank stare, head scratch, ass rubbing, wincing for irritating ass by rubbing it)

Friend: It must be that Debbie girl. She wasn't good enough for you and couldn't handle your cutting her off. I never liked her, you know.

Joe: You really think so? Wow, I never knew I could affect such a beautiful, intelligent girl in such a way that send her into the dark, vindictive world of voodooism. I should have been a better boyfriend.

Friend: Oh my, she's even got you talking strangely! You're saying all sorts of things you'd never say about her! You said she was only attractive enough to be seen with in a dark room full people you'd never see again! You must put an end to this Joe! Hurry, before it's too late!

Joe: Maybe you're right, dude. But I'm gonna wait till I'm totally sure about this. For now, I'm just ask my mom if she lend me her Preparation H. It might just be my hemorrhoids flaring up again.

So as one can see, even if "Joe" had called me out on this fake revenge scenario, I would've been found out by his smarter, effeminate, British friend.

But the best revenge of all? They say it's to live your life happily and full of success. And just look at me now, up at four in the morning with a migraine typing away on a blog that no one ever reads except for my mom if I email her a notification that I posted something new. Living the dream, people, I'm just living the dream.

Moving most of my bizness to Facebook

2009-05-02T14:29:00.001-04:00

Hey, SHE'S ALIVE!!!!

Wow, been a while, huh? Well, shoot, go pop out a set of twins when you already got one kid and tell me you wouldn't be too busy blog? I know, no excuses, right.

SO yeah. After a lot of nagging from my sister I finally went on Facebook which wasn't easy for me to do. A little scary using your real name, home address, and social security number to sign in. I kid.

So if you wanna find me you can look me up under Debbie Lenson Turcio and be my sweet wonderful friend. It's a lot easier and quicker for me and pretty easy to upload pics and video and schtuff like that.

facebook me and book my face

Ba-Rock the Vote

2008-10-30T12:56:00.008-04:00

Growing up as one of three Jewish kids in a class of about one hundred kids, almost everyone white, except one black student, I was accustomed to hearing predjudiced remarks, seeing smirks, and giggles after an "off color" remark, and the such. I also seemed to be the only democrat.

In 1988, I stood up for Dukakis while my middle school classmates laughed at his bushy eyebrows. When they said things like, "George Bush was already the vice president..." I rebutted with, "So? What about the S and L scandal?! Huh???" But even though I wasn't totally sure what was so scandalous about it, my friends were confused and instead of understanding the I was speaking of the Savings and Loan corruption that Bush was apart of, they assumed I was referring to the SNL bits with Dana Carvey.

My parents heavily influenced the political views that I have today. My mother always made a point to bring me into the voting booth and let me pull that curtain lever...God, I miss those things.

I grew up believing that only the rich, the white, the anti-Semitic were of the Republican persuasion. Although older and not that much wiser, I now know that is not always the case, and by that I mean they could just be rich, or white, or anti-Semitic separately and not necessarily a combination of all the above.

My first time voting in a presidential election I voted for Ross Perot.

I missed voting for Gore in 2000 because I had moved and didn't realize that I wasn't registered in my new district until 7:15 pm election day. I cried on the way home.
I had pangs of guilt in the days following...I live in Ohio. It wasn't as bad as Florida, but not far from it. I couldn't bring myself to fully trust John Kerry's exit plan for the war and decided to vote for Bush....yes, I know, but my parents felt the same way. My husband John did not however and claimed that he canceled out my Bush vote with his Kerry vote, so there.

My parents haved listed to Rush Limbaugh for years, I could never understand why, he always pissed me off. They thought his show was entertaining, laughable, and filled the car with enough noise to drown out traffic. They always watched CNN then sometimes FOX News and lately, all Fox news. What's going on there?

Now my mother says, "Oh, I just don't like him..." when referring to Obama. My parents were sure he might be an anti-Semi. Then there's "that crazy outlandish Reverand Jeremiah Wright, he hates Jews, you know."

When McCain announced Sarah Palin was his running mate, I told Mom "that woman frightens me." And my mother's response? "Who, Sarah?" Was I in a paralell universe, or had my mother just referred to the ultra conservative, gun-toting, shoot-em and eat-em former beauty pageant mother of five by her first name? It was as if Mom knew her personally and she was just that misunderstood neighbor that she regularly borrowed a cup of sugar from without a thought. "What do you mean, Who? Sarah? Like she's your Sarah? Mom! Are you kidding me? You're comfortable who her taking the reigns if McCain died?! Are you serious?" "Oh, come on, she's harmless..." Harmless is not on the long list of words I would have picked to describe the govenor.

What happened to my parents? Where did we go wrong? As John pointed out, it was all that casual Rush Limbaugh listening, and the constant drone of a TV with Fox News on all day. They were slowly brainwashed. Don't let it happen to your family like it did mine. I know they already sent in their ballots weeks ago and there's nothing we can do now.

Yeah, it's free country. Yeah, you have the right to vote for who you see fit to run the place. But honestly, who's ever heard of Republican Jews?
Oh, besides Joe Leiberman, I mean.

So intriguing, a fragrance like this is....

2007-12-19T08:16:00.001-05:00

They say that “diamonds are a girl’s best friend”. They say “it’s the most wonderful time of the year.” About fifteen years ago, they tried to combine both with one of the longest running Christmas classics in advertising known to all of us as Elizabeth Taylor’s White Diamonds.

It’s a commercial that’s gotten worse with age, and by worse, I mean better in a deliciously cheesy, and completely outdated kind of way.
When is the last time we actually saw Elizabeth Taylor with black hair? Okay, maybe that’s the way most people picture because her black hair and violet eyes are just her signature look. Well, then try this, when is the last time anyone has landed an old Wright brothers’ plane within thirty yards of a gentlemen’s high stakes poker game in time for Elizabeth Taylor to glide out and save the day? She steps off the plane and is soon in the middle of the action. There’s a man who cannot raise his bet until she va-va-vooms up to the table dripping in diamonds and in husky voice says, “Not so fast, comrade...”. And then she tosses her five pound forty carat diamond earing on the table and delivers the famous line, “These have always brought me luck.”

Well, I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is that makes me love this commercial so much, but I do know that nothing says the holidays are coming like White Diamonds. How much longer will they run this ad? I just can’t say. But let’s all enjoy it while we still can, and if you’re so inclined, pick yourself up an ode to the toilet of the stuff at your corner drug store.

Acid Tripping Cat Food NOT Recalled.

2007-08-12T12:42:00.000-04:00

There's a new cat food commercial I see every once in a while I find a leetle inapropriate given the bad rap cat and dog food has gotten in the news lately. This cat runs up to it's food bowl to take bite in what appears to be a normal kitchen. But once the cat swallows, the room melts away into Willy Wonka land. The announcer cheerily talks about "delighting your cat's senses" with the new colors and textures and smells and tastes that this new "food" (acid) has to offer.

Dude, when have either of my cats complained that their food wasn't exciting enough? Their only requirement is that it's there. If anything, they should be complaining about having to eat next to the litter box. "Is it too much to ask for a little atmosphere, here? Sheesh, I'm starving and all I can smell is my own poo."

But if catfood laced with hallucinagenics is the way to go, maybe I should let Lucy and Molly give it a try. They might have a little fun jumping across animated rocks in a technicolor river all while chasing after a sparkling butterfly that smells like tuna fish, just like the kitty on tv.

The wrong kind of earholes

2007-07-24T11:26:00.001-04:00

Those new fangled iPods are all the rage and so are these things called "ear buds". Let me start off by saying these cheap flimsy new age headphones are no buds of mine.

I realized the postpartum weightloss by osmosis phase is sort of over now and I have to actually do the work to lose these last twelve pounds. So I strapped on my sneaks and borrowed John's iPod. When I got to the metroparks I struggled to get the thing turned on. When I got that figured out, I put the earbuds in. One stayed in and one fell out. I put the one that fell out back in and a few minutes later the other popped out.

Now they were both in but felt like they were both abou to fall out the whole time. Especially the left one. I kept holding it to my ear as if I was recieving late breaking news. I knew it was only a matter of time before the other one would start giving me a hard time and I wondered how stupid would it look to walk holding my hands to both ears with the iPod dragging behind me.

No matter how push, shove, and screw them into my ear, the ear buds won't stay in. The only other times I ever used it was sitting down and they would stay in a little better but now that I was walking the vibration from every step shook the bud loose.

Maybe I shouldn't clean out my ears so much. Maybe these people I see running with earbuds on have sticky, waxy ears. Maybe I got the wrong kind of earholes.

I've had a similar problem with my hands-free earphone. It comes with a clip to hang on top of your ear, but that doesn't make it any more secure on my deformed anatomy.

So I'll just have to make do with these ear peices. Everytime I insert these things I'll just do my best to not move my head too much and walk as stiffly as possible. Otherwise I can expect the earbuds to act like a couple of suicidal mental cases standing on the ledge of my ear threatning to jump unless I talk them back into my ear with the use of my finger.

If loving PingPing is wrong, I don't want to be right.

2007-07-16T12:35:00.000-04:00

So I laughed right out loud when I watched this on the Today show. But so Al Roker and Matt Lauer, though they cleared their throats quickly saying that "Gee whiz, nothing happens in Mongolia all year and now this breaking news occurs!" I can see through your lies like I can see that old lady's poorly disguised vericose vein through "nude" colored pantyhose. By the way, what color is nude, nipples?

But the real reason I laughed was not so much at the expense of the world's tallest or smallest man, it was the fact that all these people showed and documented this event. Wow, two humans shaking hands, never seen that before. Sure one was sitting in a chair and one was carried in on someone's shoulder and standing on a table, but what's so crazy bout that?

Just watch this first and you'll know what I'm talking about:

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=3340503

And how awkward was that?
The tallest man was like, "Um, hi, I'm the world's tallest man, or so I've been told. Sorry we had to meet like this."
And the smallest man was all, "Yeah, you think this blows,someone put me in this ill-fitting monkey suit before they brought me out here. Dude, I was wearing a badass silkscreen tee with jeans. What gives?"
Then the asshole that brought him out picks him up again withought so much as a warning and displays him like a little manbaby for the cameras. You could almost hear Smallest Man utter, "Put me down you showboating mofo, I'm not a fucking baby, okay? I'm a man. Don't believe me? Just undo my onesie and look in my diaper."

I just wanted to rescue these two poor souls. Two men, who probably wanted to just lead normal lives poked with cowprodders and forced into "meeting" one another. If they really wanted to meet each other, wouldn't it have taken place at a mutual friend's backyard bbq or the like? "Tallest Man! I'm so glad you could make it, and thanks for bringing that bag of ice. I've been wanting to introduce you to my good friend, Smallest Man, because you both have absolutely nothing in common and it makes for a great photo op."

A statue to poop on

2007-07-15T10:34:00.000-04:00

Say, oh hell what?

Having just watched a Spongebob video, it was in my head. Oh come on, you all know the one where Spongebob is trying fly and every other half-dressed fish in Bikini Bottom isn't going for it. First they start by shaking their fisty fins in the air (water) and yelling at him, next they start with the name calling and settle on "Birdman". Next, a youngster fish taunts him asking why he's doesn't go and "flap his wings, Birdman?" and his mother says, "Maybe he's looking for a statue to poop on! Tee hee hee he!"
So there you have it.

So a quick little update on my life goes like this:

I'm operating on very little sleep and trying to just get by on autopilot. But the twins are quite wonderful and super cute and Jack loves them to pieces. In fact, he may love them a little too much. Like, I-wanna-hold-em-and-pet-them-and-squeeze-em kind of love. A bit dangerous, methinks.

So I'm micro-managing and slowing losing my mind day by day. And this happens mostly through minute by minute and hour by hour interuptions. I guess any mom or dad can attest to this. Example, I have been interupted about seventeen times since I began this post, I'm not trying to exhagerate, I lost count. Jack wanted to start a computer game, Amelia wanted to be held and Charlie although he claimed he wanted it, he just kept on dropping his binky. Then it was back and forth to the babies' room, changing diapers, and then trying to get them to take a nap. Where was John in all this, you ask? Out for a run. And it all seems to settle down once he walks back in the door and it's amazing, really, and yet so incredibly annoying at the same time.

Nothing big to complain about, this is what we wanted and I'll taking missing a shower all day for it.

Maybe I'll catch a nap when I take Jack to the movies later...

Oh yeah, I had the babies, by the way.

2007-05-25T19:54:00.000-04:00

Meet the twins!

Charlie Francis 4lbs 15oz Amelia Marie 4lbs 6oz

Born at 3:45am May1st Born at 3:52am May 1st

Jack passed his Big Brother class and not a moment too soon.

On our way to the hospital for second time because of preterm labor at 33 1/2 weeks, I already knew we'd be coming home empty-handed and rolled my eyes right before Mom took the picture.

And yes, I'm HUGE.

Everybody now:

He's got the whole world in his hands.

And then finally, after laboring and being awake for over 24 hours and not having eaten for most of them, pushing for about and hour and fifteen minutes, the twins were born!

Has it been 9 months yet????

2007-03-21T11:58:00.000-04:00

No. No it has not, but my uterus says otherwise. I'm the size of (a house, a bloated house) 35 week pregnant woman even though I'm 30 weeks along as of yesterday. I've got to try and make it to 36 weeks, and for those who aren't in the prego loop or familiar with the lingo, a regular singleton (one baby) pregnancy is supposed to last 40 weeks. So it's all a bunch of lies when they say "9 months". Lies, I tell you. Do the math and 40 weeks divided by 4 weeks in a month comes out to 10 months.

Enough algebra for today.

Just got back from the doctor's and thought maybe I'd update my way out of date and neglected dusty ole blog. I bet the next time you'll hear from me is when all the kids have moved out if I haven't kicked them out first.

I'm gonna give it a shot and try to be a little more present here but don't hold your breath.
Let's just shoot for a once a weeker, mmkay?

December 26th, a poopy day for a birthday

2006-12-23T10:00:00.000-05:00

And yes, the above may be true, but just this last Tuesday night I had my first ultrasound. And I could enjoy it now that I can finally keep food down and everything basic that I used to take for granted.

Now I wasn't planning on finding out the sex of the baby, but gosh darnit, wouldn't that opportunity present itself making it all too tempting. But the truth of the matter is I was afraid I would find out we were having a boy again and then all hope would be lost of having a girl. Only before all of that happened, I looked at the ultrasound monitor as soon as we got started, and noticed something. Something that looked like two white circles. Something I recognized immediately before the ultrasound tech. said, "Guess what?!" John got nervous thinking that meant there was a problem while Jack was just trying to figure out what in hell he was looking at. "There's two."

I could go on about how John shit enough bricks to make a chimney, but I had my secret suspiscions all along the way.

We're having twins. A boy and a girl. And I think Jack was trying to tell us that the whole time. Everytime we asked if he wanted a baby brother or sister he would always say, " I want a brother and a sister!"

I get what I always wanted which was three kids...and I finally get a little girl just for me.

So in closing, I would like to say Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Happy New Year, Happy Kwanza, and Happy Festivus for the rest of ya's.

Debbiecakes, new and improved.

2006-11-21T16:57:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile and I'm sure all of you gave up on me. In fact, I'm quite sure the forementioned "all of you" have moved on with your lives and forgotten about me. Perhaps you thought it just a case a really bad writer's block and kept hitting the refresh button in hopes to find something other than my rant about what dishes are safe for the dishwasher, but eventually after your finger cramped up and recovered from physical therapy, you just threw in the towel.

Or you might have assumed that I got a bad case of food poisoning, died, mourned my death, searched the internet for any news on me, but then decided that weeping over the loss of my blog posts wasn't going to do anybody any good. You instead proceded to celebrate my blog life and the Debbiecakes you came to know and love. You thought of me and smiled looking up to the sky, bravely thinking I made it up to heaven unscathed. And you went on thinking of the good times we had instead of being sad, because you knew that that's how I would have wanted it. Bless your little heart.

But I'm back from the dead, in fact what's been up with me has been sort of the opposite of death. I'm a born again!

No, no, no. Actually, I'm creating life as we speak. But being pregnant doesn't always agree with me and I've spent the most of these last thirteen weeks with my head in a toilet. I'm starting to feel better and actually having an appetite once in a while in between the severe hormonal headaches and throwing up. And after all those attempts to lose a few pounds to make those jeans a little less tight, all I needed was some good old morning (noon and night) sickness. I'm happy to report I've lost six pounds. I know it won't last, but I'll brag about it, because damnit, my jeans fit great. I hope I don't gain fifty pounds like I did with Jack, but there's just no telling what lies ahead. But for now, I hope to keep my saltines down and I will try to keep things up to date on here.

Dishwasher Dangerous

2006-09-17T16:33:00.000-04:00

My mother-in-law has all these plates and I’m not sure if any of them were actually purchased by her or received as a wedding gift, because they always seem to be her mother’s. They’re really lovely plates but they’re always referred to as "old", at least according to her.

So when I’m there and I happen to be helping with the dishes, I always have to ask whether or not certain plates and bowls can go into the dishwasher. Because you just don’t know. And I certainly don’t want to be responsible for ruining a set of dishes that once belonged to my grandmother-in-law, so to speak.

Some of these plates have got to be over fifty years old. I know some of these pieces weren’t prepared for the harsh conditions of a dishwasher. Or maybe it’s vice versa. They’re not "dishwasher safe", in fact they’re "dishwasher dangerous". Dishes may explode in the wash and perhaps the dishwasher will blow up and burst into flames.

There’s always this temptation for me, to see what exactly is so taboo about certain dishes going in. Now, I’m not about to try such a risky experiment with someone else’s belongings, but if I come across a dish that I’m willing to take a chance on one of these days, believe me I will.

Maybe George Jefferson had it right after all.

2006-09-06T19:55:00.000-04:00

Before I get started, you should take a moment to check out the free poopex pooper scoopers listed under the Pets section over at the Free Grabber. Charlie was nice enough to and he may be just 6-8 shipping-time-weeks away from picking up dog doo in a virtually mess-free fashion. Grab some free stuff now- including a free Carabou iced coffee. I'll be printing my coupon this Friday, sure nuff.

Me and Margie used to believe that George Jefferson had the right idea. When you walk, you oughtta swing your arms behind you, not to try and look cool like he thought he did with this strut, but to wave off any offensive odors.

As frequent slumber party guests at each other's homes we were familiar with the routine, consume lots of sugar which would inturn create hyper giggling which would often produce the side effect of gas. A side effect that we welcomed. Even little girls have farting matches. But during the daylight hours we would use the George Jefferson walk. Having been exposed to every episode of the Jeffersons that my parents watched, I came up with a theory that GeeYorgy was full of hot smelly air and that he was fanning his heiny to cut the green odor waves off of his person. I really believed this. Especially since Wheezy (that's right) would always throw a limp hand in his direction and make a disgusted expression while turning her face the other way.

Having said all that, I think I've made a pretty good case to back up my theory. And when you happen upon any wind breaking in your future, look to George and wave to others from behind.

a bedtime story and free bibles

2006-08-25T14:28:00.000-04:00

When I was about 12, I got up in the middle of the night feeling queasy. I walked out of my bedroom and and stumbled down the hall to the bathroom door. I stopped knowing full well I wouldn't make it to the toilet, but couldn't decide whether to throw up on the carpet in the hallway or the bathroom rug.

But before you go on to read the rest of the story (insert Paul Harvey's whistling /s/ here), be sure to check out the new renter over to your right- my left, I'm on the other side of the screen don't ya know? Free Grabber is a nice little joint full of links to satisfy all your freebie needs. From free Cliffnotes' style bibles (Come on, dude, the original version is way long ans BORING.) to Motzart chart-topping single downloads (Sweet!). Maybe the Free Grabber will be adding links for some more desirable items like iPods and those new fangled picture taking cellphones, but for now, we'll have to take condensed bibles and classical music. Hey, you get what you pay for.

In case you were wondering, I chose the carpet, thinking that Mom would be more upset if I did it on the rug since it was more of a shag texture and would probably hold on to nasty bits of upchuck. Still don't know what my reasoning was, but I think it had something to do with the half-assed logic that you wake up with when you're fucking nauseas.

Shove it up your ass, Jim Perdue.

2006-08-25T13:38:00.000-04:00

When it comes to publicly humiliating the very animals you make money off of slaughtering, where do you draw the line?

Recently, I had the displeasure of watching one of the many Perdue chicken commercials that Jim Perdue likes to not only make an appearance in, but give himself the star role. If you haven't seen it yet, basically it involves the CEO of the chicken coop checking his email. He finds a message from a certain someone asking if he ever considers giving his chickens treats, like doughnuts for example. Perdue responds saying that he only feeds the chickens corn and other healthy stuff. Anyway, the emails go back and forth and eventually Jim gets suspicious that one of those blasted chickens is in on it. He takes a walk down to the coop and cuts off their internet access as if he treated them oh-so well before giving orders to break their necks and package them up for sale.

Is it me, or this a little disturbing? I'm not a vegetarian, although I was once many years ago, but come on, have a little respect for the creatures you're about to chop to bits and sell.

Jim Perdue, who's the chicken now?

I have no idea what I meant by that either.

Gone tanning.

2006-08-04T23:23:00.000-04:00

Again, thanks for stopping by and checking out my little place, even though my posts have been absolute crap as of late. I appreciate the passerbys (hmm, that's a word...) from my landlady, Janet, and yes, the old folks like David A. are always fun to have swing by.

Since I will be on vacation this next week, it would behoove you to not only check out my renter GreenTeaRocks, but also all the Smiling Liars (which includes the forementioned David Amulet who is the official Daily Show anchorman of Blogger) and a ton of other great blogs as well. I would start to name them all off, but sheeyoot, don't wanna leave anyone out.

And if you really wanna, and I would also highly recommend getting your hands dirty and reading the archives, maybe even like the first month or two I started this thing. Those old ass posts have no comments. Go comment the hell out of them if you want. Or not. Whichever.

In conclusion, have a nice week and I've been waiting a long fucking time to work behoove into a conversation.

Thank you.

deb

Why, hello there new people!

2006-08-03T18:38:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to say hello and thanks for stopping by to everyone that came from Janet's blog. Nice to have some fresh blood running through the veins of Blogger via BE's Rent My Blog.

And speaking of renting and renters of blogs, if you haven't done so already, please make sure to stop over at my newest tennant's place GreenTeaRocks. KristinaQ has done quite a bit spiffing up the place and you should check it out. I love the smell of fresh paint in the morning. Another reason to go is she having a contest! Free T-shirts! WooHoo! And I heard she's gonna give away a bunch of points she won at BlogMad....well, you'll just have to go and check it out for yourself.

I'll have a story to tell tomorrow, I'm sure.

My Grandma's Gonna Set Your Grandma on Fire.

2006-07-31T14:22:00.000-04:00

If you still haven't been, then you need to go to see a true member of the RatPack. Frank, Sammy, Deano, and Bingo...and who's that other guy? Oh yeah, Paddy. Yeah, you remember him, right? Go check out his rodents and cakes and cake-eating rodents and some other good stuff. You'll be glad you did and be sure to tell him I sent ya.
________________________________________________

Feeling a little silly lately and starting thinking about things like my grandmas. They're both gone, but I started to wonder what they've been up to. I wonder if they still have conversations somewhere on the "other side" similar to what we'd overhear when the whole family would get together on the holidays. They'd be chatting away saying things like:

Baubie (Jewish grandmother) : So Ann, you still smoking?

Gramma (Catholic grandmother) : (nothing said, just a roll of the eyes)

Baubie : (shifts positions and appears to be irritated)

Gramma : (takes a long drag and lets the smoke crawl out her nostrils)

Baubie : That Kristen is such a tramp.

Gramma : (throws a limp hand in the air out of disgust) Don't get me started.

Baubie : Who the hell does she think she is? Eugene's about to find out about her and her little boyfriend if she's not careful.

Gramma : Oh and he's a bad one, that guy.

At this point we'd all look over, intrigued by the conversation. Who are they talking about?
Ineveitably we'd finally realize they've been gossipping about The Young & The Restless. And we'd smile knowing that their love of soaps was the only they had in common.

Knick knack. Paddy whack. Give the boy a rat.

2006-07-27T10:01:00.000-04:00

My apologies to Paddy. I've been a lousy slumlord and haven't been around to raise the roof for my renter.

Why don't you go on and see what all that pitter-pattering noise is over there, huh? What, you don't hear it? I do. How could you not hear four rats scattering about?

Go see my friend Paddy, his girlfriend, his photos of cakes gone wild, and his babies- yes, the rats. He's an animal lover like myself (who couldn't solve her own mouse problems without a humane solution) and proud of it. Although he has suffered many losses lately, and losing a pet is so painful, that hasn't stopped him from regularly updating his blog....like some people I know....hmmm.

So, yeah....

In other news, my dear friend Ann Marie has become obsessed with Eddie Izzard. I've been telling her about him for who knows how long and then I finally remembered to loan her my DVD and she now loves any and all things Eddie.

On one hand, I can't believe he's not huge over here like he is in the UK, but on the other, I'm sort of like happy that only the few cool people here in the states know about him. Okay, there's more than five or six people that know of him here, but Jesus, he's incredible. How is it there aren't more people who've heard of him? Mind boggling (spelling?).

Oh, enough already. I have no point.

The Phone-Head vs. The Coolest Pharmacist

2006-07-20T10:31:00.000-04:00

I pulled up to the Walgreens drive-thru prescription window. I did this not out of the usual laziness, but because Jack fell asleep in the car and it’s really hard the lug him around over my shoulder in the store. Especially so when trying to get past the seasonal aisle, there’s a lot of great stuff there. And don’t even get my started on the As Seen On TV section. That stuff’s all right there, you can touch it, you can feel it, you can judge whether or not that thing’s gonna work like it did in the commercial and it’s selling for half the price!

So I went to the drive-thru and posted on the window, plain as the mole on my face, was a sign that read, "PLEASE TURN OFF CELL PHONES." They could have just left it at that. Talking on your cell phone whilst in a prescription/money transaction is just rude. And annoying. But no, under that they listed some over explanatory reason, "We cannot guarantee that your conversation won’t be broadcast on our system along with all your embarrassing symptoms and list of possible side effects you may get from your anal wart removal prescription. The FCC requires us to tell you this and not to mention we don’t want any lawsuits on our hand because one of the pharmacists may have heard half a sentence of your ‘private’ conversation that you chose to have in a public place. Lawsuits are just messy and we don’t want to be up to our anal warts in legal fees because then we won’t be able to offer you those great As Seen On TV products for half the price it would’ve cost you to get it on TV."

A couple hours later I pull up to the same window only to be in line behind a phone-head in a minivan. She’s got her head halfway out the window and yakking away. I wanted to put the car in park, get out and bash her face in. That sign was right next to her head. And then after a few minutes the pharmacist came on the speaker. "Ma’am? Let me know when you are ready," she said in the sweetest shit-eating grin voice. "Yes! I’m picking up a prescription!" yelled the phone-head. As usual these people never acknowledge anyone or answer a question correctly but instead just blurt out demands. "Are you sure? I don’t want to interrupt you, I know you’re on a phone call right now." The phone-head never even heard what she’d just said and kept right on flapping her fat jaw. But I smiled. That pharmacist kicks ass. And it’s too bad I didn’t get to tell her so because when I pulled up for my drugs I got the boy pharmacist and he didn’t look like he was in the mood for a drive-thru chat, he was all business with me.

So here’s to coolest pharmacist at the Walgreens on Bainbridge and Rt 91. You rock, sister.

I'm alright,and nope, nobody heard about me.

2006-06-28T08:22:00.000-04:00

Those are the lyrics, right?

Golly. I am sorry. Poor little turkeys in suspense.

It's occured to me that I am a lousy blogger once the sun shines. I'm a bad weather blogger. Which is good news to some, the two of yous, that actually read this thing. Why? Because I live in Cleveland. Not exactly the sunshine state, now is it?

Anyhoo.

So, yeah, the GroundHog. Whatever happened to it, Deb?

Well, like I mentioned earlier in my last post, you know, the one I wrote about five years ago? Yes, that one. Big Brownie had a "friend", but then that one moved out and left Big Brownie on their own. And then Spring blew into town and Big Brownie came out of the hole. And ate some dandelions. No, Big Brownie did not scurry right back in after catchy it's frightfully fat shadow. That Winter weight could scare anyone right back into bed. Let me tell you, groundhogs are notoriously shy and perhaps an even lessser known fact is that they are also very modest creatures. Combine that and the weight gain and you have one very depressed animal when swimsuits are all on display at the underground mall.

Well, John cursed the furball and I did too. But secretly, I said a little "Hi there, Stranger!" and went back about the business of talking about how we were going to rid ourselves of this thing.

After a few more weeks went by of simply hoping and praying to Saint Petunia (patron saint of ridding your garden and/or lawn of inwanted pests) Big Brownie was still hanging around. Wishing thinking just wouldn't get us anywhere I tell you. But it did give us a suprise. When you can't get rid of one groundhog, many more appear, looking for places to live. Well not exactly, it was more like they just multiply.

That's right.

Turns out Big Brownie's a girl. And she had some babies. And let me tell you they were so damn cute! But that's not the point, right? Now our hands were tied. You can't try to trap or shoo away the mother from her babies, they need her to survive. And even John couldn't deny little gound-pups their mama. Although I have this sneaking suspicion that if I weren't around to remind him of the wonders of nature, he'd a clubbed that Mother Hog like it was baby seal.

A few more weeks went by, during which John had complained about our plight to any neighbor who'd listen and give him some advice or shrug and say, "Whaddya gonna do?"
Ray, next door, told John that he really better do something about that groundhog and the offspring because they were going to become his problem soon. He was right, but what to do then? Bill, next door on the other side, told John that a trap really might work. And on my way out to have the best corned beef at Slyman's (pronounced Shlyman's, extra spitting encouraged) I backed out of the driveway and spotted a metal cage in front of my door. What's this? I asked myself.

Kind of mysterious, I thought. Because for the rest of the day I had no idea why there was a dirty metallic cage sitting at our door. No note, no nod from a neighbor taking credit, nothing. But as it turns out it was only Bill lending his handy groundhog trap to us. I mean that's nice and all, but did you ever hear of leaving a note and maybe some instructions?

We put it out over the weekend and two days went by without a-nothing. We had baited it with vanilla extract, lettuce, bits of tomato, and part of bush I'd seen them nibbling on. Then Monday morning John found a small scared young groundhog. I came out to have a look-see and felt so heartbroken, the poor terrified little creature. It had no idea what was going on. But John took it to a feild and the little bugger ran free to dig and eat dandelions and burrow itself his first apartment.

The next morning we caught another, and the next day, another. Then a week went by with no catch at all. We'd been hanging out in the backyard all afternoon that Thursday and then went out front for about ten minutes and came to the back again to find another young groundhog trapped. For those of you keeping count, that's a total of four baby hogs. Big Brownie, though, still on the loose.

About a month has gone by since my last post and I am thrilled to report that I got that Big Brownie. I found that all it took was a Red Delicious Apple. I was even there rooting her on into the trap from the kitchen window. She set foot inside as she had many times before but ussually her suspicions got the best of her and she'd scurry back out again never setting off the trap. But this time the temptation of the sweet juicy apple was too much to walk away from. She'd nibbled on the slices I laid out on a short trail up to the cage. To get the biggest hunk of apple she'd have to get inside. She stepped in, cautiously, and then moved in a little closer and then right as she laid a paw on the catch the door shut behind her. She jumped and turned around quickly realizing her fate, desparately trying to dig her way out. I jumped as well, did an obnoxious dance and Jack joined in not knowing what all the hype was about but he was game. I called John to tell him that I did it. I caught that ground hog. Me.

Ray helped me load her into the car and take her to her new home, she was a heffer. And we set her free in the same field her children had ran off in before her. She was scared in that trap, not knowing what lay ahead, but not so scared that she didn't finish eating her apple, probably figuring it was her last meal. We opened the trap door and watched her run like her ass was on fire and we laughed. That groundhog brought half the neighborhood together. I know that somewhere in that big peice of land she's running and wobbling around the tall grass, digging big fat holes you can break a leg in, and happy as can be....miles away from here.

By the way, how do you keep a turkey in suspense?

I'll tell you tomorrow.

It has been a while, no?

2006-06-10T08:57:00.000-04:00

Despite my new foreign writing accent, nothing much else has happened. I haven't had a lot to report on in about three weeks. But there are a few little things that I could share, I suppose.

Hmmm. Let's think, here. Well, there was this morning's little adventure. Yes, that's right. The Groundhog.

After a year or more of scheming, we've caught one of the buggers and set it free to roam in someone else's field. Let that little critter have a happy life in the wild, but not in our yard, thank you very much.

About a year ago, John and I found a large brown animal that looked like a beaver/cat-without-a-tail wobbling around the backyard. I found him cute and wooly and he ate up the dandelions. All good things in my book.

But the "oohs" and "ahs" came to a screeching hault when John found a gaping hole about ten inches in diameter right in front of the shed door. "Someone's gonna break a leg stepping into that thing!" he exclaimed. "Why, that's just silly," I said, "Who in their right mind would step in it on purpose?" But I didn't really say that, because I knew our son could...by mistake. But that never happened either. I showed him exactly where it was and told him a wonderful tale about a groundhog who lived in there and only came out when we're inside the house to eat the weeds. Jack respected the hole. He would tiptoe around it and always point out that "that's where the groundhog lives- don't step in the hole!" And when his friends and cousins came to play, we'd pop a soccer ball in it like a cork to make sure no insurance claims would be called in.

That Fall we saw that the big brown wooly feller had a big grayish wooly friend. They moved in together. We got nervous and thought trouble was brewing. Let's face it, groundhogs don't know the first thing about safe sex and much less about combining his and her furniture and belongings from both their holes into one. But we heard things weren't working out. Eventually, the big gray one moved out. Big Brownie never heard from him again. Good riddens, I say.

Winter came and all the groundhogs hunkered down into their respective holes.

Then sometime this past April, the big brown fella squeezed his fat hibernating ass out of that hole. I was thrilled, Spring was coming early! John, not so much.

You see, I neglected to say how John and I called the city of Solon to ask what they were going to do about this nuiscance of ours. Actually, John was the one all up in a huff about it. But the city wasn't going to do anything. They shrugged and said that we had to trap it ourselves and then we could call them. But I was worried about what the poor little animal's fate would be when the city came out to "collect" him. Collect. Was one the city workers going around and "collecting" the trapped wild animals and skinning them? Huh? Does anybody really know? Well, I couldn't get a straight answer so I told John we could probably just stuff up the hole after he runs out and then with his home all boarded up, he'd have to find a new place to live. Of course that would probably mean he'd go and set up camp in our unsuspecting neighbors' yards, who later would give us the evil eye and train their dog to go in our yard.

I would stake out in the house all morning by the window and when that big brown furball ran out of his hole and far enough away, I would run out and put a big rock in his doorway. Later, he'd come back and would at the place his hole used to be and look around as if his car was stolen. "I swear I parked it right here! Oh, this is bogus, man," and then he'd go hobble away into the bushes. But the next day he'd dug alittle bit around and squeezed into his hole again. Damn thing knows how to break into it's own house.

When your own gem of an idea doesn't work, what else can you do but turn to the internet? I researched "groundhogs", a.k.a. "woodchucks"or "gophers", and found that they will only be scared out of their hole if they think a predator is trying to invade. And wolves are the predators. Unfortunately for us, there just aren't enough wolves wandering around to scare them off, and if their were, we wouldn't have a severe issue with the over-population of deer and groundhogs. And I know for a fact if they were actually living among us, the people of this town would be up in arms and claiming that we need to shoo them out of town for they'd eat our pets and children. A double edged sword for sure.

But where there may not be wolves, it is possible to purchase bottles of wolves' urine. That's right. I found that out on the trusty internet. And I found a local store that sold it. Ewww, I know. But you can bet a bought a bottle. And how much is a bottle of wolf pee going for these days, you might ask? About ten dollars in change. I'd like to know more about the background of this product, like where did it come from? Who collects this urine? Do they have wolves lined up on a big machine with funnels attached to their "parts" leading straight into these bottles? Is it then pastuerized or something, because I don't know if stale wolf pee is gonna do the trick now.

Well, after I put on some latex gloves, dribbled a little bit around the hole, and washed my hands, of course, I waited inside by the window. After about ten minutes the groundhog peeked it's head out and then ran like hell. Yeah! It worked! I'm a genius!

Not so fast.

Okay, more on this later....I promise. It's getting dangerously too long for one little post. You'd had enough reading for today, now haven't you?

"Just a friendly reminder..."

2006-05-19T14:21:00.000-04:00

I got to thinking this morning about going to the dentist. No reason in particular, it jus came to mind.

What is it about going to the dentist that really freaks everybody out? Most of the time they count all your teeth to make sure you haven't lost anymore since your last visit, and if you have, they just clean any that remain. So what's all the anxiety about?

Well, when I was little, I went to Dr. Griffith. I considered him to be sort of an odd man. His uniform always consisted of a tight white dentist shirt cover that had buttons running diagonally up from waist to collar with a pair of plaid pants. I'm not sure if they were the same pair of pants, but all plaid kind of looks the same.

He was thin and tall and didn't have much to say. Any time my mom took me to see him, his wife/receptionist would always lead my to a back room with a brown vinyl reclining chair, open a drawer, and take out a peice of paper towel and a chain with two pincers on the ends. She'd clip one end of the paper towel and run the chain behind my neck and clip the other side, making a bib. I always wondered what the point of that was, why a chain and paper towel? Why not a terry-cloth bib with velcro, or maybe one of those plastic ones you get at a restaurant when you eat lobster- maybe instead of a lobster there could be a characature of a big healthy tooth holding a toothbrush and wearing sunglasses...or something along those lines.

Anyhow, it was always the norm. Every single strange ritual that was preformed didn't seem so strange. It was the same scene everytime. It was worse than deja` vu, only because there were weird things happening, but I never bothered to question it. Until now.

Why the paper towel and chain? Why the scary looking drill with a rubber suction cup bit on the end? It's pretty frightening looking. And how exactly does it clean your teeth? They've always got that little tiny paper cup, it looks like the same ones that you squirt ketchup into at Wendy's. And in that little tiny paper kethcup cup, there's about a teaspoon of grainy blue paste. They scoop it out with the little suction cup drill bit and turn on the "vibrate" and rub it all over your teeth. How's that going to do anything? Seriously, everytime I leave the dentists office, I've got all that blue grit stuck in between my teeth. My mouth does not feel fresh and clean, it feels like a bit into a big blue sand sandwhich and I really ought to go home and floss. There is no way to rinse that stuff out enough, even with the dixie cup that automatically refills itself with water. You need a hose with a power spray, or you might even need to break open a fire hydrant and stick your face in the geyser.

Whenever Dr. Griffith finished up with me, he'd either call my mother back into the room or he'd lead me out to the waiting area. I never knew which was coming. If I had a cavity or a clean bill of health, he never gave me a clue. But I do know that you always feel like you're in a little bit of trouble when you go to the dentist.

I mean you're in that chair, laying back, you've got people shoving their big hands into you're mouth. You have to remain submissive and let them do it, there's no choice in the matter. Where else in life do people make you lay back, crack your mouth wide open, stick wads of cotton in and then shine a big hot light in your eyes and force you to answer questions? Then they start in with that evil hook and scrape around your teeth and no matter how "careful" they say they'll be, they always catch your gums and cause excessive bleeding. You feel like you're being interogated and tortured with midevial instruments and then obligated to thank these people and come back for another round a few months later.

I need to make an appointment. Really, my six month checkup has come and gone, I should go. I've had that postcard pinned to the fridge for a while now. You know the one. The reminder card. "Just a friendly reminder..." it says on the front. I also recieved a reminder from my OBGYN's office, although that came enclosed in an envelope and read like an old wired message, "Our records show that you are due for a Pap Smear [STOP] Please call to make your appointment [STOP]" That's not one to look forward to either, but I must say that a gynocologist tends to be a lot more gentle and sensitive, a dentist knows that you know what you're in for and you anticipate pain and dicomfort, he feels under pressure to deliver. But at least there's no paper bibs and chains.

"I'm living in a fish bowl!!!"

2006-05-10T11:34:00.000-04:00

Bing!

Me: I believe the question is, "What did Grandma shriek out when calling Mom early in the morning?"

Alex Trebek: That is right.

I suppose you thought I'd take this opportunity to have a little fun with the David Blane special. Special. It sure was. An entire two hours of prime-time television dedicated to all things special and David Blane. But, I'm not going to tell you a bunch of things all those late night guys already said. Well, I don't know what they all said since I go to bed at ten, but let's move on.

I will say that the title of this stunt was more than brilliant. David Blane: Drowned ALIVE! That's right, David Blane....drowned.....ALIVE! Well, let's just talk about what an amazing feat that is, not only will he be drowned, but he'll be alive when it happens. Who knew? I thought that it was only possible to drown whilst living and that once someone dies of drowning they're considered drownED, as in, "The cause of death, well she was bobbing for apples, never came up for air, and she drowned."

Why, wasn't the whole point of it all to actually just hold his breath and not drown? Holding your breath for nine minutes has almost nothing to do with drowning, when you think about it. He didn't even have to be under water to do it. He could have held his breath sitting in his living room an egg timer. Oh, but we had to be all dramatic and go into a big plexi-glass bowl full of cloudy looking water and get our hands an feet all nasty and water-logged. And we had to have chains and handcuffs to undo on top of all that. Oh enough, already. It's his own fault he didn't make it. He should have stuck to the basics, just run of the mill holding his breath underwater for nine minutes. Hop in, pinch your nose, and make big cheeks until time's up.

Looking at him in that tank left me tempted to shake some fish food onto the surface and tap on the glass. I would have like to have gotten him a treasure chest that periodically flipped it's lid to burp some fresh air bubbles. He needed some colorful aqarium pepples on the bottom or something, the way they were keeping him, he might as well have been in that big plastic baggie from pet store.

But try, if you will to imagine what it would be like to live in a fish bowl, with the whole world watching you float around, and how exposed you would feel. I couldn't quite grasp what the saying meant when the phone rang early one morning. My mom answered in a voice that sounds close to Andre the Giant's which is what she ussually sounds like if she hasn't had enough time to wake up.

"Hello."

"I'm living in a fish bowl!!!!" a small, scared voice cries. It was Grandma. Apparently sometime after she woke up in her studio apartment , the curtain rod to the one very large and only window gave way and took all her privacy down with it. She was still in, what she would call, her dressing gown. She knew that everyone who happened by Solon Road or the complex parking lot would surely be looking up at the top floor and find her indecent. For her, this was an emergency, of course second to her having only three packs of cigarettes left in her carton of Belairs.

The whole world was watching as blue curls of smoke framed a tiny woman, shaking in her nightie as she peered down into the parking lot below, waiting for her daughter's car to pull in.

My spidey-senses tell me...

2006-04-29T10:06:00.000-04:00

that something fishy is going on downtown (Cleveland, that is).

About two weeks ago, the local news anchors had a lot of fluff for news about the Indians, the Cavs playoffs and Lebron James, but mostly it was all a bunch of talk about Spiderman filming downtown.

I suppose that it's easier to close down Euclid Avenue from the hours of 8-6 every day for two weeks than some NYC street if you want to film a bunch of car crash scenes. But for the people who actually work downtown, they aren't too thrilled with adding a good forty-five minutes to their commute.

Yes, Spiderman III is being filmed here, but for the love of God, it ain't like Tobey McGuire is dangling from his feet off the Hunting Bank building and upside-down kissing Kirsten Dunst.

Those silly news anchors. They tried to get everybody all excited, but they can't fool me. The best part about it, is that there's some freak walking around dressed in a Spiderman costume downtown everyday. Now there's a grown man who probably still lives with his parents. He's Spidey's number one fan. But his costume looks like he got it on sale after Halloween at Kmart, it's all ill-fitting.

John said he's heard about the freak and a couple of guys he works with have seen him, too. I first saw him on Channel 3 News. Yeah, this is the guy they picked to interview about all the hubbub of Spiderman. And he sounded like a fairly normal guy and said all the usual pleasantries like, "Oh, this is very exciting," and "it's great for Cleveland." But did the news guy stop and ask, "Hey, what's going on with the Spidey get-up? Let's talk about that."? No, he didn't. Come on, that's the real news. I wish David Letterman could have been our guest news anchor.

We're going to take Jack down today, since it's supposed to be the last day of filming. John said he saw Spiderman last night while he was trying to get over to the Rapid (local train). He said he watched for a minute, and basically it was Spiderman holding on to a truck while two guys that were working on the set held up his legs. He was most impressed with the costume, other than that, it was pretty uneventful.

All night he kept going on about that costume. "That Spiderman costume was really nice," he'd say. I asked if it looked better than the thirty-five year old freak's drugstore version. But the real thing's spandex is always going to look better than that rayon/polyester crap that's so thin you can see through it.

If we don't see the real Spiderman, I really hope we run into some weirdos dressed up like him. I have some great questions prepared on index cards just in case.

Let your finger do the talking.

2006-04-20T14:49:00.000-04:00

I don't remember exactly how it got started, but I could say that about most of the family's inside jokes.

The talking pinky.

It might have been born from a Saturday Night Live skit that we evolved into our own thing, but the the talking pinky has been around for years.

When I find myself being very polite and proper around people who'd never get my sarcasm I start to feel nauseous. It's hard being my "proper self" around certain people. You know the ones, they just can't take a joke. You couldn't break that face with a hammer. So I rely on my old trustworthy friend, the pinky.

The pinky tells it like it is. Or at least like it is in your head. The pinky represents truth and honesty, but not necessarily honor and modesty.

Don't like someone's sweater? You could say to them, "Oh, that is a lovely holiday sweater! Where'd you get that? It's sooooo cute!" and the pinky can say, "Yeah, that's a real nice sweater...for a moron."

The pinky can get away with saying anything. But you have to do it right. All you need is two things, a pinky and a general hatred of people.

Be saccarin sweet to the victim, then raise your pinky and speak in a low voice out the side of your mouth. Be careful, though. You don't want them to notice and ask things like, "What was that? Did you just call me a fucking idiot?" You better be quick with a back-pedal response then, and that's not an area I can help you with. Good cover-ups take a lot of time and experience to perfect. Just ask my uncle, Mickey.

He's been in hot water plenty of times for his side-of-the-mouth remarks, especially when for the ones he lets rip in front customers of the shoe store. He still hasn't gotten the hang of the pinky. Muttering things like, "little shits" after complimenting a mother on her "lovely children" just doesn't fly. Without the pinky, you're just insulting people under your breath. The pinky works sort of like a vantriliquist's dummy would on his arm. It talks a lot of trash, but it's okay because everybody just accepts the dummy as a character, eventhough, it's really the voice of a passive-aggressive miserable puppeteer.

In the shoe store that my dad owns and my uncle works in, there used to be a card catalogue of all the customers. It was a way to keep track of their purchases and shoe preferences before the computer age. But since all the old people working there liked it so much, they never bothered to update the system. The real pain-in-the-ass customers had a red marker line topping their card.

When Uncle Mickey rapped up a sale with a difficult man, he took it upon himself to use the red marker and record that "This guy's a clown." The difficult man may have deserved it, but trouble started when Uncle Mickey learned that he could also read upside-down. When backed into a corner, all that Uncle Mickey could come up with was that writing he's "a clown" was the store's code for a "really good customer". I'm starting to believe that maybe it's because he's so good at back-pedalling, that Uncle Mickey takes secret pleasure in getting caught. It gives him a reason to exersize his underrated talent.

But until you've become a master back-pedaller, I suggest you start with baby steps and use the pinky. Use it or lose it, that's what I say. I mean most of us have two that don't do much for us except make a poor attempt at looking fancy when you drink your tea.

Go on, what are you waiting for? Use yours...TODAY!

_________________________________________________________________

A couple little extras for you here, and I don't mean that in like thumbkins and pointers regarding the post.

I'm pretty excited about the latest renter I just took in on the sidebar over there---------------->

HauntedHouseDressing is a blog I had planned to stick up on my links at some point and time. I mentioned it about month or so ago in an old post called "Paying it For(ward) no reason at all" telling everyone about some interesting blogs that were definetely worth a click. It rocks. You need to take some time to really check this guy out. And be sure to click on the links under the "Jack and the Beanstalk" picture. Bubbles are magic. Wanna know more? I'm not making any sense? Well, of course I'm not, Silly! It won't make much of any darntootin' sense if you don't click on it.

And I am not going to give you an easy-peasy link to click on if that's what you're looking for, because that takes away from showing the true amount of clicks the renter recieves...Just ask our little friend at StumblingThroughLifeWithGrace. And you don't get a link there, either. No, no, no. You'll have to take your own lazy mouse's behind over there on the sidebar and do it yourself. Don't look at me like that. Hey! I saw you roll your eyes- don't you start with me!

Also, you must, you must, you must increase your...........trust in my reccomendations! ( I know the Judy Blume fans feel a little let down). Click on this link to Tai's post over at Hello?IsThisThingOn? I promise you'll laugh- at her movie poster, if nothing else. And I'm sure that little blogger'll end up on the sidebar soon enough.

Dear [online] Diary,

2006-04-20T07:48:00.000-04:00

Dear Diary,

I know, I know. It's been awhile. I'm sorry, okay? It's just been a little hectic around here...Or at least it has been according to my neuroses. You know, between the recent trip to Connecticut and the whole deal with a realtor coming to taking pictures of the house, I could have really used a drink. But instead, I ended up with two back to back migraines and cramps. And we all know that mixing Codeine with alcohol can make for a very sloppy mess. I mean, I would have probably left laundry undone and and sink full of dishes because I was too busy being passed out on the floor.

Well, I know, you've heard every excuse in the book. But I've really been meaning to tell you all about it, it's just that my head's been spinning. And before you jump to any conclusions, I have not been "getting busy" over at My Space. What? You don't believe me? Go ahead and look for yourself, there's no news over there. In fact, the My Space people are still looking at my book signing post. Poor fellas.

Speaking of which, I rewrote the whole damned thing. I knew you thought it sucked. I kept the good parts, subtracted some of the lame, and multiplied it by twenty paragraphs. Yeah, that's long. I took your advice and decided to not post the new and improved version. Who wants to read that again? Not me, I tell you. I've had enough of looking and reading and rewriting it a thousand times. No thank you. So I guess it's just gonna sit in my laptop hard drive. Huh. No place to send it really.

Oh well, anyhoo.

So I guess I could tell you about how my body is so stiff and sore that hurts to just sit on the couch. Finally got John off his seat to help me move this God forsaken computer armoire. Sheesh, that was heavy. Oh and that dresser thing we use to stuff all of books in. Then of course he starts in with the "Do you really want to keep all these books?" but I told him to shut it. He's got just as many books in there. I don't want to hear about it, or I'll abduct his out-of-print paperback Amityville Horror and hold it hostage somewhere. I could take pictures of it holding today's newspaper, followed by one of it next to a book of matches, you know, just for kicks. Aw, who am I kidding? I love that book. We both know I'd never go through with it.

Well, I have been thinking. Dangerous, I know. Maybe if I could dig it up, I could post some of my really old diary entries. No, no, no, no. I thought of that, already. But I'll wait, I mean if anyone really wanted the "best of" this blog, they could snoop around the archives. I'm talking about the diary I used to write every night with a pencil. That's got some real gems in it. It has all that stuff I wrote about in the fourth grade, it's sure to be a hit. I'm gonna have to look in Mom's attic. It's around there somewhere, I'm sure.

Hmmm.

That could take a while to find, you're right. As usual. What would I do without you, Diary? I'm gonna start writing you more often. Don't expect too much from me, I've got to ease into it. Maybe I'll get an old fashioned version of you with a lock and key. I don't want John peeking in there. You're probably right, I mean he doesn't even read this one. Not likely he'll be so curious to go breaking the lock on another. I could probably leave it lying openfaced on his pillow every night and he wouldn't bother reading it. In fact, I think I will.

Okay, then diary. I need a cup of coffee. No, I didn't just wake up, well sort of. I mean, I just haven't typed yet today, that's why I sound so hoarce. Oh get off my back already, Diary.

I'll talk to you later.

Love,

Deb : )

Meeting Sedaris

2006-04-11T19:30:00.000-04:00

Except for when I was twelve and my bedroom was wallpapered with New Kids On The Block pictures, I’ve never been a star-struck sort of person. I’ve never liked the idea of putting someone on a pedestal. I might have an admiration of people rather than an obsession about them. I tend to think of myself as one who thoroughly appreciates the talents of others, but I wouldn’t go so far as to consider them superhuman. I guess it’s admirable that, when compared to rest of us, they’ve accomplished a lot more.

It even feels a little creepy even calling myself a fan, because a fan tends to worship another person and swear that they can do no wrong. No matter how I much I cringed knowing that I looked like just another "fan", here I stood with the rest them. I was waiting to have my book signed in a very long line full of his obsessed number one fans who thought the entire world of him.

I’d read every book David Sedaris had written, and a couple of them more than once. But I’d like to think of myself as a connoisseur of his works and not one of his "number one fans!!!!" "Well, good news!" a smirking theatre usher said, "I think I saw someone up there that looked like him!" He rushed by the line and appeared to be on his way to some other duty. He was ribbing us, of course. He thought we were a bunch of morons, I could tell. We were so far back in the line, we couldn’t even see the front. Our position was pathetic enough as it stood. "Ya know, I think if you aren’t even in the line, you shouldn’t mock the people at the very end of it," the girl behind us said. She had a good point, I mean, didn’t we already feel like big enough assholes spending our Saturday night standing in a long line?

I wouldn’t have anything to say when I got up there. Even if I managed to scrounge up a little something, it’d probably sound stupid. I think I know myself well enough to be sure of that. I began to think that maybe if I was lucky, they’d cut off the line and say that "Mr. Sedaris simply cannot sign anymore books. He’s really had enough now, people. Please, go home." I thought that if at least that happened, I wouldn’t have to endure weeks of beating myself up for tripping when I walked up to him, or even worse; attempting to say something witty, only to end up sounding mildly retarded.

I mean, what are you supposed to say? Do I have to ask a question? Sure, I had a few, I guess, but I didn’t want to be the loser who asked the most frequently asked question that had ever been asked. Anyone who’s in the line should probably quite enough about him just from reading any one of his essays. Was I supposed to remark about his reading? "Oh, yes, you read very well this evening. So did you practice reading the night before, or was that all done off the cuff?"

I’m sure there’s nothing I could have said that he hadn’t heard already.
The only small comfort I took was that there was probably some schmuck up ahead who would be the guy that pitches story ideas to him. At least most of us know better than to do that. That’s the guy who honestly believes he’s such a genius that a best-selling author will look up from autographing a book and pause thoughtfully feeling his pockets for a notepad, "What a minute, say that again...Oh this will be great for my next book!" Was I supposed to remark on how I was a little bit of a writer myself? Oh yeah, that’s rich. And then what’s he supposed to say? "Oh, really? Um, good for you. I mean, aren’t we all writers when you really think about it? Putting together a grocery list is writing. You are writing it down. Oh get away from me, already." And I would fully respect him for it, too, because that would be a real idiotic thing to say. I resolved to say nothing. Nothing at all.

The longer we waited in line, the more painful it was. Painful, not just because on this unseasonably cold day it turned out to be ninety degrees inside the theatre and everybody was complaining they were so thirsty. It wasn’t painful because I hadn’t worn the most supportive shoes. And it also wasn’t because I was forced to look at the Akron Civic Theatre’s terribly over the top decor.

It was a cross between an old English castle or one of those Medieval-themed restaurants. It also had hints of Roman sort of place because it had all those Caesar sculptures, and the Disney’s mockup of Mexico in EPCOT Center. They couldn’t have used more colors of paint if they’d wanted to. There were orange faux finish stucco for walls, teal crown molding, and bejewelled light fixtures. The carpet matched, being that it wasn’t short on pizzaz either. It was a parrot pattern. Each parrot had a swirling feathered tail that went around in loopy curly-q’s. It reminded me of the type of carpet you’d find in a Vegas casino, flashy with wild designs. You’d never find a stain in all that confusion.

These were all pains I could take. It was the awful doom of the impending awkward situation I found the hardest to withstand.

Meeting David Sedaris is something I have always thought I wanted to do, but all along I knew that this wasn’t the way I wanted it to go down.

I never wanted to be the lowly blubbering fan who sheepishly asks for an autograph. To be clear, I never looked down on anyone who asks for an autograph, it’s just not something I never really pictured doing myself. It’s not me.

I was fourteen when we went to the Penn Pilot in New Haven, Connecticut. During one of the breaks between tennis matches, the up and coming Jensen Twins sat on the bleachers a couple rows from us. My father handed me a slip of paper and pen and told me to "go on and get their autograph!" "I’m not going over there," I said looking at the players. "Oh come on, Deb! It’ll be neat!" Mom chimed. Neat for who? I thought. I couldn’t care less about those guys. "You want it so bad, go get it yourself," I said. . My parents play tennis. My parents watch "Breakfast at Wimbledon" every year in it’s entirety. They’ve been watching it for as long as NBC has broadcasted it. My father was disappointed in me. To him, I was turning down the opportunity of a lifetime, as if the sheer act of going up to these people and getting an autograph was going to open doors for me.

We were halfway to the front of the line. At this point I figured that he was going to sign a book for everyone. As admirable as that seemed, it made me even more nervous. I was going to have to face him, now. I still couldn’t think of anything to say. By the time I reached the front, I’d had over two hours to consider what I could say. I drew a blank. But watching the people that had gone ahead of us, it was easy to see I was the only person who would have nothing to say. I was going to be the weird mute fan. Oh, great, I thought, Do you want to be remembered by this guy because you said something stupid or because you were the one who said nothing? The truth was I didn’t want to be remembered at all. We were fourth from the last people in line. The last person in line would surely remain the freshest memory, that is until the next book-signing gig, of course. I still had nothing. So I was going to say nothing. That was it.

I had also noticed people having him sign all sorts of things, like every book that had of his plus other copies that belonged to friends of theirs. How annoying are those people? Then one couple had him sign a few of their business cards. That was definetely more creative than having him sign a bra, I suppose. I tried to picture this guy at business lunch with a potential client. "Yes, Mrs. Harris, it’s been a pleasure. I would love to assist you in drawing up a living will. But before we go, let me give my card....I beg your pardon?....Oh, my, I forgot all about that! Did I give you one of my specially autographed cards? Silly me."

The people in front of us went up for their turn. Five books. Five books, they had for him to sign. John thought this was getting ridiculous. I agreed. Really, now, was that necessary? But somewhere between the back of the line and the front, I’d thought that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to ask him to sign my notepad. I carry it around with me in case an idea strikes me in the car, the grocery store, or even in line for getting a book signed. What’s the harm in asking for that? It was just one book and a notepad. That’s not too much to ask for, right?

While we waited for the people in front of us to have their entire library collection signed, we talked to the usher who was manning the front of the line. We learned he was from Connecticut. We also learned that if you stood on one foot at a time your feet wouldn’t tire so quickly when standing for hours on end. I had wished he’d been in charge of the back of the line so he could have shared this information with us much earlier.

The usher had stopped himself from saying anymore and gave us a wave of introduction to the man of the hour. It was our turn. Shit, it was actually our turn. I hadn’t considered that we’d ever be finished waiting.

I held out my notepad and copy of Naked. "Hi," we said to one another. "Just two things," I was trying to communicate that he only had to sign two things instead of four or five or a pack of business cards, but I don’t know if it really came across that way. He asked who to make it out to and I answered "Debbie....IE!" another attempt at speaking. I was trying to explain that my name ended with an "ie" and not some of the alternatives other Debbies of the world use. "I mean, ie, you know, D-e-b-b-i-e. No ‘Y’. Please, not a ‘Y’" I tried to explain myself. "So that’s the classy ‘Debbie’, right?" he asked. "Yeah, I mean the ‘Debby’ with a ‘Y’ is sort of, like, whitetrashy," I said. "And when it ends with just an ‘i’, that’s sort of like a slut, don’t you think?" he asked. I did. I thought so exactly. How gracious of him to save me from making a complete fool of myself. When he’d finished a cartoon drawing of TNT and writing "To Debbie: You’re dynomite" on the inside of the book, he handed it back to me. "And I was wondering if maybe you could sign my little idea book?" I said handed the notepad to him with a trembling hand. Did I just say "idea book"? I don’t even know what that is. He thought for a second and asked, "Do you have plans tomorrow?" "No, just sleeping in and John’s going to church, you know, being it’s Palm Sunday," I said giving out way too much information. And then he said, "I’m going to make you a To Do List." He jotted down three things. I was too embarrassed to try and read what he was writing. I felt like I was in grade school and had to see the really cute teacher after class that I’d had a longstanding crush on. I did have some kind of crush on him. But not in the traditional sense. It was like I had a crush on his talent. He asked where we were from and I told him, "Solon, Ohio. Not far from Gates Mills." I was referring to a story he’d written about his rich aunt who’d lived and died there leaving an inheritance to his mother. "Ah, I had an aunt who lived there once," he said, trying to humor me. God, I was such an idiot. I couldn’t leave well enough alone, now could I? I wanted to go back to my original plan of saying nothing. It would have worked too, if he hadn’t been asking me so many questions. It was so unexpected. "Thanks a lot," I said and then I stuck out my hand which he didn’t notice at first, but then did, and shook it. "It was nice meeting you," I said. John was already halfway out the door. I was hoping he could have at least held my stuff so I could put on my coat if he hadn’t been such a goddamned hurry.

Feeling like the biggest dork, I sat in the car and went over that two minute meeting the whole way home. I would go back and replay the entire scene in slow motion and hitting the pause button on the most awkward parts. I cringed.

I could have asked him where he came up with the title of Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim. I’d read it twice and couldn’t remember ever finding a reference to it. I could have asked an even more obvious question like, when was his next book coming out? I could have told him that the reason I bought my ratty looking copy of Naked was because it the first book I’d read that made me realize that all the little things I’d been writing could add up to a book one day. It introduced me to many other writers of essays and short stories that I didn’t even know where out there. I never knew you could make a living writing that way. I should have told him that when he read his story about Mrs. Peacock, I forgot I was sitting in a theater and swore I was in a rundown neighborhood inside her house staring at her mish-mosh collection of dolls. One had a dirty face with no eyelids and half her hair was cut off.

I could have told him any one of these things.

But I couldn’t.

I didn’t.

I was star-struck.

Oh, how nice of you to drop in.....DEBBIE.

2006-04-10T09:11:00.000-04:00

I was pleasantly suprised and more than un-deserving to find a load of comments on my malnourished blog. Thanks, really.

I'll have to ask you to excuse the lack of a new post in a while. I'm sure that some of you have thought, "Enough already with the inside-out potato chip bag, get over yourself and pick it up already. Sheesh." I know, it's getting a little old. If that post were a loaf of bread, it would have been sporting something of a doggy sweater made of white fuzzy mold by now.

A quick little ditty to let you know what's been keeping me (if you ever really cared to know, that is. If not, that's okay. I get it. It's not like breaking news that I'd been abducted or something.)

I'll make it a bullet point list. Those are fun to do, right?

bullets:

Been house hunting. With a realtor.
Realtor brought a "Staging Consultant" (hold all giggles please) to my home to assess our place and how we need to make it look presentable enough for showing.
Went to Trader Joes. On a Sunday. So crowded with hippies and wannabes I vowed to never go again on a Sunday.
I have nothing against hippies, just the "crowded" part.
Went to see David Sedaris do a reading in Akron.
Waited in line for well over two hours to have him sign my book.
Got home very late, indeed.
I'm getting to old to stay up past my bedtime.
I felt hungover the next morning.
Spent time with Mom and Dad, who took Jack for the night. Hadn't been able to hang out and have bagels in a while. Enjoyed that.
Went home and crashed on the couch. All night. Over tired and couldn't sleep.
Feel like poo today.
Wondered to self this morning; Why is it always a bright sunny day when you feel like crawling into a dark cave to get some sleep?
I will attempt to finish post about the Sedaris reading and the joys of waiting in a line for 2+hours at eleven o'clock at night.
Note to Mom:
Mom,
I will put up a longer post. I know, the diary entries are short. You want a "real story I can read". In the words of SNL's MiddleAgeMan, "I'm WORKING ON IT."

Hey! Who put that there?

2006-03-31T17:15:00.000-05:00

I can't complain about this winter. The old man dished out a mild one to Cleveland this year. But I can complain about all the garbage on my lawn.

My nextdoor neighbor Bill, a very nice albeit suspiciously single AARP member, is a pretty nice guy. But John pointed out the empty styrofoam hamburger container right next to his fence....but in our yard. Oh so that's how it is, now Bill?

This morning I saw something shiny hopping and flying around the yard. Hello, what's this? Oh, it's lunch sized potato chip bag turned inside out, now is it? Clever.

Near the mailbox, I spot something of an unnatural green color in the brownish grass. An empty 20oz Sprite bottle. I know it didn't fall out of my garbage can, cause I don't drink that vile stuff. Who drinks Sprite anyway? Highschool kids from 1989?

I'm not blaming it all on poor old Bill, who I only recently discovered was an AARP member due to the sloppy mailman's mix-up. This is what Spring is all about. It gets a little warmer and windy. And everybody else's crap migrates over to your yard.

Maybe I should pick it up and throw it away, only I'm worried that once I do, some more shit will come to take it's place. Maybe I should get out with my bullhorn, pump my shotgun and yell, "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

I'll show that insideout potato chip bag I mean business.

Easily Amused. That's me.

2006-03-30T21:47:00.000-05:00

In a few minutes, The Office will be on. My favorite new show. This makes me love Thursday.

These are the things in life that make me happy. That and my fat ass catlksa fm just caused me to make a huge fuckin typo I will leave in because she insisted on sitting her little fat furry ass next to me. Climbed all over the laptop, stepped on my pinky, and I just got a nice whiff off her butt aromatics. Thanks, Lucy.

See, she does this because, Molly, is sleeping next to me already. Lucy is insanely jealous of Molly, the newer, younger, thinner, stripy-er version of her. Lucy smacks poor Mollycat with an open paw when she gets more attention. She's driving a wedge between us all because of her own insecurity.

Dear Lucy the cat,

You're still my first cat. I bought you with my own money and you were my first roommate in my very first apartment. We will always have that.

But lately, you have been getting too possesive. It's not exactly a good look for you. Not sexy, not sexy at all.

I still heart you, but you need to lighten up, I am not your bitch. In fact really, it should be the other way around, even though you're not a female dog, but a cat instead.

Anyway, I think we both know what I'm talking about, here.

Love,

Deb, your master and don't you forget it.

Captain Magic

2006-03-29T10:08:00.000-05:00

If asked, my dad could write a book about the characters that come strolling into his shoe store. The range of crazies, strange cookies, and loopy folks that wander in to "buy shoes" come in all different shapes and sizes.

Most recently he had an old grumpy couple. The woman whined that the shoes my parents had special ordered for her "weren't pink enough". Her husband looked at the shoes and the picture in the catalogue that she picked it out from. "It's the same shoe, Ruth!" he yelled. "No, look at it. Look at the picture. The one in the picture is more pink. You can't tell me that this (pointed to the shoebox with a crooked finger) is the same one! I ain't buying it!" My mother, who was standing behind the counter, shrugged and my father said, "Well, ma'am, I don't know what to tell you." Her husband told her to "buy the goddam shoes already." She continued to gripe about it's lack of pinkness. Then her husband turned to her and told her to "Die, already!"

Then there's Captain Magic. My father tells the story best. An old man came in with the help of his wife. He could barely hold himself up, the left side of his body had completely failed him and his wife, who was considerably shorter than he, held up the other half. Together they hobbled in and he bossed her around as she did her best to fit him with shoes. "No! Not that way; pick up my foot! No, my other foot!" My dad stepped in to help. The man insisted he'd "walk" with him to find his size but my father told him that the store wasn't open that long.

When they finally found a pair that fit him just right, he was a happy man. His wife went up to the counter to pay my mom and he called my dad over. "Come here," he said and put his hand Dad's arm pulling him closer. "Nah, come here!" he said in a loud whisper. He was sitting in the chair and my dad was getting tugged down so low he practically had to sit on his lap. "I thought he was going to kiss me!" my dad later reported. When my father was close enough the man let him in a little secret, "You know, they call me 'Captain Magic'." "Oh yeah?" Dad asked. What the hell was this guy getting at?

He called over to his wife at the counter whose back was facing them. "Hey, honey, what kind of face does his wristwatch have?" She described my father's watch. He pulled on Dad's arm, "Gimme some money; a bill!" he demanded. Instead wanting my father to pay him for his parlor tricks, he just wanted a single bill for his next act. Dad handed him a five. "What kind of dollar bill am I holding?" he asked his wife and she answered "a five." The he asked her to list the serial number and she went on to do so in perfect order. "Wow, that's fantastic," my parents said.

Captain Magic is a retired magician. He used to preform with his wife as his assistant on cruise ships.

Feeling very proud of himself, he smiled. "You know," he said struggling to pull himself up from his chair, "I feel so good....I think....I can walk in these!" He got up, all six foot five of him and walked much like Frankenstein. He stomped one foot in front of the other and announced, "I feel like a new man!" Those words were immediatly followed by him falling flat on his face. The thump of his large body hitting the floor was so loud you would have thought someone had just chopped down a redwood.

Many weirdos have graced the store's presence and more will follow Captain Magic. But the store will be closed soon. My parents are getting ready to hang up the shoehorn. And maybe if we're lucky, they'll write a book.

On the Verge of Coughing Up a Lung Laughing...

2006-03-28T13:59:00.000-05:00

This latest renter is riot. Mommy on the Verge is my kind of gal. In her spare time she likes to write obscene poetry about Michael Jackson and his fulltime lapse of judgement- Sharpie marker drawings included! Bonus!

If you don't think that's worth going over there, then I don't think I know you anymore. What kind of person would wander around my blog and NOT appreciate that? You people make me sick. But for the rest of you who do stop by, like good little readers, be sure to leave her a comment and tell her that I sent you- running for your life.

Ta Ta for now. AKA:TTFN.

Um, that's for, you know...THE KIDS.

2006-03-25T14:58:00.000-05:00

As I have come to learn, you can never judge a book by it’s cover. Although I’m curious what my cover says about me, I know that it’s easy enough to fool someone for a short period of time that I am a mature adult. But after about ten minutes of acting like a real lady, I quickly lose steam. Soon enough my inner five year old laughs out loud at your futile attempt to cover your fart with a fake sneeze. And neither of us are fooling anyone.

I was in the children’s section of the library with Jack one afternoon. There’s a nice size play area with a couch for the grownups, miniature chairs and knee-high tables for the kiddies. A little blonde boy wandered over, without parent, to the train table. He and Jack made some small talk and then got down to business pushing trains around the tracks.

The boy came over to show me one of the trains while I was on the laptop. "Oh, that’s nice." I tried to get back to work but he insisted on describing the train’s features in detail. Then he started in with the questions. Not wanting to crush any of his beliefs in the meaning of life, I offered nothing but vague answers, "Oh, uh-huh, um yeah...uh...I don’t know...uuuhhhh," Where is this kid’s mother? I rubbernecked around and didn’t see anyone nearby that looked related to him. He finally took a hint and left me alone.

Another twenty minutes went by before the very social little-orphan-Andy’s mom finally appeared. She was blonde, pretty, well dressed and carried a Coach bag. "Hey, Sweetie, having fun? Yeah, well, anyway, we have to get going soon to Wal-Mart so we can buy that...toy you wanted! Are you done playing now?" Oooh, I wonder what he’ll say? "NO!" Parental rule of thumb: Never ask a child a yes or no question when you have already decided the answer for them. "Do you want to use the potty before we go, Sweetie?" "NO!" he shouted on cue. Duh, lady, duh.

She got down next to him and made a poor attempt to look him in the eye. I guess she figured that he wasn’t listening, when really, she wasn’t parenting. You know, if you’re not willing to watch your child in public places, then you probably shouldn’t expect them to listen only when you decide to check in just to order him around.

This kid’s thinking, "What? Oh, I see, now that I’ve been doing what I want to do without you around, you want to just surprise me with this piece of news? You want me to go sit on the toilet and then leave all this to go to, what, Wal-Mart was it? So excuse me if I don’t want to, I’m busy pushing trains here." What followed, was a little more difficult to understand with all the screaming and other things that went along with a tantrum. I wanted to say, "You go, Sweetie!" but she’d picked him up and carried him off before I could.

She brought him into the children’s bathroom which was only steps away and unbeknownst to her, did not have soundproof walls. She reprimanded the child at high volume, while the rest of the library got a free show. Then we were treated to the sounds of a small boy peeing. Oh, isn’t life grand.

When the boy emerged, he had an announcement to make, "Uh, you (pointing to the entire library) can’t go in the baffroom! My mommy’s in dere!" That’s curious, I thought, Last time I took Jack to go potty, there was only a tiny children’s toilet to use. It looks like a regular toilet, but it’s about a third of the size and really low to the ground. Jack’s only thirty-six inches tall and his feet didn’t even leave the floor when he used it.

What I heard next was not a tinkle, but more like what I supposed how it would sound if a sixteen year old was dumping out a keg of beer in a hurry because his parents came home early and were about to crash his underage drinking party. I could picture the scene clearer than I could hear it. Here’s this prissy mom; a full grown adult, squatting down to use a tiny potty.

I wondered if she was able to get all the way down and touch her ass to the seat, or did she go about a halfway and let gravity finish the job? And how the hell was she going to get back up without putting her hands on the disgusting bathroom floor for balance?

What happened between the-world’s-most-audible-public-urination-not-recorded followed by wiping-that-sounded-like-she-was-trying-to-fold-an-open-map and the actual flush, was a very long pause. I imagined that she fell over when she tried to get up. Her ankles were probably tied together by the pants she had push down so low that she might as well have taken them off. But eventually, she came out completely unscathed. She looked totally calm, refreshed, even.

If asked when I first saw her, I would have guessed her cover said she was a woman of wealth who probably knew which fork to use at a fancy dinner party. She carried a Coach bag and looked sophisticated, but she had fooled me and I’m sure the many others who were within an earshot of the children’s bathroom. Her true insides were revealed and the plot thickened. Yes, "Coach" and "class" both begin with the letter "C", but that’s the only thing they had in common when it came to her. And myself, I had to bite the inside of my childish cheeks, when she came back out. She hadn’t one clue what had just taken place. As she struggled to leave with her defiant son, I dug into my purse to write this one down in my notepad. I’m not sure what the cover would look like, but this one’s definitely going in the books.

Make sure you're taking advantage of our current renter, StumblingThroughLifeWithGrace. And I didn't mean it like that.
What I'm trying to say is that you better get your behind over there before time runs out and she moves on, and it could happen at any minute. So....HURRY! CLICK ON THE THUMBNAIL!!! Now, here's something to think about: Do you think she means that she's "stumbling through life, but doing it as gracefully as possible" or that she's inviting us to "stumble through life with Grace" and she's Grace? Do you get what I'm saying, here? Like she might actually be Grace and the whole "3rd Times a Charm" is just some kind of alias.
Dude, that's like, deep or something.

Mystic Tan on Leather

2006-03-20T19:50:00.001-05:00

Outside of the grocery store one in a upscale neighborhood, I saw two posh ladies chatting up at the entrance. One a brunette and one a blonde. The blond was rail thing and wearing a little brown corduroy outfit with fur tim and short UGGS. Her hair was long, thick, and platinum in color. She had an expensive designer bag on her shoulder.

I just assumed she was the usual 35-40 year old rich suburban glamourpuss seen shopping there. But then she turned to the side, and I saw leather.

Orange leather.

It was so fucking shocking, I almost yelped. I probably did jump back a bit, but I don't think she noticed. She might has well had two heads, she was that much of a freak.

I was still getting over the sight. I mean, holy schnickeys, you can't go around looking all young and hip from the back and then turn into a fried egg yolk when you turn to the front. You gotta give some kind of warning. There should be some kind of a bumpersticker on your back that says; Brace yourself, I'm turning around., or I hoped you stuffed some Quilted Northern in your pants, 'cause when you see my face, you're gonna fall on your ass.

I couldn't shake that face. It was just like that middleaged, over-tanned neighbor from There's Something About Mary. And then halfway done with my shopping, I was about to come face to face with her.

She was pushing her cart toward me down the frozen food aisle. Then we met where a stockboy was stacking the Green Giant baby peas. I was stuck, there was not enough room for me to go around him and her and her cart. I thought I was gonna lose it for sure.

The unsuspecting college boy was looking at her feet and started to look up and answer her. The poor, unfortunate soul. I watched his face, while I winced inside.

He caught the face and momemtarily froze. The Leather started to re-ask where the creamed spinach was and as straight-faced as he could, he answered her.

I wish I'd had a camera phone. I wish I had a flipping film crew with me. It was pretty wild.

_________________________________________________________________

Accidently, an unfinished version of this post was published last night. I was positive that I had saved it as a "draft". Anyway, I think that "Charlie"-aka starkist tuna, and "Amy"-incredible off-the-cuff-poet, will be a little thrown off by this. But I'd like to thank them for their comments on what was a pretty dry bit of a post. You should read these comments, especially Amy's.

charlie said...
They would be chatting about something really profound. No?
21 March, 2006

Amy said...
two posh ladies chatting at the doorone a dark haired beauty

one a fur trimmed corduroy wearing whore

the dark haired beauty was listening intently

as the blonde was gossiping relentlessly

when out on the lawn there arose such a clatter

i sprang from my bed to see what was the matter

and as the blonde suddenly realized she had somewhere better to be

she told the dark haired beauty that she had to go pee

the end
21 March, 2006

debbiecakes said...
Good Lord, Amy. That was impressive. I think your comment should have been my post instead. Funny thing is that I didn't know until just now that my post went up-it's only half done, I swore that I saved it as draft-Blogger's been fucking with me.
21 March, 2006

A 100,000 Major Cows

2006-03-18T13:19:00.000-05:00

Hey, you. Yeah, YOU. As long as you're hanging round my blog, why don't pay a visit to the latest liar that's smiling?

She's a little bit nutty, I'm a little bit outta control. I think we make a great BlogSlumlord/BlogTennant team. StumblingThroughLifeWithGrace is part personal diary and little bit of self-analysis, and it's being analyzed by a woman who goes by the name "3rd Time's a Charm" and refers to herself as a neurotic, closet bitch.

You can also redecorate the place, you have a couple of blogskins to choose from. Maybe that doesn't sound like anything exciting to you, but I think it sure beats those lameass paperdolls with flimsy paper dresses with the tabs that broke off after changing her only once.

Anyway, I've got this feeling that she's gonna end up over there on that links sidebar thing. A couple of past tennants already have, and I'll only add ones that I think are worth going back for more.
________________________________________________________________

Disclaimer: This is going to be another one of my mini-series posts. I can't tell you the whole story in one sitting, you'll be at risk for bedsores if you read it all ar once. Yes, coming back to read more parts will be a different kind of pain in the ass, but it'll be more like a dull ache. You're also not going to find out the meaning of the title either. Sorry, Charlie, but that's all part of a little thing called "suspense". And if you like that sort of thing, then go and read about all my adventures as a weightloss consultant for Jenny Craig parts I and II. You'll have loads of suspense in store for you over there. Some folks are still waiting on parts III and IV which haven't even been written yet. Aye, me loves a good suspense, Matey, along with talking like a pirate.
_______________________________________________________________

Carey was one for falling hard and obsessing at length about any boy that looked her way, even if not directly at her. Now she was madly in love with five boys at once. They were better known to the rest of the world as The New Kids On The Block.

Maggie had already come over and we had to coax Carey to do the same. She wouldn’t leave because she wanted to watch some "New Kids’ special", so we lied and said if she came over she could watch it at my house. She said she knew we wouldn’t do it once she came over, even though we promised....and then she came over. And while she boo-hooed we snickered behind her blubbering back, we didn’t care about her lame terms or the good of our word.
She begged us to turn on the New Kids. "Uh, no thanks?" we said. We giggled and laughed and threw every easy boy band joke in her direction. "Like, why do you like them anyway? I mean what’s the point? You do know that they’re gay, right? Tee hee hee heee heee hawaaa..."

Normally she cared what we thought, being that she was so insecure, but this time it didn’t matter what we said, this was real love and nothing was going to come between us and her five loverboys. She was completely devoted them. She was willing to drop everything, leave home to become a full time groupie and follow their every move. She would have done it, too, but she was fourteen. I bet her rich parents would have sponsored her, but you know, the neighbors might look down on them for supporting her obsession with pretty boys rather than having her finish school.

After all that whining with But they’re so cute, and my mom doesn’t know how to use the VCR so I can’t tape it!!! I finally flipped the channel. "Alright! Fine! There; happy, now?" Maggie and I sat, arms crossed, watching these five boys perform synchronized jumping and singing on a stage in front of a bunch sweating, screaming girls that, besides the sweating and screaming, looked a lot like us. Total Fluffchicks. We were the sort of preteen girls that spent more time on their hair than there homework. Looking at the crowd of AquaNet bangs, I could almost smell the grape Bubbliscious through the TV screen.

The smallest and presumably the youngest New Kid stepped up to lead microphone and sang something perfectly crafted for a middle school slow dance. It was sweet and he was....kind
of...cute. "Of course he’s cute! He’s Joey!!! See? I knew you guys would like them!!!" I told Carey to shut it. Nobody said they liked them, I was just making an observation. Maggie and I kept on with the sarcastic remarks and Carey kept on getting all hot and bothered, shushing us which would only add more remarks to the well deserved ridicule. We couldn’t help ourselves.

Maggie: Look at all those losers in the front row.

Me: Why is that chick crying?

Maggie: Hey, that one’s crying, too; what the hell?

Me: There’s another one!

Carey: SSSHHHHHH!!!

I didn’t get it. Maggie and I admitted that they weren’t that bad, and some were kind of cute even. But what the hell was all that crying about?

The Man with a 'stache

2006-03-15T12:57:00.000-05:00

When you’re young, all you ever want is to look older. You just want to be able to at least pass for an adult so that you can get a taste of what it feels like to do whatever you want. But when you look back as a grownup who actually looks their age, you can’t help but wonder what you were thinking. You were sure that wearing your mother’s lipstick and eye shadow made you look like a distinguished woman at High Tea, when really, all it did was make you look like six year old tramp.

When I came across pictures of John with a mustache, naturally I was curious. Was that a real mustache or had he glued on a fake one for a costume party? If it wasn’t real, then why was he wearing it in this photo of him at the the 1994 New York City Marathon finish line? Surely it would have started to slip off with all that running and sweating. But when asked about it, John confirmed that it was in fact real.

I wanted to know more. How did it come to be, the mustache, that is? Why did he have one? How long did he have it? More importantly, how and when he decided that he was a mustache man? Those men are few and far between. You don’t see a lot of them nowadays. My dad was and is still a mustache man. It’s his trademark. You’d think he was born with one, he’s had one for so long that seeing pictures of a younger version of him without one is startling.

Beards indicate that a man's a roughneck, a trucker, a biker, a tough-looking hippy, a hunter, a hard worker. It could also mean he’s a Hassidic Jew, marooned on a deserted island without a razor, or extremely depressed and has lost the will to shave. A goatee is most popular with outcasts, nonconformists, and beatnick poets who wear turtlenecks and berets. A mustache is a different kind of facial hair that takes a certain amount of gumption to carry off. They have been seen on distinguished actors and actors not so famous except to those who frequent adult movie theatres. They can be worn by comedians or even New Age Musicians who date Linda Evans. Although the mustache can be worn on many different men, the one thing they all seem to have in common is a need for the warm glow of a spotlight. But John’s not the type of guy who wants to be noticed, stand-out, or even remembered for that matter.

At a social event with people he doesn’t know, John makes himself scarce and leaves his coat on always prepared for a quick getaway. So finding out he’d been a man who had a mustache shook everything I thought I knew about him right to the core. What was lurking beneath the surface of this so-called quiet, nice guy? I needed answers.

So not wanting to wait one minute longer, one day I just asked him. "So what’s up with the mustache?" I said pointing to a picture of his past. He was visibly uncomfortable with the question, "Uh, I had one, once?"

That wasn’t an answer.

"Well, for how long? When did you have it? Did you just recently shave it off? I mean I don’t know what I would have thought if you had a mustache when I first met you," and I pictured the awkwardness of that moment if things had gone that way. "Weird."

"I used to have one a few years ago, okay?" He sounded sort of pissed off that I asked him about it.
"Well, I mean why did you have it? Did you think it was a good look for you? They’re kind of dated and it looks a little creepy on younger guys." Maybe it was my tone of voice or the continuous pestering, but he’d had enough and walked away.

I followed him.

"What? What’s wrong? I just want to know." He kept moving around his apartment trying to look too busy to answer and I continued behind him, asking more questions. Maybe this ignoring tactic worked with other people in the past, but not with me. When I need to know something I turn into one of those investigative reporters, the kind that starts chasing down the guy who sells meat out of the trunk of his car, yelling questions out while he shoves a defiant hand into the lens of the tv camera.

When he stopped answering, I started to do it myself, with my own conclusions. Maybe he was that guy who starting sprouting fine hairs above his lip during puberty and then never bothered to shave it off. I came up with that one after seeing his high school graduation picture in his parent’s house. He looked so sad in it, like he was so dissatisfied with his life. But then again, who wasn’t miserable in high school? It’s the single worst time in your life. A confused and sometimes teenager with complexion that reads like a mood ring you get from one of those gumball machines they have by the front door at Denny’s. His hair looked like a Dorothy Hamill haircut and wore the tell-tale puberty mustache. And below that was a bored mouth. His eyebrows gave more of a questioning expression, but not one rooted from curiosity, more like inside his head he’d been asking himself why, why me?

John was hoping that I’d just drop the whole thing and leave him alone. He was not so lucky.

Over the following weeks I would find a way to drop the word "mustache" into everyday conversation. "You know some people say my father looks like Groucho Marx, I guess because he’s a short Jewish guy who wears glasses and...has a mustache."

We’d be out to lunch, "Hey, that guy over there has some food on his face. I wonder how long it’ll take before his girlfriend tells him to wipe the egg salad off his mustache..."

Flipping channels I’d say, "Look! Magnum PI! I used to love this show. Remember how much everyone was so into Tom Selleck? I don’t know, he never did anything for me, maybe it was because of the mustache."

I imagined that everytime I said the word he get all fired up and yell out, "Alright! You wanna know why I had a mustache, is that it?! I’ll tell you why!!!" But my passive-aggressive prying wasn't getting me anywhere. It was as though he had know idea the painstakingly lengths I would go through to work something so offbeat as a mustache into a conversation.

After a month of playing this psychological game of roundabout questioning and avoidance, I asked him directly. "John, I need to know why you had a mustache. Don’t be embarassed, I just want to know. I won’t laugh, I promise." He just rolled his eyes and became defensive, "What is the big deal? I had a mustache, so what? Who cares?"

"You act like it's so friggin' personal, it's just a mustache. It can't be that sore of a subject! Just tell me and I promise I’ll never mention it again!" I pleaded. After plenty of time for my overactive imagination left it’s own without some much as a hint why he had it, he gave me a boring answer. "I grew it because I wanted to look older. I was sick of getting carded at bars. Okay? Are you satisfied?" Hardly.

That was it? That was his whole reason for wearing the mustache? It wasn’t even an entertaining enough story to tell people at a dinner party. What about all the colorful scenarios I came up with?

So, no, I was not satisfied. I had more questions. "So how long did you keep it?"

"I don’t know, a while."

"Well, did you ever get carded again?" I was grasping at straws.

"No, I don’t think so."

Mystery solved, I guess.

"Family Night!" Not as exciting as advertised.

2006-03-10T10:04:00.000-05:00

Before you read anything else, you should check out the new renter Gussy Up. I know I'll be over there snoopin' around. And if you have a stupid looking blog template like I do, you should be over there too. That's all I'm gonna say 'bout that.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Last night we went to this thing at the preschool called "Family Night!".

That's right.

It was lame, as you might have guessed.

It's nobody's fault that the turnout was pathetically low, but it is my fault for wasting my money.

No cover charges or tickets were required to get in, no bands, no booze, but there probably should've been, would have lightened up the party.

It did cost me, though. I'm on the "hospitality committee" and we're the ones who set up the food and decorations for these little shindigs. So, I was in charge of a cheese and cracker spread that would be enough to feed eighty to a hundred people. I also had to bring two-hundred plates, two bouquets of flowers, and the vases to hold them. What did I get myself into? Glad I signed up for the playdough making committee next year...

I got there early to set up and a lot families were already starting to arrive, no one that I recognized just yet but it looked as though it was gonna get hoppin.

The families of the two and four year old preschool classes were set to be there from 6-7 PM. Then our class, the three year olds' families, were supposed to show at 7 and stay until 8.

So when I asked my mom to come with me, John, and Jack, I had it in my head that just about everyone was coming and they were bringing extended family. That's what the whole point of "Family Night" is, it even said so on the flyers they handed out to advertise the whole even. But when we all got there at 7:00, there were a ton of people, but no one we knew. I felt like we were at the wrong party. We saw Jack's prechool teachers and talked to them, but where in the hell were the other 3 yr olds?

Major turnout for the two and four year olds' families. Well, aren't they special. But it looked like we and four other families out the roster of twenty-three in Jack's class, were the only suckers to show up.

The following is an open letter to all the other families that didn't show up for no good reason:

Booooooo! BOOOOO! You other no-shows SUCK! Do you know that I spent over $40 on flowers and plates, and good fucking cheese and crackers that I hand sliced myself just to see almost all of it thrown out at the end of the night?! Huh? Did ya?

I'm giving you all the stink-eye next school day,

Deb

Orange Kitty

2006-03-07T17:24:00.000-05:00

Quick annoucement: My Corner of the Web has moved out. Why don't you just check out our two-named renter, Suzanne/Keadamna, one last time. Or even more than that. You can go back as many times you want. It won't hurt my feelings, in fact, it will probably cheer the old girl up. She's feeling a bit "BLAH" today- her word.
----------------------------------------------------

We all know a few famous felines. (Say that three times fast without slipping in "fuck") There's Morris, Garfield, Smelly Cat, Tom, or is it Jerry? Anyway, I got one of my own. Orange Kitty.

Orange Kitty is sort of a raggamuffin tramp. Last Summer, my son Jack and I were opening the door to play outside when out of nowhere he appeared. Jack was excited because he was friendly and would let him pet him. But I was worried. Here was this poor lonely pet without a collar or a home I assumed. He was so sweet and hungry and kept trying to slither his way into the house between my ankles and the screen door. But since I already have two cats of my own, I wasn't having any of that. Adult cats do not take to new roomates kindly. So, we'd pet him, give him a snack, and water outside. And outside he stayed.

I told John about him. I was getting concerned since he'd started coming around every single day. He'd just sort of hang out and sunbathe on the patio, much to my two indoor cats' disaproval, I might add.

"What if he's homeless? Should I try to trap him and take him to the vet? Maybe I should post 'FOUND: ORANGE KITTY' flyers around, what do you think?" I asked.

"He doesn't look too skinny, I'm sure he belongs to one of the neighbors."

Then I had a brilliant idea, I was going to make a collar for him. I grabbed a piece of thick elastic and sewed it into a collar- I didn't get too fancy, and then I wrote in marker: Am I lost? Please call 123-456-7890.

Then next morning I strapped it around his neck and he went off with it. It was kind of exciting, it felt like I was sending a message off with a pigeon. What if he was from Alaska? Who knew how far that collar would travel?

At around ten o'clock that night, we got a call...from down the street. He lived just around the corner.

The owner apologized, but I told him it wasn't a big deal I was just wondering if he was a stray. The guy said the cat, who's name was Tommy, just showed up on their doorstep all skin and bones about a year ago and they've taken care of him ever since.

So Tommy kept coming by the house, but I had stopped feeding him. My son and I would pet him and let him hang out with us while Jack played outside.

Then one Sunday shortly after, John had come in from running. He had come across Orange Kitty on the road. He'd been hit by a car. I was so sad, and I felt guilty, and I was pissed at the owner for not keeping a better eye on him or at least strapping on a collar. Then I thought maybe John was wrong. Maybe it was a different cat?

But we never saw him again. That was last September.

About two weeks ago an orange and white cat came stolling onto our patio and layed down to soak up the Februrary sun. I looked out the window and couldn't believe it, it was Orange Kitty. I went outside and he ran up to me, purring and rubbing up against my leg like no time had passed. Jack was so excited.

We don't know what the real story is behind the other cat. But he's been on my patio every morning like clockwork. Orange Kitty's back.

People Magazine's Smelliest Man Alive!

2006-03-02T16:15:00.000-05:00

I caught a few minutes of the Baba Wawa Special last night, and it was just enough. Just enough for me to hear about how Matthew McConaughey has not worn deodorant for the last twenty years.

For all the cheap, funky smelling bastards who aren't willing to part with a buck for some Speedstick, Matt's just keeping the dream alive.

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

On a better smelling note, the renter has a name, and not a mulitple personality disorder like I feared earlier. It's Suzanne. Not "Suuuzzze" or "Annie". It's Suzanne. And her name is not "Susan", though she sometimes goes by "Sue". But she also goes by "Miss Jackson" if you're nasty.

I'm still going to call her by her full two names. I'm formal like that. She even tries to explain her aliasessessss in a recent post. I don't need to do all the talking, here. Go read it for yourself, you goddamn lazy ass. And if you don't like it, you can go sniff Mathew McConaughey's underarms, Armpit-sniffer!

The Web Has Corners.

2006-02-28T20:06:00.000-05:00

My last renter, Julie, has moved out and now we welcome a new tennant who's made herself a little comfy spot over in her corner of the web. It's a personal diary type of blog, and I will say, that I'm still a little confused on what her name is...is it Suzanne, or is it Keadamna? I looked on the "about me" and it didn't totally clear it up for me. But, then again, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But I do know that she lives in Middletown, Ct., a place where I have quite a bit of family history, including my own contribution of getting married there. Small world.

Anyway, go check out Julie's Life in a Nutshell for one last time and then hop on over to Suzanne/Keadamna's Corner of the Web and give a hello.

Pass With Care

2006-02-26T16:10:00.000-05:00

A deflated spirit and an inflated ass have left me trying to eat less and move more. I stopped eating a couple of hours before going to bed. Baby steps.

I’ve decided to actually use my membership at the local rec center.

Thursday, I dropped off my son at the preschool in my sweats and sneakers, that way there was no reason to drive back home. I had my headphones so that I wouldn’t have to listen to the shit they try to pass off as "good workout music".

Seriously, the music is awful. I’m not getting real motivated listening to Michael Bolton sing "Said I love you, but I lied". What kind of a shitty line is that? I bet the girl he told that to threatened to cut all his stringy hair off. I bet that gave him the idea to cut it off in the first place which actually worked out in his favor. He’s almost hot. Almost, because behind his new look lingers the memory of his horrible old one.

So, now I was walking around on the indoor track. Going around in circles. Being passed by runners. Being passed by walkers. Ouch.

I didn’t let that get to me, until an old guy, and I mean old as in his seventies trotted along the right side of me and then took off like a fully charged electric wheelchair. Alright, that’s it. I will not be passed by anymore senior citizens that are leisurely walking to keep their blood pressure down. But Speedy OldGeezer was already a half lap ahead of me and I wasn’t up for the competition. That was okay, I just needed to pick up the pace to help prevent further humiliation.

Soon I was passed by a woman who had a good fifty pounds on me. She was running. She couldn’t have possibly been in better shape than me. Apparently, she’d been training for a race involving passing people that looked like they might be able outrun her.

After a half hour of being passed by like an old lady driving on the freeway, I pulled off the exit closest to the door. I took a look behind me to make sure I wasn’t going to get plowed over by the old, fat people. I’ve come to learn, they are surprisingly fast.

Are you there, God? It's me, DebbieCakes.

2006-02-23T18:48:00.000-05:00

Last night while I was getting dinner ready, the phone rang. I couldn't get to it and checked the answering machine- it was the movie theatre! The movie theatre where my wallet had last been seen alive and on my person! And they had it!!

Well, I can't give "Julie", the movie theatre manager, all the credit now. I think I need to give a "Holla" and a "Whoop, whoop" to Anthony, Patron Saint Of Lost Things.

My man really pulled through for me this time. And now I spread my joy onto you, so that you may hear about the true miracle that occurred last night- not only was my wallet recovered, but everything was in it, including the cash. If that's not a real live miracle, I don't know what is.

Oh, you didn't think a Jewish girl prayed to Catholic Saints? Well, this one does, sucka.

Lose your wallet, car keys, your car in a giant parking lot, or even your mind and try St. Anthony sometime.

St. Anthony. It works.

Fun with Bud at the DMV

2006-02-22T10:04:00.000-05:00

Somewhere between the arcade at the movie theatre Saturday night and home the next morning, my wallet disappeared.

I wasn't go to lose my mind over it. It's nothing that couldn't be replaced, except for ten bucks in cash, which kind of irritated me because I almost never carry cash with me, except for when, you know, my wallet makes a run for it....ERRRGH!

With credit cards cancelled and replacements on the way, I knew there was one thing left on my to-do list. Go to the DMV.

The DMV. It's what I imagine the receptionist office in Hell must be like. I don't know whether it's the tension in the air caused by lack of Muzak playing, or the buzzing of fluorescent lights. Maybe it's how you look under those lights, it makes even the healthiest of human beings look
as though their circulation has been cut off and they're awaiting their own autopsy results.

When I walked in, there were only two other people there. Their numbers were called up within minutes of each other. I was number 53, and I was next. Then, two more people walked in, and then another one, and another, and another, and ANOTHER.

It's okay...I'm still next....It's just getting busy. It's just more people...Just a bigger audience to watch me get my license mug-shot taken.

Then this old guy came and sat two seats away from me. Peee Uw, what did that guy eat? Maybe he was gnawing on one of those foot-long, shrink-wrapped, salamis you see hanging by a gas station register...smells like giant rotting garlic bulb...oh, I don't think I can take it anymore! Breath through your mouth...ew, I think I tasted it.

We were running out of seats and then this skater guy came in and sat next to me. Right NEXT to me. Not that he had much choice, but now my "Sit at least three chair lengths away from the next stranger" rights were being infringed upon. I like my personal space, I take pride on how far away I sit from people.

Miss Fancy Coat & High Heeled Boots came in and got a number....and then she sat right next to me. What, am I that likeable? There were other seats, you know.

Then the old lady with a walker and her middleaged daughter made their way in. Someone else moved to sit right next to another unfortunate soul so that the two of them could sit together. I could tell that Walker Woman wasn't really put out by the whole ordeal of going to the DMV. She probably pretended that it was a nuisance, but secretly loved getting out of the house to be just about anywhere.

I was squished. I was antsy. What the hell is taking them so long?!! Call number fifty-three! FIVE, THREE! SAY IT!!!

I stared at the crooked posters on the wall. "Don't Drink and Drive", "Become an Organ Donor, TODAY!". There were some homemade posters that the DMV employees put together, like the one by the number-ticket-machine written in marker that read, "Take A NUMBER!!!! HERE---->". There was another one taped up by the counter that was done in a computer font that started out real big and then got really tiny at the end. It said, "DON'T WASTE TIME!!!!! HAVE ALL DOCUMENTS READY!!!!" I noticed that one when I overheard the Walker ask her daughter, "Have documents....dear, what does that say there? Oh...it's my eyes. It looks so small to me...I can't make that last word out."

There was another poster on the wall with a bunch orange and white striped construction barrels lined up on the road. They all had these creepy looking cartoon man-faces drawn on them. It said "Make BUD happy, GO SLOW!" Huh? Who's Bud? The barrel? Is the barrel, Bud?

Miss Fancy Coat's counterpart walked in with hips swinging. I heard a cartoon whistle in my head, because I saw GarlicFunk Man sit up in his seat. Fancy Coat 2.0 sat next to him. Now the Funk had two lucky ladies on either side of him. I didn't mind, better them than me, their fluffy coats were containing his smell.

Oh, God, PLEASE...Get me out of here? Oh, she's gonna call a number! "Number Fifty-two? FIFTY-TWO!" No! That can't be.... But I didn't panic long because nobody claimed it. "Number FIFTY-THREE?" I shot up and ran to the desk.

"I'm pulling out....Watch your boobs."

2006-02-20T21:08:00.000-05:00

We have to bid farewell to my last tennant Nonsensical Flounderings. They were such lovely people, I'm gonna stick a link to them on the sidebar so you can visit them anytime.

But now it's time for the newbie to schlep her stuff up to the third floor of the SmileIfYou'reLying complex, and there's no elevator...or cable.

This week we bring you a nice italian girl from Quincy, Mass. You really ought to see what going on with Julie. She sounds like a real trip. And you know what else? She's going on a date with a firefighter, I can't wait to tune in and see what happens next. It's almost better than Desperate Housewives.

Speaking of underweight overpaid actresses, the award for best line goes to Eva Longoria. Gabby drops her hootchiemama-mama off at a hotel to get her out of her hair. Mama steps out of the car with nothing but the clothes on her back and her newly purchased silicone breasts. Before she drives off, Gabriel shouts, "I'm pulling out; watch your boobs."

Well, I thought it was funny.

Hey! Them things is worth money!

2006-02-17T07:51:00.000-05:00

I can only guess how it got started. Jack was playing on the computer while I was doing laundry, then he quietly slipped away.
"Hey Jack, watcha doin'?" I called out. No answer. That ussually means he's up to no good, no good at all.

I wandered into the kitchen and found stamps stuck on the table, stamps on the chair, stamps on the pantry shelf and the counter, stamps everywhere. I tried to calmly explain that those weren't stickers, they're stamps. They cost money, more money than the stickers, and each and every single one was 2 cents (hey, there's no cent sign on the keyboard?) more expensive than they were just a couple of months ago. He kept saying "Sorry, Mommy," and who could be mad at that little face? I never was, really, I actually thought it was pretty funny. Rather, it was the thought of John coming home and finding stamps pasted all around the house like it was giant stickerbook that made me shiver me timbers.

Okay, it's not like he beats me or anything(not funny), but when it comes to matters of wallet, John gets a little testy. TESTY.

We cleaned up the scene of the crime, but I know that sooner or later, John's gonna be all, "Hey, Deb? Why are the stamps not so sticky, and why are they a looking a little roughed up?" See, I put them all back in the stamp book, but they never stick as well as they did the first time when they were spanking new. The adhesive suffers some kind of Post Tramatic Stress.

Well, I'll just have to wait and see what happens now. And buy some more stickers for Jack.

Maybe we need some magic mushrooms...

2006-02-15T10:03:00.000-05:00

Last night on HOUSE, the ever cranky doctor had a migraine, like me. Gee, I wonder how many Vicoden he's gonna chow down tonight? But instead, he turned to the streets and dropped some acid, chased that down with some anti-depressants, and then before he could make a smartass remark and piss off everybody, he was hobbling on one leg to save lives.

Hmmph. Well, I don't know anyone (anymore) that I might get some LSD from. So I'm stuck with Codeine. Not bad stuff, but don't take two at once, because last time I threw up. But I remember throwing up and being really cool about it. No nervous pacing beforehand, holding my stomach and trying to psych myself out of hurling. I just calmly walked my green-self over to the toilet and threw up, washed off, and went back to making dinner. Codeine does wonders for your nerves.

Ask your doctor about Codeine. Codeine may not be right for you. You might like it too much and start popping em like a handful of M&Ms, much like actor Hugh Laurie does on HOUSE.

Nothing says "Happy Valentine's Day!" like an angry screaming man

2006-02-14T08:51:00.000-05:00

I woke up with a beauty of a migraine this morning. Where's the codeine? Get me the fucking codeine. Now! I only said inside my pounding head as not to frighten the child. I don't need a blubbering three year old on top of my hurting head.

While forcing pills down my throat, which is not easy when you're nauseas, I saw a Valentine's card and a cd on the counter next to the coffee maker. First, I thought Awwww. Then I thought Crap! because I forgot to leave John's card out for him. Oh, well. Let's see what we got over here... The Nine Inch Nails cd I told him I wanted! Sweet!

Of course, I got to thinking, that this may not sound very romantic to most girls, but it is to me. John's not one for standing in front of crowds of people and shouting "I... LOVE... THIS... WOMAN!" causing many white doves to fly up and almost shit on our heads and then gingerly pull a ring out his pocket after I ask him what's up with the psychotic behavior. So, the fact he remembered that I'd mentioned that the new NIN cd sounded pretty good in the car a few days ago, was as sweet as could be.

And what wouldn't put a girl in the mood like Trent Reznor screaming at top of his lungs? That's hot. Okay, I did have a big crush on him about ten years ago, but I've always had a thing for disturbed people. Especially disturbed people who put their disturbed feelings into a peice of music or slap in onto a canvas. Expression through art, I get. People talking about their feelings and not raising their voice the slightest bit, I don't.

When I need to get something off my chest, painting, writing, or just stewing in a pot of my own depression with a pinch of animosity stew is what I do. It just feels right.

By the way, WITH TEETH rocks.

Happy Valentine's Day to all ya lucky lovers.

And if you're not so lucky, just know this; the boy who is geeky in high school will be cute when he grows up. I'd show you a picture of John, but he won't be too happy with me if I do, but I have seen his yearbook picture, and all I can say is teeheehaha.
But I will give you this instead:

Blog Hopping & Paying It For(ward) No Reason At All

2006-02-12T16:10:00.000-05:00

I recently (an hour or so ago) put up a FOR RENT sign, and a bunch a people just started beating down my door. Well, since I could only take in one of ya's, I thought I'd give a little something to the folks who didn't make the cut:

Now out of the six bids, a couple of the blogs just weren't going to be associated with me or a tiny thumbnail size rental spot on my blog for that matter. For starters, one had a gianormous picture of Carrie Underwood (American Idol! Oh, pleeeease.) and another that was by this loser Merv the Perv guy with a picture of an unfamous skanky-looking girl whose reason for having a huge photo layout on his blog left me quite disturbed and I really didn't hang around to see long enough to find out the reasoning behind the skank scrapbook....Eeew.

Then there were a couple others that I found to be interesting enough that maybe when I've got nothing better for you to read about (which is often, lately, let's be honest.) you might just wanna move yer mice on over to.

The first is Coffee Stoned, whatever the reason, I liked it. It left me with a feeling of freshed brewed bewilderment. It had sort of a cozy cafe feel to it. Seems like a groovy bunch, so, go on and check it out, will ya?

And the second is Haunted House Dressing. It's little bit spooky, it's a little bit "Huh?" and "What the fuck?". The way I see it, anyone who is willing to stage a live fingerpuppet show that reads like a Sunday's comic strip about a pumpkin, rotten banana, and a black cat is definetely worth investigating further.

And since we're being all nicey nice and promoting other people's blogs for no good reason at all, you should be checking out who rented thst little spot over to your right.....Nonsensical Flounderings, they're not so bad either, and that's why I accepted their bid. And those bitchy bitches gave him 4 smacks, and to be smacked around like you're a bitch's bitch is a good thing in their fuckyaverymuch world.

You should also be taking a look-see at some of the new additions on the "Other Liars" list. Some of these folks have been listed there for quite a time now, but I added some fresh new talent I think needs to be associated with smiling and lying and whatever it is I'm doing here.

The newbies, in no particular order would be Horace Finkle, a 13 year old ghost that's sort of being put upon by his mother and school classmates who recently TP'd his house, a mess he later was ordered by that foremetioned pain-in-the-ass mother to clean up. No fair, but funny, and don't ask me to explain how the paranormal are blogging these days.

Also, there's Mommy Matters, a mom, a woman (der?), a writer, and a funny read for the most part. And now I may not know too much about templates, but her's does rock the kasbah (sp????).

We've also got Spinster War Diaries. Okay, anyone willing to take the preemptive strike to go ahead a refer to themselves as a spinster is so not one. You can go ahead and assume that she's as cute as can be, almost always has a funny little ditty posted along with about 583 loyal commentators following her every move, and I believe she's still in her twenties. So why, you ask, don't I just start calling myself an old lardass and fish for compliments, now? A popular blog and a good one at that.

And lastly Ah, yes, medical school, a blog that became one of those overnight sensations due to Blogger's Blogs Of Note is on the list, too. So you've probably seen it before, and this guy needs no more publicity, but I'll betcha ya didn't know....that he linked back to little ole me in Ask the Fake Doctor Part 3. It was in regards to my rant about Grey's Anatomy. And so besides being an entertaining, educational, and sometimes "Warning:Reading Some Entries May Cause Mini-Throwup", he's pretty cool just for that link. So there.

Under new management

2006-02-11T15:08:00.000-05:00

It's the same manager, just a new look. One template shared by many, I suppose.

I had to change templates. I really didn't feel like this was so much better, but the other one was giving me a headache. I could never get the fonts to be a normal size for all the links and a bunch of other malarchy.

Anyhoo. Hope this looks better. And besides, the bitches over at italk2much had some really big issues with it. I agree the fonts were ultra annoying. But ugly? Oh come on. I couldn't really call the old template "ugly". It was kinda cute, in a sort of Old Navy commercial kinda way. Whatever.

I don't love this template, but it's a lot of work getting all your links and other junk up on a new one, so this one's gonna stay for a while. Until Blogger gets some nicer looking free ones, this is how SmileIfYou'reLying is going to look.

So yeah. That's all that's going on.

Okay, there's a lot more than that going on. And no, I don't want to talk about it right now.

Ah. I'll tell ya later.

Still off the wagon.

2006-02-06T19:17:00.000-05:00

Okay, honestly? I never got on it to begin with. I ate way to much crap yesterday(and for about all the other days going back to and before Christmas, but I digress).
It wasn't the Zeppe's pizza, and extra helpings of salad smothered in dressing. It was the Meltaways.

Meltaways are the Devil's brownie. My mom has been whipping those suckers up since I was knee-high to a chocolate chip.

Rich, chocolately, dense brownies covered with buttercream frosting and a layer of hardened semisweet chocolate atop of all of that.

Then she forces me to take the rest home, as if I wasn't bloated enough. I already ate 2, this morning. Then I cut them all up, wrapped them in tinfoil, stuffed it into a Ziploc and shoved the whole thing in the freezer. I was hoping that it would make it almost too much work to make it worth defrosting one and eating it. Or that maybe if I tried to eat one while still frozen, it would chip a tooth and then I'd learn my lesson.

But, noooooooooooooo.

They're even better frozen.

All Work & No Play...makes for a very dull blog

2006-01-31T19:55:00.000-05:00

SO, yeah. Had quite a weekend over here in the land of snack-cakes. And I'm referring to last weekend.

Since "Jason" the Toyota salesman never answered our email inquiring that maybe he crunch a couple numbers on the Rav4 verses the Highlander, he lost out. So there, "Jason".

And you know what? I actually thought he might be kinda cool. Maybe it was the faux-hawk, maybe it was because he looked like he had just gotten out of highschool, maybe it was because he commented on my purse. He said it was cute. He said, "Hey, cute purse!" Who says that? A girl, maybe. I don't think he was gay, he said he had a son. Well, I mean that could have been fixed, I guess. It could have been a ploy, some little detail he threw in to try and make him seem relatable to us.

Be that as it may, we decided to drive the minivan to Subaru. And a very long story made short, Debbie's got a brand new cab.

And it sure is pretty. Even cute. Maybe even cuter than my purse.

Not Dressed Up and Everywhere to Go

2006-01-24T18:43:00.000-05:00

I went to Trader Joe's yesterday without a list- bad idea. I was a wandering Jew(ess) and as usual felt like I was in La-La Land. I don't know if it's the smell of all those organic herbs and friendly staff in Hawaiian shirts, or the fact that every shopper in the joint appears to be a stoned hippie slowing meandering down the natural food aisles, but something about that place sends you into a foggy state.

Anyway, there was a display of six packs of Trader Joe's Winterfest Black Lager on sale for $4.99. That sounds like a pretty good deal, why not buy some? John and I aren't really in the habit of keeping beer in the house, drinking it, or anything but the occasional glass of wine.

I've tried to drink beer many times and find that no matter how hard I try to convince myself that "this time it'll taste different", I can't help but make a bitter-beer-face. Any and every beer tastes like sheeeyit as far as I'm concerned.

But recently, I had seen on The Modern Girl's Guide to Life (you know, on the Style network, duh.) that most women, even ones that don't care for beer, actually like a darker beer. I felt adventurous, especially because I wasn't confined to buying items on a list that I never bothered to write and sometimes it makes me buy crazy things..

So, after Jack refused to eat his dinner last night (this is an every night occurrence) and had many a temper tantrum, I realized that I still needed to give him a haircut before putting him in the tub and sending him to bed. I didn't have a choice because today was Picture Day! at the preschool. Um, Yeah.

Yadda, yadda, yadda. After all the craziness, I felt like crawling into a bottle, a bottle of Winterfest Black Lager for that matter. I cracked it open and John gave me a look like "So, this is how it is now? Why didn't you change into your wife-beater and change the oil?" I felt like a fraud. I'm not a beer drinker, this is lame. I'm getting a glass... Well, glass or bottle, it still tasted like horse pee. Make that rotten horse pee.

I couldn't stand the idea of wasting it, why waste a good glass of rotten horse pee? So I drank half, swallowing it down like contestant on Fear Factor does a cat litter turd, or rancid horse urine.

Today, got up, didn't have a chance to shower, I was too busy getting Jack polished for his picture. So I got to the preschool at 8:45 and hoped to just run in and drop him off without anyone noticing. But the teacher didn't open the classroom until 9. Normally everything is ready to go, this almost never happens, but the other teacher was absent.

So I hugged the wall, hoping no one could smell the beer stink that I was certain was permeating through my pores. I figured no one would recognize with my Buddy Holly glasses on, I usually have my lenses in. But nooooo. Everybody was a chatty Cathy. And some were close talkers.

I figured everyone thought I'd been out drinking all night, was hungover, and lost my will to live by coming to school unshowered with greasy hair, and geeky specs.

I started to wonder if maybe I don't look that different than when I'm clean and pretty. Maybe all the trouble I go through showering and doing my hair, putting on my face and popping in my eyes don't do diddly and it's all for my own satisfaction. Could it be?

I mean, there have been many an occasion that John has asked, "Ready to go?" And I'll look down at my pajamas, finger through my dirty hair, adjust my glasses and say, "Do I look ready?" He can't seem to tell the difference. It's like he wouldn't care if he was seen with me in public like that. But shute, I don't want to been seen with me in public.

Why do I even bother?

Get out of my dreams- and my CAR!

2006-01-21T20:21:00.000-05:00

After many calls from a very persistent Toyota receptionist, John called "Marcie" back. "She seems nice, and she said that we could turn the Oddyssey lease over to them and get a Highlander without paying all the penalties and stuff," John said.

I couldn't argue with that. I hate that minivan more than anything. It makes me sick. It stands for everything I don't. But at the time Honda had this blowout of all the '04 models and we got a loaded one for a 2 year lease for $325/mo. We couldn't find a new SUV with that kind of monthly payment anywhere, especially one that had a DVD player.

I feel like a horse's ass driving around this big bus carrying only me and a 3 year old. Stupid.

I hate the way it looks. I always said that I'd never drive a minivan, not just because they look a loaf of bread on wheels, but because it's so conformist.

When I pull into the preschool parking lot, it's full of Tyota Siennas, Ford Windstars, and other Honda Oddysseys.

It's difficult to find my minvan in sea of other minvans at the grocery store, the post office, the library, the mall, or any other place in suburbia.

I need something cooler, something that stands out, and more importantly, something that fits into our undersized one-car-garage.

"Well, let's go and have a look-see," I said to John after he talked night and day about shopping for a car now before the lease is up and something else about how it couldn't hurt to look.

So after talking to, let's call him "Jason" (because that's his Toyota salesman name), he pulled up a shiny new Highlander.

Jason popped open the hood and pointed to parts, I couldn't hear what he was saying over my teeth chattering. It was flippin' cold out there and Jack was freezing because John insisted on leaving his hat and mittens in the minivan because "Deb, it's not that cold out."

I didn't give a poop about anything but getting my frozen self and child into a heated building, but Jason kept going on about "saftey features" and "spare tires". Yeah, listen buddy, could you tell us about this stuff inside where it's not snowing?

When he opened the door, everything was covered in Saran Wrap. Oh, come on! You couldn't provide us with a car that wrapped up like a piece of leftover fried chicken?

We put in the carseat and we were ready to go. Jason ran in to Xerox our licenses.
When he came back he sat in the back. Aw, man!

I hate that! I hate testdriving with the salesman. I feel like I'm being tested or something. On top of that, I've John telling me how to drive, like this is my first time and he's some overprotective expert.

I couldn't enjoy myself, I wasn't in familiar territory. Okay, actually I knew Little Italy pretty well, but it's not a place I frequent. The closer you get to downtown Cleveland, the more traffic you hit. How am I suppose to see how this baby runs when I never get into second gear?

Then John drove, like a total retard, I might add.

You see what happens when you can't drive like yourself? You buckle under the pressure and have no idea where you're going, your butt sweats from the plastic wrap, you're being watched by big brother Toyota.

Next time, I want the freshly unwrapped version, and I want some serious alone time with this if I'm seriously going to invest.

In case of EMERGENCY press button

2006-01-19T17:39:00.000-05:00

I almost got stuck in an elevator this morning. Don't worry, I'm okay. I mean, I almost got stuck.

I was on the fourth floor and had my choice of three different elevators, the one on the far left opened. I pressed "L". "L" is for "LOBBY".

The elevator kinda sat there for a moment. I pressed "L" again. The doors closed, then they opened again. I pressed "L" again, this time like I meant it. The doors closed. The doors opened again. "What part of 'L' don't you understand?!" The doors closed.

Movement. Doors open. Two women are gossiping in the hallway of a floor that definetly was not the "LOBBY". I looked at them, they looked at me. I looked up at the numbers and saw that I was only on the third floor. I looked at them again and made a face like, "So watcha waiting for beeyotch?" The one lady looked like some kind of cafeteria worker, even though she wasn't wearing an apron or even a hairnet. She just had a look about her that screamed "lunch lady!". They went on yuckin' it up and the doors closed. Okay, little odd, but whatever.

The elevator sat there. I pressed "L" again to remind it where we were going. "Huh?" it said. "L!" I pressed again. "Oh, okay." We were moving....up. "What the?" The numbers went all the way to 9. A guy got on. He wanted the 5th floor. We arrived without a problem. He got off and the doors closed, but the elevator was back up to it's old tricks.

We sat there motionless. "Hello??? L!" I yelled at the elevator. "Huhuh, oh yeah." We moved and it looked like we were going down according to the numbers. Then the doors opened and we were on the third floor again with the lunch lady and her friend. "What are you doing?!" she asked me as if I was purposely coming back to eavesdrop on them. "I don't know what's wrong with this elevator, it keeps going everywhere except the lobby, which is where I need to go!" I don't know why I felt the need to explain myself especially since she was talking to her friend, I'm sorry, lesbian lunch lady lover, the entire time I was talking. Some people are so rude.

The doors shut again and then I pressed that "L" button again. This time I said a silent prayer to God to just get me to the Lobby and I promise I'll take the stairs for the rest of my life. We moved and the doors opened again on the fifth floor. Nobody there. I decided I'd had enough of this nonsense. I stepped off and got on the elevator next to it where a woman was patiently waiting inside. I told her about my elevator issues and that I just wanted to get to lobby. She was quite sympathetic, but also creeped out. "Ooh that's sort of....creepy." She said it just like that. Maybe she was on to something, maybe the elevator was haunted.

She got off on the next floor, and as the doors shut I started to panic. I wanted to tell her "Don't leave me!" for fear that once again the elevators would fuck with me while I was alone.

As my heart started pounding and I started to hyperventilate, the doors opened and I saw the world's most beautiful lobby.

Deb gone wild....on Girl Scout cookies

2006-01-18T17:00:00.000-05:00

First, he brings home those new Hershey kisses filled with this really gooey, drippy, quite yummy, caramel. "Why did you buy those?" "They were on sale! I got 2 bags for $3!" John's so proud of himself. "Great. This is what happens when I send you out to the store because I'm too sick to go. Anything else in there (pointing to bags) of nutritional value?"---yes, I got sick, AGAIN. This time Jack and I both got this mysterious fever that wouldn't break for 2 days. I'm thinking about locking myself up in a sterile bubble.

Before I know it, I found myself sitting in a pile of little pink and red Kiss foils and the cat's playing with one of those Hershey paper flags. She starts chewing on it all sideways like when a human eats a taco.

Last night he comes home telling Jack he's "got a suprise for him". Thin Mints, Samoas, and Do-si-dos. Son of a bitch! "Can't you see you're making me fat, here???"

John's a runner. He could eat about forty-seven double bacon cheeseburgers everyday chased down with a strawberry milkshake and never see a bit of it stick to his ass because he gets up at 5am to....RUN.

I'm more of the non-runner. I've tried it, but after thirty consecutive seconds of running I feel as though my lungs could explode. I'll walk, thank you. If I need to get anywhere faster, I'll drive, okay?

But what am I going to do with all these cookies? I told him to get them out of the house, I can't control myself. I've really got to take these five or six holiday pounds off, and the Girl Scouts have no interest in helping me, they just want me to getting hopped up on refined sugar and then hand over cash for more.

If he comes home with some other treats tonight, there's going to be a serious talk and I'm jst going to have to come out and ask him if he's a closet chubby-chaser...

The PBS of Blogs.

2006-01-14T09:58:00.000-05:00

If I had a dollar for everytime someone read this blog, I'd have over $1800.

It would be really nice to have over $1800 right now, but there's no cover charge at my blog. The damned thing is free. So think about that the next time your cheap eyes wander over all my genius bits.

And since we're on the subject anyway, feel free to send me donations, you know, $20 to $50 dollars a month. If you send me $100 a month, I'll send you this complimetary coffee mug as my way of saying "Thank you." And it'll be yours to keep.

So open your hearts, open your wallets, and thank you for your support.

So, you wanna work for Jenny Craig?

2006-01-12T13:57:00.000-05:00

WARNING: Long ass post. You may want to print it out and bring it to the bathroom with you so you can do something, er, productive with your time while reading this...

Training was about to start and I was actually excited about it. I mean, I was going to learn everything. Everything I needed to know to be a qualified, certified, and confident weight loss consultant. It all felt so very professional.

I showed up in my new business lady clothes that I bought fresh off the racks at TJ Maxx. I had to convince John that I needed the new wardrobe, so I could look the part.
When I got there, the receptionist told me to go on back and the training would start as soon as Amy and Diane arrived.

There was a half circle of about eight chairs with attached desktops in the room, a dry-erase marker board, and flip chart. About half of the newly hired were there and I said hello and introduced myself. One of the girls practically rolled her eyes at me and went back to her conversation and another one just smiled and nodded her head. Feeling like an absolute idiot, I sat down and rustled some papers around my puny desktop trying to look busy.

After spending what felt like an hour of me looking at papers I wasn’t reading, the girl who rolled her eyes got up and grabbed a fun-sized Nestle Crunch bar. I wondered why in the world she was going to eat candy in a diet center. I mean, duh?

But then I discovered she’d fished it out of a giant plastic bowl overflowing with candy on a snack table tucked in the corner of the room. There were other things on the snack table too, like veggies and dip and some fruit. But who the hell is going to help themselves to an unpeeled orange? All that orange zest gets stuck under your nails and then your hands are all sticky, every time you pull a piece off you risk squirting juice all over you. And everybody knows when someone’s eating an orange. It’s impossible to contain the smell. It’s not a bad smell, it’s just that then everyone’s like, "Hey, is someone eating an orange in here or something?" Who wants to draw that kind of attention to themselves? Even more puzzling; why was there all this candy? I knew it was a test. There was probably some sort of hidden camera in the room. Maybe that was why the trainers were late. They were probably yukkin’ it up in the back watching us on some small black and white t.v. I can’t believe that idiot fell for it. Serves her right; thinking she’s better than me. Bitch.

Finally, Amy and Diane strolled in causing a whirlwind of excitement. They were the only ones that seemed excited, though. Amy started up some friendly banter with some of the girls. And Diane stood there with a smile that made her mouth appear freakishly large in comparison to the rest of her face. She was in a navy pantsuit with a white turtleneck, gold necklace, and gold hoop earrings. She looked as though she’d just stepped out of 1988 and was feeling like a million bucks. Amy was dressed in a much more updated pantsuit which just became a pair of slacks and t-shirt soon after she lost the jacket.

Diane instructed Amy to go ahead and start setting up, which meant she was to become her lowly assistant for the rest of the day. Everything that Diane said was quickly recorded on to the dry-erase board as a bold point. Then Amy would flip to referenced pages that were previously written out in different colored markers on the big flip chart.

We learned about the history of Jenny Craig the woman, the inspiration, the diet guru. Later on we were then quizzed on that information.

We learned about what every employment position was responsible for. For example, a consultant’s job was to see active clients once a week for a fifteen minute long consultation. In those fifteen minutes a trained consultant could help their client celebrate their weight loss by being their little hired cheerleader and then they’d get down to business and put together the next week’s food menu.

A Program Director’s job was to set up appointments with potential clients, called "tours", and spend one hour with them asking questions about their weight loss goals, the challenges that have prevented them from losing weight, and then to sign them up with one of the Jenny Craig programs that would best suit their individual needs.

The next day of training involved rolling up our sleeves and role-playing the parts of consultants. Amy and Diane acted out a scene which involved a nervous caller played by Diane, and a consultant, played by Amy, who tried to comfort her and encourage her to come in for an appointment. In the end, Diane’s character felt relieved that she’d taken the first step in calling and Amy thanked her for calling Jenny Craig and was looking forward to meeting with her to discuss the weight loss program options this Wednesday at 2:00 PM. Sounded easy enough. But then again, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

First, we had to learn how to answer the phone. This was tricky. There was a script to follow and those anxious callers could throw you a curve, such as asking how much it cost to join, or "do you have to eat the food?", and "I heard the food was expensive!" Beads of sweat formed on the forehead of every trainee with a look of "what do I do next???" Enter the experts. Diane and Amy would step in to show you how it’s done.

When it came to receiving new customer phone calls, it was crucial to remain in control of the conversation at all times. Don’t let questions about price or food get you off track. Never, and I mean never, talk about what the food or programs cost except in the case of the advertised program specials. You were permitted to say "Our current special is 19 lbs for $19! (plus the cost of food)" And you always had to say "plus the cost of food" to cover Jenny’s ass. If the Federal Trade Commission called and you forgot to say that, it could be grounds for immediate termination. They were always telling us about all the legality stuff, and how you would be fired if you messed up just once with the wrong person.

After a long morning of rehearsing our telephone answering scripts, it was time to break for lunch. Two of the girls, Lisa and Courtney, asked if I wanted to go to Chili’s across the street.
While the three of us waited for our food, we talked about the whole phone pitch. "Doesn’t it feel kind of phony? I mean, if I called, and like, wanted to just find out how much it cost, and like, some stupid chick kept saying ‘19 lbs for $19!’, I’d be like, shut-up and tell me what it really costs," Lisa said. "Oh, and I like how we’re supposed to say ‘plus the cost of food’, which would naturally lead into the customer asking, ‘Well, how much is the food?’ and we’re not even allowed to tell them. So stupid."

I asked what was up with all the candy. "I mean there were mounds of candy on that snack table yesterday and today. And someone had to have refilled it, because I noticed M&Ms were there this time and they weren’t there yesterday, you know." But they didn’t seem to bothered by it. I asked if they thought it was some kind of test or something. They shrugged. Was I the only one who thought that was little hypocritical? They hadn’t really thought about it. I started to think they maybe they were in on it. Maybe I was the one that Jenny Craig was testing and the rest of trainees were just paid actors. I dropped the subject immediately.

The next couple of days involved more role-playing, but this time it was acting out a consultation. It was even more awkward and unnatural than the phone answering bit. You really had to hone in your acting skills with this one. Always using a positive spin on everything and making sure that you sent your client off with a full week’s worth of food and a motivated spirit. Before they left, you had to be sure to secure their next week’s appointment, because if you didn’t, they could fall off the wagon and you’d lose them forever. In other words, if they didn’t come in next week, Jenny made less money and you were out of food commission.

Consultations are free, the food is not, and that’s how Jenny Craig stays rich.

As the end of our training days neared, we’d spent almost every moment of our time learning how to answer a phone, sell food, products, and programs. We learned how to operate the extremely outdated and anything but user-friendly computer systems. We practiced bagging up clients’ weekly food orders and then double checking with the clients to make sure that we packed all their precious Jenny Cuisine and had "secured" their next appointment. We made "reminder calls" to real live clients to make sure they weren’t going to conveniently forget to come in tomorrow.

The last day of training involved some serious testing. Diane and Amy pushed us to the limit, role-playing phone call and consultations. It was the day that we all had to bring our A-game or we could kiss our Jenny Craig careers goodbye.

Oh, What a World, what a world...

2006-01-10T18:21:00.000-05:00

Don't think I haven't noticed that numbers are down, I've gotten less hits in the last week than the average wifebeater dishes out in a single night. Oh, don't poo-poo me about being in bad taste. If you know anything about me, I have a dry, sick, leaves-you-with-cotton-mouth sense of humor.

Moving on.

Look, I've been sick for the last, oh, 2 weeks give or take a few days. My Christmas in Connecticut was less than enjoyable since I spent most of it blowing all sorts of things out my nose and spraying a lovely medicine right back up called Flonase which, if you didn't already have the pleasure of experiencing, has some wonderful side effects, like smelling floral undertones to everything that has a scent at all. My mother-in-law fried meatballs and all I could smell was roses. It really felt like I had shoved my face into the center of a qiant bouquet of flowers.

So, having felt like absolute poo and yet at the same time being amazed by my own ability to produce an endless amount of snot, I have been neglecting my blog.

Another issue is brewing. I am on the way back from sickyville, but I am having some technical difficulties.

My 30th birthday present was a new laptop. It's wonderful and marvelous, but I cannot seem to get things working as far as hooking it up to the internet via the wireless card. I have to call SBC and see what's up with that. So I have my third Jenny Craig installment trapped inside there. And I'll be damned if I am gonna retype that thing onto here (Sorry, Micycle).

But moving on still, I refilled my Flonase, saw Mr. Mullet Man at Walgreens twice today who always gives me a friendly smile under his salt and pepper mustache, and finally picked up pictures from a roll of film I started taking pictures with in August and just finished a week ago. I need to return some library books that are overdue and keeping me awake at night hearing coins jump out of my wallet for the late fees. I ordered a book through Buy.com because I kept seeing those commercials with the CEO of the company standing on the roof of the Buy.com building telling me to order from there and he'll save me 10% off of Amazon. Well, Mr. CEO and rooftop fiddler, I'm a'waiting for me damn book. I guess paying 10% less also means they do things 10% slower.

Oh, and if you're wondering what the Wizard of Oz reference is all about, it really didn't have anything to do with anything at all I'm afraid. It just came to me. For some reason the melting Wicked Witch came to mind followed by Mel Brooks as Yogurt in Spaceballs.

May the Schwartz be with you.

2006-01-02T20:20:00.000-05:00

Oh suck it up, Kirstie Alley. I'm almost ready to upload my third installment of the Jenny Craig saga.

Just a few more typos to fix...Ah who'm I kidding, I won't get that uploaded for another day or two.

Be patient and wait, oh, and while you're waiting, why don't you just read Part I and Part II...

Make This YOUR New Year's Resolution:

2005-12-28T11:19:00.000-05:00

Okay people, I am proud to say that I have kicked the caffiene. Doing the half-caf and no more headaches. Hooray. Consider that my New Year's resolution taken care of early.

Now, let's talk about all of you folks that get on my last nerve. You know who you are.

You're "IMing" on your little "cell phones" and typing really queer stuff like "CUL8R" and "LOL". You make me sick.

Please kill the person who came up with "LOL".

You know I used to pass notes in highschool, back when we used paper and pencil because, like, it was all we friggin' had. I used to say "j/k" and "cuz" or it's lesser known version "Bcuz", but I wrote out my laughs as "ha ha" or even "tee hee". I know I'm guilty of it. But I was fifteen and I thought it was cute. Well guess what, if you are over the age of twenty-five and still using those cutesy little terms, it's not cute. So there, lameasses.

You think you're so clever.

Oh, and another thing. Very over the lame little cartooned versions that people display as themselves. I don't know why, it just irritates me. Almost everybody has one of those Yu-Gi-Oh little people as their trademark. What's going on here? Get some real pictures, not that I'm one to talk because I still can't figure out how to do it...

SHOOOWEEE. Glad to get that off my chest.

Now Happy New Year, Everbody!!! And remember folks, if you're driving, don't drink. And if you're drinking, don't drive. (Yes, you've heard it before- Beastie Boys: Check Your Head)

Happy Birthday, Jesus!

2005-12-15T16:55:00.000-05:00

Slowly, but surely, my 30th birthday is approaching. There’s no stopping it. But oddly enough, it doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.

What really bothers me, is that most likely, no one will remember. That’s what happens when you’re born the day after Christmas.

December 26th is not exactly the most fun day. Everyone’s worn out from the holidays, bloated, and fighting crowds of people for the after-Christmas-sales and returning all the crappy gifts they never wanted.

My sister, Michelle, got a turtleneck for Hanukkah from my Uncle’s cheap girlfriend. We went to the mall so that she could swap it for this eight dollar bracelet she picked only to find out to that she owed the cashier three dollars. The turtleneck’s original value was just short of five dollars before sales tax. It wasn’t the most wonderful start to that birthday.

So many lessons are learned on Christmas, and I’m not talking about how it’s better to give than to receive or "goodwill toward men" and all that. I’m talking about the real hardcore lessons of life, like who you spent too much money on for a gift that you actually fretted over whether or not they’d like it and then found out they couldn’t be bothered to spend a whole eight dollars on a turtleneck you didn’t even want in the first place.

You learn a lot about other people, too. They’re all right there with you in the department stores and malls, taking back what they never wanted or something that someone though they’d want and they are mortified not by that person’s taste, but that they could have mistaken that gift for their own taste. People begin to wonder what in the hell others really think of them afterall. For example, my parents have been the recipients of many novelty gifts. The fact that they play tennis has somehow lead others to believe that they would want tennis ball pillows and ugly miniature statues of Ziggy wearing a headband and holding a tennis racket.

So many more lessons are learned on the day after Christmas. You’re in debt, you’re disappointed in your loved ones for the bits of shit they gave you wrapped up to look like a gift and disapointed yourself for overindulging on too many cookies and saying things like, "Well, it only comes once a year!" while scarfing down another Schwetty ball chased with eggnog.
I don’t know what it is about this time of year, but I’ve never really been a fan. Too many people, too much stress, too many little details to fret over like going to the Post Office and getting the holiday stamps instead of the flag ones to stick on the Christmas card envelope that’s going to be thrown out anyway. Why do we do this to ourselves? In a society where most people are going out their minds overscheduling themselves on a daily basis, why do we push ourselves to the limit at the end of the year? It’s like, "Hurry up! The year’s almost over, give everybody else every last bit of sanity that you have left and lose your mind! And then make a promise that you’ll fix all your faults on the first day of the new year!" What the hell is that all about? I totally get why the suicidal rate skyrockets as soon as you hear a Salvation Army bell-ringer on every street corner. Killing yourself is the easy way out. It’s such a relief when it’s all over and everything is said, done, overeaten, and exchanged for something else.

Is this what God had in mind? Is this the way he really wanted his son’s birthday party to go every year? Why are we buying presents for everyone but Jesus? It’s his birthday. Yeah, yeah, don’t talk to me about how everybody’s giving a lot to charities and making bigger than usual donations to the church. That’s not going directly to Jesus. It’s going to other people and preists and nuns and stuff. They are not Jesus. They just work for him, there’s a difference. And has anyone ever bothered to think about what Jesus would like for his birthday? Has anyone ever asked? I’d really like to know.

Maybe that’s what God had in mind. Maybe God’s been looking for the perfect gift for his son. Like that new iPod with the video display. Tell me Jesus wouldn’t want one of those. But that’s a little out of my price range. Maybe I could get him one of those iTunes gift certificates, or download U2 songs for him on the hard drive so that he’d have something to listen to while he tried to figure out how to work the damn thing. I got to be honest, though, I really wouldn’t know how to program that stuff in there. Well, I’m sure he’d be able to figure it out eventually, I mean he turned water into wine.

Okay, so that takes care of him. Now for my birthday, I’d really like to just hang out and relax. I don’t really want anything, just some peace of mind. I’d like to have some laughs with friends and to be alone with my thoughts for a little while. Feed the birds and pet the cats. I just want a day off. A day where I can be me, and not have to fake it for anyone to fit into some kind of mold that conforms to their expectation of me. That would be the best birthday ever.
And I’m pretty cool about letting go of my twenties, almost as much so as was of leaving the teens, but not nearly as much as I was about going beyond the single digits. Turning ten was like I was finally on my way to having something in common with adults, we both had two numbers in our age. But I really believed that I would be regarded as an adult in my twenties, but much to my chagrin that never happened. Everyone would look at me as though I was still ten years old and say that I was "so young" which translates to "you’re a stupid baby, you don’t know anything, call yourself an adult, hah!" At least when you’re thirty, no one can really say that you’re a child anymore. I think that one is officially considered an adult when they have a three for the first number in their age.

Problem is, I still feel like I’m twelve. To think I’m going to be thirty boggles my mind. I thought when I turned thirty, I’d be like really grownup and mature and ladylike. But in my mind, I’m none of those things, not one. I don’t fit in with my peers. I fit in with a crowd of sixth-graders. So I’m constantly on the look out for children trapped in old people bodies. Oh, we’re out there, man. There’s tons of us putting on a face to work that says, "I’m an adult. I work at a job and pay bills. I have children and a spouse. I have responsibilites." But people like me only repeat that mantra to ourselves so that we can play the part and avoid having everyone else look at us like we have three heads.

Do you know how much energy it takes for me to contain my "inner child"? It takes everything I’ve got. I think that’s why it’s so hard for me to be an adult, because I’m not one. I wonder if when I was a kid that all the grown-up acting adults were doing the same thing. You know, trying to contain giggles and act all professionally grown-up when really they felt like a kid in this mature body. I mean I don’t doubt there were people like me before I realized I’m the way I am, I just wonder how they got on with their lives without just losing it.

It’s a lot more acceptable to kind of look into who you are nowadays. It certainly wasn’t that way fifty years ago. Why else did my grandmother drink instead of going on Zoloft? Because there wasn’t any. There wasn’t a lot help available to creative spirits, my grandmother, who played in what she always called an orchestra but was really a four or five piece band, put all that aside to become the "adult". She married, she had two kids and raised them, and was miserable about it and made everyone around her sorry that she had to grow up.

I think I’m in the same predicament. I’m staying at home with a child and struggling with my identity as well. Who am I? There’s the artist, the writer, the animal lover, the wife, the mother, the friend, the daughter, the sister, the aunt. I’m too many fucking people. I feel like I have to put on a different hat for every role I play, and I got to be honest, if I didn’t have so many responsiblities I needed to be in control of, I’d drink, too.

Well, Happy 30th Birthday to me. I know it’s not December 26th yet, but I am typing out this post from my birthday present- a new laptop (Suuuweeeet!). I may not be an adult, but I sure as hell wouldn’t have been allowed to play with this when I was a kid. And I guess that’s one advantage we have over the kids.

Checking myself into Maxwell House, which is like Betty Ford, but for caffeine addicts.

2005-12-07T10:40:00.000-05:00

Thanks for all your letters, your encouraging comments, and of course the care packages overnighted to me filled with Coffee-Mate. You all have no idea what this means to me.

Wait a minute. No one did that! Guess who had to get out of her pajamas and go to the store- in freezing temperatures, no less? Who had to warm up the car for twenty-three minutes and scrape all the ice off the windsheild? Who wandered around the store, hair all a'muss, clothes on backwards, hopped up on codeine (to relieve pounding caffeine headache, only, of course) and in a complete fog searching for the dreamy, creamy, french vanilla beany nectar of the coffee creamer gods???? Huh? Huh? Just who exactly do you think ending up in that predicament?

Alright.

This has got to stop. I'm putting an end to this right now.

Today is the first day of the rest of my no-longer-dependent-on-caffiene life. I need to take back control. I will start as soon as I finish my tall hot cuppa steaming coffee (with french vanilla coffee-mate).

I can do this.

I will start to wean myself off this substance. It has a demonic hold on my soul. And it can't be doing much for my anxiety issues, I suppose. It's going to be a little harder than it sounds. I've been using for a good 10 years.

It all started with a summer job at the "Unique Grind", which was a coffee shop and not a an artistic strip club as some might have assumed. I never even drank coffee before that. But it grew on me. A few months later I was back in school and the cafe was shut down. I started drinking coffee at home. Just one cup in the morning.

I started wanting a little "pick-me-up" in the afternoons, and found that coffee was doing the job so well, that I continued to use it whenever I felt that 2-4pm sluggishness.

At night, I'd drink a cup to stay up for clubbing. I mean, you can't hit any club untill after 11. That's when all the cool people come.

The next summer I was working in a drugstore. I was still drinking coffee at home. But there weren't any Dunkin' Donuts nearby where I could get my fix- keep in mind, this was in '96, before Starbucks had taken over every corner of every city and suburb. I quit after a year and took a job with The RoseCart Cafe. That's when this habit started to get really out of control.

I wasn't just drinking coffee anymore. I was onto espresso.

The Folgers and Maxwell House canned brands weren't doing it for me anymore. I needed something stronger. I started bring home bags of Guatemala Antigua from the cafe, which I ground with a newly purchased grinder. My mother thought it was a little too strong, but then she got a taste for it and requesting me to bring home other kinds like, Columbian, Sumatra, and French Roast.

A few years later, Starbucks came to town. People were paying four bucks and up for a cup of their brew. Grocery stores started to carry the beans, exposing the public to their seductive brand of coffee. Luring customers into the shops with the smell of fresh roasted toastiness and images of couples holding coffee mugs up to their noses, with their faces enveloped in steam.

Caribou Coffee has moved in down the street from me and they're even worse. Their cheery staff and goddamned good coffee is too hard to resist. The atmosphere, so alluring with it's ski lodge motif, cozy fireplaces, and enough cushy chairs for everybody and their caffeine addicted brother and you won't have to show up at 5am just to fight with another customer to get one. And of course, there's also a drive-thru for where you can get your fix without so much as leaving the confines of your vehicle.

A couple days later....

Took myself on over to Trader Joe's and picked up some Half-Caf Whole Beans the other day. So far, things are going okay. The coffee's still pretty good, I must admit. And there appears to be just enough caffeine to keep me from falling down and having a withdrawl seizure followed by hallucinations. I'm gonna keep weaning myself off. That's what my counsellor has advised me to do. I've got about 23 days left here at Maxwell House. I'm hoping to get out on a leave for the holidays, but they're pretty strict around here. Feel free to come and visit, write me a letter, or send me some flowers. And next time you have a nonfat-hafcaf-french-vanilla-latte with extra foam, remember to think of me.

Coffee-Mate

2005-12-05T09:03:00.000-05:00

Need more coffee. Ran out of Coffee-Mate. Can't drink coffee without Coffee-Mate. Must buy more Coffee-Mate so I might have another cup of deliciously artificially flavored French Vanillia coffee. And what the hell do the french really know about vanilla? What's the difference between that and plain vanilla? Doesn't matter, because without it, the coffee will be a black, bitter, hot cup of crap. If I don't get more Coffee-Mate for my coffee I'll start having caffeine withdrawl headaches. Please somebody help me for the love of GOD. I can't get to the store now, I'm still in my jammies, and I can't get out of my jammies untill I've had a good cup of coffee. I may never live to see another day without a headache or the strength to get out of my pj's.

THE UNOFFICIAL EDDIE IZZARD FAN CLUB POST.

2005-12-03T12:16:00.000-05:00

Post Secret's not so Dirty Little Secret....

2005-11-30T08:50:00.000-05:00

For some reason this morning, I decided to watch VH1 instead of the news, hadn't done it the while, and seeing new videos (and they only play videos early in the morning because the rest of day is but chockfull of really lame shows that I have been guilty of watching...) can sometimes make me feel real "hip" and "in the know" of what's going on in the world. It helps me feel 29 (my real age) again.

So anyway.

The All-American Rejects has this new video "Dirty Little Secret" and the entire video was based on a blog called PostSecret (which is pretty darned cool and highly addictive if you're not too careful.) I checked out the TAAR site just to see if there's a link or some sort of recognition given to the entire inspiration of the this blog and couldn't find any, or it's well hidden. Went on PostSecret and found this under the Frequently Asked Questions:
------------
Did The All-American Rejects Steal Your Images For Their Music Video?

No. The band made a generous donation of $2,000 to the National Hopeline Network. They were given full permission to use PostSecrets in their MTV video.

(To date, over $4,000 has been raised for 1-800-SUICIDE.)
-----------
Now, I don't want to get all negative, here, but $2,000????? And it was a donation and no money was paid directly to PostSecret's creator???!!!! Come on! Give me a break! This guy needs some money to keep his project going and he gets no credit in the video and I couldn't find the small print credit that might be on the TAAR website...

The PostSecret Book has been released.

First week sales are critical. Please buy a book or two this week to support the project.

The PostSecret book is a hardcover with 288 pages published by Harper Collins/Regan Books. All the postcard images are in color and many have never been seen before.

PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives

Is it wrong for me to feel severely annoyed by this?

This guy is a bigger human than I'll ever be....

Get your FREE iPods...Get your FREE iPods, right here!

2005-11-28T12:24:00.000-05:00

Well, why don't I just come out and say it? Just click the link and sign up and then you can get your free iPod, too.

I'll get a free iPod, he'll get a free iPod, wouldn't you like to get a free iPod, too?

Come on, people. Get in the free iPod giving spirit. Someone will think you spent a fortune on them. Or, be like me and just keep it for yourself.

Turkey Hangover.

2005-11-28T07:59:00.000-05:00

Dear Diary,

I feel so fat, I'm bloated beyond belief. If I were on a plane that was gonna crash into the ocean right now, I could use my belly as a bloatation device.

I will eat nothing but lettuce and drink water today. I don't even care about losing weight, I just need to eat something clean and pure, unlike the over processed ingredients of the green bean casserole leftovers I'd been snacking on. Just thinking about the turkey carcass and petrified stuffing topped with the remaining jellied gravy is sending nauseating chills up my spine.

Thank God Thanksgiving is but once a year...

The President's Pardoned Turkey.

2005-11-23T12:10:00.000-05:00

So, I just heard that Georgie-boy pardoned a turkey from being plucked, stuffed, devoured, and reheated for leftovers. Good for that turkey.

Now what about the others?

You know what I hate more than anything about this time of year? When some jerky guy starts making comments to a live turkey on TV about how "he'd better make a run for it", or "hey, you'd look fabulous on a platter with an apple stickin' outta yo' mouth", or something along those lines. How low do have to go to start hazing your future meals?

I think the same can be said for this hick I saw at the county fair we took our three year old son to this Summer. We were looking at ponies and chickens when someone squealed (yes, I know) about how cute the baby piglet was (now you get it?). I picked up Jack so that he could get look at the newborn little spotted pig with his mother when some asshole stepped in next to us with a beer in hand and turned to his buddy to say, "Hey, Earl! Get a load of this! This little piggy's got some real tender pork chops I like to put some sauce on!"

Oy. What can you do with these people? So half turned in his direction and said passive-aggressively, "Nice, real nice." But he didn't hear me, instead he moved on to drool over a lactating cow.

Happy Thanksgiving. And think of me and the poor turkeys (sp?) sacrificed for our day of glutton....I'm doing better than our feathered friends but I am doing all the cooking this year, wish me luck.

There's more than one way to catch a mouse.

2005-11-21T09:03:00.000-05:00

scritch-scritch, scratch-scratch......(pattering of tiny feet running across the ceiling)

The cats freeze, their ears perk up, and they crouch low to the ground. John hits the mute button on the TV. "Did you hear that?" he asks.

"Hear what?" I say playing dumb. I am not about to be involved in the witch hunt.

"Huh. I don't know, I thought I heard something, like maybe a mouse in the attic." He turns the volume back up while I begin to sweat trying to come up with a plan that will work. I'm on a mission to keep this uninvited creature out of harm's way.

A few years ago, Molly (the cat) had taken to sitting on the dining room table and staring at the wall for days at a time. I knew why, but John, who had never had a pet before I brought my cats into his life, hadn't a clue. I tried to distract her with catnip infused toy mice but shortly after the herb induced buzz wore off, she'd be back to staring at her favorite wall.

The next night, John woke me up to tell me that Molly had a mouse. "So?" I said pulling the blankets over my face. "No, Deb. A REAL mouse."
I jumped up out of bed and started to have flashbacks of a childhood spent wrestling varmin out of my cats' clenched teeth. The poor little mole or baby chipmunk that they'd catch a bring home bleeding a squealing in pain that I'd end up burying or trying to nurse back to health. My mom had even fashioned a little shoebox kennel with holes and a little cut-out window with a screen so that I could do my veterinary duties.

Almost always, the tiny animals would just lie in there shaking until they died. One time a baby squirrel recovered pretty well, but when I finally set it free outside it was still in shock. It didn't run away when I set it in the woods, it just sort of sat there and looked at me. It started hop away cautiously, and then I just said a little prayer hoping for the best. I went back inside and put my eyedropper of milk and shoebox away just wishing it wouldn't have to come that again.

I grabbed my glasses and ran into the dining where Molly sat growling with a mouse head sticking out of one side of her mouth and a limp tail out of the other. Lucy (the other cat) sat next to her waiting for her share, I shooed her away. No animals were gonna to die a gruesome death on my watch.

I crouched down next to Molly and cooed her telling her what a good girl she was that she caught the mouse, but she wasn't buying it. Mouse in mouth, she trotted off down the hall and into the cream-colored carpeted family room. Now I had to save a mouse without staining the floor with blood and guts. Without thinking I grabbed Molly and a pryed open her jaw. The mouse dropped and layed still. It was too late. Molly growled and squirmed wanting at it, and then all of the sudden the mouse perked up and took off crawling along the wall and disapeared. John yelled that I should have let Molly kill it and should have known better that the mouse was only playing dead. I told him only possums play dead and did he really want to watch Molly commit murder and ruin the carpet at the same time?

The next night was a deja vu. John woke me up and there was Molly with the mouse again and Lucy sitting next to her like a guilty accomplice. Didn't the mouse learn it's lesson the first time? Whatever, I knew exactly what to do. "Get me a big cup!"

"What? What big cup?"

"You know, one of those big plastic cups, like the one you got at the Indian's game- Hurry!!"

"I don't know what good that's gonna do, just let her kill it! It's a goddamned mouse, Debbie."

"I don't care! Now get me that cup!"

"Jesus Christ..." John came back with the cup, "Is this one okay?"

"Perfect, okay, now Molly, open up..." I straddled the cat and placed the cup over her face and worked my fingers into the back of jaw forcing it open. She growled and made noises like demons were taking over her body, she wiggled around and I clenched her tighter between my knees, "Now, hold still, will ya?" Even though her mouth was almost open all the way the mouse was still stuck, so I tried to get it out and then when I got it I felt this incredibly painful pinch on the inside of my pinky finger. "Motherfucker! I'm trying to save you, you little shit!" I only say the big "F" when I'm in pain. It's just a knee jerk reaction.

I put the mouse in the cup and brought it outside. The following day I went to the doctor to get a tetnus shot. "Wait a minute, yo got bit by what? Are you telling me that you were saving a mouse? Do you know what a problem those things are? Serves you right getting bit. I hope you learned your lesson."

I can't help it. I just can't stand seeing an animal suffer. What a horrible way to die, being eaten by a cat.

We still get mice every Fall, and this year I finally found a humane trap that really works- and yes I've tried others. Even though John wants to use poison, (which I will not allow, because if the cat catches the poisoned mouse, it could get poisoned, too) he lets me catch them alive and he drives them out to the Metro Parks to set them free. He's afraid that if we just take it out to the back yard it will find it's way back in. So far, the new mouse catching system has been working out just fine, and all is right with world again...

Public Service Announcement

2005-11-20T08:38:00.000-05:00

Lyme's Disease is no day at the beach.*

*Click on the PSA link above for more information on how you can help.

Nevermind the "Engrish" used in the photo op of Hall and Oates singing with a Japanese popstar for a Coke advertsement. (scroll all the way down the link...)

Houston: Hall & Oates have a problem...

2005-11-17T10:58:00.000-05:00

Say it isn't so...it isn't so-oooh-oh.

I just went shopping around for a Hall & Oates pic to upload to my last post and came upon the Official Hall and Oates Website. They have a blog, and dude, Daryl Hall has Lyme's Disease. Why wasn't I informed? Where are the telethons, America? Too busy trying to save the rest of the world when one of the greatest rock bands of all time is in trouble????

Here's Hall, with his post....what a brave soldier. By the way, could there be any more exclamation points(!!!!)

7.15.2005

Lyme Disease

OK everybody! Here's my story so far...On Saturday, June 18th, I played a great acoustic show for a Northern Dutchess County Benefit. All went well - I felt fine.On Sunday, I woke up feeling as though I had been beaten with a baseball bat. My bones ached, I had a headache my skin and hair hurt!

Monday, I developed a fever of 103 degrees. Not pleasant, especially because I was supposed to fly to San Diego to play a show the following day. I talked to Brian Doyle: he suggested I travel the day of the show (Tues), opportunistically hoping that this was a 24 hour flu that would blow through me.

On Tuesday morning, I woke up with a 101 degree temp, but still left the house, drove 2 hours to JFK, flew 5 hours to LAX, drove 3 hours in traffic to San Diego and played the show! Talk about "Doing It For Love!"After the show, I literally thought I was going to drop dead!

I was supposed to do another show in San Diego the next day, but I told everyone to cancel - there was just no way I could do it.I then had two days off (supposedly to recover) in time for the next show in Phoenix. On the first day off, I traveled to L.A. (still with a fever), saw a doctor there, who gave me B12 and cortizone.

The following day, I still had a fever, but flew to Phoenix anyway. I felt terrible! It was 108 degrees in Phoenix and felt like 180 with my fever. At 8:00 p.m., I hit the stage.After about 4 or 5 songs (Used To Be My Girl), I suddenly felt a wave of fainting and nausea hit me and knew I had to stop immediately.

So, I just said, "Sorry everybody, but I have to leave the stage." John then took over, singing 3 or 4 songs. I could hear him from backstage and they sounded great. I particularly remember a great version of Italian Girls! (By the way, all this was recorded on the new "Instant Live" system, so if you're curious, you can get this show online!)

So anyway, there I was backstage - totally out of it - but my will (and maybe stupidity) won out. I returned to do a few songs at the end. Am I a trooper or what?!After that, I realized that it was not smart to continue the tour feeling the way I felt, with what I thought was a "killer flu." I returned to upstate NY where I just laid in bed for days with a fever that just wouldn't go away.

After more of this, I grew increasingly sure that this was not simply the flu!Sara Allen (my unofficial doctor up here) suggested I go to the local hospital for blood test to check for Lyme disease, a very common malady in the part of the world. I did this, and after having to wait out the drawn out 4th of July weekend, finally got my results sent to my Dr. in NYC.

I went into town to see the doctor, and he told me I tested positive for Erlichia, a tick-borne disease, but I was too early to get a reading on Lyme. I then showed him a three inch red ring with a bite-like center that had appeared the night before - Voila! Lyme Disease!

I have since been put on an antibiotic (doxycycline) for one month, and if all goes well (by no means assured), I will be cured. I hope this is the way it works out, 'cause I MISS YOU GUYS and want to get back on the road. Let's hope for the best.Lyme and other tick-related diseases are very serious maladies that for some reason have been underplayed by the media and medical profession. Chronic Lyme causes arthritis, heart problems, stroke - even death. This is serious stuff, and the public should be better informed, as it has reached epidemic proportions in the Northeast! You'll be hearing more from me about this.

Wish me well!Daryl

posted by Daryl at 5:34 PM

Houston; we have a problem.

2005-11-15T11:23:00.000-05:00

Okay, people. We've been experiencing some technical difficulties over here. I have to reinstall all the bloglinks and bunch of other crap, so bear with me....

I'm sorry things haven't been too happening on here, a bit of a writer's slump and cancelling out my AdSense account made for some issues.

But, I will give you a little something, like an interesting tidbit to chew on while you wait for the fog to lift over here. Think of it as that Muzak you're stuck listening to while left on hold when you try to call, oh let's say, your parole officer or something...

Here it is: In case you've ever wondered or were just too embarassed to ask, "Deb, what exactly does Smile if You're Lying really mean? Where does that saying come from?" Well, it's an old saying. Oh, you've never heard of it? Okay, it's an old saying from my family. When we were kids (my sister and I, that is) it seemed as though every single time we were coming home from somewhere with my mom, a Hall & Oates song would come on the radio. It was this really weird coinsidence that never failed. I mean this didn't seem so out of the ordinary in the seventies and eighties when they were always on the radio, but this continued into the nineties. Every time we were going home. It got to the point where if we were on a way to somewhere to run another errand and Hall & Oates came on, we actually figured that it was some sort of sign that it was time to go home. It still happens to me every once in a while now when I'm alone. But if I'm out with my mom, and we're not listening to NPR or talk radio, it will come on for sure. What are the gods trying to tell us????

Okay, so back to "smile if you're lying". "Your Kiss is on my List", the Hall & Oates song has a line in it that goes "I only smile when I lie". Whenever I wanted to bust my big sister to watch her get in trouble I would say, "Smile if you're lying!" It ussually worked. But then she'd get better at covering up, so I'd have to make faces or funny voices until she cracked and then I could take in the sights of her getting in trouble because she'd been a liar.

Hope that little nugget holds you over...

Let's Hope My Husband Doesn't Read This...

2005-11-13T11:27:00.000-05:00

That said, chances are he won't, but in the event that he does, he should not be ashamed or embarassed for his actions....

The Naked Truth

One of the things that irritate me the most about being told what’s fashionable is that it completely undermines what everybody is already wearing. Fashion critics are always making appearances on those morning news shows telling us what’s “in” this season. Oh, so now it’s not okay to wear pink pants? But last year you were all excited about the pink pants. Have you listened to yourself talk? “Chartreuse is the new orange! And pink is definitely OUT! If you are still wearing pink, you need to get a magazine and take a good look at what’s going on the world! Honestly, if I see anymore pink, I might puke!”

I’m reduced to sobbing in my closet feeling completely lost. Now what? Should I just chuck everything out and send it off to Goodwill? I don’t really care for chartreuse day-glow green or even what used to be hot, orange. I love how these fashion editors make these statements about what color is hot. Have they stopped to consider how ridiculous someone, such as myself, might look sporting a bright green shirt? It’s not going to work with my pasty, pale complexion. I’m just going to have to be out of style and wear pink.

You can never be in fashion. It is impossible to keep up. I have a real hard time agreeing with some of the choices stars wear for award show dresses. A well known actress was wearing what I thought to be incredibly hideous gown. She was so pale and that black tulle and lace dress completely washed her out and made her look like a heroine addict gone Goth. But all the fashion critics raved, claiming it was a hot new trend she was setting. That’s fashion forward. It’s not enough to be in style now. You must be constantly moving forward. So how should I dress now? If now is out and forward is in, should I dress like I’m from the future? But what about the past? Oh, that’s retro.

And what about these runway shows? There are definitely some weird “clothes” there. Designers throw together these gowns of exaggerated proportions made of new age materials like tin and gravel. There’s never anything sensible to wear. Then there are those people sitting in the front row, straining their necks to look at these odd creatures wearing even odder creations. And they’re all taking notes. What are they writing down?

The models walk very strangely, too. Who walks like this? It would really be something to actually be out somewhere and see someone walking around like this. And they look very pissed, although who could blame them? If it were me, I’d want out of those ridiculous things, too.

And it seems perfectly acceptable to be mostly nude and walk around when you’re a runway model. Nipples everywhere. I don’t understand how it’s okay for the runway nipple to be broadcast on the news that’s doing a segment on “Fashion Week” but never acceptable anywhere else. I guess it’s because the models are practically flat.
It’s comparable to seeing a three-year-old girl running around on a beach with only her bathing suit bottoms on. Nothing strange about that.

But I find it rather ironic how the only fashion show that you would rarely see a nipple is Victoria’s Secret. It’s the only show where the models actually get to wear bras, and underwear for that matter. They also can’t take the chance exposing the nipples because they belong to bigger breasts. For whatever the reason, the bigger the breast, the more obscene the nipple is. It’s the truth.

There is a line to be drawn with nude offensiveness of a man verses a woman. If a woman went around the city flashing people, the only ones who might make a call to the police is another woman. It’s hard to picture a man calling that complaint in.

“Excuse me officer, but there’s this woman flashing people around town. I really think you need to send out a squad car or something.”

“Is she good looking? Does she have a nice body?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“Then I don’t see what the problem is, sir.”

“What do you mean? She’s naked!”

“Now, look, if she was ugly and fat or even a man for that matter, then I think we’d have something to deal with. But she looks good and no women are calling it in, so how about we just look the other way and let her have her fun, alright?”

Now if a man is flashing, that’s a whole ‘nother story. People would call the police immediately. Both men and women would have a big problem with that. It would make the news and the guy would be taken away in handcuffs.

If we had more male nudity in R-rated movies, would that help ease our fears? There are naked women all over the place and nobody’s up in arms about it. But if a male actor dares to show it all, people are talking. It’s a really big deal.

I remember when my friends and I went to see Young Guns. We only went to ogle at all the cute guys in the movie and couldn’t care less about cowboy and Indian story. One scene took place in a whorehouse where Emilio Esteves got up out of bed to look out the window and he was naked. His bare ass was right there for the whole theatre to see. My friend Margie and I got so excited about it. And when he put his pants on she yelled out “Rewind it! Rewind it!”

Men are much freer about their bodies, too. Women should really take a lesson from them. I cannot stand to be naked unless necessary. When I get out of the shower, I towel off and put on some underwear. I don’t linger around in the nude. I really don’t want to see my body in its true form long enough to make me depressed. My husband on the other hand likes to streak in the house.

He really doesn’t sit around naked, and I appreciate that. For the most part he’s very modest, except for when he gets out of the shower. Something about all the hot water and soap loosens him up. Because once he steps out and dries off he feels like a new man. He’s ready to make the long trip from the shower to his closet naked.

I’ve asked him why he does it. “How about a robe or even a towel around your waist?”

“What do I need that for? I’ve got two hands; one for the front, one for the back. I think I’m doing okay.”

Now there’s a good thirty-five foot dash from the bathroom to the bedroom. The windows are wide open and he’s in for the run of his life.

Next on my list of things to do...

2005-11-11T20:09:00.000-05:00

Not enough to write about lately, so I'll bore you with my next task on the to-do list, which would be so much fun to call the "ta-da!" list.

I shall, right before your very eyes, get rid of the annoying AdSense ads. It's not like it's really making me a lot of money. Not even enough to buy a cup of coffee, not the frothy kind, I'm talking not even enough to buy me a cup from a coffee vending machine in a truck stop in the middle of Pennsylvania.

So much to do, so much to do....

And the winner is...

2005-11-10T13:27:00.000-05:00

Micycle Tricycle! Congratualions, Mike. You've helped rid this blog of that really annoying "l" thingy that was hanging out and the top of every post on here. For those of you that don't remember or are new here, there was this little lower cased "l" on top of every post. Somehow, it invited itself on here and wouldn't leave. I don't know who put it there (probably me) or what it wanted (cash), but I can tell you this: I am not done investigating this (yes, i am).

Anyway, let's hear it for Mike, a hero and damned good blogger. If you haven't checked out his blog, then you're a fool, because it is one of the best blogs out there. And I don't know if that's saying a lot, because there's a lot of blogs that suck. In fact about 93.8% really, really stink. And he has link to this blog which makes him extra cool.

Hello? Is it me you're looking for....

2005-11-07T08:53:00.000-05:00

Okay, it's been about a week and, oh, so much has happened. I suppose you want to hear about it, now.

I buried a chickadee.
I ate too much refined sugar and it has thrown my organic food consuming body into a spin causing me to have night sweats.
I have baked a lot of cookies.
I have some kind of spasm in my back from raking leaves.
I went to the eye doctor.
I went to the library.
My books finally arrived from eBay.
Only one of my handbags sold on eBay, with all the advertising fees verses the profit, I broke even.
I carved a pumpkin, it is sitting outside and molding away quite nicely.
I gave candy to the 3 trick-or-treaters that showed up and realized that once again I bought too much candy for fear that if I didn't buy enough the trick-or-treaters would turn on me.
We drove around to look at houses for sale.
I've been watching too many ghost shows and am convinced there is a ghost in our house. Or at least the one that turns on the attic light every once in a while for no reason at all.

Ordering contacts would be much easier minus the red tape.

2005-10-26T12:47:00.000-04:00

So I ordered my lenses, a long overdue chore by the way, and Coastal Contacts emailed me one of those virtual reciepts and all is cool. Then I get an email saying that my prescription has expired. I beg to differ, I am still blind and that prescription seems to do the trick.

Now, let's go back a couple months ago. John comes in with the mail and hands me a postcard from Sears Optical, it's one of those reminder things that says I should go see the doctor. Whatever, I say, last time he told me that my prescription barely changed. Why should I have to go and pay a hundred bucks to hear the same news? I know nothing's changed. So I tossed it in the trash and then a few days ago I took out my last remaining pair of lenses and decided I better order some new ones before these start bothering my eyes.

I don't want to go to the eye doctor. I mean, it's a lot better than going to the dentist, but it's just kind of pointless.

I know he's just going to squeeze me for cash while he holds my prescription hostage.

But now I'm stuck. I have to call and make the stupid appointment. You know, I'm really not in the mood.

Help.

2005-10-26T08:38:00.000-04:00

My Dear People,

Okay, once again, I am asking for your help. I don't know how to get this stinking little white line that looks like a lower cased "L" or capital "I" (you decide) off of the top of every post. I'm a bit put out by that thing.

I know one of you out there knows the secret and you know who you are. I implore you to look within yourself and find that good samaritan that lives within a few of us and help me.

Waiting on pins and needles,

Debbiecakes

Contiued from 1-800-Jenny-Craig

2005-10-25T15:57:00.000-04:00

Here's just a bit more of the story that received a flood of comments from all of my biggest fans out there in Nowhere Land. By the way, there were no comments. Feel free to leave one. And note to Kirsty, I'm sorry but I am going to have to take out all the anonymous comments, I know just how careful you have with what you say about Jenny since you are still under contract.

When Amy called back to schedule an interview I got nervous. I didn’t have any real work clothes. I’d always been in jeans with all my other jobs. I went shopping at TJMaxx and then in my aunt’s closet, who ended up lending me an entire outfit. I felt fat in it and I was sure that wouldn’t be a good thing considering I should feel and look fit and trim in order to convince people I know how to get them to lose weight. The blazer and skirt were a couple sizes too big, but my aunt insisted that it looked fine. The shoes fit, but weren’t my style at all. I felt like I was playing business lady dress-up in my mother’s clothes.

I sweated during the entire car ride down to the regional office. I had no clue what kind of questions she was going to ask me or how the hell I was going to answer them. I had spent the whole weekend pretending to be interviewed asking myself questions like, “So, Debbie, what do think that you have to offer us here at Jenny Craig? I see that most of your prior work experience is in (skims over the resume)….oh, it looks like you worked in some cafés? Is that correct? And what do think your prior work in the restaurant field has taught you about losing weight? I mean, look at you, you look like a fat cow in that suit! Are you wearing your mother’s clothes?”

I walked into the lobby and the receptionist looked up at me and asked, “Can I help you?” I immediately knew she thought I was fat and probably assumed I was there to lose weight, but I cut her off. “Yes, I have an interview scheduled with Amy.” And with that Amy appeared around the corner walking toward me with a big smile and her hand stretched out to shake mine. “It’s so nice to meet you! Come on back! Oh! By the way, this is Lisa and Bridget!” she said introducing me to the girls behind the counter. “Hi, nice to meet you,” they said

The entire interview felt like a therapy session. She’d put at ease immediately about not knowing the first thing about weight loss. There was in depth paid training that all the new consultants were required to go through. She asked me lots of questions about my previous work experience and hung on my every word even when I talked about how at my last job we had to wash all the dishes by hand because there wasn’t enough room in the kitchen for an industrial dishwasher.

She was incredibly nice and friendly, very tall and pretty and had this star quality about her. Even though she’d been super nice, I felt like a dumpy frumpy loser that she didn’t want to make feel bad by telling me there was no way I was right for the job. It seemed like everything was going well enough but I’d figured at the end of this really long and involved interview that she kindly shake my hand and tell she’d give me call after reviewing other candidates for the job. But then out of nowhere it seemed, she just came out and said, “You know, I’m really not supposed to do this, but I just feel like you’d be a perfect fit here. I’d like to offer you a consultant position, but I’d really like to see you in a management position in the future, what do you think?” I was stunned and accepted. She walked me out and reintroduced me as a new consultant to Lisa and Brigdet. I felt like saying, “In your face!” but I just smiled and thanked Amy for the opportunity and drove home on cloud nine.

Still working on it, they'll be more to come. Like you even care.

You want the truth?

2005-10-21T15:42:00.000-04:00

Okay. I lied. Maybe my popcorn maker was not a "featured" news story, but it could have been.

Anyway, I don't even know if they read my email or not because I wasn't able to watch the entire three hour broadcast this morning. But if it never ended up on air, then I think Fox & Friends are the real losers here because it certainly isn't me. They could have kibbitzed about popcorn, popcorn makers, brands and various kinds of kernels. There could have even been an online poll.

Naturally the discussion would have moved onto the subject of popcorn balls and recipes would be made available. I would have been scheduled as a guest on the show to demostrate the old fashioned and long forgotten art of kettle popcorn popping. Who knows how different the world would be today if that email were in fact read on air. And it was a good email, too. One of my top five best written emails of all time. Perhaps even, number three.

My old popcorn maker

2005-10-21T07:23:00.000-04:00

more on that later...

The Old Popcorn Maker in Question...

This morning my old popcorn maker was a featured news story on Fox & Friends.It all started with Steve Doocey (first guy on the left) complaining about how he couldn't find any bags of raw loose corn popping kernels at the grocer's.

They only carried that new-fangled microwaveable kind.

Then, I remembered that I, too, appreciate the old fashioned popcorn making traditions of our ancestors. In fact, I'd made a bowl of the white fluffy munchies only last night. It was the first official homemade kettle corn of the Autumn season in our household.

Unfortunately, I decided to try out a new expensive gourmet brand of black kernels. It sounded exotic and tempting so I bought it. But it was horrible and full of tough shells that did little for the pallette but leave it wondering what the hell was I trying to ingest. It wreaked havok on our gums forcing us to floss immediatley after eating and picking out contact lens sized husks from between our teeth.

So here's the email I sent to Fox:

Debbie Cakes to friends
More options
7:23 am (3½ hours ago)

Hi Guys;

Come on, you knew that some loser was going to write in about how they have one of those old popcorn makers.Mine has been passed down a few generations. It's old, it's electric (believe it or not) and is on the brink of destruction. My sister and I fought over the rights to it and somehow I won.
It makes the best popcorn. Orville Redenbacker's got nothing on me.By the way, I just happened to break out the old girl last night and used a new popcorn kernel brand called "Black Jewel". It sounded exotic, but instead was horrible and expensive. Just thought you should know, Steve.

Alright people, back to the real news....

Deb @#$%^}$#%^&(! ,
OH

P.S.I have a picture of it, but I doubt you're that interested...

Help Wanted:

2005-10-20T13:11:00.000-04:00

Does anybody out there know how to get rid of this annoying little white lower case L from the top of every post I have? It's really starting to get on my last nerve.
Thank you.

What Do All These Women Have In Common?

2005-10-18T14:11:00.000-04:00

What do all these women have in common? Okay, besides looking like me, really.

Jennifer Aniston and the many hairstyles of:

That's me, on the right...

Chris Kattan as Kathy Griffin;

Kathy Griffin, as herself:

Woman who claims to be "Vitamin C";

Actual Vitamin C:

Before breast reduction;

After the procedure:

Jagged Little Pill;

No, Thank you, India.

Don't judge me, I found it when I googled Alanis, okay?

Hey....wait a minute! That looks like...me- who put that there?

I know, it doesn't look like me. In fact through modern technological distortion, it appears that I have on a ton of eyeshadow, which is not the case. In fact I'm not wearing any today. Oh well.
Still, curious, huh? Okay, well here's another one, back when I had my Paige Davis flippy 'do last year:

Well, come on, you didn't think I'd put an actual photo of the real me did you? Sorry, Charlie, I'm a little too chicken to for that. Way too many pervs lurking around on the internet.

Hey! Has anyone ever told you that you look like____?!!

2005-10-18T10:48:00.000-04:00

Has this ever happened to you? You know, someone meets you and maybe they're a little sloppy (or not) and start being brutally honest with you that your face shares some similiar features with a celebrity? Okay, sometimes, that's not a compliment either.

I really got to thinking about this lately. It's happened quite a lot to me. Here's who I've been told I look like:

Jennifer Aniston (yeah!)
Kathy Griffin (umm, yeah.)
Alannis Morrisette (okay, I guess.)
Gillian Anderson (the redhead from XFiles)
Vitamin C (okay, I don't know who she is either.)
Punky Brewster (now or when she was Punky Brewter- before or after breast reduction?)

Okay. So, some of these people I can sort of see a bit of resemblance. When Friends was starting to become a big hit and had been working in coffee shops, I got a lot of the "hey you look like Jennifer Aniston" comments. It went away after I lost the "Rachel" 'do. But then it started coming back. I was working as a preschool teacher when I'd decided enough with trying to grow this hair out and chopped it off into a nice bob. Then another teacher, a strange one who one day brought a picture of her dead cat to school to show me, said, "Hey, why did you cut your hair? Are trying to look like Jennifer Aniston or something? I mean, cause you look exactly like her." Okay, then. Like I said, she was a bit of a freak.

When I used to work in a cafe back when I was still sporting the "rachel", this regular customer came in for a cuppa and swore that I looked "just like that girl from Suddenly Susan!!!" Which one? "Oh! I can't think of her name...but you look just like her!" Oooh! Brooke Shields? (Who I look nothing like, but I'll take it. "No, the redhead spitfire!" That would be Kathy Griffin. Now, I really like Kathy Griffin. But don't get me excited saying that I look like the Suddenly Susan chick and it turns out it's the goofy comic relief. Thanks.

My mom is the one who swears that I look like Gillian Anderson. I can see that a little. And since I loved the XFiles, I could live out my Mulder fantasies by watching my lookalike investigate the paranormal side by side.

I was in the flats (Cleveland bar and club district) when a very drank albeit very cute band guy was going nuts over me and calling people over to take a poll on how much I looked like Alanis Morrisette. What do you do with yourself in that kind situation?

Back to preschool teacher times. I had some highlights put in and one afterschool kid about ten years old started yelling to his freinds that I looked like Vitamin C. Then a couple of the girls agreed with him and became incredibly hyper jumping around me saying that I looked like Vitamin C. I guess that's a good thing if it's cold and flu season.

And lastly, I've been told that I looked like Punky Brewster for eons. I don't know if people think I look like her now as a little kid or that I look like the current Punky Brewster all grown up. Perhaps it's that little red bandana I always have tied around the knee of my jeans.

1-800-JENNY-CRAIG

2005-10-17T13:39:00.000-04:00

This is just part one of many, many parts of this sorted tale....and it's all true...

I found an ad in the Hartford Courant for a weight loss consultant position at Jenny Craig. I was unemployed and needed to either find work or move back to Cleveland and live with my parents. My entire reasoning for moving to Connecticut was to help my aunt run her café and now she was closing it. I figured it was time to make a preemptive strike against my karma. Since I’d spent the last year of my life fattening everyone up with homemade pastries, working at a diet center was the only way to the settle the score.

I called the number listed and left a voicemail saying that I was interested in finding out about what the job entailed. I didn’t know anything about losing weight. I’d gained about twenty pounds during my freshman year at Kent State and lost it on my own. But I can’t say that I’d really made a conscious effort to. It’s sort of happened by osmosis. I didn’t go back to Kent, started working full time and since I wasn’t sitting around smoking pot and stuffing my face with Wendy’s and Taco Bell, somehow the pounds just melted away.

After leaving that message I found myself getting even more curious about what it meant to be a “weight loss consultant”. I’d actually get to learn all about how to lose weight, and working for a big diet guru like Jenny Craig would expose me to all the secrets of how the rich and famous do it. And I’d get paid for it! I’d actually be doing something to help people, something to help them out of the misery that goes along with being overweight. I’d be like a medical professional, but then would I need to know stuff like a real dietician or nutritionist knows? I quickly began to doubt that I would ever be qualified enough to consult overweight people on how to lose weight. What the hell did I have to offer? What did I really know about diet and exercise? How was I supposed to figure out how to teach someone what and how much to eat? I was sure that you needed some sort of background in nutrition to know what you’re talking about. I’d never be able to get this job.

A couple days later the phone rang, and a woman named Amy was calling about the message I’d left. She sounded really friendly and professional and asked me about my previous jobs. When I’d told her about how I really didn’t have any experience in the diet industry but I was still interested in learning she didn’t baulk at my ignorance. She asked me to send her my resume` and when she had time to look at it she’d give me a call to set up an interview. Resume`? I didn’t know how to make a resume. I didn’t even know what one looked like. My fiancé`, John worked in an office, he’d know how write one of those.

When we sat down at the computer to type one up, I realized it was going to be one of the most pathetic looking resumes ever. “Okay, first you need a mission statement, or a goal,” John said. What was my mission? “Like my mission in life? Well, I should say something like; My mission is to become very healthy, or help others become really healthy. It should say something about eating right if I want them to think that I really want the job.” I had no idea what I was talking about. John suggested that maybe we should keep it simple by stating that my objective was to obtain a weight loss consultant or entry level position at Jenny Craig. Wow, he really knew what he was doing. There’s no way I could ever sound that professional.

I felt squeamish when he starting asking me about every job I’d held in the past five years. But I’d only been working for three years, I said. Unless I could count my summer jobs, would that be better? Then it would look like I’d been working for a long time and that I’d had lots of jobs. I was sure that the more jobs it’d looked like I’d had, the more impressed Jenny Craig would be. John said that long resumes with lots of different jobs would only make me appear unstable and unreliable. What would I have ever done without him?

I looked at the finished product with a sense of pride. There it was, neatly typed, my entire employment history. From August of 1995 through March of 1996 I’d worked at Discount Drugmart as the Manager of the Cosmetics Department. I was really only a cashier located at the makeup counter, but I was in charge of all the stock and inventory, and since I was the oldest cashier at that counter that pretty much made me a manager. From April 1996 through March of 1997 I’d been the assistant manager for the RoseCart Café. I waitressed and took inventory, and the owners had given me some extra responsibilities that they just couldn’t trust the teenagers with, like counting cash and making bank deposits. Then from March of 1997 through September 1998 I’d been working at Celia’s Café and Deli, my aunt’s place, as a manager, cook, waitress, cashier, and buyer. I did everything anyone who works in a restaurant does, especially when only three people work there.

But wait! There's more....to be continued, dot, dot, dot.

Did he just say?....

2005-10-16T15:01:00.000-04:00

Okay, someone just forwarded this to me. I have no idea if George Carlin really said this or if it's just some stupid hoax. Either way, that's pretty controversial. Have a look at this:

George Carlin on New Orleans

"Been sitting here with my ass in a wad, wanting to speak out about the bullshit going on in New Orleans. For the people of New Orleans... First wewould like to say, Sorry for your loss. With that said, Let's go through afew hurricane rules: (Unlike an earthquake, we know it's coming)

#1. A mandatory evacuation means just that...Get the hell out. Don't blame the Government after they tell you to go. If they hadn't saidanything, I can see the argument. They said get out... if you didn't, it's your fault, not theirs.
(We don't want to hear it, even if you don't have a car, you can get out.)

#2. If there is an emergency, stock up on water and non-perishables. If you didn't do this, it's not the Government's fault you're starving.
#2a. If you run out of food and water, find a store that has some.(Remember, shoes, TV's, DVD's and CD's are not edible. Leave them alone.)
#2b. If the local store has been looted of food or water, leave your neighbor's TV and stereo alone. (See #2a) They worked hard to get their stuff. Just because they were smart enough to leave during a mandatory evacuation, doesn't give you the right to take their stuff...it's theirs, not yours.

#3. If someone comes in to help you, don't shoot at them and then complain no one is helping you.
I'm not getting shot to help save some dumbass who didn't leave when told to do so.

#4. If you are in your house that is completely under water, your belongings are probably too far gone for anyone to want them. If someone does want them, let them have them and hopefully they'll die in the filth. Just leave! (It's New Orleans, find a voodoo warrior and put a curse on them.)

#5. My tax money should not pay to rebuild a 2 million dollar house, a sports stadium or a floating casino. Also, my tax money shouldn't go to rebuild a city that is under sea level. You wouldn't build your house on quicksand would you? You want to live below sea-level, do your country some good and join the Navy.

#6. Regardless of what the Poverty Pimps Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton want you to believe,
the US Government didn't create the Hurricane as a way to eradicate the black people of New Orleans;
(Neither did Russia as a way to destroy America). The US Government didn't cause global warming
that caused the hurricane (We've been coming out of an ice age for over a million years).

#7. The government isn't responsible for giving you anything. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave, but you gotta work for what you want. McDonalds and Wal-Mart are always hiring, get a damn job and stop spooning off the people who are actually working for a living. President Kennedy said it best..."Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Thank you for allowing me to rant. "

squirrel napping

2005-10-16T14:30:00.000-04:00

Waiting in Bars and Restaurants

2005-10-15T16:20:00.000-04:00

I am terribly impatient when it comes to waiting for a table in a restaurant. If I walk in and they tell me there is even a 20 minute wait, I get antsy. I’m thinking, I can’t wait around with all theses other knuckleheads. And of course there’s no place to sit, so you’re left standing in the middle of all these people who are thinking the same thing you are.

“I’m going to the bar,” I’ll tell whoever I’m with. But I am actually telling that person that we are all going to the bar because I’m certainly not going in there by myself.

And then instead of waiting in the lobby with the cows- well, when you think about it, hordes of people standing together in a crowded area all talking at the same time sounds pretty close to mooing; you’re left waiting in the bar where you wait to order a drink while waiting for a table where you’ll be waited on.

There’s always this ill formed line, just mounds of people all around the bar waiting for one of the bartenders to look in your direction and get your drink. And why are there never more than two of them to handle the three-hundred of us? Why don’t they just let us back there and we can just serve ourselves? It would be a logical solution. Kind of a buffet style bar. I think it’d be a real hit.

The best way to get the bartender’s attention is to hold money, preferably, wave a five dollar bill. So that’s what I did to show him I mean business. Then I see some other people holding tens, now of course the bartender goes to them first. So I get wise and pull out a twenty. I look over at one of dopes still waving two singles in his hand, I give him a look like, How you like them apples?

I finally get some service and then there’s this very effeminate guy squeezing in next to me and starts whining, “Can I just get a glass of ice…hey! I just need- hello? Can, can I get ice, just ice? I just need a plain glass with ice is all!” What the hell does this guy think he’s doing? If I have to hold up a twenty to get a three dollar drink, he’d better hold up a fifty if he wants something for free.

With my long awaited vodka tonic in hand, I leave a one dollar tip for all his trouble. For what God forsaken reason is this? For crying out loud, these guys have got it made. Everyone’s stuffing singles into that big oversized brandy glass sitting on the counter. Ridiculous. Who’s going to drink that much brandy? Tell you what; give me the drink in that glass so that I won’t have to come back for seconds.

And I believe that I had asked for a wedge of lime. Or rather, I thought it was implied by the type of drink. A vodka tonic always comes with lime. So before the bartender gets too far I ask him for a lime. He drops something in my drink that looks like one of those pie pieces you get in Trivial Pursuit. This is not a wedge. I’ve even gotten the really paper thin slice of lime. What the hell am I supposed to do with this? I can’t squeeze it. Am I supposed to steep it in my drink like a tea bag? One time I got a piece of the lime peel. It was curly and cute, but I didn’t know what it meant. It’s the zest, I was told. Zest is a bar of soap. Gimme the wedge, damnit! I know you got more limes back there! Why are you so stingy with the limes? Give me the lime and a knife and I’ll cut my own piece. A proper wedge that I can squeeze into my drink. Jesus, do I have to do everything around here?

The Most Shocking Moment on TV

2005-10-09T18:41:00.000-04:00

(p.s. i wrote this during the premiere season of "grey's anatomy" for all you nitpicky people)

I happened to catch that new medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy the other night. Of course I couldn’t stay up to watch it in it's entirety. It comes on at ten and that’s just cutting it too close to my bed time.

I believe it was the opening scene, it must have been. It was shocking and dramatic. Usually that’s how they hook you into stay up till eleven and once again costing you that extra hour of sleep. A rape victim was rushed into the emergency room.

They began to examining her injuries when Dr. Grey, the med student, notices that this patient is wearing the same exact pair of shoes she, herself, had been wearing earlier, only these were spotted with fresh blood. They were these hideous leopard print flats, although I’m sure that they’re like a really hot designer shoe. I guess it was supposed to be a reality check moment, as if to say, “Paging Dr. Grey, this could happen to you the next time the rapist is out targeting women who fell for another bad shoe trend.”

Since Dr. Grey isn’t a full grown doctor yet, she was left to observe standing at the end of the o.r. while a team of professionals poked and prodded the patient. The man in charge the surgical team was standing at the head of the patient. For some reason he bent in closer to get a look and noticed an obstruction in her airway; no wait, it wasn’t that, there was something in her mouth, something that he was gonna get out with some tweezers. He pulled out what looked like a bloody lump. Then the camera came in for a quick close up. He seemed puzzled. He held it up high to the light and looked around, “What is that?” he said to himself. Then he asked a little louder, “Does anyone know what this is?!” The others around him looked at each other and shrugged.

Dr. Grey who was standing at the outer edge of the room spoke up, “It’s a penis.” Then the room filled with gasps and whispers, someone said “Oh my god!” and then I’m not sure but I think one of them came this close to fainting.

This may come as a surprise, but that is not the most shocking thing about that scene. The most shocking thing is that Dr. Grey, the new girl doctor knew what it was right away. “Oh yes, I’ve seen one of these before…I am almost certain it’s a…PENIS!” Shouldn’t he, who was holding this chunk of flesh, have recognized it right away? He was a trained doctor, not to mention he had been walking around with one of those since day number one. Made me wonder what might be going on in his pants.

Even after Dr. Grey had said what it was, he looked at her in complete disbelief. It would have been believable at this point for him to drop it into a metal pan demanding the nurse to rush it to the lab. “I want you to run all tests necessary to make sure this is, in fact, a penis!”

These shows keep blowing us away with all their controversy. Where will we be when someone decides it has finally gone too far. I usually don’t get personally offended when watching a show. If it’s getting on my nerves I simply change the channel. There’s more where that came from.

I used to work in a weight loss center with this one woman who would ask me every week, “Did you watch Fear Factor last night?” The answer was always the same; no. I would tell her I never watched it and wasn’t about to go and get myself hooked.

It held no interest for me, watching twenty-somethings force unspeakable things down their throats in order to have a chance at winning some money. It was all I could do to keep from wondering why it was these schmucks wouldn’t go out and just get a real job. And if not that, why not just play the lottery, go to Vegas, or even try their hand at one of those get rich quick schemes. I just couldn’t relate to people that were willing to stuff their mouths with a cow’s colon and rotted chicken brains with a side of minced pig testicles. Eating disgusting things is one thing and doing it for money is another. But doing it for only the slight chance of winning money is what gets my knickers in a bunch. It’s not even enough money to say it was all worth it. Fifty thousand dollars. Certainly I, could use fifty grand, but I’ll work at a non-stomach churning job for an entire year to earn that salary rather than spend one night gorging myself with petrified monkey feces for only a chance at having it.

John and I really got into Survivor. It was the pioneer of prime time reality shows. The first season was great, we didn’t know what to expect. People formed alliances and you started to believe that these folks must be really smart. No one else had even thought of teaming up with other people to increase their chances of going further in the competition. Now it’s the first thing they do before they even land on the remote island.

The many seasons of this show have worn away its original mystique. Even when Jeff Probst throws the newer castaways a curve ball, it’s never the same. The first season had almost no twists and turns as far as the rules of the game were concerned; it was the players that made the show a hit.

Reality shows where the contestants get kicked off the island, so to speak, lose their edge quickly. Every new season leaves the producers scratching their heads wondering how to make the show, the game, and the players more intriguing. The shows have a great beginning, but refuse to stand the test of time.

Each new season promises smarter, more cunning players. They’ve usually sent in an audition tape showing that they can be wild and crazy and are willing to doing anything to get in front of a T.V. camera. The producers try to throw off the new contestants with last minute switches in the game and upping the ante. It never really works though, because the new players are a highly evolved breed that had the advantage that the first season didn’t. They watched last year’s show.

Our own children have become zombies in front of television sets and computer screens all across America. Parents wonder why their kids are overweight, under motivated and hyperactive with short attention spans. I have a three year old son, Jack. I’m not eating granola, and making clothes out of hemp, but I try to raise him somewhat naturally. Yes, he can watch T.V. but the moment he becomes a little bit brattish about wanting to watch this or that I usually turn the television off. He’s had enough. At this very moment he’s been keeping him self busy with handful of magnets and a metal cookie sheet for the last forty-five minutes without the TV on as even background noise.

There’s a certain cable channel, and I won’t mention names, that boasts of its nutritional value for the child’s growing brain. They have some cute programs that don’t get on my nerves and aren’t completely mindless entertainment for the little ones. Shows include things like counting numbers, recognizing letters and shapes, and cute cuddly wide-eyed characters that are learning everything for the first time. They know nothing at all, which I guess is the point. Your child is either supposed to learn along with them or snicker at their stupidity.

The network says that their programming is equal to sending your child to preschool for the day. I sincerely hope that parents out there in TV land aren’t taking this claim too seriously. But the channel’s commercials certainly don’t help.

In one such ad, you watched as a little girl sat on the couch with her grandparents talking about the usual childish nonsense when her buzz kill of a mother walks in. She tells her that’s enough chatting it up with Grandma and Grandpa; it’s time for preschool. The mother then hands her a small backpack to put on. The child pulls the straps over her shoulders and plops a squat on the floor with her face inches away from the television set.

From 6 AM to 6 PM, your child can watch preschool programs. Why pay for an actual preschool when there’s one on TV all day long? I wonder how much longer this cable channel can keep the FCC at bay with this ridiculous claim. Surely, some trailer park trash mother will be charged with neglecting and endangering her child by leaving them parked in front of the TV while she ran out to get some smokes and beer. She’ll claim that she had left her child at preschool so what’s the big woop? It might not be a severed penis in someone’s mouth, or even on TV, but still, I think that’s pretty shocking.

pps. if you click on the title you can check out the most dramtic surgery ceremony ever. i think i found the picture. i know, i'm lame for even looking it up....

Autumn in Cleveland

2005-10-06T13:30:00.000-04:00

Enough with the heat already. I can’t wait for fall. I’m sick of being hot.

It’s October. It’s supposed to be “brisk”, good running weather. But instead, I’ve been sweating in my jeans for the last three days. That’s right, jeans. I’m boycotting all summer clothes. Well, not all, I’ll wear a t-shirt or tank, but no more shorts. I refuse.

I keep looking at my fall clothes oh, so longingly. Like forbidden lovers, the call to me, an angora sweater sleeve falls from the shelf and brushes against my shoulder. I tell him “not now.” My high-heeled boots beckon me, I tell them we will be together soon. I will wear them with my tan corduroys when it gets cooler. They don’t realize it’s harder for me than it is for them.

Normally, Cleveland wouldn’t conjure up images of a tropical climate. But let me tell you, the summers here are as hot as hell. Humid as….something other than hell, because I think with all that fire, it’s probably like a nice, dry heat.

Did I mention that we have no central air? Well, we used to have a couple of units up until John took them down- one month ago. “Summer’s almost over, we don’t need these anymore. It’s been getting pretty cool at night.” He does this every year. Then I complain that it must be nice to work in an air-conditioned office all day while his wife and child are left to fend for themselves like a couple of Alaskan Huskies locked in a hot car.

This morning I checked the weather. High of 79. What the? They said it was gonna rain and be like 55 just a few days ago. Liars. It’s freezing in the morning and then at eleven o’clock you need to change all your clothes and put on more deodorant. By the time “Survivor” is on tonight I’ll be sitting on the couch bundled in a fleece blanket.

When I got dressed this morning I really had to do some thinking. I was the parent helper at my son’s preschool today. I was going to have to figure out a way to dress appropriately from 9am-12pm. I wore a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie. Twenty minutes after I got there I decided to lose the sweatshirt. The preschool teacher, who’d been wearing a cardigan, and I found ourselves tugging on our shirts and then she turned to me and said, “Is it hot in here or is it just me?”

"Happy Anniversary!!!" or perhaps not...

2005-10-04T20:02:00.000-04:00

About six years ago, my newlywed husband, John, and I drove over to my mother-in-law’s house on a Sunday. We’d been married about one month and truly believed our love was here to stay. Still feeling that honeymoon bliss, we were happy to go over for Sunday dinner. This dinner was in honor of my brother-in-law, Jimmy, and his wife Kathy. It was their tenth wedding anniversary.

“I can’t believe it was ten years ago, I can still remember sweating in that tux outside when we took pictures. It was so humid, and the limo’s air conditioning broke. It was awful,” John said. I couldn’t tell you a thing about that day myself, for I was but a twinkle in my husband’s eye.

Anyway, we hadn’t actually bought them a gift. Jimmy worked for the state and had a hectic schedule. We were planning on getting them tickets to see The Lion King on Broadway. Truth be told, we weren’t ready to fork over a few hundred bucks on tickets until we knew when they’d be able to go for sure. So in the cute little Hallmark card I wrote:

Dear Jimmy and Kathy,

Congratulations and Happy 10th Anniversary! I hope that we’re half as happy and as in love as you two are today when it’s our tenth! Consider this a gift certificate for two tickets to “The Lion King”. Just give us the date you can go and we’ll take care of the rest.

Love Always,
Deb & John

We pulled in the driveway and walked in the side door, which is the entrance to the kitchen. I had smile on my face and said “Hello!” but that smile and cherry disposition quickly faded. I looked at my mother and sister-in-law who were sitting at the kitchen table. They looked upset.

“Deb why don’t sit down, we need to talk,” said Theresa, my sister-in-law.

Jimmy entered the kitchen and took my husband aside into the den where I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

What the hell is going on? They’ve split us up, something happened, someone died! Oh God, someone must have died. My mind was racing.

I sat down cautiously, “What’s going on? You guys are really making me a little worried.”

Theresa looked at my mother-in-law who gave her the nod to go ahead and speak. She drew in a deep breath and said, “Jimmy and Kathy are going to a marriage counselor.”

I have to say that I was never more relieved- I really thought someone died. But why the hell are we finding this out now on their wedding anniversary?

“I don’t understand, they seem so happy. How long have they been going to one? What’s the problem? Where’s Kathy?” I whispered.

“Kathy’s not here. Jimmy thought it best if she stayed home.”

“What?! I don’t get it, what’s going on? I’m just in shock! I mean, yeah, they bicker, but…” I began to realize they did bicker, quite a lot actually. Kathy tended to get a little heated over small things. She seemed to always spend money on new clothes, jewelry, manicures, going on spur of the moment trips all the time. I just assumed they made lots of cash and they treated themselves to a vacation or two- every few months. She was pretty rude to John, too. She’d always pick on him for being cheap. And he was, still is. Even though I tried to believe that she was just busting his balls, sometimes she’d crossed the line. I used to think that maybe I just need not be so sensitive. She was also pretty opinionated. Like, in your face, opinionated. Not a characteristic of hers that I particularly enjoyed.

“We were pretty shocked, too,” Theresa continued. “Jimmy said they’d been going for a couple months. He’s never mentioned anything about having problems. He says he wanted to get divorced, but she really wants to give the counseling a try, so I don’t what’s going to happen.”

After the three of us sat in stunned silence at the table, John and Jimmy reappeared. Now the five of us were silent in the tiny kitchen. The noise of the blaring TV in the den was only bit of distraction from the tension. My father-in-law was still sitting in the recliner watching baseball.

I don’t remember who got up or spoke first, but I found myself helping set the table. We sat and ate supper, barely speaking a word. I felt like we shouldn’t be eating. I think I just pushed the ziti and meatballs around my plate.

My husband always looks forward to these family get-togethers, especially when there’s a birthday or anniversary. Not because he loves partaking in the celebration so much as he does stuffing his face with cake. My mother-in-law buys a cake for everything. A new job, a new house, she finds any or no reason at all to gather the family around a cake.

He’d noticed the cake in refrigerator earlier when he’d gotten a coke. Jimmy and my father-in-law went in the den after they finished eating and my mother-in-law gathered the dishes to clean up.

John leaned in towards Theresa and I, “So…what are we going to do with cake? I mean Mom got a cake, I guess we’re not going to eat it?”

“Johnny, no, I don’t think we’re going to eat it,” said Theresa.

“John! I think it’s a little inappropriate to ask, don’t you think everyone is upset enough? You better not say anything,” I shuddered at the thought that he could be so insensitive as to think we’d eat the cake.

“Johnny, you’re such an ass.”

We went into the den for awhile and my mother in law put on the kettle for tea and made coffee. She came in and asked if anyone was going to have any.

We all shuffled into the kitchen pathetically quiet. And on the table, there it was in all its glory: the cake. “Happy 10th Anniversary to Jimmy & Kathy!” it shouted sarcastically in pastel frosting.

“We’re going to eat the cake?!” John practically shouted.

My mother-in-law huffed and shook her head, “Well you better, it cost me $16.00!”

The Coffee Pot

2005-10-03T10:32:00.000-04:00

I am the proud owner of a defective coffee pot. Oh, it makes the coffee just fine, but the pot itself is defective. My mother had to learn to accept this. It wasn’t easy. She kept insisting that I send away for a proper working replacement. I could, but I’m a little too lazy for that.

Whenever I make coffee for company and my guest start pouring coffee for themselves, they become incredibly stressed out. I tell them that they aren’t doing anything wrong, that coffee pot is just defective. It always spills coffee on the counter. After apologizing and cleaning up their mess we usually have the following conversation:

“This is dribbling coffee all over the place. This coffee pot is horrible!”

“I know,” I say.

“So why don’t you get a new one?”

“Because it was a wedding gift.”

“So what? Now you gotta live with this dribbling coffee pot for the rest of your life? Who would give you a defective coffee pot for a wedding gift?”

“I picked it out.”

“You mean you registered for this?”

“Yes.”

“Well, did you know that it was going to dribble coffee all over the place?”

“Yes.”

“Then why’d you pick it?”

“Makes a great conversation piece.”

Columbo and a Few Idiots

2005-10-02T15:09:00.000-04:00

Columbo and a Few Idiots

I used to watch Columbo with my mom, we really got a kick out of him. Ever watch it? Peter Faulke plays this stumbling detective walking around in a wrinkled trench coat that’s about three sizes too big.

Anyway, I don’t need to watch the entire show to know whodunit. It’s always the suspect that he befriends from the very start. He keeps coming around the murder victim’s wife and asking questions like, “Are you sure he didn’t have any enemies? I mean is there anyone you can think of that he might have had a beef with? And ma’am, just one more thing and then I’ll be out of your hair; do you know of anyone that may have happened to overhear a loud argument in a public place where they threatened your husband’s life?”

There’s always that one suspect, the “public-argument-threatener”. Doesn’t this guy ever learn? If you threaten someone’s life and people overhear it, you can bet the’ll turn up dead.

Imagine what’s going through that guy’s head. “I knew I shouldn’t have argued with Joe and threatened his life in Public Square, I should have known he’d get killed- by someone else, of course. It certainly wasn’t me.”

But that guy’s never the one who did it. They want you to think it’s that guy. But it’s not him.

Columbo already knows this. What he lacks in smart appearances, he makes up for in his persistence and determination of getting on the killer’s last nerve. He’ll just keep going back over to the widow’s house. He’ll pull that same piece of paper out of his coat pocket. He starts asking more her more questions, some are new questions but most of them are the same questions he’s asked her a dozen times before.

“Ma’am, are you sure he didn’t have any enemies? No one you can think of that might have wanted him dead?” At this point the truth starts to come out and not because she can’t lie anymore, she just plain loses it. “If I have to answer these questions one more time…” She ends up confessing to the whole thing while Colombo chews on his cigar. She goes to jail and he looks like a genius.

The best part about Columbo is that he’s still driving around that same old jalopy. Even on a reunion show filmed twenty years after they rapped up the series he was driving around in that thing. It’s true.

That car was on the verge of breaking down in every single episode. It was about two clunks and a sputter away from blowing up. But at its age, it might have just imploded. It was at it’s worst whenever things started getting interesting. Columbo would hop in all fired up because he was onto something when the engine wouldn’t start. He’d talk to the steering wheel, coaxing the car to start just this one last time. And miracles of miracles, it would.

The fact that he’s been driving around a car like that for thirty years makes me think he must be like my husband. We used to have this used Honda he’d bought ten years ago. It drove like a dream. Honda knows how to make a reliable car. But then little things started to go wrong towards the end. “I just wanna get a couple more years out of it and then I’ll trade it in,” my husband would say. What are they going to give you for a trade in on that car? Honestly. And it’s funny how he kept saying “a couple more years”. He started saying “a couple of years” four years before we finally led that car out to pasture.

How many did he think a couple was? A couple would imply two, right? But we got four more years out of that car, that’s two more than a couple; which would really be “a few”.

These generic types of numeral terms often confuse people. When I used to work in a coffee shop, people would come in asking for a couple of this and few of those. “Put in couple of Sweet n Lows, would ya?” I’d put two packets in. They’d sip their latte and make a face at me, “Nah, put in a couple more; that’s not sweet enough.” I’d usually point them over to the concession stand of sugars. I had other customers to deal with, if he didn’t mind. “Go over there and put in your idea of a couple sugars. In fact, why don’t you take a couple more with you in case the couple more you put in aren’t enough.”

A couple is two. When Noah was gathering animals for the ark, didn’t God tell him, “Get a pair of elks, two frogs, a couple giraffes, well you get the idea…” There wasn’t enough room for more than two of everything. Noah understood this, and that’s why God picked him in the first place. “You know, Noah, some people out there think that a ‘couple’ is three or four, but not you, boy. You get it. That’s why I’m letting rain. Maybe I can flood out some of these idiots that have it all wrong. Gotta cut the fat around here, you know how it is. Well, that’s all for now. I’ll give you further instructions in forty-one days.”

Now a “few” is much too general. I happen to think that a few is four. Maybe because they both start with “f”. When someone asked for a “few”, I could never be sure how much they really wanted. “I’ll take one cranberry-orange muffin, a blueberry scone….oh yeah, three chocolate croissants, aaaaannnnnnddddd…..hmmmm….throw in a few biscotti!” They had me up until “a few” got involved. I would then ask how many was “a few”. Inevitably they’d look at me and say, “Oh I don’t know, a couple.”

Worse than a “couple” or a “few” is “some”. What the hell is some? There’s no value in some. “Wanna come over and watch some Columbo?” “Well, I don’t know. Exactly how much Columbo are we going to watch? Because it sounds to me like I won’t get to see the whole thing. It doesn’t matter really, I don’t really need to watch the whole show to know whodunit.” Some. What is that? It’s nothing! Well, I guess it’s something.

Personal Realty Tour

2005-10-01T15:55:00.000-04:00

Personal Realty Tour

I find myself driving around aimlessly this afternoon, which by the way is a highly enjoyable way to drive. Since my son has been taking part in a nap strike and I’ve decided to call his bluff. I drive while he is forced to sit in his car seat, riding along until he can no longer keep his eyes open. Nothing is more soothing than riding in the car, although I suppose that also depends on who’s driving.

I have taken to the road, quiet roads. Some would be considered main roads but there aren’t many cars traveling along them. I make some turns here and there. Sometimes down through the Metro Parks where the drive is practically meditative. You can look at the trees and hear the birds sing if your windows are rolled down and not driving so fast that all you get is wind rushing through your ear.

But my favorite roads are the ones “less traveled”. And by less traveled I mean “Private Drives”.

The sign says it all in the most condescending way; “This drive belongs to the people that dwell within and not the likes of you”. Some are little developments that include manmade ponds and lakes. The signs posted on the road include certain words like “hidden”, “trail”, and “lakes”. An example would be “Cedar Trail” or one of my personal favorites, “Hidden Lakes”. This would imply that there are an abundance of lakes, but they are hidden. Maybe they don’t even know that they’re really there, but they’re sure that they exist. But don’t attempt to be Lewis and Clark discovering them, the likes of you need not enter our private existence.

I’ve taken a ride through and I usually find at least one of the lakes and guess what, it’s in plain view, well maybe behind a thin veil of trees and bushes, but I certainly wouldn’t call that hidden. If I should ever move into that community, I want to be greeting by fellow upper-middle-class neighbors bearing casseroles and potted plants. Then after everyone has dropped off their housewarming gift and left, I suppose I’d snoop around my new attic full of old things the previous owner never bothered pack. I might stumble upon and wooden box, blowing off a thick layer of dust to find that inside would be a folded piece of delicate, yellowed parchment paper and inscribed would be a very faint map. It would lead me to a hidden lake full of mermaids and octopuses.

What if the lake was actually under something, like big boulder? The neighbors would be stunned, “Imagine that, the real hidden lake was underneath this big rock the whole time?” Maybe it was beneath a house, like an underground canal. Of course we’d find out it was only the septic tank, and although it certainly would be a feast for our eyes and nose it just wouldn’t be able to capture the same magic and wonder.

I pass by one driveway to a secluded neighborhood bearing a “No Outlet” sign. In other words “Don’t Bother Driving In Here”. If you should feel the need to there is only one way out and it’s the same way you came in. You will actually be driving in circles. There is no “where” to go, so just keep on driving, you insignificant piece of crap. It is the equivalent of the police officer at a crime scene motioning the crowd of nosey rubber-necks to move it on back. “There’s nothing to see here, people. Go on about your pathetic lives…”

Ordinarily this would have piqued my curiosity and I would have pulled in just to spite the pretentious sign. But I saw all there was to see from the street. The sign out in front of this little gathering of mini mansions said “Fairfield Oval”. Oval? Really? Are you sure it’s not hexagon perhaps? It was really about a half a dozen houses gathered around a circle of trees. Yes, a circle of trees. But perhaps a circle is a commoner’s shape; they needed a much sophisticated piece of geometry worthy enough to name their village.

And how come no one ever lives in the circle? Is it because all those who live around the circle don’t want to look at one another? It would be like prime real estate for those who love to be the center of attention. “Everyone in the neighborhood is looking at me!” they might say proudly before getting their swollen head stuck in a doorway.

Not one for loving the spotlight, I would keep my curtains drawn no matter how stifling hot or stale the air in the house got. I would be much too self conscious and paranoid knowing in my heart of hearts that “Everyone in the neighborhood is looking at me!” It would be for certain that the one late night I decided to open the windows sure that all my neighbors were asleep they’d catch me doing unmentionable things. Mostly, late night pig outs. “There she is Jan, look at her! Stuffing her face with Oreos, it’s sickening. Look at the way she separates the cookie halves licking the insides till there’s nothing left! She just dropped one on the floor….Oh my GOD! She picked it and ATE IT!”

I notice that my son is starting to slump over in his car seat, a sure sign that the drive has rocked him into a deep sleep. It’s time to head home. I live on a pretty quiet street with neighbors whose estates do not intimidate the passers by. Our modest home is neither large nor boastful, but something we are proud to live in none the less. As I unbuckle the seat belt straps and carry his warm little sleepy body inside the house I turn to see a car slowing down past our driveway, and I must say, it felt nice to be noticed.

It's a Dirty World We Live In

2005-10-01T15:40:00.000-04:00

It’s a Dirty World We Live In

You never realize what disgusting world we live in until you have a kid. From the moment they’re born parents shield them from the dangers of dirt. How come we never noticed how dirty the floor was until a baby crawled on it? I’ll tell you why. From up here everything looks clean. But they’re down there, they’re right there in it. It’s sort of like watching an astronaut set foot on a new planet. You’re scared for their safety; there’s no telling what they could step in.

When you’re a parent you see everything with new eyes. And your new eyes can see the dirt that your old eyes would miss. Your radar vision scans the area and immediately locates every piece of dirt as a blip on your screen. “Oh this will never do. Quick! Sanitize this child and tape off the area immediately. It’s a biohazard!”

Of course as a parent we can now get away with calling anything dirty. You’ll have no bones about pointing every dirty thing for your child to avoid. Anything and everything you don’t want them to touch is now called dirty. You’re a guest at the White House when your kid drops a cookie on the floor. “Don’t eat that! It’s dirty!” You look over at the First Lady, “Oh, I certainly don’t mean to say that your floors are dirty. I’m sure you could serve dinner off of these floors, but would you really want to?”

Let me clear something up: There is no five second rule. That rule only applies to the slobs so lazy that they can’t be bothered to disregard filth. Don’t come crying to me when you get food poisoning. You’re whole life could summed up in a petri dish.

Look around where you live and you’ll see that dirt is everywhere. It’s all around us. It’s on the floor, it’s on the door, and when you wake up in the morning, somehow it is in your hair. “My hair had no dirt on it when I went to bed last night, but when I got up this morning, it was filthy.”

Dirt. There’s a whole bunch of it outside, too. Dirt is on the street and in your driveway. Want to really knock yourself out? Go outside and dig up a patch of grass and you’ll find nothing but dirt under there. Some people build piles of dirt on their lawn called “mulch” that they decorate with flowers like that makes it okay. It’s dirt! Don’t you people know that?

Our mothers knew where the evil lurked and they were terrified of it. They knew what it was, and they didn’t want it in the house. The biggest concern was always the carpet. You could be wearing a new pair shoes fresh out of the box, but shoes were never to be worn on the carpet. Shoes, no matter how clean, were always dirty.

Our feet are dirty. But when you stop and think about it, they should cleanest thing on our body. How is it that our feet are so dirty? They have socks on them. They have shoes on them. They have layers of protection from dirt exposure. What about our hands? They’re just hanging out naked. We should really be shaking people’s feet instead of their hands.
If dirt was flying in the air right towards your head and there wasn’t enough time to duck, what do we use to protect our face? Our hands. If dirt were about to land on our feet what do we do? We jump the hell out of the way, that’s what we do. We are so quick to protect the shoes which cover the socks covering our feet. This proves my point. I think I’d rather shake a guy’s foot than the filthy hand he might have sneezed in.

As a kid you’d go outside to play and tapping on the window from the safety of the clean indoors was your mother screaming, “Don’t touch that! It’s dirty!” You’d look at the fire hydrant and think, “I don’t see any dirt. She just never wants me to touch anything fun.” If my mother had been more specific and said that a dog used it as a urinal, perhaps I would have been less inclined to get my mitts on it.

I’ll never be comfortable with dirt and germs. They make me nervous like when you come across snarling dog without a leash and no owner in sight. You could be minding your own business taking a stroll in the park and there it is. You could be waiting in line at the drug store when the slob behind you coughs on the back of your neck. It’s a dangerous dirty world out there and you sometimes you never know when you’ll be attacked.

Some of this fear is stemmed from thousands of years of evolution. It’s in the genes. In order to survive we must steer away from the clear and present danger of filth. For some of us, namely me, the fear and resistance may have gone a bit far. For example; I would sooner walk across hot coals to sign to divorce papers in my own blood before fishing out the wedding ring I dropped in the toilet. Doesn’t matter if it’s clean. I think I’d even be willing to lose it if it fell in one of those display toilets lined up at the Home Depot.