Another Day, Another Truck

*sigh*

In the immortal words of the dwarf...

I am NOT Happy.

I finally finished my CAP survey at 11:00 last night with several hours to spare before it's due today. Thank freakin' God. If I never see another DVD of swimming sperm it'll be too soon. The only thing lacking from this one was a soundtrack. It was disappointingly silent. Lori suggested "Flight of the Bumblebees" as an option and then I couldn't get it out of my head as I watched.

So I headed home at 11:00 singing, oddly, The Who's "Pinball Wizard" on the drive home, and I was trying to puzzle out some of the lyrics. Remember the bridge?

"I thought I was_____, but I just handed my pinball crown to him." What??

What did Roger Daltrey think he was?

Anyway, I was driving south, concentrating on Pinball Wizard, when a deer appeared in front of my truck. I never saw it run out there. It just...was. So I stood on the brake and whipped the wheel to the left. Cleverly, the deer ran to my left also. I hit it broadside at about 45 miles per hour and it exploded in front of my eyes.

You know how time slows down in a crisis? I was standing on the brake, fishtailing towards a ditch, watching the deer's head and neck fly over the roof of my truck while the front half and the back half of the torso broke apart at the ribs, and I was thinking, "Huh! I never would have expected it to do that!"

The truck continued to spin after the impact and eventually it landed in a shallow ditch on the northbound side of the road. It was smoking like mad but still running somehow, so I turned it around and ran it back up the hill and onto the road.

It was making a godawful racket; the valved were clattering, something was dragging underneath, the radiator was steaming and hissing, there was a grinding, scraping sound coming from the engine, but hey...it was still moving. My left headlight was pointed at the treetops on the right side of the road and my right headlight was gone completely. The frame was bent, so I was pointed in a vaguely southeasterly direction while the wheels were aimed due south. But it was still moving. Yay!

I was about 15 miles from home on a dark road without too much traffic, and it would have been a long, cold walk home if it had died completely, so I slowly crept towards home. It was tricky, since neither of my headlights were actually pointed at the road, but I figured what the hell. What was I going to do, hit another deer? At that speed, it would have laughed and walked away.

After about 5 miles the heat stopped working and I noticed that the temperature gauge was pegged at the top, and the oil pressure gauge was pegged at the bottom. But it was still moving. I made it to my mom's house and thought that if I get desperate, I can wake her up. But my mom isn't good in a crisis, so I was hoping not to have to go that route. A couple more miles and I was in Cobden, which was dark, cold and empty. Even the cop who stakes out the place near the park where the Mexicans hang out and play basketball...even he was gone. The OneStop was closed, the taco stand was shuttered...Fuzzy's Bar may have been open, but since the truck was still moving, I kept going. At that point I was thinking that if I had to walk now, it would only be 7 miles home.

But the truck kept going...loudly and smokily, but still moving. Just as I pulled into my driveway, whatever had been dragging fell off and I ran it over. I'm still hoping it was a truck part and not a deer part. I parked the truck and shut it off and one last cloud of smoke belched forth. Now it's as dead as the deer, and probably just as unsightly.

So...my list of things to do today is to get the other truck going again, and put the valiant little Ranger out by the road with a "Free" sign on it's windshield. Someone will take it for parts, I'm sure.

This is precisely why I buy $400 trucks on eBay. Although this was scary and inconvenient, it was a fairly inexpensive disaster. Besides oil changes and new wiper blades, I hadn't invested a dime in that truck in the 6 months I owned it, which means that the price was roughly $75 a month, plus the cost of gas. Luckily the other truck, the one I paid $300 for, is my favorite. I'll get that one back up and running and after Christmas I'll start shopping for another crappy eBay backup truck again.

This morning my right leg hurts from ankle to hip from braking so hard, but otherwise I'm pretty okay.

But I am NOT Happy.

Another One Bites the Dust

On my way home from work tonight I hit a deer. The deer exploded. The truck is totalled. I've had two naprosyn and three beers and I'm stiffening up as I type.

On the bright side, I finished my survey.

The details of the story will be tomorrow's post...provided I can get out of bed. And how's your day been?

A Project!

When my son was a little kid, I started buying Klutz Guides. His favorite was "Juggling for the Complete Klutz" and the set of beanbag juggling balls it came with. My favorite was "The Incredible Clay Book" with it's rainbow assortment of polymer clay and detailed instructions on how to make millefiore beads, buttons, jewelry ... and miniature food.




I loved it so much that I bought a lot of little tools and spent most of my evenings making tiny soda crackers, tiny fruit, tiny pies, tiny cakes, tiny veggies, tiny cookies, tiny candy ... and then storing them in a Rubbermaid container because I had nothing else to do with them. Somewhere along the way, I decided that someday I wanted to build a dollhouse to display the tiny food. That's as far as I got on that project.

I've moved several times since then, and the tiny food hasn't traveled very well, but there are still a few pieces left unsmashed, and I still get a kick out of making it, although it's significantly harder now that I need bifocals. It's also a little difficult to take a picture of!

Last year I started buying books on miniature making, and this year I've asked for a dollhouse kit and a fancy stylus Dremel tool for Christmas. When I dragged Ev to the St. Louis Miniature Museum last month she bought me a kit to build a 1/4" scale Christmas village. So, tonight I bought all the supplies needed for assembly, cut out all the pieces and sorted them into Ziplock baggies, and with any luck I'm going to turn this:




Into this:









in time for Christmas. I'll let you know how that goes. Now, where did I put those magnifying glasses??

A Rebuttal

I read Lori's post with my first cup of coffee this morning and I'm considering it. I'll cop to the blogging slump and the Christmas-hating, but not to the post-Thanksgiving depression.

Mostly I'm mentally bogged down with work stuff. I've got a huge CAP (that's College of American Pathologists to you acronym-challenged folks) proficiency survey due Friday, and several other end-of-the-year things to do, and I've been so freaking busy lately that I can't figure out when I'm going to get them done. So every night I leave work more and more anxious about how I'll get it all done in a holiday-foreshortened month.

The only bright side to that dilemma is that I have Friday off this week so come hell or high water, I'll have to finish the survey by Thursday night, and Friday it'll be out of my hands.

You know those people who thrive on stress? I'm not one of them.

So the leftover turkey is turning into soup as we speak, the chainsaw will be back from the shop Friday and new firewood will be forthcoming. The pies are gone, but I'm too fat anyway. Maybe having the pies go bad will help me stave off my heart attack for a few extra months.

But let's not forget, Gentle Internet, that winter is a time of senescence. The universe clearly wants us to do less, since it provides us with less daytime to do things. Outside it's cold and muddy and dark; it's much more fun to be sitting in a recliner in front of the fireplace with a book and a cat.

But yes, it's true that I also dread Christmas and all it's obligatory merriment. I like food and I love my family, but I hate decorating and I LOATHE pressure. And Christmas, with it's mandatory shopping requirements and suicide-generating faux-cheer, is the worst of all holidays for me. Give me a Memorial Day picnic or a Labor Day barbecue any day. Those are holidays I can get behind. Christmas makes me anxious about time and money and schedules...and being pushed into a state of anxiety by societal responsibility makes me angry.

I don't begrudge Lori her decorating and planning, I just don't have any desire to participate. I like going to pick out a tree at the tree farm, and I don't mind bringing it home and wrestling it into the tree stand. At that point my decorating needs are met and I'll be spending the rest of the month hiding from the calender.

But I'll blog more after Friday, scout's honor.

It's Bleak, Folks

I can't help but notice that we finally blew off NaBloMe in a big way. I know I keep waiting for Ev to have some bolt of inspiration and blog something, and I suspect she might be hoping I'll pick up the ball and run with it for a few yards, but I'm afraid we're in a slump here in Nowhere, IL.

We kicked it into high gear to get through Thanksgiving, and then ... we tanked. Maybe it was the tryptophan. You see, we thought we were going to have several out-of-town guests for the holiday, so Ev roasted a 25 pound turkey. It turned out to be just us and our veggie-eating girls, so we've been working our way through that Big Bird ever since. Yesterday we finally had to throw out the remains of the pies that had begun to get moldy. No matter how much you love pie it just isn't possible for two women to eat six pies in five days when they have to spend part of every day at work.

Now we're heading into our official Holiday Slump. It's cold and drizzly outside, the leaves have all fallen, the grass is crunchy with frost every morning, the dog has decided it's too fucking cold to go outside to pee, we're burning through our woodpile like (you should pardon the expression) a house afire, we need to whack down another dead tree for more fire wood but the chainsaw is in the repair shop and there are tubs of Christmas decorations in the shed taunting me. I can feel Ev psychologically holding her breath hoping against hope that this year it just won't happen. We won't hang the stockings by the chimney with care. We won't deck the halls with boughs of holly. We won't hear any Christmas music. We won't shop. We won't don our gay apparel. (Well, okay, we'll have to don our gay apparel because the only alternative would be going naked and NO ONE want's that.)

But on the upside, we're going to be visited by our missing sons this Christmas, so there's that to look forward to.

Deep in the innermost reaches of my subconscious I've been dangling "December 1st" in front of my medulla oblongata as a sort of semi-goal for putting away the Thanksgiving decorations and considering the remote possibility of starting to unpack Christmas, but I know that's the first step on the slippery slope that will plunge us into the black hole of despair that only this time of year can bring, so I'm dragging my feet.



And neither of us want to blog. Sorry, but we suck in December, and for all intents and purposes, the last half of November, too.

Yeah, yeah...I'm going to hell.

And speaking of "My cats were NOT happy"...This is one of my all-time favorite jokes. :-)


I rear-ended a car this morning. I knew it was going to be a really bad day. The driver got out of the other car and I looked down and I realized he was a dwarf. He looked up at me and said “I am NOT happy!”

So I said, “Well then, which one are you?”

And that’s how the fight started.

LOLOL...Ha! You Asked!

CEDARFLAME said...
People from the middle of the country scare the crap out of me.

Maybe Bennie was right, if we made Turkey the national bird we would all be eating something else tomorrow.

Okay, I got to ask. How did Turkey save your cat?

21 November, 2007

Well, funny you should ask. Ha! I get to tell another story. And by request this time! :-)

Several years ago my daughter Carrie dropped by our house with her new cat. My cats were NOT happy. Muffy Puffy, our 10 year old cat, was particularly displeased. She hissed, and then ran into my bedroom to hide. Carrie and the cat stayed for a couple of hours and then went home.

Several days passed. Since I'm not an attentive cat mother (and I'm iffy on my human children too), I didn't notice that Muffy Puffy was missing. Finally, we figured out that she was gone and started searching the house for her. We found her under my bed, where she'd been hiding for the three days since Carrie had been there. She hadn't eaten, drank, or pottied in that time. When I dragged her out, the whites of her eyes were a bright golden color, as were her ears, and every other place her skin showed through her fur.

I took her to the vet and she said that Muffy Puffy was jaundiced, and that her liver had failed during the time she hid under the bed with no food or water, and she would probably die. She sent us home with special food and we made an appointment to come back in a week.

She wouldn't eat the special food. In fact, she wouldn't eat any food. Muffy Puffy, who was famously obese, got skinnier and skinnier and more and more lethargic. I kept taking her to the vet and the vet kept changing food, trying to find one she'd eat. Finally, we were force feeding her high-calorie food via a syringe, and hydrating her with IV fluids delivered with a 21 gauge needle that we'd stick in the back of her neck several times a day. For months she got sicker and sicker and we debated daily about putting her down. In the meantime, we'd try to cram a few teaspoons of food into her, and run enough IV fluids into her to keep her alive.

One day, I cooked a turkey. I don't think it was the Thanksgiving turkey...I can't remember... but while it was cooling on the counter and we were doing something else, Muffy Puffy jumped up on the counter and started eating it. This is the cat that hadn't eaten anything for months. She stood there and ate probably a pound of turkey while we watched in amazement.

And that was that. We fed her the rest of the turkey (I wouldn't let anyone else eat it...it belonged to Muffy Puffy now) and in a few weeks she was completely healed.

But she hated us for the force feeding and the IV, and as soon as she was better, she ran away and moved in with the neighbors. I used to see her sitting in their window, glaring as I walked by. Bitch.

Sin Is Our Friend

I think MY sin package is much more tasteful and balanced than Kwachie's...don't you?

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	High
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	Medium
Pride:	Medium

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

How Deadly Are Your Sins?

Looks like a couple of these will come in handy when the turkey hits the fan tomorrow ... yay gluttony and sloth!

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	High
Wrath:	Low
Sloth:	High
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	Very Low
Pride:	Medium

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

The Turkey Story

I believe it's entirely possible that now that I've been blogging for more than a year I'll be retelling last year's stories. Luckily I've been hit in the head and don't remember last year, so if you're offended, I recommend a stout thump on the side of your own head to improve your attitude.

So...The Turkey Story.

Many years ago, when my three kids were small and I was living with the Girlfriend Who's Birthday I No Longer Remember, we went to an SIU women's basketball game over the Thanksgiving break. Even though SIU had been in the NCAA championship Final Four the year before, they had pretty sparse attendance at most games. At the game during the Thanksgiving break, the crown consisted of me, my kids, the Bad Girlfriend, and Dr. Englert, my genetics professor, who never missed a game.

They had a raffle at the ticket counter...they were raffling off 5 free turkeys.

Do the math. Five of us, one genetics professor...we were a shoo in for a turkey.

We actually won all five of the turkeys. They called all of our names and we came out of the stands and lined up like there were actually people there to see us and our five turkeys and maybe cheer. Apparently Dr. Englert forgot to fill out the ticket, because it was statistically incorrect for him to not get a turkey. Maybe he's a vegetarian.

So after the game, we lugged our five turkeys out to the car, went home, and stuck them all in the deep freeze (that made a grand total of six turkeys, since we already had one for the next day's Thanksgiving meal).

This is why it's important to support women's sports. Because there may be a year's worth of meat involved.

From Lemons...Lemonade

Well...*sigh*

Once again the NoYouDonBloOftAsYouSho has ended in failure. This time, though, I was the innocent victim of my own overzealous domesticity. I thought I'd spiff up the yard in anticipation of our Thanksgiving holiday guests, so I went out back to finish cutting up the trees that I cut down and then left laying sprawled on the ground like this week's scantily clad dead hooker on CSI Miami.

So me and my chainsaw (my chainsaw and I?) got started with our tree decimation project...and then the saw broke. So I threw it in the truck and took it to the repair guy, who agreed with me that it's a crappy design, since I've managed to break it twice already in just a couple of months.

I left the saw with him and came home , planning to at least get the weed whacking done around the jungle in back of the house. I've got a brush cutter blade that tears through stuff in no time flat...and I keep Cedar in mind when I'm using it.

So I was blissfully slicing through the weeds and Whoops!...I cleverly sliced through the phone line. And boy, was it easy! I didn't have to chop at it or anything. So...no phone, no Internet, no blog.

But I went to Carrie's, called Verizon, and got the automated yet warm voice of the service robot. She told me that a service tech would be here between "8 o'clock a.m. and 1:03 pm tomorrow."

I couldn't drag myself out of bed by 8, but at 9:30 I was parked in front of Regis and Kelly, watching out the window for the Verizon guy, and his life-sustaining Internet access. I waited...through The Price is Right (and may I add that Drew Carey sucks raw eggs as the new Bob Barker), through The Young and the Restless (Victor and Nikki should stop fighting and come together while Victoria is in her coma, don't you think?), and through The Bold and the Beautiful (Stephanie...let it go. Eric doesn't want you, he wants Donna now. Move on, Babe.).

At noon...still no Verizon guy. I watched the local news...the Franklin County animal shelter burned down and almost all the animals were killed in their cages (I cried over that), and then some municipal workers fished a kitten out of the sewer line (I cried over that, too).

12:30...no Verizon guy, but the gay guy in the wheelchair on As the World Turns and his handsome and devoted boyfriend warmed my heart. Gay and disabled! That's two, two...two minorities in one!

Finally, at 1 o'clock I got in the shower and left for work. No Internet, but I made up for the 20 year gap in my soap opera watching, so at least I felt good about that.

The Verizon man called me at work at 4. He said he's on his way. Cross your fingers, or tomorrow we'll all discover who shot Stephanie at the end of today's Bold and the Beautiful.

Widgets and Buttons and Possums, Oh My!

I've been playing with the blog today when I should be cleaning the house in preparation for Thanksgiving. I added the smart-assed "Ask A Lesbian" crystal ball widget for your clicking pleasure and the nifty RSS feed button to make us appear all techno-literate and hip (do they still say hip?). I also stuck on an annoying widget that pays us a few paltry bucks if you do your Christmas book buying online.

But I got the most fun out of using the "search this blog" box! Who knew we'd written that many posts involving the word "possum"?

It appears that I've run clear out of avoidance antics now, so I'm off to the scullery.

Another Reason Any Blind Fool Could See We're All Related

This morning we have a special guest blogger...my daughter Katie. Let's give it up for Katie, shall we?

I suppose I should start with my alarm clock. It is a tiny little travel clock that I got for $4 at Walmart to take with me on trips to Tucson. It runs on one AA battery and is about the size (and weight) of an index card. It's very handy for on-the-go time telling, but rather shitty as a permanent fixture to one's bedroom. I sleep with it on the corner of my bed, because I have no bedside table and my room is too damn cold to walk across in my underwear as soon as I wake up.

So this morning my alarm went off. I had knocked it off of my bed in the night, as I sometimes do, and it landed about 6 feet away from my bed. It beeps about 5 times before it goes into SUPER BEEP MODE and is capable of waking all the dead animals in the fridge. Unfortunately, it usually takes me about 4 regular beeps to finally shake me out of my sleep, so by the time I realized it was on the floor it was already in SUPER BEEP MODE. I got up, walked across the way too cold room, turned it off, and climbed back into the covers. "Oh fuck!" I thought, "I never did that English paper!" Lying there, I went through my list.

1) I could stay home?
-No. I'm not even remotely sick. It's mom's day off. Mr. Horn will know that I skipped. Can't get away with that.

2) Make up an excuse?
-Oh please. The guy's not stupid. Anything too creative will be an obvious lie, and anything not creative enough is an excuse that I'm sure he's heard before. As tempting as "Oh no! Why isn't it showing up on my flash drive?!" is, it would never work.

3) Just accept the consequences of my irresponsibility?
-Am I crazy? I have a 91% in that class! We're on an 8 point grading scale, so that's a B+. My only B, that I could easily get to an A should I turn in a good paper, or easily never recover from, should I not turn anything in. This thing will be worth 200 points, easily.

So I rolled out of bed and shuffled over to my computer to start researching. The paper must be at least 3 pages, in MLA format, with a works cited page and no more than 10 passive verbs. It's about the religious symbolism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It was 6:05. My bus comes at 7:30. Oh yeah, and I didn't have my text book, which held my actual copy of the story.

As I typed furiously, the hopelessness of the situation was dawning on me. There was no way I could research it, formulate my ideas, type everything up, rephrase all sentences with active verbs, and then write a correctly-formatted bibliography in an hour (I still had to get ready for school). This paper needs 4 hours, at least. I could just stay home, tell my mom what happened, have her lecture me and ride my ass about it all day, then never hear the end of it for the rest of my life. The story would be told at the table this Thanksgiving, so as to shame me further, in front of guests. Nope. Not happening.As I started beating myself over the head for not having done it yesterday, like anyone with a brain would have done, I wondered where the day had gone.

No really, where had the day gone?

No.

Noooooo.

It's Sunday.

The alarm must have gotten switched on when the clock fell off of my bed.
I took it as a lesson: I really need to stop procrastinating. Waking up late the morning before something is due is pretty common for me. Usually, I set my alarm for 3am, and put in my 4 hours of work in the silence of the wee hours of morning. It's not a flawless strategy, but time is an excellent motivator for me.

So I continued researching, and began the paper. I'm done with one page, and now I'll have breakfast, and if I keep up this pace, I may be done by lunch time, and then the rest of the day I won't have to fret and put it off more.

I'll still be up at 3 doing my trig homework the morning it's due though.

An Alarming Juxtaposition of Events

Last year, on October 29th, MelonKiwi...the greatest cat ever, the love of my life, my soulmate...came to live with us. A week later, the tragic story of my leg occurred. A year later, it still hurts.

Today, in a blinding flash of insight, I've come to understand: Melon has been demonically possessing my leg! I don't know why it didn't occur to me a year ago! My leg problem is clearly not from a lack of exercise, it's a lack of exorcism!

I wonder where I can get an exorcist on short notice. Do you think they charge extra around the holiday season? It seems like the casting out of demons would have a season aspect to it...

Grrr!

Ack! This evening we had a 17 year old kid with a fever come into our E.R.

The Doc ordered a spinal tap first, and then serum tests for:

1. HIV
2. Syphilis
3. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
4. Epstein-Barr Virus
5. Eastern and Western Equine Encephalitis
6. West Nile
7. Lyme Disease
After the spinal tap and after packaging all that esoteric stuff to send to our reference lab, the E.R. added on a rapid test for mononucleosis.

Guess who has mono? Who says defensive medicine isn't fun?

There's No "I" in "Lose" (But There Is in "I Lose")

We just didn't win the "Best GLBT Blog" award. Not that we particularly deserve it, but when Lori went to check out the winner's blog, it was much gayer than ours. I think that's the problem. We're not writing a dykey enough blog. I think we ought to frame the edges with little pictures of power tools, and talk about famous gay people doing famously gay things.

I'm pretty sure we're losing dyke points by being too conventional. We ought to go out clubbing and take cruises on that dyke cruise line that I can't remember the name of. And we need drama. LOTS of drama.

However, we've already mastered the processing part. We can process like nobody's business. We can even process the process of processing. There's no emotional nuance so subtle or inconsequential that it can't benefit from a thorough analysis, followed by pie or a steak dinner. Maybe a steak dinner with pie, when the processing gets particularly hairy.

Maybe if we process our feelings about Ellen Degeneres here, on our famously GLBT blog, we'd be in the running for the best gay blog. I can see it's a cutthroat business, this gay blogging. We may have to process a strategy.

Pie, anyone?

A Few of Lori's Favorite Things...

There's a reason today is the day for posting our favorite things. Apparently it's also the 48th anniversary of the Broadway opening of "The Sound of Music" -- which, coincidentally, is on my long list of favorite things. I have many fond memories of the movie, not the least of which is the story about how my big sister smashed in the front bumper of my dad's brand new VW bug.

My sister had a brand new driver's license and the Catalina Theater was showing the brand new Julie Andrews movie. In order to be allowed to use our dad's car, she was forced to take me along with a couple of her real friends to see it. After the movie we piled in the bug and headed for the parking lot exit with my sister exuberantly singing "Climb Every Mountain" at the top of her lungs ... and that's when she plowed into the car stopped at the parking lot exit. We fabricated a huge whopper to tell my parents, and it was at least 20 years before we told them the truth on one of those great days you get to have with your parents when you're all grown up and can smoke and drink and confess things to them on their patio by the pool.

And so, with nostalgic memories of that evening in 1965 playing in my head, I shall proceed to wax all mushy about my other favorite things:

1. Christmas:

Exhibit A -- The Christmases of my youth - especially the year Santa brought me the book "The Littlest Angel" and I sat on my mom's lap while she read it to me and then explained, in one of the best mothering moments of her life, that Santa was not a real person, but the Spirit of Christmas and giving to those we love ... just like the Littlest Angel gave the things he loved the most to the Baby Jesus. I believe that may have set the stage for my lumping Santa and Jesus together under the heading of "great fairy tales."

Exhibit B -- Christmas trees - especially the Christmas trees of my youth. We used those big Noma lights with the red-hot bulbs and the thick, fabric-wrapped electrical cords for twenty years, and it was my dad's job to find the blown lights, change the fuses, string the lights on the tree and then cuss and move them around until they met my mom's approval. No same-colored lights together, of course. Then we took turns hanging the ornaments. My mother performed the last detail --the ritual Hanging of the Tinsel -- because it was a job no one else wanted. It was the bean picking of tree decoration and it took roughly three days to hang those thousands of strands of tinsel, starting from the inside of the tree to the tips of each branch. Equally as labor-intensive as the tinsel hanging was the tinsel retrieval from the dead tree a couple of weeks later. Because you can't just throw it away, you know ... you have to save each strand, untangled, in folded newspaper to re-use next year. Ahhh, but when it was all done and my mom's tinsel all hung there neatly and tidily reflecting my dad's lights, and we laid underneath it in our footie pajamas peering at the little lighted Christmas village under the tree, it was so worth it! I can still picture the tiny trees, little groups of snowman candles (sort of squatty from semi-melting while in storage), and Santa in his sleigh coming down a "snowy" hill covered with cotton batting and mica snow.

Exhibit C -- Christmas music - especially the traditional Christmas carols. While I enjoy "Grandma Got Runned Over By a Reindeer" as much as the next guy, it's Bing Crosby singing "Adeste Fidelis" that really does it for me. I can remember shopping in downtown Tucson when there still was a downtown Tucson. All the fancy department stores had Christmas displays in their windows (just like New York!) and elevator operators who said things like, "First Floor, ladies dresses, Second Floor, lingerie" and let you off at some mysterious non-floor called the "Mezzanine," and they played "Silver Bells" over outside loudspeakers. One of my great Christmas memories is shopping with my son when he was little. I would threaten to embarrass him if he wandered off from me, and I did it by singing "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" ... at a steadily increasing volume ... until he would run back and walk with me to shut me up. I have no shame.

Exhibit D -- The Miracle of Snow - especially snow in the desert southwest. Over the course of my life in Arizona I probably saw snow fall on Tucson a half dozen times. It would leave a light dusting of white on the tops of cactus and about 1/4 inch of flakes on the ground, and we'd call it a "snow day" and stay home from school, but it never happened at Christmas. But the year my son was born, it really snowed. He was three months old and we were driving from Phoenix to have Christmas at my parent's house in Tucson, singing along to the Christmas music on the car radio, when it started. But this time, for the first time in my life, it didn't stop. It snowed all night. On Christmas morning Tucson was blanketed with almost a foot of snow. It was piled up on our poolside lounges and the diving board. It had to be swept off the front porch. There was even enough for my ex-husband to construct a full-sized naked snow woman with nipples facing the kitchen window to greet my mom when she got up to cook Christmas dinner.

2. Thanksgiving -- especially big Thanksgivings with lots of relatives and lots of food and the playing of board games after dinner.

3. Autumn -- especially now that I live where there are visible seasons and the changing of leaves. I love the smells of Autumn, not the least of which are woodsmoke from fireplaces and the kitchen smells of baking and roasting.

4. A long hot bubble bath with a good book.

5. A movie that makes me cry in a good way. Guaranteed multiple-tissue choices include The Trip to Bountiful, The Color Purple and Seabiscuit.

6. The first bite of a perfect, juicy, medium-rare steak.

7. Thick-sliced bacon, toasted buttermilk biscuits and plum preserves for breakfast.

8. Going places in the car with Ev. I love long car trips to actual destinations with her, or short day trips out touring around aimlessly, but I'll settle for a five minute drive to WalMart. She's my favorite person to be alone with, always.

9. Our house. I love coming home, especially when Ev's been off work and there's a fire in the fireplace. I love the way our house looks, especially the antique furniture we've bought to add to the antique furniture Ev already owned. It's roomy and yet cozy -- colorful without being an assault on the senses. It sits up on a grassy hill tucked up into the trees with a broad view from the back deck.

10. Having all the clothes washed, dried, folded and put away.

11. How good the bed feels when you first crawl in at night and the sheets are cold and the pillows are fluffy.

12. Driving with the top down.

13. Hearing a song on the radio you haven't heard for a zillion years and still remembering all the words.

14. Looking through old picture albums.

15. The little coffee cup I inherited from my grandfather that came from a Southern Pacific Railroad dining car, my fraternal grandmother's glass cream and sugar bowls, the tiny cordial glass my dad used to fill with chipped ice and a tablespoonful of Kahlua so I could have a "cocktail" when the big people were having theirs and my maternal grandmother's crockery mixing bowls ... and having a place to put them all out where I can see them every day.

16. Necking with Ev.

17. A hug from my grown son now that he's all tall and lanky and I'm the little one.

18. Good lord, I almost forgot to mention chocolate!


I'll stop there, but I might want to revisit this list in the future. This morning I read Feral Mom's blog post suggesting we all list the five things that always cheer us up. My first thought was that I don't have things that always cheer me up, but I guess I do. Making this list was certainly cheery!

Whoring For Fun and Profit

I've got 18 minutes before I have to get in the shower and get ready for work. In the meantime, I was reading Linda at Straight Up and Slightly Dirty which, though amusing, is not NEARLY dirty enough. However, just because she doesn't have enough hot realtor-on-realtor porn doesn't mean I won't steal her ideas like a white-trash meth addict steals your pit bull out of your yard. So I'm stealing Linda's idea and chaining it up in my OWN yard, and pretending it's my own.

A list of my favorite things, which I hope will encourage you other toothless wasted meth addicts to steal this idea and chain it up in your own yards:

1. Lori
2. beer
3. cats
4. aimless driving
5. books
6. bonus games
7. tractors
8. haircuts
9. quiet Saturdays at work
10.doing piddly-ass things with my kids

What are a few of your favorite things?

Oh...and Katie is just a little outraged that she placed lower than the tractors and the bonus games, but hey...a few years ago, she wouldn't have made the list at all. Half full/half empty...don't be such a baby. You're lucky to have a mother. When I was your age, we had to walk 10 miles in the snow to be insulted by our mother.

You kids don't know how easy you've got it. Now shut up and eat your brussel sprouts.

Give or Take

I got a flu shot at work yesterday. It's not quite mandatory, but the Nursing Supervisor will be down every day to bully you until you consent. It's not a bad idea anyway, since I'm in the sick people business and the flu mightily sucks.

But I was talking about it with a coworker and she said, "I never take a flu shot." That sounded weird to me. I would have said, "I never get a flu shot." To me, take is something you actively do...take a pill, take a friend to lunch, etc. Get is something that's bestowed on you...get a gift, get a sharp stick in the eye.

Now I wonder if the two...take and get...are interchangeable in this situation, or if that's one of those examples of Southern Illinois language butchery, like the use of "whenever" instead of 'when", like in this sentence:

"Whenever I went to the doctor's office, he said I should take the flu shot."

So what do you think? Take or get? Which do you do?

My Heart is Blue...Not the Black Heart You May Think I Have

I stole this from Ms. Sassy Pants. It has the advantage of being fun AND fulfilling my blogging obligation in case I dont get to it.

A buy one-get one deal. Who doesn't love that?

Your Heart Is BlueLove is a doing word for you. You know it's love when you treat each other well.You are a giving lover, but you don't give too much. You expect something in return.
Your flirting style: Friendly
Your lucky first date: Lunch at an outdoor cafe
Your dream lover: Is both generous and selfish
What you bring to relationships: Loyalty

What Color Heart Do You Have?