Open a New Window

Well here we are on the last day of November, the last day of NaBloPoMo, and I haven't written sh*t.

Why start now?

Falling in love has been hell on my blog, friends. :)

And my beloved's punishment tonight? I'm subjecting her to the musical Mame, starring Lucille Ball and Bea Arthur...

in singing parts.

Now, I love me some Lucy. I sometimes feel like I was partially raised by her -- particularly on Friday nights in the 70s when my father was on Rescue Squad duty and I was allowed the extravagance of frozen pizza on a TV tray in the living room, while watching episodes of I Love Lucy on Channel 5 ("The fun's on Channel 5!")

If I was lucky -- or my nagging was successful -- I'd then trot on around the block and spend the night at my maternal grandparents' house. It's no wonder there was a period of time when my young self confused my grandmother with Lucy (addressed in The Gift of Grace)...

Loooooooooong, rambling story short, you really have to LOVE Lucy in order to get through Mame. It's a sweet story, but directed by a famous Broadway director and filmed as if it's in front of a theater audience - complete with overly long pauses for laughter. Not too much of that present in a film, Gene Saks. Let's move this baby along.

Have I mentioned it was filmed in 1974 and Lucille Ball had been smoking for many a decade at that point? It's painful to hear her speak let alone attempt to sing. And perhaps my favorite touch? In an effort to make her look younger and believable as a free-wheeling late 1920s' Manhattan party girl, the director has seemingly coated the lens in Vaseline for her shots only. Everyone else is crystal clear while our dear Lucy is fuzzy softness. Cybill Shepherd should have sent her a thank you note during Moonlighting...

The movie's been off and on for most of the night. We're probably about a third of the way in. I'm writing and Girlfriend is Christmas shopping online. This isn't a good sign. And yet, it's nice to look up and see my old friend Lucy.

Our memories really are ours alone. Our likes and dislikes, too. We can explain them and share them as best we can, but ultimately it's something we can only share with ourselves. I love you, Lucy; I always will. And I love you too, Girlfriend. Thanks for trying to share my memories with me. :)

How I See Things

When Tails Collide

No Shave November

Bodhi's been a big fan!

Everyday

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

So Glad It's You

Funny how I feel more myself with you
Than anybody else that I ever knew
I hear it in your voice, see it in your face
You've become the memory I can't erase

You could have been anyone at all
A stranger falling out of the blue
I'm so glad it was you

It wasn't in the plan, not that I could see
Suddenly a miracle came to me
Safe within your arms, I can say what's true
Nothing in the world I would keep from you

You could have been anyone at all
An old friend calling out of the blue
I'm so glad it was you

Words can hurt you, if you let them
People say them and forget them
Words can promise, words can lie
But your words make me feel like I can fly

You could have been anyone at all
A net that catches me when I fall
I'm so glad it was you

You could have been anyone at all
An old friend calling out of the blue
I'm so glad it was you

Anyone at all
Anyone at all
Anyone at all
So glad it was you

:)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Don't Think Because There's a Ring on Your Finger, You Needn't Try Anymore

Some of you may already know that one of the many twins within is an 80-year-old guy with a penchant for music from the 50s and 60s. How else to explain my listening to an AM radio station billed as, "Great Songs, Great Memories" (remember them while you can) and currently featuring this guy and his...furry little friend as one of the disc jockeys:

Anyhoo, a little ditty in heavy rotation has gotten stuck in my head lately. To truly appreciate how happy this must make me, take a gander at a 1964 performance of it (lyrics follow for those of you unable to see the video -- or if you'd like to perhaps print them out and tape them up as a daily reminder):

Hey! Little Girl
Comb your hair, fix your makeup
Soon he will open the door
Don't think because there's a ring on your finger
You needn't try anymore

For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
I'm warning you...

Day after day
There are girls at the office
And men will always be men
Don't send him off with your hair still in curlers
You may not see him again

For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
He's almost here...

Hey! Little girl
Better wear something pretty
Something you'd wear to go to the city and
Dim all the lights, pour the wine, start the music
Time to get ready for love
Time to get ready
Time to get ready for love

Need a second to recover?

The song reminds me of that fortune cookie game. Add "in bed" to the end of any fortune, for seconds of pure hilarity. Example: "Whatever your life's work is, do it well"

IN BED.

Ahahahahahaha!

OK, you typically have to be 14-years-old to find this game truly uproarious...

But can't you just hear "BITCH" added to the end of nearly every line of the song??

You've come a long way, ladies. At least the boys have the decency to not say or sing this stuff out loud anymore -- even though they're probably still thinking it. ;)

It's a Blog!

I'm apparently the mother of a bouncing baby blog. For whatever reason, I'm experiencing technical difficulties tonight and am unable to craft the post I intended. What's that got to do with motherhood? Thanks to the tech difficulties, I've spent far more time trying to write tonight and feel like I've been neglecting Girlfriend as a result. And when I tend to Girlfriend and our relationship as I'd like, I feel like I'm neglecting my blog. And let's face it -- there's been far less writing this November than in Novembers past...

Sigh.

Thus concludes this literally phoned-in post. We thank you for your patience and understanding. Hopefully things will be back up to speed tomorrow....

Giving. Thanks!

Yours truly wound up taking an unexpected day off today to run errands, including buying most of the food and accoutrements for this week's Thanksgiving dinner. Basic as it may be (bird, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, etc.) it was still a tremendous amount of food. Around the time I was cruising through Costco picking up a pesto, sundried tomato, & cheese torte and bruschetta pita chips to snack on while everything was cooking, I started feeling really, really guilty about all the food we were going to have while so many people are going hungry.

Sigh.

What I wouldn't give sometimes to regain a little innocence.

I texted Girlfriend to let her know how I was feeling and asked if we could head back to Costco this week to load up on some items to drop off at the Foodbank. Girlfriend was all over it, as I knew she would be. :)

So please, everyone: I, the great Only Child, the girl known to threaten small children with a fork to the back of the hand as they reach for my french fries, am asking you all to share some food this week, in the coming weeks, and as much as possible over the course of the next year. If you're even remotely lucky in these trying times and have some money to spare, would you please donate some food to your local foodbank or make a monetary donation? Ours says it can squeeze 3 meals out of one dollar.

Perhaps we should put the foodbanks in charge of school lunches...

Okay, okay, that's a blog for another day.

In the meantime, our local foodbank cites these as the most needed items and I'm sure the need is pretty universal:

Protein, Meat, and Fish

peanut butter, tuna, canned ham, canned chicken, beans

Fruits and Vegetables

canned fruits and vegetables, 100% fruit juice, instant potatoes, fruit preserves, dried fruit

Grains

cereal, oatmeal, rice, whole grain crackers

Complete Meals

pasta and sauce, boxed meals, chunky soups, stews

Baby Products

powdered formula, baby food, diapers, wipes

People who would never dream of using the services of a foodbank are now doing so. Many of us are far closer to the edge of hunger than we realize. Please don't procrastinate. Go drop off some food or send some money and help your neighbor today.

I'm thankful for my good fortune and I'm thankful for you. :)

[If you're in the Norfolk area, go to

Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia for more information.]

'Cause We Need a Little Christmas

Girlfriend and I, in preparation for our first Christmas together, have been discussing the age-old question:

Fake or real Christmas tree?

I haven't managed to have a tree of my own in many years thanks to my travelling to NJ every Christmas to spend the holiday with my mother. It never made sense to me to have a live tree, since I'd just be leaving it to die once I left town. It looks like I may be staying in town this year for at least part of the Christmas holiday (and that's another blog topic on its own), so I'm very excited about having a tree and decorations this year.

I'm rooting for a live tree, complete with the evergreen smell of my childhood Christmases.

Girlfriend is rooting for this:

OK, that might be a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea. G's arguments against the live tree are that she's a bit of a neat-nik and doesn't want to vacuum up pine needles constantly. I pointed out that you can get tree condoms that sit below the tree and are pulled up for neat disposal at the end of the season and that as long as the tree is alive, the needles shouldn't be an issue. She argued that her tree already contains lights; I said I'm an expert light-stringer and would be happy to do it. Her tree already has a stand; I can get one. Her final argument is that her tree is environmentally friendly. I'm not sure what part of non-biodegradable plastics is environmentally friendly.

Live trees. Putting the pagan ritual in a Christian celebration since the 1800s.

Won't you help us decide? We're open to your opinions on this matter.

Unless you choose the fake one. ;)

Saturday

Great day. Train, parade, & pizza with boys and Girlfriend. Possible break-in at Girlfriend's. Waiting for cops to appear. Less than stellar close to great day.

Awesome

This one's kind of a cheat. I posted this on facebook a few months back, but I find myself thinking about it fairly often and I don't know that all of you saw it on the face. I have a hard copy printed at my desk and a glance Amelia's way never fails to make me smile. Wake up full of awesome, my friends.

Waking Up Full of Awesome

August 3rd, 2011 | Author: melissa

There was a time when you were five years old,

and you woke up full of awesome.

You knew you were awesome.

You loved yourself.

You thought you were beautiful,

even with missing teeth and messy hair and mismatched socks inside your grubby sneakers.

You loved your body, and the things it could do.

You thought you were strong.

You knew you were smart.

Do you still have it?

The awesome.

Did someone take it from you?

Did you let them?

Did you hand it over, because someone told you weren’t beautiful enough, thin enough, smart enough, good enough?

Why the hell would you listen to them?

Did you consider they might be full of shit?

Wouldn’t that be nuts, to tell my little girl below that in another five or ten years she might hate herself because she doesn’t look like a starving and Photoshopped fashion model?

Or even more bizarre, that she should be sexy over smart, beautiful over bold?

Are you freaking kidding me?

Look at her. She is full of awesome.

You were, once. Maybe you still are. Maybe you are in the process of getting it back.

All I know is that if you aren’t waking up feeling like this about yourself, you are really missing out.

"Amelia says Good Morning"

Captain Douchebag

I know it's ridiculous for me to even have an opinion on this, but...

Demi Moore is divorcing Ashton Kutcher. Her official statement on the matter, after allegations of his having affairs became public a month or so ago, is:

“It is with great sadness and a heavy heart that I have decided to end my six-year marriage to Ashton. As a woman, a mother and a wife there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life. This is a trying time for me and my family, and so I would ask for the same compassion and privacy that you would give to anyone going through a similar situation.”

Since we weren't that tight to begin with, it shouldn't be too difficult for me to afford her the privacy she desires.

But I'm a little annoyed with Ashton. Good grief, are there ANY good guys out there?! I've always rooted for the guy. He seemed handsome and goofy and kind and secure enough that dating and marrying someone 16 years his SENIOR didn't phase him one bit (at least publicly).

Again, I know it's silly for me to care one way or the other.

Maybe it's just ridiculous for us to expect anyone to be monogamous and faithful. Maybe people should just cop to that out of the gate instead of going through the Big Show of a wedding and vows.

I, Ashton, promise to love you and cherish you always, but there's a good chance I'm going to want to have sex with strangers on occasion and I will do my best to not bring home any communicable diseases. And, oh yeah, please sign this prenup beforehand. I do.

This also reminds me a little of my sixth grade friend Carolyn and me. Carolyn was a little rough around the edges and rebelling in school, so my mother and sixth grade teacher decided to promote a friendship between Nerdy Nerderson (me) -- fresh out of parochial school -- and Carolyn, with the hopes that my Little House on the Prairie-lovin' ass would rub off on her. And as anyone else could have predicted, the opposite occurred. I was quite the elementary Rebel Without a Clue.

And so it seems with Ashton. He's been on Two and a Half Men for ten minutes and he's already showing symptoms of Charlie. By the by, Ashton -- those camera commercials with you flirting with all those chicks were only cute when you were Mr. Moore. Now they're just icky, you letch.

Sigh.

Is it SO blasted hard for people to do the right thing?

Let's ask Demi. Or perhaps her daughter, Tallulah. Or, as I like to call her, ROB LOWE IS YOUR FATHER!!!

Big Blue See

We totally did not get dissed by Big Blue, despite media reports to the contrary. Oh wait -- we did.

He obviously doesn't know who we are. ;)

I Have Never Shipped a Live Pig to Hawaii

I made the mistake of signing a petition or two recently and now it seems I'm being asked to sign a new petition at least once a day. In the last week, I've received emails entitled:

What you did to Keystone XL
Stop shipping live pigs to Hawaii
Save Bryce Canyon from a dirty coal mine
Lesbian torture clinics.

No, seriously.

I know.

I thought that last one was the next Meetup event planned for the Gay Women of Hampton Roads. It took me a few minutes to realize it wasn't an invitation.

And I don't know who this Bryce Canyon person is, but he can probably do better than this chick they're referring to as, "dirty coal mine."

Apparently, there are A LOT of things out there that people want to protest.

My current favorite is an employee of Target petitioning Target to open at 5am on Black Friday rather than 12am, so that he and his fellow Target employees can enjoy Thanksgiving with their families a little longer.

I get it. I do. But here's the thing, Target Employee: if Target doesn't open at 12am, all those wackadoodle Black Friday shoppers are going to haul their assumed WIDE asses over to Walmart and spend all their money there. And then Target will miss out on that money. And do you know where some (I know, not as much as anyone would like) of that money goes? Into your pockets, Target Employee. And into your health insurance. So I suggest you SHUT THE F*CK UP AND BE COOL!!

Be cool, Target Employee; be cool. Stay employed. It's a good thing in 2011.

Next up? Parents who are purchasing lollipops licked by children with chicken pox and feeding said lollipops to their children in an attempt to stimulate immunization against chicken pox naturally vs. vaccination.

I'm actually in favor of part of this. I won't spoil the fun and tell you which part yet. Talk amongst yourselves.

Tacos, Tails, Vodka, & Tampons

So some of my female dog-owning friends decided that a biweekly (bimonthly? twice monthly? duoweeko?) dinner gathering of female friends and their dogs might be fun. In their brilliance, they named it "Tacos and Tails."

If you don't get it, I'm not explaining.

Tonight was the second one and Girlfriend and I were graciously included. Since we're still battling some of the flea holdouts, we thought it best to leave our particular tails at home.

Dinner conversation turned to teenage girls soaking tampons in vodka and shoving them up their vaginas, as dinner conversations often do...

Oh, haven't you heard?

Yes, teenagers everywhere are trying the latest fad: getting drunk more rapidly and more discreetly by shoving vodka-soaked tampons up their vaginas. Don't have a vagina, boys? No worries! Just shove the tampon in your rectum! Apparently, studies show that one (1) super tampon can hold one (1) shot of vodka.

How much time do you need to absorb this little tidbit? (harrrrr)

Seems some of us at the table knew of this trend and its sister activity, butt chugging, in which the tubing of a traditional beer funnel is inserted into one's rectum rather than one's mouth.

Not for nothing, I'd hate to be the person who rolls up late to that party and mistakes the butt chugging funnel for a regular one...

"What? Why is everyone screaming for me to take this thing out of my mouth?!"

Anyhoo, we the Tacos and Tails of the Monday, November 14th Meeting have the following questions and if you have answers, we'd love to hear them:

1) If the tampon expands after absorbing liquid, how does one insert a giant flaccid tampon into one's vagina?
2) Substitute "rectum" for "vagina" in the above question and pose it again.
3) In the instance of butt chugging, where does all the extra liquid go? Once the rectum is filled, does it start shooting out?

Ah, it's bedtime boys and girls. I hope you've enjoyed this little story.

And just for the record, lest any of you be as mistaken as the proponents of vaginal/rectal drinking -- not ingesting the alcohol orally does not affect your blood alcohol level.

Uh duh.

What will those crazy kids think of next?

Balls o' Napthalene

As some of you may recall, the suggestion was made to fight the great stray cat/flea infestation with a security moat of mothballs...

The mothballs have been lain about the perimeter of the property and now it smells like Mrs. Muccifori, my old Italian (and I mean OLD) landlady from when I was a kid.

We lived in a two-family house, owned by the Mucciforis, until I was 10-years-old. They lived on the first floor and we were on the second. They were tailors from Italy and I spent many an afternoon doodling on dark fabrics with the bars of soap they used to mark their plan of attack on an item of clothing.

In my young mind, the Mucciforis were boiled down to the smallest of generalizations -- Mr. Muccifori slept a lot and liked quiet, which is why I couldn't be too loud outside or stomp around upstairs, and Mrs. Muccifori was always cold, which is why she wore 300 sweaters even in the summer and jacked up the heat to the 80s. Since heat rises, our apartment used to average 98-degrees in the winter. My father used to sleep with the bedroom window open in NJ in the dead of winter and I still can have a mini anxiety attack if it gets too hot indoors...

Hmm...perhaps I should get back to the mothballs... If you ever met my Aunt Rhoda, you understand that I get my meandering storytelling "ability" honestly!

The attic of the house was finished except for two offshoots that remained unfinished storage areas and reeked of mothballs -- Mrs. Muccifori added them to her things to stave off the moths. I knew those were her things, associated the smell of mothballs with her, and to this day think of her whenever I smell mothballs.

And then I almost immediately think of the most puzzling story I've ever heard in my life.

My mother was about 25-years-old when Mr. Muccifori died. Mrs. Muccifori thought it would be a terrific idea to knock a hole in the wall downstairs and install a door between her apartment and our entry way. That way, if she needed anything, she could just essentially come into our apartment foyer and call upstairs.

And she did.

One particular afternoon, she called up to my mother in an Italian-accent-laced singsong:

"Kaaaatie, I want an enema.........."

Now, my mother's name is Kathy.

And what landlady asks her tenant for an enema?!

And more importantly, WHAT TENANT ACQUIESCES??!!

Katie, my mother, that's who!!

I won't go into the details at this time because I've used Mrs. Muccifori's actual name and there's the outside chance that one of her people might stumble upon this story, but I'll write about it sometime down the road using an alias.

In the meantime, if you've ever rented an apartment, just imagine giving your landlady an enema. Under what circumstance would this possibly occur?

Pre-Race Goodness!

Wow. I really need to run some of this off during the half marathon tomorrow!! Or, The Long Stroll, as I like to call it. Tomorrow's my first training run for the Shamrock Marathon. :)

Gotta start somewhere!

Grace & Joe (To Be Continued)

Girlfriend and I were fortunate once again to have generous friends in high places, who bestowed upon us VIP ODU Women's basketball tickets for tonight. I had planned on posting a pic from the game and calling it a day, NaBloPoMo-wise.

Alas and alack, Girlfriend's grandmother is ill (mildly or deathly depending on with which family member one speaks), so we're heading out to bring the poor woman soup and good cheer.

I'll be bringing nervousness, as she's very important to Girlfriend and I've yet to meet her.

Eep!

Girlfriend kept apologizing for our missing the game and as I told her repeatedly that it was all right and that of course we should go, all I could think to myself is that I would give anything to spend a Friday night with these two:



As I think I've mentioned earlier, I spent nearly every Friday night of my childhood at my grandparents' house. The fact that it was around the block from my house made it difficult for them to hide. :)

Shoot. Girlfriend's on her way. Gotta wrap this anemic post up. Just hear this -- if you're lucky enough to still have grandparents walking the earth: go hug them, call them, and/or write to them. They're only in our lives for a short while, but if you've been really lucky, they've made a tremendous difference in your life.

I love you, "Mom" and "Dad." Hope you're enjoying a rousing Happy Hour right now!

Stephen King

Can't keeps eyes open. This will have to suffice.

NaBloPoMo's about quantity, not quality, my friends. :)

Black & Orange Stray Cats Sittin' on a Fence

Ooooo oooo oooo ooooo...

I won't even get into how many years it took me to figure out that's what the Stray Cats were singing as the first line of "Stray Cat Strut." I got the "...sittin' on a fence" part, but "Black and orange stray cats" eluded me for YEARS.

So embarrassing. Maybe I was distracted since I had one eye in the mirror as I watched myself gavotte.

Bodhi recently befriended a passel of stray cats in the 'hood and being the selfless creatures they are, each time they meet, they leave her with some parting gifts in the form of fleas.

Twelve years of urine leakage, separation anxiety, sour stomach, malignant tumors, benign tumors, and one (1) root canal, she fortunately hadn't seen fit to throw fleas into the mix. Until now.

And for my thirteenth year...

They don't appear to be bothering her, but I'm Frontlining her and staring at her obsessively. Last night there appeared to be quite a few having a party near her chotch (perverts). Now she keeps wondering why I'm talking to it -- as I speak to her in an effort to keep her still, all the while up-close-and-personal with her nether-region, looking for the moving spots. I'm getting more than a little paranoid. I spent 3 minutes trying to pick a freckle off my forearm earlier today.

I made the mistake of discussing the situation with my coworkers, who told me heartwarming stories of tapeworms transmitted by ingested fleas (and discovered hanging from a pet cat's butt), fleas laying eggs in dog beds (I found a flea in Bodhi's fleecy bed yesterday), and all-out flea infestations, requiring mini-vacations while the house in question gets bombed. I'm hoping with a pesticide...

Anyone want some cats?!

Tapeworm Cat Butt Coworker recommended sprinkling moth balls around the yard to keep the cats away. Like nearly every other living being on the planet, cats don't like the smell of moth balls. According to the packaging, I purchased "Old Fashioned Moth Balls" as opposed to those newfangled digital ones, so I'm hoping they'll be extra toxic. "Old Fashioned" probably means "Not Green." Sorry environment, these cats have got to GO.

I called Animal Control to come get them and then discovered that if caught, they'd be taken to a kill shelter. Whoops. I'm kind of torn. Normally I'd be sad to hear such a thing, but dammit, what am I supposed to do? I don't want to keep dousing poor Bodhi in toxic chemicals so these hippie cats can Occupy my 'hood.

If anyone would like to rescue one or all of them, please let me know.

They're going to need some flea treatments.

And for the love of god, please get them spayed/neutered and keep them indoors!

A Prayer for Bruce

No offense to Joe Frazier or Heavy D. (may they rest in peace), but tonight I ask you to pray for poor Bruce Jenner. Let's review:

He used to be a god. In 1976 he won the gold medal for the decathlon, which despite its name, actually involves about 72 sports. And he excelled at them all. He was young and handsome and athletic and he was all over the Wheaties boxes and Love Boat.

And then...

I don't want to say his appearance in the film Can't Stop the Music was a curse, but it did also star The Village People. As much as I love them and made my mother call me Felipe (the Native American ["Indian" in 1979]) for six months, it can't have helped.

Bruce lay low for a couple decades after that (can you blame him?!) and resurfaced in a charming little reality show called, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, in which the public discovered something had gone horribly wrong with our handsome Olympian:

Now, we know this is the result of really bad plastic surgery because 1) Bruce has admitted it and 2) We have his genetic beneficiary, Brody, as evidence:

And you know that's just gotta burn Bruce up, dontcha? (Look at you, you handsome bastard!)

As if this assault on his face wasn't cruel enough, he also landed smack in the middle of this mess 10 years ago:

And for good measure, even though he already had something like 4 biological kids and 4 step-kids, he felt it necessary to bring 2 more into the world. Now the 2 new Ks seem ok, but they've got the jet black hair of Kardashian krazy and the K names, so there's really no hope for them either.

So now he spends his days bumbling around his house like Ozzy on boring instead of oxy, being alternately mocked and forgotten by his wife and her offspring coven -- and their equally annoying mates.

Please, people, say a prayer for Bruce.

In the last two weeks, his step, Kim, left her Special Olympian basketball hubby (come on -- you thought the same thing!) after 72 days of marriage and then his son, Brody, and his SK8R GRL, Avril Lavigne, got their asses kicked outside a Hollywood bar.

Please, say a prayer for Bruce.

His 2011 decathlon appears to be:

Maintaining Kendall and Kylie's virginity
Repeatedly telling Kris she's not gaining weight
Assuring Khloe she's not adopted
Watching Rob on Dancing with the Stars (PLEASE -- say a prayer for Bruce!)
Getting his ear pierced and hair cut (one event)
Giving everyone unsolicited advice
Presenting motivational lectures for a fee (No, really -- people pay him!)
Remembering all of his children whose names don't start with K
Cowering under Khloe's blistering gaze
Ignoring the most annoying speech affectation on the planet and managing to hear what the 3 older K's are actually laying down

For this, he deserves a medal and more. He deserves your prayers. So please, pray for Bruce.

After all, he's just a guy who learned a really hard lesson: there's no such thing as a free f*ck.

What Goes Down, Must Come Up

I have a couple blog topics floating around in my head... Education in America, the obesity problem, poor nutrition, poverty -- you know, lighthearted fare like that.

But as I sat down to write tonight, it dawned on me that many of you -- this very evening -- may be wondering what it looks like when you recognize that gigantic smile on your dog's face for what it is (a surge in saliva as her glands empty pre-puke); manage to get her outside (Hurray!!); and PUUUUUUSH her off the deck just a little too late.

Well tonight's your lucky night, because I'm here to show you EXACTLY what that looks like!!

(Don't say I didn't warn you.)



Reminds me of a joke my Dad used to tell when I was a kid...

These two bums are walking down the street and come upon a rotting, dead cat. They're starving and the one guy says he's going to eat it. The second guy says he's crazy and refuses. The first guy eats the rotting cat and almost immediately throws up. The second guy exclaims, "Now THAT'S what I've been waiting for -- a warm meal!"

(I'm almost sure I screwed that up and will wait for my mother's confirmation and corrections. In the meantime, I'm going to go throw up now. NaBloPoMo Day 7 is rough!)

Old Friends

For the record, I just have to post something in order to satisfy the requirements of NaBloPoMo.

See -- I could just publish that sentence above and I'd be good to go. So perhaps you'll forgive me for giving you someone else's story today.

I first heard about Tarra and Bella a few years ago on my beloved CBS Sunday Morning:



I love Steve Hartman's final words...

"They harbor no fears, no secrets, no prejudices. Just two living creatures who somehow managed to look past their immense differences.

Take a good look at this couple, America. Take a good look, world. If they can do it - what's our excuse?"

The video would make the internet rounds on occasion and I'd always watch it and smile first and then cry.

Unfortunately I awoke this morning and learned of Bella's passing. I assumed it was from old age and while I was sad for Tarra, I figured an elephant who befriends a dog rather than another long-living elephant risks losing her companion prematurely.

I should have known these two sweet creatures weren't done making me cry.

CBS News reports: Last week, sanctuary workers found Bella's body. By all indications she'd been attacked by coyotes. Whether Tarra witnessed it, tried to intervene or was too late - no one knows. All they do know is that where they found Bella is not where she was attacked.

"When I looked around and saw there was no signs of an attack here. No blood, no tufts of hair, nothing," said director of elephant husbandry, Steve Smith. "And Tarra, on the underside of her trunk, had blood - as if she picked up the body.

Tarra moved her?

"Tarra moved her," Smith said.

Steve's theory is Tarra carried Bella possibly a mile or more to bring her home.

Whether it really happened that way or not, no one doubts Tarra was that devoted.

"There's nothing we can do to take away her pain," said Atkinson. "The only ones who can help now are the elephants. And that is already happening."

Atkinson said the elephants are "stepping in and stepping up." He said they're spending more time with Tarra and being extra nice - making gestures like giving her a portion of their food.

Of course, anyone who's lost a dog knows you can't eat your way out of the grief - as much we might try -- but it's still nice to know at least Tarra's not alone in this.

It's also nice to see that compassion is much more than just human.

It bears repeating...

"Take a good look at this couple, America. Take a good look, world. If they can do it - what's our excuse?"

That's Why Sometimes I Love Thoughts... 'Cause They're Just Yours

Thanks to Girlfriend's sweet personality and gorgeous looks, we found ourselves invited into the VIP section of the last ODU (Old Dominon University, for those of you not in the know) home football game today. Yours truly had season tickets, but thanks to some other obligations, this was the first game I had attended this year. What a way to go out!! Thanks to our hostess' connections, we enjoyed free food and many a free beer throughout the game. And thanks to our seats two rows behind the goal post, I actually SAW part of the sporting event, which is a miracle in itself...

Going into the game, I had in the back of my mind that I needed to behave myself to some extent. As inappropriate as I can be, I can also pull myself together when need be. If I wanted to be invited back to the VIP section in the future, I should probably toe the line...

Things were going smoothly enough and we were in the restaurant area before the game (who knew there was a restaurant area?!) when everyone realized the marching band was on the field and they were playing the National Anthem. People starting popping up from their chairs, chatter ceased, and all faced the field from our enclosed area of the end zone. We could hear the faint melody of the anthem from the opened doors until someone made the executive decision to close them. And then we all stood there, some with hands on hearts, facing the field and the flag, listening to the very loud color commentary of whatever football game was on the flat screen TV in the VIP lounge. We could not hear a THING from outside. So we all stood there in deep pride, solemnity, and utter silence as the announcer on the TV yelled out names and plays LOUDLY.

And one of us began to giggle.

And one of us noticed her Girlfriend was giggling.

And one of us realized she had to PULL HERSELF TOGETHER lest she never be invited back to the VIP section!!!! But it was SO TEMPTING to just LOSE IT at that moment.

It was sheer ridiculousness. No one could hear the band. We had NO IDEA where they were in the anthem. I finally harkened back to my marching band days and set my sights on the conductor in an attempt to figure out where they were in the song. But damned if we didn't all clap in the appropriate place at the end.

We Americans are smart-like when you can hold our attention for more than 30 seconds...

Congratulations to ODU on their 42-28 win over Richmond and thanks for the hospitality! I'm totally spoiled now...

Oh, and as for the title of this here blog? I was just lamenting the need for a blog topic to Girlfriend and that was her response. How could I not love her?

Danke Schoen

Girlfriend and I are training for a half marathon. That's taking place in a week. For which training started approximately one day ago. :/

Now Girlfriend appears to be a natural runner and an extreme oddity -- someone who actually enjoys running -- so this almost complete lack of training probably won't affect her much. She'll have a great run and a great race (that's code for how long it takes to finish), while yours truly will be sucking wind and eventually enjoying a long stroll, forgetting that she's supposed to be running a race...

Anyhoo, we were running yesterday and while Girlfriend was running at a chipper little pace, I was running through quicksand while wearing concrete boots. Knowing I wouldn't make it all the way through our course before dark, I turned around and decided to catch her on the back side of the loop. And I did. Rather, I saw her zip by on the perpendicular while I was about two blocks away. So I Ferris Buellered my way through a wooded area, a school, and a library before finally catching up with her.

Once my labored breathing subsided and I regained the ability to speak, I made my Bueller reference and realized she didn't understand -- she had never seen the movie.

So you know what we're doing right now, dontcha?

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Have truer words ever been said?

Danke schoen, Ferris Bueller. Danke schoen, John Hughes.

Ma Bell, Pa Jobs

I’m in love. I was already in love, but I had no idea it could be like this. I’m also a procrastinator. So falling in love with my newly-activated iPhone 4S is downright dangerous. I’ve been happily using a 3Gs for over two years, but she was becoming a little sluggish. She’d lag as I bounced from Words With Friends to texting to Hanging With Friends to Facebook. I’d find my brain working a few steps ahead and figured that couldn’t be a good sign for the phone’s processing speed. I lamented my inability to zoom in and obtain clear photos. I found a disgusting layer of oil on the back of the phone, underneath the rubber Otter Box protective covering.

That wasn’t really the phone’s fault.

And now I have this beauty in my hands. She’s crystal clear and super-fast and…

I’m wasting a tremendous amount of time on her! I activated the phone last night and stayed up well past my bedtime. This morning I discovered the snooze function on the alarm worked very well and proceeded to hit it every 9 minutes for two hours. Then I got lost in absolutely nothing interesting for a few more hours – some while sitting on my toilet seat, which resulted in two numb legs and a deep ring impression on my fat ass – and had to force myself to

put.
the.
phone.
down.

in order to shower and finally get to work. Thank goodness I’ll be in the lab the rest of the day and will have her tucked away safely in a drawer.

I hope she’ll be ok in there. It’s so dark and cold.

Sweet dreams, little [blank].

I need a name for her. My first iPhone was named Mildred; Millie for short. I thought about Millie 2, which made me then consider Audrey 2, from Little Shop of Horrors. But naming my beloved new toy after a man-eating plant seems ill-advised.

Any suggestions?

In the meantime…

If you recall, I mentioned yesterday that one of my coworkers is Scott Adams, the author of the comic strip, Dilbert.

It appears one of my dear readers may be the author of one of my fave strips, Pearls Before Swine. The evidence:

A Soupcon of Soup's On

I heart when the blogs write themselves. Especially during NaBloPoMo. What I heart even more is when one of my friends writes the blog for me!

Hold that thought…

Some of us at work are convinced that Scott Adams is in fact one of our coworkers. If you remember, I told you yesterday that the Big Bosses are Big Brothering our internet access – basically, they’re keeping track of who’s online, what sites we’re visiting, and how long we’re online. After announcing this new activity, they then said in the same breath that we should enjoy increased internet speeds thanks to the reduced traffic.

Irony, thy name is IT.

Scott Adams, thy name is coworker:



Back to my friend-induced blog post…

Bert emailed me a few weeks back to announce the arrival of fire, wine, and soup season in New Jersey and to alert me to a certain opera singer’s voice being used in a Bertolli commercial. The commercial can be seen here:

Bertolli Soup Opera

My affinity for one of the singers can be explained here:

The Opera Singer

Be sure to read the comments afterwards for one of life’s happy little coincidences.

And now, we’re done with NaBloPoMo Day 2. Thanks, Bert!

To be continued…

And Then...

Huzzah!! Happy NaBloPoMo Day, my friends!!

That’s all I’ve got.

And you know what? It counts. :)

For those of you not in the know, today is not only the first day of November and All Saint’s Day (shouldn’t that be All Saints’ Day?!); it’s also the first day of National Blog Posting Month, better known as the questionably-catchy, “NaBloPoMo.”

The goal of NaBloPoMo is to post a blog entry every day in November. Seems easy enough, yes? I can tell you from experience that it’s a little more nerve-racking than one would think. I have an alarm set on my Outlook calendar to remind me to write every day. I have an alarm set in my phone to remind me to write every day. What I don’t have is an endless list of interesting topics to write about. And now thanks to a Big Brother move at work, I can’t surf the internet looking for ideas. I can’t find cute/funny/disturbing pics and/or videos to help support my ramblings. I have to fit this exercise into my free time when I already have trouble working exercise into my free time…

So why do it, you ask? Because I might win a prize!! Yes, it’s true. The folks that started this nonsense scan the participants’ blogs to see if they’ve written every day and then throw the names into a virtual hat and some lucky bloggers are selected to win prizes. Of no significance. I’m pretty sure someone won a spider ring last year.

So why do it, you ask?

I don’t rightly know. Writely know?

Well that’s enough of that. And really, I could stop right now. Write now.

But I shan’t.

You can’t make me. All you can do is stop reading.

Guess it’s just me and Bert now….

So Bert, I took The Girlfriend up to DC to see Sting this past Saturday. I know!

But first we had to run a 10K that I was ill-prepared for. And then we had to skip the beers and chili we so rightfully (writefully? Please make it stop.) deserved after the race because we were pressed for time. And then we had to get caught in a frigid torrential downpour as we walked over a mile back to our car. And then just when the car was packed up and we were ready to go, we had to discover that my dear old dog SH*T THE SH*T OF ALL SH*TS on the front passenger seat of my car (!!!) and I had to clean it up fast enough so that Girlfriend wouldn’t back out of the trip. And then we had to pull a U-turn on a one way street and travel the wrong way down the one way street into a major intersection in order to avoid a lake that had formed across the one way street. And then we had to drive out to West Bumblef*ck to drop off the pooping machine at the home of the two kindest people on the planet who agreed to watch her so I could take Girlfriend up to see STING in DC! And then we had to hurry ourselves to DC in the middle of an October snowstorm. And then we had to sit in separate seats on opposite sides of the theater because the concert sold out in 30 seconds and yours truly could only find individual seats, but wanted Girlfriend to see one of her favorite singers so much that sitting separately seemed like a small price to pay. And then I had to beg and plead with an usher to let me sit with Girlfriend when the single seats on either side of her remained empty after the show started. And then I shuffled back to my seat to watch the concert alone and to beg the Asian woman sitting two seats over who was devastated that Girlfriend and I couldn’t sit together to PLEASE get up off the floor and return to her seat and that Yes, I realize if you sit on the steps there’s room for Girlfriend in your seat and that's unbelievably kind of you, but the usher won’t let her up here without a ticket!! And no, thank you, I don’t want any trail mix right now… And then I was finally able to sneak up to Girlfriend’s seat and see how happy she was and we were finally able to hold hands and watch The Sting for a couple songs. And then we stopped by the White House which was temporarily orange to say Hi to the Prez and I almost lost Girlfriend to the Occupy DC tent city. And then we hiked a mile-and-a-half in the freezing cold up to the Shake Shack and stumbled upon what looked like a mob of hungry hamburger eaters but was really a huge Halloween celebration outside the Shake Shack. And then we ate our delicious organic beef cheeseburgers and drank our divine chocolate shakes and then we hopped in a cab back to our hotel.

And then my head hit the pillow and I looked at Girlfriend and I thought about how very thankful I was and how this was the best day and the best trip I had ever been on. And since I had been on all the other trips I had gone on and they weren’t all that wonderful (please see Rome If You Want To, Rome Around the World), the only new variable I could identify was Girlfriend.

And then I smiled.

And then I probably snored.

Until tomorrow, Bert.