Life's candy and the sun's a ball of butter

There isn't much to report but today I'm compelled to write a blog post anyway so what you're probably going to get is a rambler. I'm just going to keep typing and see what shakes out. I'm pretty sure that bullet points and blurting out whatever comes to your stupid mind are how Byron and Tennyson and did it.

Let's see... it's kind of late for all the happy new year well wishing stuff (consider yourselves well wished) and I wouldn't share with you my list of resolutions because I don't make new year's resolutions. I'm patently opposed to them, although for some reason I seem to come up with all of my brightest ideas to incorporate big changes and/or improvements to my life in early January. I keep these to myself until mid-February or so... just so they are not mistaken for new year's resolutions.

One of my bright ideas for life style improvements that I will not be implementing officially until mid-February, and is most certainly not a new years resolution, is the need to incorporate more exercise into my daily routine. I have recently been toying with the idea of rejoining my old gym and I just can't bring myself to do it. Not in January. What is more pathetic than a middle aged fat chick joining a gym in January? I guess maybe a fat chick never joining a gym at all, but still. Or now that I think of it, more pathetic than that is the fat chick who joins the gym in January and then stops going in early February and yet continues to pay for that shit well into the next year. Especially more pathetic when said fat chick already owns enough gym equipment to train the US Olympic.... um what? I was going to say women's basketball team or something like that just to be silly, but after taking a quick mental inventory I've realized that I probably realistically could train the curling team right here in my very own home. Have you seen those guys? What could they possibly need that I don't have in my basement this very minute. I'm pretty sure I have all the necessary equipment, which is to say a treadmill, two stationary bikes, a set of 3 pound weights (pink ones) and an industrial size push broom. Something to think about...

But enough about my semi-real plans to coach Olympic curling...

What else is new? Did I ever tell you about my best friend Amy's stalker? It's her ex-boyfriend from forever ago, blah, blah, blah. It's kind of old news. He's deranged and he lives in Los Angeles and for some reason is still upset about the fact that she broke up with him well over 15 years ago. Now that's a grudge. Anyhoo... he's just your average psycho ex-boyfriend stalker sending threatening emails and such. Amy has a restraining order and followed all the proper channels. Yawns all round. But what is very interesting and exciting news is that Amy's stalker must have gotten bored of her ignoring him and has recently been stalking and making prank phone calls and sending threatening emails to her ex-husband Assface. Saying all kinds of lovely, obscene things about Amy to him. It's delicious and not just because it makes Assface so very angry, but also because Assface doesn't have the same amount of common sense that God gave to hamsters and refuses to hang up the phone or put the stalker on his block-senders list. He listens and reads and sets himself up for a right huge hissy fit every time. Funny.

I think there is no better way to end a shitty rambling post like this one than with bullet points detailing the highlights of our trip to Columbus to celebrate New Year's Eve:

• Dinner at the swanky restaurant was a bust. It was a four course prix-fixe menu which at $45 per person seems very reasonable, but the food kind of sucked. We would have been better off to rent a room at Claddaugh and doused ourselves in beer and corned beef.
  
  
• Alas before Frenchie had the chance to get drunk enough to pass out while sitting up she and Nature Boy got a call from the sitter that their son young Jimmy Neutron was sick and they had to leave the festivities early. Bummer.
  
  
• The rest of us were able to rally until midnight and watch the ball drop with what remains of Dick Clark. Guilty laughter filled the room as Amy dared to say what we were all thinking - he looks a bit like Cha-ka from Land of the Lost. I'm not saying that he should be hidden away. Why should he? You go Dick! I admire his bravery and fuck it - he owns the goddamn show and he can host if he wants. More power to him. But how about some fucking subtitles? Nobody could understand a goddamn thing he was saying. I take that back. Seacrest and Clark were like psychic friends, simpatico, slurred speech and drowned out by a crowd of thousands cheering in the background, Seacrest seemed to understand every word:
  
  Clark: Aahhh mahh gah heeba Ryah!
  Seacrest: That's right Dick.
  
  
• I might be a terrible person.
  
  
• Fuck it. Dick Clark had a stroke and his face looks funny and it's hard to understand him. Big deal. Host the show my old friend, but maybe have someone smarter than Ryan Seacrest translate for us.
  
  
• I spent New Year's Day with 2 of my very best friends in the world, Amy and Dan. We went to see Avatar, but not in 3D for fear that I would get motion sickness and throw up as I have been known to do when I get caught up too tightly in the action.
  
  In the middle of the movie I had a full on, nearly peed my pants, silent laughing jag when Dan came back from his second trip to the bathroom during the film and whispered to me, "I've been to the bathroom twice during this film and just now realized that both times I was in the women's bathroom."
  
  Apparently he just thought it was one of those really nice, all stall men's restrooms. Sure.
  
  
• My new favorite breakfast food in the whole wide world is pho and my favorite place to get it is here. We stopped by on our way out of town where I quickly slurped it down and then grabbed a bahn-mi to go for my lunch later on. Who knew that the girl who never even tried canned tuna fish until she was 20 would love Vietnamese?

That's all I've got. You still there? Thanks for sticking with me.

The Assface Chronicles - Screen So Soft

Last night I talked to my best friend Amy on the phone for a long time. We don't get to do that very often these days as she is the mother (and new step mother) of 3 unruly and obnoxious teenagers. Talking to her for any length of time is glorious and certainly I always take whatever time she can give, but last night was an extra 2 hour after school special. I was over the moon.

First of all she started off her conversation with me as she often does by declaring her ex-husband Assface to be an even bigger dickhead than he was the last time I spoke to her and then she tells me of his crazy antics and I agree with her that yes, indeed somehow he has become a bigger dickhead than he was before. Only last night I analyzed why he keeps becoming an increasingly large clot and here is my theory and a list of examples:

1. Assface no longer has Amy to stop him from doing asinine things like wear a suit, carry a briefcase and generally behave like a self righteous stiff when proctoring their daughters piano competition at OSU so that everyone mistakes him for a judge.

2. She is no longer around to pull him away when he has overstayed his welcome when visiting friends and trust me he needs it. The man is missing the natural ability to tell when he is boring the snot out of people in addition to being too thick to take polite hints that people would like to go to bed, thus resulting (we heard stories thru the grapevine) in slamming doors and situations escalating to near violence (being brusquely escorted to his car by the elbow) and tearfully told in plain English (after many hints were dropped) that he must leave.

OK. I made up the part about the elbow escort, but all the rest is true.

When they were still married I always took the direct approach with Assface, having learned of his handicap early on and even then it didn't always work.

Me (smiling, with one eyebrow raised: ALLrighty Assface GET OUT OF HERE...

Assface: 010101010101

Me: I mean it dude - VA MINOS - Adios Muchacho... On yer way...

Assface: 00011110000101001

Me: I'm shutting the door now. I have to go take a shit so please leave.

Assface: 000011100011110001

You get the picture. By the way Assface speaks in a low, inaudible monotone that is remarkably similar to what I imagine binary sounds like.

3. He no longer has Amy around to give a list of 25 good reasons why you don't allow your daughter to have a sleep over at the neighbor's who have the police and social services visiting 3 times a week and then act surprised when your child ends up with head lice.

There are lots of things that he still does that Amy was never able to talk him out of when they were married like wearing black socks with shorts and spraying every surface of his home with Skin So Soft in the summertime for it's supposed bug repellent properties.

Notoriously, Assface once spent over an hour obsessively spraying every inch of the screens of the screened in porch of their old house with Skin So Soft before a BBQ. For those of you unfamiliar with Avon's line of products, Skin So Soft is a spray-on oil conconction - for human skin.

I don't really know if it kept the bugs away, but it rendered every doorknob unturnable, caused every guest at the party to slip upon the oily surface of the porch floor and Dan and I to giggle incessantly (and to this day) about the supple, touchable nature of the porch screens and forever think of the substance as "Screen So Soft".

Ass Fatties

I'm always trying to expand my horizons and learn new things. You may know this about me already. And what is the point of knowledge or wisdom if it is not shared? So in the spirit of enlightenment I give you the new vocabulary word I learned this weekend from my poor dear old best friend Amy. I'm pretty sure she made it up, but I'm hoping that it will catch on.

Typical of me it is not what you may think it is and comes with a long-winded back story. Skip to the end if you can't commit. I have highlighted the good part in red for the skippers among you. And by the way - it's totally disgusting and you may be better off not knowing.

Amy has recently remarried happily to a lovely man who adores her completely and of whom MDH and I wholly approve. We'll call him Ted. Prior to this marriage, Amy and her young daughter, who we'll call Little Baby Lion (LBL for short), have lived for the last 2 years alone in girlish bliss. Toilet seats permanently in the down position and tidy, tidy, tidy.

Prior to that they lived with her now ex-husband Assface, who was an anal retentive, overly tidy and organized son of a cunt. The toilet seats were permanently down and all about the house tidy, tidy, tidy. In fact their home was never tidied to Assface's full satisfaction so when she had had all of the bullshit and anal retentiveness she could take, Amy and young LBL moved out.

I don't mean to trivialize her divorce. There were a hundred more reasons for the split besides his aggressive disapproval of her cleaning style. We don't need to get into them here. At least not today. I'm being kind by describing Assface as a son of a cunt.

When Amy married Ted this past June she and young LBL moved into his house with his 2 teenage boys, M is 13 and K is 15. The three males had been living alone together without female supervision for a very long time. The way that men who were raised by women who wait on them hand and foot and their subsequent progeny is very different from the way that my dear Amy (and me too by the way) had been living for her entire life. The boys lived like little piggies and Amy has had to swoop in and the muck the stalls out, so to speak before it was fit for her and LBL to live in.

I walked into the newly blended family's home for the first time on Saturday night ready for anything after the nightmare stories she had been telling me since moving there in June. A pantry full of books and papers and several years worth of greasy stalactites growing from the roof of the microwave, just to name a few. To my surprise I found the house looking and smelling totally fresh and fine. In fact her stylish furniture and decor makes the place look great.

She said now that the house is clean and organized she's working on new behaviors for all the boys, Ted included. She described it as living with 3 people who don't have any fingers or fine motor skills. Paws for hands, if you will. Objects are dropped, thrown and left to rot. Coats are tossed on top of other coats hanging neatly in closets, or thrown onto the closet floor. Wet, sweaty clothes removed and left mouldering on the carpet or sofa. Wet washcloths wadded into moldy balls. The list of disgusting boy habits goes on and on.

As she was describing her new lifestyle as wife and stepmother she suddenly blurted out, "and don't get me started on the ass fatties", and then she answered her chiming cell phone, leaving me in suspense for about 6 minutes while she chatted.

When she got off the phone I was nearly bursting into flames. What the fuck is an "ass fattie"? Don't leave me hanging like this please, please, please.

An "ass fattie" is the nickname that Amy has given to the errant pieces of toilet paper that get rolled into marijuana-cigarette shaped tubes from aggressive paw like ass wiping. Certain brands of toilet paper, such as Charmin or White Cloud, increase the likelihood of the occurrence of ass fatties.

I should qualify here that she has no issues with the ass fatties as such, and in fact acknowledges having experienced them on occasion herself. (I have no comment and wish to plead the 5th.) She does however take great offense to having to pick other peoples ass fatties up off of the bathroom floor.

Her argument is persuasive and I too now believe that one should be aware of the existence of one's own ass fatties and dispose of them properly before they are seen by your stepmother.