Drinking Game

Last night after dinner MDH and I created a new drinking game while watching back episodes of House Hunters that have been piling up on our DVR. The game is called Man Cave. The rules, as with any drinking game, are simple:

• Watch any given episode of House Hunters* and chug a shot every time a guy uses the phrase "Man Cave".


• Chug two shots if a female says it because for some reason it sounds twice as stupid to hear the phrase come from the mouth of a woman.


• Players will draw for different finishes and features, ie., "granite counter tops", "stainless steel appliances", "crown molding", "tray ceiling", etc., and must drink each time their own special finish or feature is mentioned.

We didn't actually play the game because between the two of us we have too much common sense and probably not enough liquor in the house anyway.

(I'm looking forward to spring and summer when it's not unusual for MDH and I to spend the entire evening without turning on the TV.)

*Or for that matter any given half hour time slot on HGTV's prime time line up. Property Virgins, Bang for Your Buck, etc.,.

WARNING: Playing this game with the DIY show that is actually called "Man Caves" could lead to alcohol poisoning and possibly death. Play at your own risk.

Congratulations, you're still in the running towards becoming America's Next Hot Mess

Forgive me Blogland for I have sinned. It has been 20 days since my last confession, I mean blog post. I have been a right mess and until recently was in no mood for much of anything other than playing endless games of Big Kahuna Reef (it's like Jewel Quest except with seashells and tikis) or watching endless amounts of mindless, syndicated television. Here are 2 important things that I have learned:

1. Tyra Banks is an ass.

2. I need the company of other human beings.

During the first couple of weeks in September I morphed into a weepy, be-sweatpantsed, mascara smeared, unemployed lady-blob.

Early last week I almost reached the tipping point and was moments away from an apathetic and joyless life consisting of eating all my food straight from a can and wearing nothing but mumus, but thanks to a kind email from Gwen with a picture of a kitty, the hope provided by an online Oracle class offered by my local community college, the company of my good friends Jogger and Ladette, and a well timed, real job opportunity I was able to start snapping out of it.

I shook out my pony tail, showered, got dressed again, and put on make up.

I started doing all those things that I had planned to do in order to take advantage of all the free time I had. I started making the bed every day. I finally took down and washed the living room curtains. I got my cholesterol checked (high, but not too bad) and made appointments for teeth cleaning and an eye exam. I even sucked it up and applied for unemployment (even though everyone kept telling me you can't get it when you were a temp, which turns out not to be true) and discovered that being on the dole isn't so bad.

Yes. This upswing lasted for about 4 days.

Just when things were looking up for me I was suddenly and violently shoved back into my sweatpants. I was struck back down into raccoon eyed, ponytail hell by what I can only assume was the flu. I don't know what kind of flu, but to please Gwen we'll call it the Heiney Flu (H1N1) although it could possibly simply be that it's a rotten head cold and I'm a big baby.

Anyhoo... What the hell man? This is like the 4th or 5th time I've been sick this year. Fuck. I like to think of myself as a hale and hearty type, but since last Tuesday I've been wallowing around in my jammies wheeling around a sickroom humidifier, that I rigged up on an office chair with a bath towel to catch any spills, with me from room to room. My glamorous entourage of late, in addition to the humidifier, includes the following:

1. A giant box of tissues with lotion.

2. A bag of sugar-free cherry cough drops.

3. A bottle of saline nasal spray.

4. A tube of medicated lip balm.

5. A box of the most potent decongestant available over the counter. It's the kind from the locked cabinet at the pharmacy counter that you have to sign for because people make crystal meth from it. My philosophy about cold meds is that if it isn't harmful to pregnant women and I'm able to operate heavy machinery then it's no good. I want the hard stuff.

6. A plastic grocery sack filled with all my used tissues - I call it "the sad sack".

So today I'm finally starting to feel a little bit better and I'm learning to live without the humidifier (it broke anyway - I'm sure I wore the fucking thing out) and the meds (I ran out). I started back up again with my online class and found my way back to my blog.

That's all I have the strength for at the moment. Stay well and keep busy.

Love, Lady

To Do:

It's pretty scary when the top of your to-do list includes "Write Blog Post!" - yes - with an exclamation point, and then you still don't write one.

I have absolutely no good reason for not posting except maybe that I have been:

A. Terribly busy and caught up with the mundane workings of life and feeling enormously guilty about not posting for so long.

B. Entertaining myself in other ways such as watching movies, going to concerts, taking long romantic walks with my husband and generally enjoying myself so immensely that I'd temporarily forgotten all about blog land.

C. Kidnapped by space pirates who look remarkably like Chris Noth

It's actually a combination of all of the above and although I wasn't really kidnapped by space pirates, my personal soothing vibrating neck massager did break last week and I've had to spend extra time and energy dreaming up fantastical imagery to make up for the loss until the new one I ordered arrived in the mail yesterday.

What?

I suppose it is shocking that I have posted about something so very personal - I normally don't make much mention of such devices here on my blog. Maybe you are shocked that I don't keep a spare. Who knows. Either way, let's face it, a broken vibrator is funny. Maybe a little bit sad, but mostly funny.

What's even funnier (or sadder) is the speed at which I hopped online to order another one and how I have practically broken my neck craning to view the front porch for signs of the package every afternoon as I pull into the driveway when I get home from work. Now I really need it to help with my terrible neck pain.

Anyhoo... somehow I have allowed 10 days to go by with no post. That's a record for me and yet I still have nothing much to say.

I almost posted something the other night after MDH got home from seeing John Edwards and Barack Obama speak at our local arena and I was driven screaming in horror from my very own living room. It was the same evening that Edwards gave his official endorsement of Obama and MDH rushed home to watch the news coverage of the event, see if he could spot himself in the crowd on TV and watch what the pundits were saying about the endorsement.

While I admire his passion for politics, personally I've had it up to my neck with the campaigning, but I wanted to share some of my husbands excitement of having seen his candidate so I decided to watch the pundits with him for a few moments until I realized that I was watching a show where pundits were analyzing the analysis of other pundits!

"This is a pundit cluster-fuck and I cannot be party to such nonsense!", I said, haughtily, and stomped off for the shelter of the closest room in the house with no TV in it. I don't have many opportunities to do anything haughtily, so it was a pretty special moment.

I won't have many other opportunities for blog posting next week either as MDH and I are jetting off to sunny Florida for our annual visit with my parental units in The Villages, where every day we will all be drunk by noon, have dinner at 4pm and every night in bed promptly by eight. Actually that's a fib. My mom doesn't wheel out the cocktail cart until well after 1pm.

The Crab People

I'm not a big dreamer. Not in a skies the limit, wild horses couldn't stop me goal accomplishing way and also in that I don't dream when I'm sleeping, at least not much that I can remember.

Sometimes I really feel like I'm missing out when I hear other people discussing (or blogging about) their dreams. Like, "cool you flew around wearing a magic bath towel and drank lemonade with Liberace?"

I'm merely well rested.

Dreamers are well rested and also got to go on some nifty adventure while they were sleeping. I call that excellent time management.

Well today for the first time I'm going to blog about my dream. Mainly because I had one. A vivid one and I haven't been awake long enough for it to fade and forget about. So here's my dream:

I was with MDH in what looked like a movie set of some old western town. The sidewalks were wooden planks and the street was dirt. We were walking and with some people we had met who told us that the town was infested with some kind of giant chigger bug the size of your fist that looked like a soft shell crab and attached itself to the back of your neck and took over your body.

No sooner had the people said this than I noticed one on the back of MDH's neck. It had just landed there and hadn't gotten it's claws into him yet, so I knocked it off and we were very relieved but immediately started to high tail it out of town. This was the frightening part of the dream.

We made it home to a house which of course was not our house and everyone there was having a party. In my waking life there is normally nobody else at the house but me and MDH, but in my dream there were tons of people. The one who stands out foremost in my mind is my friend Rachel because she was having an engagement party at our house while we were gone and for some reason I didn't seem to mind. As far as I know in real life Rachel not only doesn't have a key to my house, she is also steadfastly single although she has been dating and getting a lot of attention from the fellas lately.

Rachel was sporting the latest fashion which seemed to be brightly colored home made crocheted shawls like the kind people wore in the 70's, with little puffy yarn balls at the ends of the draw stings. I looked down and I was wearing one too.

Anyhoo... the party was rocking and I was having a great time until I noticed several people come into the kitchen for snacks and they all had crabs on the backs of their necks and the crabs looked like they had been there for awhile. They mostly went for the crab cakes, which had suddenly appeared, and took paper platefuls of Rosemary & Olive Oil Triscuits. They ate the whole box and I was very upset.

The crab people had blank looks on their faces, but otherwise seemed pretty normal, other than the fact that they had a nasty soft shell crab attached to the backs of their necks and a crazed hankering for crab cakes and Triscuits. I said "what's the big deal, having the crabs doesn't seem so bad" and then I cracked myself up.

I felt the back of my neck to make sure I didn't have a crab on it and checked the necks of MDH and all my friends and we were all fine. I called an exterminator to make sure that there weren't any loose crabs crawling around that might jump on my other guests and went back to the business of partying.

I'll take merely well rested if this is what my dreams are like. Crocheted ponchos and crab people? Where's my magic towel? Where's my Liberace?

This dream was a total waste of time and I'm not well rested at all.

Are you still reading this? I hope you'll come back and read my blog again another day anyway. Meanwhile I'm going to go get some coffee.