Get Ready for Lies & Exaggerations

MDH and I are spending New Year's in Columbus and I can hardly keep still I'm so excited. Well, I guess I'm sitting still enough to write this blog post, but anyway, you'll just have to trust me - I'm excited. I'll be surrounded by my old friends in a city I know like the back of my own hand. Home.

We're not staying long (driving back early Saturday), but I think I've managed to work out a schedule which will maximize friend hanging time and also take full advantage of the old neighborhood while we are there. In fact I think I'm most looking forward to Friday afternoon because I've planned an unplanned day in our old neighborhood.

The beauty of planning an unplanned day is that I don't know exactly where we will end up, but I'm sure it will include lunch (maybe here or perhaps here) and possibly a movie. I don't care where else we go but we are definitely going here. Maybe.

Meanwhile I leave you with a super long winded post including a bullet point list of random bullshit I was thinking of yesterday at work when I was unable to concentrate from the anticipation of our trip.

• Remember weekend before last when I posted the snowy photo and bitched about having to go to the Supermarket? Well, here's what happened. I did not go. Not only did I not go, but I waited until the Tuesday before Christmas and made MDH go with me. Oh, and get this - he is the one who pushed the shopping cart through the slushy parking lot. It was pretty great.
  
  
• I realized on Christmas day when I was hanging out at my friend Rachel's that I haven't had a cigarette in well over 6 months. I hadn't been keeping track. All I know is this:
  
  I think I'm done smoking.
  
  I think about smoking sometimes, especially when I'm watching an old movie or god forbid a French movie, but then I remember that heavy feeling I used to have in my chest and the way my all coats used to stink and I get over it. It's not a horrible gnawing craving like I used to get, more like I think to myself Oh, this is a moment where I might normally want to smoke my fucking head clean off but I don't do that anymore.
  
  (I realize that I have posted about not smoking before, but this time I really mean it. I used to cheat here and there and I haven't even been doing that.)
  
• In related news I also realize at this moment, as I sit here typing this, my pants are too damn tight and that while it's all terrific and shit and goody for me that I haven't smoked for six months, I have meanwhile gotten fat as a fucking manatee, and am currently wishing that it would be acceptable behaviour for me to sit here in my cube with my pants off. Can't I at least unbutton my pants? Jesus.
  
  
• In other related news, as there was no one else around at the time to disagree with us, last week MDH and I declared for the record that there is no better vehicle for salt and butter than the potato. We decreed it officially a fact.
  
  
• Corn and many of it's related derivatives come in a close second.
  
  
• I saw over at Gwen's place a little thing where she tells 10 honest things and have decided to do one myself. Hence the title of this post. I'll probably do it when I get back from Ohio.
  
  
• I already mentioned that I spent Christmas Day at Rachel's house but I didn't tell you that I simultaneously got to meet her mother, step dad and niece visiting from Washington state and her boyfriend of 6 months.



• Impressions:



• Boyfriend adores Rachel and seems to treat her with appropriate reverence.
  
  
• Boyfriends young daughter, decked out in what I was told was sparkly princess outfit #3 of the day and sporting the dark circles and glassy stare that can only result from the exact combination of three things
  
  
• 1. Being under 6 years of age
  
  
• 2. Being awake and in constant motion since 4am and it is now 8pm.
  
  
• 3. It is Christmas and you still believe in Santa.
  
  
• She is the most well behaved and pleasantly demeanored youngster I have encountered in a very long time.

Hey look! I managed to give you bullets and numbers. Damn I'm good.

Oh, and by the way, that's me at the top there on Christmas day about a million years ago. I'm pulling the string on my new Drowsy doll. Click here to find out what happens next.

Does anybody remember the Drowsy doll? I adored this doll and carried it around with me until she nearly disintegrated.

She appeared a bit stoned and a more appropriate name may have been Whiney. When you pulled the string she said annoying bratty things like "I wanna drinka water!!" or "I wanna stay u-up!" How annoying is that?

Wishing You and Yours

and what the hell? Everyone else too!

Seriously. Thanks to all who read this blog and write blogs of your own who make me smile every day with your comments and amazing writing skills.

Winter Blows

This is the current view standing inside my front door. So grim that I didn't even have the balls to step out onto the porch or even open the storm door to take the picture. I should state for the record that the plow guy was just here not more than 20 minutes ago and the driveway has already disappeared again.

Shitfuckdamn. I hate winter.

The only thing worse than this view from inside my front door is standing there looking at it knowing that I have to go out to the supermarket. We are out of everything. Eggs, milk, orange juice, coffee creamer. The only fresh produce I have at the moment is 3 garlic bulbs and 2 Spanish onions so old they are sprouting green roots.

The only thing worse than this view and knowing that I have to go the supermarket in this mother fucking horrible weather is the thought of maneuvering a shopping cart across an icy, slushy parking lot.

You know what? We are too fat and over indulged in this house anyway. I mean these are tough times and so I need to learn to be more resourceful and make due with what I have instead of all this gross consumerism I've been willingly participating in for so long. Who needs coffee creamer when you have tea? Who needs fresh orange juice when you've got an old grape Kool-aid packet left over from 1992? Besides I just brushed my teeth, why would I want to eat onions?

I'm not leaving the house today and nothing can make me.

Oh darn, I left the baby on the bus.

Good Morning!

Am a allowed to be this chipper when it's so early that I haven't even had coffee yet?

I say yes.

It is Sunday after all, so cut me some slack bitches. I can't help it. I'm naturally perky damn it.

I've been tagged by the lovely Gwen over at Everything I Like Causes Cancer for Splotchy's story virus. How thrilling! I'm going to give it a whirl and hope to keep it moving by tagging Linka over at Stop Looking at My Screen... Nosy! I've never tagged Linka before so I don't know if she's game. Are you game Linka?

Directly below, italicized and slightly tiny, is what I assume is the nugget of Splotchy's original idea and then below that in blue is the story:

Here's what I would like to do. I want to create a story that branches out in a variety of different, unexpected ways. I don't know how realistic it is, but that's what I'm aiming for. Hopefully, at least one thread of the story can make a decent number of hops before it dies out.If you are one of the carriers of this story virus (i.e. you have been tagged and choose to contribute to it), you will have one responsibility, in addition to contributing your own piece of the story: you will have to tag at least one person that continues your story thread. So, say you tag five people. If four people decide to not participate, it's okay, as long as the fifth one does. And if all five participate, well that's five interesting threads the story spins off into.Not a requirement, but something your readers would appreciate: to help people trace your own particular thread of the narrative, it will be helpful if you include links to the chapters preceding yours.

- The story begins -
The bus was more crowded than usual. It was bitterly cold outside, and I hadn't prepared for it. I noticed that a fair number of the riders were dressed curiously. As I glanced around, I stretched my feet and kicked up against a large, heavy cardboard box laying under the seat in front of me. (Splotchy)

I hunched down to see what it was, but as I did, the bus violently veered to left. I was thrown up against a heavyset Asian woman with blond hair. I pardoned myself, but she faced forward with no reply. Just then, a man wearing a jumpsuit of silver and gold stood up at the front of the bus. He was holding a megaphone and a box of graham crackers. He held the megaphone up to his face and began to speak... (Some Guy)

"Yukon Cornelius was the greatest prospector that ever lived!" Waving the box of graham crackers over his head, "And the silver and gold nuggets in this box were mined by him at the North Pole!" It was then I noticed the box under the seat was also filled with graham crackers. Not name-brand ones made by the tree-dwelling elves, but the generic kind that come in white boxes meagerly labeled in big black letters: GRAHAM CRACKERS. Probably made by a guy named Butch who masturbates at lunch and doesn't wash his hands.

"And I had a whole bunch more right here on this bus until one of you misfits stole it! Gimme back my silver and gold!"

As I contemplated the man's sanity the bus stopped at a red light, throwing the woman next to me into a fit of rage. Before I knew what was happening she had tossed me out of her way onto the floor and was lunging for the kook with the microphone. Her wig flew across the aisle as she jumped on the man's back and sunk her toothless gums into his shoulder. The two of them went down like a pine tree headed for a Boy Scout lot.

The driver, startled by the commotion, looked up into his overhead mirror, accidentally removing his foot from the brake, and the bus rolled into the busy intersection. (Gwen)

He jammed his foot on the brake as soon as he looked up and saw the traffic coming at his bus from all directions and although he escaped the horrors of causing a multi-car pile up he was only mildly relieved. The driver was far too pissed off with his rowdy passengers to even notice that he had narrowly missed plowing over a woman pushing a baby stroller filled with kittens across the street.

It was just as well because had he noticed he might have been very disappointed. The bus driver really hated kittens, but he had bigger matters at hand. He parked the bus and stormed his way back to Yukon Corneilius and the wig-less Asian lady who were currently engaged in what could only be described as a combination of Sumo wrestling and the Foxtrot. (The Lady Who Doesn't Lunch)

Memo to Myself: What's Up Chuck?

I send emails to myself throughout the day while I'm at work when I am suddenly struck upside the head with brilliant ideas that I believe (at that moment) would make brilliant blog posts. As I'm sure you can imagine based on the sparse nature of my blog lately, not many of these brilliant self-emailed ideas make the cut.

In fact most of them are pretty damn stupid and I delete them. For example, I sent an email to myself last week with "What's Up Chuck?" in the subject line. The body of the email said this:

a monthly (or somewhat regular) feature in which we discover the recent comings and goings, gossip tid-bits, etc. of beloved, tough-guy "actor", Chuck Norris

I put quotes around the word "actor" for my own amusement because of my intense dislike for his body of work. (Some of you may remember a post I wrote a while back in which I take a few liberties with his film titles.) Also I noticed just now that I used the word "we" for some reason. Probably because I'm an idiot.

Anyhoo... I tried to turn the email into a post, as suggested by me to myself, and Googled Chuck Norris to find out what kind of amazing and/or titillating high jinks the old man might have been up to lately that I could poke fun at. As it turns out in addition to having the cheesiest website I have encountered in quite awhile, he's a pretty fuckin' dull guy that really hasn't been up to much lately. In fact the most recent item on the page titled Upcoming Events happened 3 months ago.

Apparently he wrote a new book. I think the title might be Buy It Now!, but the website was such a yawn I was too bored to scroll down any further to find out for sure.

Here's what I'd like to think he's been up to lately:

Currently in production, Chuck Norris in the title role of:
Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific! The Paul Mitchell Story

Chuck Norris acts as mohel at Rosanne's grandson's bris. He karate chopped the foreskin clean off the baby.

My apologies to whoever this woman is in the photo with Chuck, but guess what baby?You bear a remarkable resemblance to Roseanne.

Nobody Needs This - Special Video Edition

Speed Fit - are you fucking kidding me?

Poo Flinging Narrowly Missed Due to NFL

Living without my computer is simply unimaginable, let's face facts. Living with it for 30 minutes at a time at which point it starts to whine, sputter and shut down, is simply undignified so yesterday I broke down and did what I had to do - I called Dell support.

I spoke with Vincent a nice young man in the Philippines, who walked me through a couple of exercises in futility. Things that I had already tried before on my own for free and things that unsurprisingly didn't work when I tried them all over again while on the phone with Vincent as my guide for $49. Remarkably cheaper than I would have guessed, but still.

My conversation with Vincent wasn't a total loss of my $49 because he was able to get me to be a little more brave and dig into the machine a little deeper than I had before on my own. I discovered just how piping hot things were becoming inside my sad old computer and came up with a temporary fix on my own that you see in the photo above, until the new parts arrive.

This handy little arrangement, unbecoming though it may be (my old window fan is dirty), allowed me to leave my computer running all yesterday afternoon and well into the evening hours. I dare the fucking thing to overheat now.

Other goings on this weekend:

I made BBQ pulled pork in the slow cooker, which MDH now refers to as "the all day torture device". He must have asked me 5 thousand times, "is it ready yet?, is it ready yet?"

Not to be left out when there's excitement MDH has been experiencing troubles of his own on his laptop, which when combined with the drama I have been having with our home computer has caused a complete meltdown of all civilized adult behavior in our household. If it weren't for televised sports diverting his attention I'm pretty sure we would have resorted to cave man grunts by noon and flinging poo before dinner. Thank you ESPNHD.

After some Internet research (that I'm able to do now thanks to the new temporary cooling system) I am pretty sure that the user profile on his laptop is corrupt and since his computer is owned by his company, it's really something that he will have to wait til Monday and have his IT department fix.

The man has no respect at all for my IT background especially when I give him answers he doesn't want to hear so he has decided to take matters into his own hands and try to fix it himself. This is the same man that tried to get rid of a virus last year by deleting his Internet viewing history. It would be funny if wasn't sooo not funny.

Quickly, quickly

Computer problems are so frustrating.

I've just recovered from the most annoying Trojan thingy that I accidentally downloaded about a month ago and now my power supply and fan seem to have gotten together behind my back and designed an elaborate plot to drive me completely insane.

Eventually I'm going to have to bust the machine open and replace them both, but until then the computer will run normally for an undetermined period of time, anywhere between half an hour and all the way up to 3 hours, and then as I live and breathe, mock my very character by suddenly making a shrill noise and then completely shutting down for no discernible reason.

It happened the other night when I was experimenting with new templates for my blog. Some of you may have seen the results of my experiment briefly. It was sort of cute. A black background with pink text and some flowery, swirly things. I was just playing around and then out of nowhere the fan on my computer started making this sound so loud, at once chugging and whining, I thought a helicopter might be trying to land in there. And then the power cut off. Snap.

Then it got very quiet.

The only sound was my blood boiling.

When I booted back up the pink flowery theme was still there and all my widgets were gone.

Anyhoo... I was so angry that I figured the best thing to do was just turn the fuckin' thing off and walk away. Just walk away, rather than yank it free from all of the cables and cords, drop kick it out to the driveway and run over it a couple of times with my car, as of course was my first impulse.

I'm back now. I put my old template back (as you may see) tonight. Perhaps it's a little bit boring, and maybe I'll change my template when I find the right one or figure out how to design my own. It's going to take me awhile to rebuild my widgits. I thought that I backed them up, but alas, no.

So I was thinking about my younger days, back in simpler times before indoor plumbing, electricity and cell phones. Back when the only video game was Pong, everyone thought high fructose corn syrup was delicious and good for you and Aids was a candy you could eat to lose weight (although it was spelled differently). I was thinking about a time when there were no computers and I had to type all of my term papers on a manual typewriter, and how excited I was to get an electric typewriter for graduation. Twenty-three skiddoo. Fancy me.

I've got to wrap this up quickly because my computer is starting to make that weird helicoper noise again so I know my time here on the blogs this evening is limited. Whatever. Are you still reading this? There's no real point to this post other than that my computer is taking a big shit and instead of ordering the parts, cracking it open and fixing it I'd apparently rather wax nostalgic about the typewriter I got for high school graduation instead of a car like all my friends.

My apologies for any typos and/or spelling errors.

I went roller skating in public with no pants and it may or may not have been Thanksgiving

Don't you love not having to go to work? It's one of my favorite things about holidays. The not going to work.

I get so much done. It's not even 8am and I've already emptied the dishwasher, baked a pie, washed the kitchen rugs, had about a million cups of coffee, whipped up a pitcher of Bloody Mary's and made cocktail sauce for the gorgeous giant shrimp (oxymoron anyone?) I bought yesterday on a whim when I picked up my turkey from the deli.

Perhaps much of what I've just described sounds a bit like work, but it's my work and I do it because I want to. So there.

All this holiday hoo-haw and you'd think that I was entertaining for the masses, but sadly this year it's just me, MDH and our cat. I decided to pull out all the stops even if it is only the 3 of us.

I include the cat in the festivities although he won't technically be joining us for dinner at the table and I would beat him with a broom handle if he jumped on the counter and laid a whisker on my beautiful roasted bird, but I did buy him a special can of Fancy Feast turkey and giblets.

This will be the first Thanksgiving that we have ever spent without family and/or friends. How weird.

When I was a kid Thanksgiving and most other holidays were always at my parents house. That's just the way it was. Probably due to the controlling nature of my mother combined with the twin facts that we had the biggest house and were more centrally located to our relatives. I'm not even sure my mom ever actually invited anyone. People just seemed to naturally show up.

While I have a small nuclear family, I have an enormous extended family. Aunts, uncles, and buttloads of cousins. (We are hillbillies after all.) So I have somewhere near like 25 first cousins and of those about 15 of us are within a 4 year age range of each other.

On Thanksgiving day while the mom's were busy cooking and the dad's were occupied playing poker and occasionally slipping out to the shed to steal sips of corn whiskey from the mason jar my dad hid behind a collection of old car batteries, us kids were left to our own devices for very long periods of time. I'm pretty sure there would have had to have been an explosion or rifle fire before any of the adults would have taken notice of us and even then I might not have been surprised if they merely told us to keep the noise down and to sop up the blood before it made a stain.

One year when I was very young, like not more than 6 or 7, I seem to recall that some adult, perhaps one of the older cousins, had had enough of our destructive and rowdy bullshit and decided to get us the hell out of the house and took us all roller skating.

As I type this I begin to doubt whether or not this actually took place on Thanksgiving because what roller rink would be open on Thanksgiving day? Is that possible?

Anyhoo... you will have to suspend your disbelief along with me and mine because I can't think of any other holiday or reason we would all be together and I want to carry on with this story so that I can finish this blog post and dress my turkey and get that mo-fo in the oven.

Besides, whether it's real or not, going roller skating on Thanksgiving day with all of my cousins is one of my best and favorite childhood memories.

One thing I do remember vividly is the fact that I left the house wearing only half of my special Thanksgiving outfit and my parents and the other adults around were so drunk and busy cooking or gambling that no one noticed.

My mom bought me a Jan Brady type of ensemble consisting of a longish, plaid, button front top with a Peter Pan collar and a matching pair of elastic waist bell bottom trousers. I loved the top and despised the bottoms. They were itchy.

The top was just long enough to cover my tush if I stood completely still. So it might have been just fine if we decided to go to the movies or pose for oil portraits.

I thought I looked like my favorite child movie star Shirley Temple, who frequently pranced around my TV screen in black and white, wearing short little dresses with bobby socks and lace up shoes. Apparently I did not grasp the concept of how fashions evolve over time, the importance of covering up your bum in public or, more importantly, how frequently one is required to bend over while roller skating.


I (bottom right corner) along with a few of my cousins, circa 1979, hope you make some great fuzzy holiday memories for yourself this year.

Happy Thanksgiving!

When You Tickle Me Do I Not Throw Up?

I've been sick with a rotten head cold for almost two weeks now. I could see it coming but it was too late, we were surrounded. MDH and I jokingly referred to our train ride home from Chicago as the tuberculosis express because of the freakish amount of open mouthed coughing and sneezing going on around us by what seemed like every single human being seated within a 10 foot radius.

By now of course I'm feeling much better, practically back to normal. No more fever and chills but for some reason all the great gobs of snot created during the course of my illness have decided to make a winter nest in my sinuses and just hang around for awhile doing bong hits and watching reruns of Mork & Mindy. So even though technically I guess I'm not sick anymore I remain a disgusting mess and have apparently lost the ability to control all my parts because once at work and numerous times at home I have coughed or sneezed and busted out with an uncontrollably boisterous fart.

At home that's not a big deal. Happens all the time. So much so that I barely notice and most of the time and admittedly, I am probably doing it on purpose or at the very least controlling the volume, force and tempo. Sometimes I even do it timed perfectly to punctuate a fake yet graceful, karate style round house kick to my husbands head or some other equally mature form of physical humor. Ah yes. Those are great moments. When I'm at home.

The one at work seemed particularly hearty and long lasting and my office is carpeted so there no getting away with trying to scoot my chair all around trying to create a similar noise. Nor could I cover it up with more coughing.

It just happened unexpectedly and I couldn't control it.

The shame of it all. I farted at work and it was loud. People heard it and then pretended like they didn't and I was mortified. Not that I would have warmly welcomed any comments at that particular moment, but still.

The closest I can find to any bright sides to this story is that:

A. At least I didn't crap my pants

And

B. In retrospect it's kinda funny and at least funny enough to blog about. Although at the moment it happened I wanted to die.

Anyhoo... it made me think of this Dimitri Martin bit, mainly the part where he talks about how funny farts are by location (starts about 1:44) - it's like 9 minutes but worth it if you haven't seen it and have the time:

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs - I'm going to grieve and get a bit preachy...

My best friend Amy lost her dog Rita to cancer last week.

I wrote about Rita almost a year ago in honor or Amy's birthday in a post describing Rita's nasty smell and obstinate, curmudgeonly disposition.

Smelly and undisciplined though she was, Rita was not without her charms and I loved her very much for many reasons, but mainly because she was deeply loved by someone who I deeply love. Going to Amy's house just won't be the same anymore without Rita there yipping at my heels and trying to lick my brains out.

Rita developed a tumor on her front leg that was removed in early July and made to suffer indignities while the wound healed by being forced to wear not only the perfunctory plastic funnel around her head to keep her from chewing on her stitches, but also a glitter encrusted 4th of July preemie sized t-shirt, not unlike this, that Amy bought at the dollar store to prevent the doggie from digging at her bandages.

Rita was not the kind of dog you put clothing on.

Not if you wanted to keep your fingers. She had her dignity. So for Rita to sit still while being dressed and then actually keep the t-shirt on long enough for it to be beneficial is really saying something. After awhile she was back to her old spry, naked self. Good as new.

This fall however, a little more quickly than expected, the tumor came back with a vengeance and after only one watered down chemotherapy treatment Rita seemed to wither. The tiny, stinking dynamo became unrecognizable as the sassy pain in the ass she once had been and rather than put her through any more misery Amy decided to have Rita euthanized and made an appointment with her vet last Thursday.

Amy is inconsolable and understandably so. Rita has been her constant, faithful companion for the past 13 years.

In addition to her overwhelming grief, Amy worried that she put Rita down too soon. She and I spent a lot of time talking about this all throughout Rita's illness, starting way back when the tumor first developed and right up to last week when Amy made the final decision.

Although I couldn't make that decision for her, I think it was the right one and I certainly didn't think it was too soon.

After working in vet clinics for so many years I have seen people do some crazy shit in attempts to keep sick and dying pets alive. Some of them work out and are very inspirational, but most of the time these attempts just seem cruel to me and I'm amazed at how much money people are willing to shell out to keep their pets with them just a little while longer.

This is what I think, and maybe some of you will disagree with me, but here goes:

Your job as a pet owner is to give your pet the best quality of life possible for as long as it lives. That doesn't merely mean feeding it, making sure it has clean, fresh water and cleaning up it's crap. It also means keeping it safe from harm and getting regular check ups with your vet. It means teaching it not to jump on people and not to bite. To take it a step further, I also believe it means that you should try to shape your pet's behavior in such a way so that it can get along in the world, be more easily loved by you and others and not get kicked, beaten, bitten or taken away from you by the authorites.

Otherwise your pet is either a large pain in the ass or livestock and unless you are a giant asshole or a farmer, what's the point?

Anyhoo...

You cannot explain to your pet that it has cancer, or kidney disease, or liver failure or whatever it has wrong with it. Your pet doesn't understand why it feels sick or has pain, so your pet isn't going to understand why you are forcing it to swallow pills or give it daily shots or IV fluids or whatever horrible hell you have to put it through to keep it alive. Being a pet owner involves a certain amount of selflessness and that sometimes means deciding whether or not your pet's quality of life is being compromised by medical treatment.

Maybe it isn't.

If the medical treatment is minimally invasive and/or your pet has the kind of disposition that doesn't mind being poked, jabbed or prodded, then maybe you can stretch things out a little longer. Lucky you.

Otherwise you have to think about how you want your pet to spend it's last days and how you want to spend your last days with your pet.

Amy decided that she'd rather have Rita live a shorter life as her yapping, obstinate, brain licking self. I'm going to go cry again now.

Not if you was the last immigrant grocer on earth Honey...

Not Unless Round Is Funny

I'm not feelin' it. I'm just not. Among all of the things that I do feel: fat, grumpy, a spot of soft flowing hair near my ankle that I've missed the last 6 times I've shaved my legs, I don't much feel like writing and I haven't felt very funny. I think I can safely (for the moment) blame it on the presidential campaign.

I've been riveted to the news every night and yet writhing in agony and frequently leave the room screaming or begging MDH to turn off the TV because of all of the ridiculous things I'm seeing and hearing.

My biggest pet peeve in human form at the moment is one Mr. Joe Wurzelbacher, real occupation unknown, who can't seem to keep his stupid trap shut on national TV and probably confirms my perception of what people in other states perception is of my home state of Ohio being filled to the brim with dim-witted mouth breathers. I'm beginning to wonder myself.

Anyhoo... Joe the Buttplug bugs me on several levels and he makes an entire state look bad.

Rant over. But I must say I saw the picture at the top of my post for the first time the other day and it's now my desktop background. It gives me a ripe fit of the giggles every time I look at it. What happened? Was the old man coughing up a hairball or suddenly struck with an urge to grab Obama's ass when he thought no one was looking? Either way, it gives me great joy to look at this photo so I thought maybe there's a chance that you haven't seen it and I would share. I'm a giver, that's me.

I've been so busy hanging on to every sliver of campaign coverage that I forgot to tell you: MDH and I went to Chicago this weekend. Yes we did. We met up with MDH's friend O'Pint, visiting from Ireland and his lovely girlfriend K. I had never met either of them before but have been hearing drinking stories about O'Pint for a very long time. K is a somewhat new and charming development and we find O'Pint to be a very lucky man.

We introduced them to wet Italian beef sandwiches, Chicago style hot dogs with pickles on poppy seed buns, and Old Style beer. Sunday night we took them to Second City and then out for beer (not Old Style) and ribs at the Twin Anchors. I don't even live any where near Chicago and I was showing it off, all proud like I owned the damn place.

MDH and I had some alone time on Saturday afternoon before R and K's flight arrived from Dublin so we hung around at the Art Institute, where we spent a good deal of our time enjoying a leisurely, wine-soaked lunch in the fancy restaurant (as opposed to the food court) and then walked around and for some reason I took a million pictures of chairs.

Here are some of the pictures of our visit - chairs included:



It took me a very long time to figure out the trick to embedding a Flickr slide show into my post - Patience! By the time it was done I found I had gone completely gray and grew a long white beard, so you'd better enjoy the damn thing.

Em Face Iss On the Wrong Sill AH Bull

One of my co-workers, Bag O'Mice came up to me recently to personally let me know that he had updated one of the many thousands of SOP documents that we have to use to perform our jobs effectively. The first thing you might have a problem with the way this blog post is going is probably the fact that I used the acronym SOP in the first sentence of it.

Sorry, but that is what they are called. This ain't fiction baby and I don't make this shit up. I didn't understand for a long time what it meant either, but then I'm pretty terrible at acronyms, as I have explained in a previous blog post. Apparently it stands for Standard Operating Procedures, which is the second thing that may cause you to have a problem with this blog post.

Standard Operating Procedures. Ugh - It sounds so stuffy, doesn't it? I would be just as happy to refer to these documents as:

HT-DTS - How To Do This Shit

Anyhoo... the SOP's are constantly changing and being updated and it's not enough to merely change the documents - you have to let the rest of the team know when you've changed something. Usually we do this via email, like any normal person in the 21st century would. But I'm not sure that Bag O'Mice understands such high falutin' technical concepts like attaching documents in emails so he often makes photo copies and then hands them out personally. It's a charming touch, very personable, but I can see through him like used Neutrogena.

He's kind of an old timer and a totally nice guy, but he has to be nice... because the man is about as sharp as a bag of wet mice and niceness and good looks is all he's got going on.

It's amazing to me that someone as noticeably stupid as him has remained gainfully employed for over 20 years with this company, whilst I, on the other hand, and many others like me, have been slavishly clinging to my temporary position for dear life.

Bag O'Mice is so handsome, well mannered and soft spoken that when I first started working there it took me several weeks before I noticed that he is actually mildly retarded. It happened as we were walking back to our cubicles together after a meeting one day and he started to ask me pointed questions about the very same subjects that had just been discussed in some depth only moments before in the meeting.

So he cheerfully lays the updated SOP on my desk and points to the spot that he changed:

Bag O'Mice: There's been a change in country code numbers.

Me: Which ones?

Bag O'Mice: Blah, blah and CROW-AH-TEE-AH.

Me: Crow-Ah-What-Ah?

Bag O'Mice (pointing to word on document): See? CROW-AH-TEE-AH.

Me: You mean Croatia?

After he left I tried to think of all the reasons that a college educated, 50ish guy with a wife and 2 grown children might not have ever heard of Croatia. I know that he owns a TV, more than one in fact, and I assume that he listens to the radio because he always calls me a "Good American" in lieu of saying thank you like a normal person when I do favors for him. Then of course there was that little thing called the Bosnian War that was on the news every night for most of the early and mid 90's, right? Did I dream that?

Also the company has a market there. A small market, but we talk about it ALL THE TIME becaus it's kind of new. I'm postitive that somebody would have had to have said the word "Croatia" out loud to Bag O'Mice at some point during his career with the company, especially around the time that the country code for Croatia changed which is what caused Bag O'Mice to have to change the goddamn SOP.

I guess I am feeling more than a little embittered this week as I spend my evenings and weekends updating my resume and looking for work again while dumbass mother fuckers like Bag O'Mice are hogging the good jobs. I wish he would just retire already so that I could have a chance at career complacency and dumbassed-ness too.

Seriously, Bag O'Mice should be collecting disability.

Tell me in the comments about your dumbass co-workers please.

Monkey Shines

We've moved back into our house after 5 days of self imposed home improvement project banishment. They said the fumes from the polyurethane were pretty noxious and would make the house unlivable. It's had more than a day to blow off and I'm finding that it kind of smells like a combination of burnt plastic and Elmer's glue with just a hint of bongwater.

Staying in the hotel was cool while it lasted, kind of like business as usual during the day, but being on vacation in the evening. We ate out for dinner every night and it was quite luxurious to have clean towels every day and someone else to make the bed, although I have a few bones to pick with the Ramada, not the least of which is the unexpected week day closure of the giant indoor water slide that had been prominently featured in all of the hotel's advertising and not a small factor in MDH's decision to stay at the establishment.

Apparently they only get business travelers during the week and apparently business travelers don't care for indoor water slides enough to warrant having a life guard on duty during pool hours. Whatever.

I was more upset about it because MDH had been looking forward to the water slide and was horribly disappointed to find it would be closed for the duration of our stay.

I, on the other hand, am never overly keen to dunk my body into the kind of pool that is geared toward child persons. I get a case of the shivering willies even thinking about all the filthy youngsters too busy flapping around having fun to make their way to the little boys and girls rooms should the need arise. And don't even get me started on those babies that I see in public pools swaddled in enormous diapers, swollen with pool water.

Besides, after my experimentation of late with hair color, I'm not sure what would happen should the chemicals on my head co-mingle with the scary brew that burns my nostrils in a public pool. Perhaps something like this...?

Anyhoo... we're home now and here are some pictures:

The Living Room Before:

The Living Room After:

Turtle's New Cat Bed - I realized that he had no soft place to curl up in the living room anymore...

The best thing that happened to me all week? Finding the most adorable slippers EVER in which to pad around on my new floors ...

The News Round Up

Hey all... I'm back. Sort of.

I'll be leaving again shortly as MDH and I pack up for a week long stay in a hotel starting Monday when the people we hired to refinish our hardwood floors begin to do so.

They told us that it will take 4 days and after they are finished we won't be able to walk on the floors in shoes or move the furniture back where it belongs for another week after that. That may seem like a long time to have things scattered all over the place, but because it's been this way for so long already, I've become accustomed to living in a pig sty. So whatever dude.

Actually, I've never been more excited to stay at a hotel in my entire life. It's just the crappy Ramada down the street, but it will be a week of living like a semi-normal person again. I won't have to turn sideways to walk through my kitchen and I already know exactly where the phone book will be (in the nightstand drawer).

The floor people were able to schedule the work in just the nick of time. I've gotten so used to living in this mess that one more day of it and I would have begun wearing nothing but mumus and eating all my food straight out of the can.

In the comments of this post, which contains the majority of my bitching, somebody made the clever suggestion that we move everything back to it's proper place until time came closer to the actual date when the work was to be done. Yes. Thanks for that. Marvelous idea. I hear you. It makes perfect sense and would probably have been a fine thing for us to do if we were not the two laziest people on planet earth and possibly galaxies beyond.

Anyhoo... now there is an end in sight.

Meanwhile I realized that not only have I been neglecting my blog I've also left it hanging with a couple of untidy loose ends that I intend to take care of in this post.

Like first of all:

Whatever happened between Gaydar and Jogger? Remember that whole thing with the old man with the crush on the young girl and the mysterious packet of Oreo cookies? Well I swear on a stack of chocolate cream filled cookies that the very next day after I wrote that post - what should I see displayed prominently on my very own desk when I got to work? Yes. A mysterious packet of Oreo cookies.

Anyway... here's what happened... Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was weird and I half wondered if Gaydar hadn't read my blog post where I all but called him a dirty old man because his annoying harassment of Jogger seemed to end right after I wrote it.

Jogger and I still don't know who gave us the cookies.

and loose end number 2:

The Case of the Olive Garden Charges
In this post I wrote a few months ago about a mysterious charge I noticed on our family credit card statement to the Olive Garden to the sum of $52.83 and the arguments and accusations of bad taste that ensued between me and MDH. A week or so later I called my mother who thanked me for the Olive Garden gift card I had sent to them for their anniversary. What a relief! Neither of us remembered having eaten at the Olive Garden because neither of has had.

And now a numbered list of random bullshit:

1. I dyed my hair back to my "natural color". At least I think it's my natural color. Over the years my blond highlight just kept getting lighter and lighter and my hair was starting to look fried. It's brownish now and very shiny again.

2. MDH does not like my new old hair color. He said he finds it "jarring". Too bad mutha fucka.

3. I drove around the block and wrote down the address of the house where the dog lives that barks all goddamn night and keeps me awake. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, probably call the police the next time it happens. I have also toyed with the idea of finding out the phone number of the house too and then calling these assholes at 2am when they let their dog bark and howl for hours on end.

4. I have become addicted to the new HBO series True Blood. I know, I know. Vampires. But trust me, it's really good.

5. I have also become addicted to the MTV show called Exiled where the little spoiled rotten assholes previously featured on My Super Sweet 16 are hauled off like criminals in the night, made to live among families in third world countries and forced to perform chores such as making huts out of cow poop and sleep on dirt floors. It's wonderful. A feel good festival of grins and evil giggling.

6. Mr. Boo got me last week. I vowed that I would never let this happen, but it did and I am ashamed. You see, I was deep in conversation with my back to the cubicle aisle way and the asshat snuck up behind me and burst a handful of bubble wrap in my ear. I won't go into detail about what happened or what I said to him afterward, but suffice it to say that he limped away from the experience holding onto his ball sack for dear life and has still not been able to look me in the eye nearly a week later. I have no fear that he'll ever sneak up and scare me again.

Can't Get There from Here

Our local whoever is in charge of fixing the roads seems to have had some kind of planning, scheduling or logistical foul up because every goddamn road we normally use to get anywhere has been closed and there are detours.

Lots and lots of detours.

It's maddening.

If you would like to travel on Highway A under normal circumstances you would turn right at the end our our street drive about half a mile and voila! Highway A.

If you would like to travel on Route B simply make a left turn at the end our our street drive about 3 miles and.... Ahhhh... Route B.

One of the reasons we chose this particular neighborhood was the lovely combination of quiet sleepiness and close proximity to multiple highways. But for the last month there is so much road construction around our neighborhood that I cannot go more than 4 blocks in either direction at the end our our street without encountering a detour of some kind. We have been completely boxed in.

I was nearly destroyed earlier this week when after establishing a new pattern, however convoluted of using the detours to find my way to and from work every day I discovered that one of the detours I have been using now has it's own detour. Did I mention something earlier about madness?

In spite of all the detours, construction and extra traffic my commute to work in the morning is only taking about 5 extra minutes, but for reasons that are very difficult to explain to people who don't live in Michigan or states that discourage left turns, the time it takes me to drive home in the evening has doubled.

I have lost that certain 5pm spring in my step and eagerness to go home. Why bother, I think, I'm just going to sit seething in traffic anyway.

Actually, lately I've noticed I'm seething less. Not that the other driver's aren't every bit as irritating to me as they usually are, but the road rage has given way to a sort of secret encouragement and I have turned into a detour traffic coach, unbeknownst to my fellow de-tourists and I find myself saying things like:

That's it Green Ford Focus, focus!

OK beat-up Corolla, I'm counting on you. Turn! Turn! Turn! Aw damn! Why did you stop in the middle of your turn? Next time. You'll get it next time.

C'mon Buick! Let's go. Show me that Charlie Hustle!

Anyhoo... I'm glad to be home.

How to Kill An Hour or Twelve

Please witness my newest obsession. My friend at work Jogger hipped me to this website that basically lets you upload photos of yourself or loved ones and then magically superimpose the face on old yearbook pictures


I have been laughing like a donkey all night. Thanks Jogger!!


Here is the picture I started out with - it's one that I posted here on my blog several months ago:


and here are some of my favorite results as Lady thru the ages...


As a girl:

1952 1964 1966 1982 1988



As a dude:

1950 1952 1968 1986



Enjoy!

Love, Lady

Stick Around for Joy

Don't get too excited. The picture above is my pipe dream - hopefully soon a reality. The before picture is the current state of our living room floor - filthy and stripped bare. The after picture is of our master bedroom floor, which was already refinished when we moved in a few years ago, but the model of what we hope the rest of the floors will look like when the job is finally completed.

Meanwhile my life is in chaos because my house is in a total fuckin' shambles. I want to move somewhere far, far away. To a place where all the rooms make sense. Where the kitchen is the kitchen and the living room doesn't echo and give me splinters.

What feels like an eternity has passed since my darling decided to rip out the nasty carpets in our house. It was a spur of the moment decision even though we have always planned to refinish the floors in our house. We just hadn't planned to start ripping up carpet that very second.

He is not typically a man of action. In fact most of the time he mainly stays very still, so I don't know what came over him. At the time (Labor Day weekend) because he was supposed to be simply shampooing the carpets, I was thoroughly prepared for a carpet cleaning project. We moved all of the furniture and breakable items out of the way and created a situation that I thought would be temporary, like for one day.

I left him alone with the shampoo-er machine for less than 5 minutes and returned to find him wild-eyed and grinning, on his hands and knees, looking up at me and barking proudly "Look at this! - These floors are perfect, why didn't we do this before??"

Because you need a plan crazyman.

To be honest, at first I was kind of excited to finally get the wheels in motion, but that was a few weeks ago and at this point I am tired of living like an animal. Meanwhile, the estimates have all come in, a deposit has been paid and the job has been scheduled - in another 4 weeks.

So I am writing to you now from a cramped space that I have carved out for myself in the office by moving several large piles of crap. I'm going to post some pictures tonight and reassure you that I haven't dropped off the face of the planet. It's just difficult to get in the post writing zone when I'm drowning underneath all of the crap piles.

Here is what used to be my kitchen, filled with all of the crap from what used to be the dining room and some of the crap that used to be the living room... and some other crap that I have just started piling on top of it because I have no fucking idea where to put it anymore...

Here is what used to be the entry way filled with more of some of the crap that used to be in the living room. We have to tilt the pizza boxes to get them through the door. What? You think I'm going to try to cook something in this shithole?

Here is some of the crap I had to move to get into the office, including the ever present shop vac... like those American Express ads, it's everywhere I want to be...

Here is one of the few rooms in the house I can stand to be in... our lovely empty dining room...

If You Need Immediate Assistance You Can Go Piss Up a Rope

I've been working at a job I truly enjoy, with a great bunch of lovely people that I truly like, since the middle of February. I'm a temp and, unbelievably fabulous and amazing though I am, have been given no promise of permanent employment. Not even a smidge. Oh sure, they all tell me how great I am and have thanked me with kind words and a few small bonuses here and there, but my ID badge is dated Jan 15, 2009. My expiration date.

It's sad really, but on the other hand, being a temp gives me great freedom to say fuck it, when certain situations arise.

Be that as it may, I have done the best work possible for these people. I never say no when someone gives me an assignment or complain no matter how crappy that assignment may be. I smile, and say "Sure!", although I might ask how soon it's needed so that I can better prioritize all the other 10 kazillion things they have me doing. I have to prioritize because I have to somehow fit it all into an 8 hour day. I'm an hourly employee and not approved for any overtime.

I make it happen because I am good and I am trustworthy. I am Supertemp. You can rely on me.

Lately, because summer is drawing to it's close and the people I work with are gainfully employed and have all worked there longer than dirt (this month Hey Mr. DJ celebrates his 38th year with the company with no sign of eminent retirement) and subsequently have more vacation time, sick time, and personal days racked up than I ever dreamed would be possible in a lifetime, let alone in one year, they are often out of the office - and have all apparently decided that I am a terrific out of office back up.

I'm a temp. I don't get vacation days. I am always there. Every ding dong day. Reliable, that's me.

It's fine when it's one person. But when it is 3 or 4 people and on one occasion recently FIVE people - it's just simply not OK.

I should mention that I barely have time to perform my own job and fulfill my own responsibilities and tasks within a what always seems to be a very short 8 hour day.

Frankly, it's getting old.

So here is a message to all of the people who have slammed me, and will probably continue to slam me during my coworkers absences, with arm flapping emails marked "Urgent!", with all caps in the subject line and little flaming envelope icons:

I'm only vaguely aware of some of the projects that my lovely teammates are currently working on.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy to help you when time permits and when my associates have given me the tools and background information that I need to help you. But they didn't. They only fill me in on the truly important stuff and since I have no fucking idea what the bloody hell you are talking about, I can only assume that you are:

a.) a giant liar head
b.) mistaken
c.) in a deep bucket of shit because you waited until the last minute to do this "Urgent!" thing and forgot that my co-worker was going to be out of the office
d.) all of the above

Don't get me wrong, I am indeed a whiz, and I really (sort-of) would like to help you out, but you are misguided if you think that I am so intimately up my collective coworkers asses as to be able to read their minds from afar. And no, I'm not going to try to reach them at home.

As I mentioned before I don't even know what the fuck you are drivelling about, so don't ask me to make snap decisions on their behalves, try to gain access to their files, or have all the relevant numbers for your project memorized.

You are shit out of luck.

They are not here.

It will have to wait until they come back.

Re-fucking-lax.

Oh, and while I'm at it - It is not OK to cram an entire message into the subject line of your email. It's an email, not a text message. Even if you somehow manage to squeeze "pls" and "thx" in there, it's rude. Stop it.

Pants Noise

Today I wore a pair of shoes that are a winning combination of cute and comfortable. I hardly ever wear them and when I took them down from the top shelf of my closet and pulled them out of the box, I was thinking to myself - Oh, I love these shoes, why don't I ever wear them?

Because they make an irritating rubbery squishing noise with every step - that's why.

They make a noise like wet socks inside a pair of rubber boots, but of course I didn't remember this until I was well on my way and it was too late to turn back and get another pair.

In addition to this I wore one of my newer pairs of wide-leg khaki trousers. They make a soft, swishing sound that is also pretty annoying after awhile.

So between the shoes and the pants I sounded like a one man band.

I was self conscious about it all day to the point that I made a contest with myself to see how long I could go without getting up to do anything. Pretty long actually. I made it until around 12:30. When I finally couldn't take it any more and got up to go to the break room to heat up my lunch (there was no way I was going to eat cold soup from a can) enough time had gone by for my feet to stir up a little moisture and a new delightful farting noise was now added to the mix for accompaniment.

Great.

Round about this time (12:50, to be exact) a reminder popped up on my calendar for a meeting I needed to attend - on the other side of the fucking compound. Seriously it's a very big place - the meeting was half a mile away. No joke.

It took me 11 laboriously noisy hours to walk there. Farting, swishing and squishing all the way. Of course I got there late and had to walk all the way to the back of the room to find a seat.

Marvelous.

Anyhoo... the first thing I did when I arrived home this evening was rip these shoes from my feet and ceremoniously slam them into the trash. I said, "Take that you noisy motherfuckers".

Then I unceremoniously pulled them out of the trash, put them back into their box, placed a post it note on top of the box that says simply, "Farts", and placed the box back on the top closet shelf. At least next time I'll know why I never wear them.

The title of the post is a little inside joke because when I was in middle school I had a friend named Dana whose mother was into some weird rattle-snake frenching religion and thought that everything having to do with the human body was dirty and any mention of a body part or body function was a dirty word. She was kinda like Carrie's mom.

Dana's mother once washed her mouth out with soap for saying the word "pimple". Her mother created an alternate language for such things:

Zit/Pimple = Place on your face

Fart = Pants noise

Vagina = Special place

Butt/Ass = Seat

Crazy Bitch = Mother

That's all I can remember, but "Pants Noise" always gave me a giggle and when Amy's daughter LBL was a baby, that was one of my favorite nicknames for her.

A Helpful Hint from Amy - The Cool Paper Towel

School started last week and although I'm not a teacher, most of my friends are teachers. Did I ever mention that my best friend Amy teaches the 2nd grade? Yes she does. Did I ever mention that my best friend Amy is brilliant? Yes she is.

One of my favorite works of her genius is this:

She keeps a little mini fridge in her class room filled with diet cokes and a life time supply of water-soaked paper towels tidily folded up and individually sealed in snack-size zip lock baggies.

Do you know how many snot dripping, red faced, sniffling, crying jags occur in the daily lives of 2nd graders? Well, I'll tell you, it's a lot. Bumps, bruises, scrapes, headaches, loose teeth, name calling, hair pulling, pants peeing, booger eating - no matter what your problem may be it can all be taken care of by the soothing relief of a cool, wet paper towel.

Amy always says it really fast too - Go get a coolpapertowel and sit down. The smeary red-faced child person goes to the mini-fridge and gets his or her own cool paper towel. Sometimes they even tell her when they might need one.

Mrs. Amy I'm very upset. I think I need a coolpapertowel.

I would like to state for the record that the cool paper towel works on children older than the 2nd grade also. Like 41 year old ladies who have had a bad day at work only to come home and find the kitchen sink full of dirty dishes so that she has to work all goddamn day and then clean up the damn kitchen before she can fix dinner, and clean up the kitchen yet again before bed. I think I need a cool paper towel.

Yesterday there were lots of cool paper towels getting tossed around at my house after my husband, who had started off the day sticking to the original plan of renting one of those Rug Doctors from the grocery store, ended up ripping out all of the carpet in our living room, dining room and hallways.

This is something that I have wanted to do from the minute we first walked in the door of this house, but MDH has always held back because hardwood floor restoration is in our home ownership fear zone, along with pretty much any home improvement project that goes beyond spackling or painting.

Needless to say there was some drama, but as you can see, it's a bit too late to turn back.

I'm not sure we have the skills to refinish this floor properly because it has some pretty bad stains in the wood, and I'm fairly certain that we do not have the money to pay someone else to do it.

Even scarier, MDH, in a similar fit of reckless impulse to the one that caused him to go from cleaning the carpet to tearing at it like a wild animal, decided to call in his brother Miami to see if he could come up and do the floor for us.

Bad. Idea.

Yes. Miami is by trade a concrete foreman and tends to work on high rise buildings, but started off as a carpenter and general contractor, so he knows how to refinish a floor.

He is also a roaring drunk.

Several years ago he nearly ruined the office of our old house when MDH asked him to make us some built in book shelves. Miami was all disciplined and lovely the first 2 days, but after that I'm not sure what happened, but I do know that he discovered the bar down the street kept Valpolicella in stock, and after that the job was rather untidily abandoned. He claimed it was complete, but I ended up hiring someone to come in to fix nearly everything he had done.

The thought of him coming here and attempting to take on our floors makes me need a coolpapertowl. Maybe five.

Even Turtle needs a cool paper towel after this...

Brace Yourself - I Hate Birds

This morning there was this bird guy on the radio who was the son of some other guy who wrote some big damn important nature book and also himself happens to be some big damn important guy in the bird watching world.

Allrighty.

Whatever. It was fine as background noise until they started playing clips of bird songs. The bird guy had a big high hard one for bird songs.

I don't care for birds, or much else having to do with nature, but I was willing to keep it going for awhile longer merely because I was busy and didn't feel like figuring out what the hell else to listen to.

Anyhoo... at one point the radio host introduced the next bird song clip and the crazy bird guy broke in excitedly and began to describe the subtle and brilliant nuances of the upcoming bird song.

The bird guy just knew that this was going to be the best fucking noise that anyone in the entire known universe and possibly even galaxies beyond our own have ever heard - so he prefaced the bird song clip by saying, "Brace yourself".

Yes. He said brace yourself.

And sweet jeezus didn't I prepare to have my mind blown? And wasn't I glad I braced myself for the clip he played - of a fucking Cardinal.

It was a fucking Cardinal. A Northern Cardinal, to be specific. I could scare away about 7 of them this very second if I stepped into my back yard. In other words, who gives a shit?

While the words brace yourselves used in preparation for the recorded sounds of a creature I hear every day did sort of make me laugh for a brief moment, it also caused me to tear off my headphones and take a moment to consider my own less than savory encounters with other commonly known bird species:

The Crumb Crested Fry Pecker
Natural Habitat: Outdoor cafes and open air restaurants, the occasional movie theater or mall.

Diet: Whatever can be scrounged from what you've dropped on the ground or sneaked off from your plate while you are not looking.

The Car Shitting Fuck Knuckle
Natural Habitat: Suspended above freshly washed cars for several hours at a stretch.

Diet: Blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, poppy seeds, pine tar, Elmer's glue.

The Rat Fucking Squatter

Natural Habitat - Dryer vents.

Diet - I don't know - but whatever they are shitting into the dryer vent makes the house smell like the gibbon cage at the zoo.