Not a Fan

I cannot tell you how fucking sick and tired I am of the NBA play offs. I'm sorry to drop an f-bomb on you in the first sentence of my post, but I'm pretty sure that the Boston Celtics have been playing the Detroit Pistons every weeknight for about 6 months straight and I. Have. Had. Enough. Of. This.

Unfortunately for us both, the love of my life is a crazed Boston sports fan, whilst I on the other hand, couldn't possibly give less of a shit about sports. He doesn't paint himself up or dress in a Leprechaun outfit or anything (although that would be pretty amusing given that he is a giant swarthy, Portuguese guy), but you can bet he does everything in his power to make sure he never misses a game. There are serious problems under this roof when there is overlapping like the kind we are experiencing these days when basketball season runs into baseball season and the Celtics are playing at the same time as the Red Sox.

For me the Celtics being in the playoffs this year is kind of like that movie Groundhog Day. The one where Bill Murray wakes up every morning and relives the same day over and over and over again. This is very similar to my experience lately of coming home every single night of the goddamn week and seeing the Celtics and the Pistons on my television.

We couldn't even escape them on our vacation. We flew out of Detroit to save about $400 on our airfare and drove up and stayed at a hotel near the airport the night before our flight to Orlando. I left the room for like a second to go to the bathroom and when I came out the fucking Celtics were playing the fucking Pistons. They haunt me.

You can imagine I'm sure my reaction then when last week MDH was able to score two tickets to tonight's installment of the never ending Celtics V Pistons game in Detroit. The man actually expected that I might go with him to the game. What a silly!

It was all I could do to restrain myself and decline politely. I begged sweetly off with the excuse that I needed to do our post vacation laundry and didn't want to drive to Detroit after a long work week, rather than scream at him that I as far as I was concerned the Pistons and the Celtics could all die in a fire.

Of course that's a bit harsh. I really don't wish that on anyone. I merely want them to lose interest, as I and any other reasonable person have done, and stop playing. Take a fucking break guys.

I have really been looking forward to having this time to myself. Funnily enough since MDH was going to watch the game in person I had planned to spend a completely basketball free evening and behold what my typing fingers have produced.

Anyhoo... since I'm obviously in the mood I will share with you some other things that I am also not a fan of:

1. The woman at the post office drive up mail box who sat in her car obliviously putting stamps on all of her envelopes while a long line of cars piled up behind her.

2. She is probably married to the guy at the drive up bank teller who waits until he is at the thingy to sign his check. I hate him too.

3. My neighbors whose cat I always used to see roaming around the neighborhood and twice caught shitting in my window box who have now been passing out fliers to help them find their missing cat. Oh boo-hoo. If you were really that worried about the welfare of your cat you wouldn't let him run around outside in the first place. I'm sure he probably shat in the wrong window box. (I realize there are those who would argue that it is more natural for cats to roam around free outside, but the risk you take is that there is a 100% chance that some shit will happen to them; hit by car, virus, animal attacks, fleas, ticks, you name it. Inside cats have more than triple the life expectancy of outdoor cats. That's a fact Jack.)

4. Returning from our vacation and realizing that before we left, in an effort to save energy, my darling had unplugged all of the power strips in the house, including the one that our cable box is plugged into. Hence none of the shows I had set to record on the DVR did so. Shows that included the season finale to Grey's Anatomy. Mother fuck.

In other more cuddly and happy cat news - I found this baby picture the other day of our cat Turtle. It's his picture from our vets adoption website. He weighs almost 17 lbs now and looks like a freaking mountain lion.

UPDATE: 1:09AM - I wrestled with the imagery of the words "die in a fire" and decided to go with it because for some reason it seemed funny to me. Upon further reflection I realized that there was no way possible that someone as timid and sweet natured as me could have come up with that all by myself and then remembered a post from several months ago that I am going to blame for this violent inspiration. The Guv'ner makes everything seem funny.

The Screamin' Baby Express

It's difficult to piece together a post about my experiences this past Memorial Day weekend visiting my parents in Florida in a cohesive kind of a story that has a beginning, a middle and an end. In the first paragraph (which you are now reading, in case you didn't notice) I will start off by telling you that I love my parents very, very much, which will pretty much guarantee you that I will spend the rest of this blog post trashing them and the god forsaken place in which they have chosen to live out their golden years.

Mostly I will be trashing my mom as she is for some reason way more irritating than my dad.

To balance things out however, I'll go ahead and say some shitty things about my dad. His list is longer, but my mom is still more annoying.
1. He is a right wing, wing-nut who believes every right wing wing-nut email anyone sends him.
2. He calls Barack Obama, "Osama" or "That dirty Muslim".
3. He distrusts all Mexicans and thinks that all women who golf are lesbians.
4. He has driven his golf cart through the garage screen door 3 times.
5. He backed over my mom in the driveway with his SUV.
6. He is meticulous about the cleanliness of his garage and now the bird cage thingy that covers their back yard pool and mercilously smashes lizards and frogs who enter these domains with a broom handle. The frogs and lizards don't enter with a broom handle. He smashes them with a broom handle.

And now on with the functioning alcholic portion of my blog post.

Since they have moved away to Florida and I only see them once or twice a year, all my visits with my parents start off the same way, jubilant and full of loving hugs and kisses, which I enjoy very much. Then comes the small talk, peppered with expressions of so-glad-to-see-you-ness and pats on the arm or knee. Then the drinking starts. My dad or mom will pour themselves a scotch and offer one to MDH, who graciously accepts.

I hate scotch so my mom will list off other available beverages and point me in the direction of the fridge to fix it myself. I might have one drink and the drinks I make myself are typically pretty weak. I'm just not a big drinker and end up drinking sodas all night.

The rest of the evening and subsequent evenings which begin earlier and earlier each day, pan out pretty much the same. Scotch, scotch, scotch. Drunk, drunk, drunk. At first it's kind of fun, but then it begins to wear.

My parents have always had lots of friends, and have always been heavy drinkers. When my sister and I were little the party was always at our house. My sister and I would entertain the children of their friends in the playroom in our basement while upstairs the grown ups drank, smoked and played cards all night. They had a special fridge that was always stocked with beer in case people stopped over, and people always stopped over.

When my father called my mother in the evenings to see if she needed him to pick up anything on his way home from work, it was never milk or eggs that she needed. She'd tell him that we were almost out of beer and he'd bring home a 12-pack.

Now that I'm thinking of these things, I'm reminded that my little sister's first word was "beer". No kidding.

I don't know when they made the leap from beer to scotch. They still keep the party fridge stocked with beer, but they seem to have switched exclusively to scotch. In the four nights we spent with them I watched the two of them go through about half a liter every evening. It scared me. They got sloshy, sloppy drunk and I don't remember things ever being quite this bad. Maybe it's just more noticeable since I don't see them very often. Not to be a bummer or anything, but it was upsetting. So upsetting in fact that I'm trying to figure out how to or whether or not to say something to them about it. They are clearly out of control.

Also upsetting... going to the movies in The Villages. Although my folks opted out of going to the movies with us, and for those of you who read the previous post, they actually treated us like high-schoolers and not middle-schoolers and let us borrow their car and have an evening out alone. They may as well have come along because it was like they were with us anyway as everyone in The Villages is exactly alike; old and WASP'y. Even the Jews that live there are WASP'y and there are no brown people, other than those WASP'y persons who have acquired leathery tans. It's creepy. Like Stepford for fogies.

Anyhoo...Imagine a sold out movie theater, crowded with row after row of your annoying, elderly parents.

It's difficult to describe that particular kind of shrill squawking and slow moving pace, but I have never seen such a fuss over finding a seat at a movie theater (or theatre to satisfy those with a discerning vocabulary - I'm talking to you Step Right Up). Wake up white people! Sit down and shut the hell up before I grab that four-pronged cane and shove it up your flabby ass. Sit down already. Four pronger.

The lady who finally stopped squawking and sat next to me, looked exactly like my mother and every other Villager woman. Tanned with short salt and pepper frosted hair, khaki or white Bermuda length pleated shorts and a fluorescent hued t-shirt with a sparkly, tropical-themed appliqué. Shit brown Naturalizer sandals with over sized stitching. With or without socks.

This woman, who was not my mother, hummed all though the trailers and film, just like my mother. What's up with moms and all the goddamned humming? Does your mother hum? My mom does. It's irritating right? I wanted to shush this lady, but she reminded me too much of my mother and it didn't feel right. I usually say something asshole-ishly passive aggressive to my mother when she hums like, "Did you say something? I didn't hear you. I was trying to listen to this song."

The Memorial Day visit ended only scant moments before I lost my mind completely, although it was a close call when I got into a 15 minute argument with my mother during dinner on Monday night over the pronunciation of Bethesda. Yes. The city in Maryland. She kept calling it Bethesda-la. I do not know how the subject came up, but I said the same of the city and my mother corrected me.

Me: Something, something, Bethesda.

Mom: Bethesda-la.

Me: No Mom, it's Bethesda.

Mom: Bethesda-la.

Me: I'm pretty sure Mom. It's Bethesda.

Mom: No honey. (Louder) It's Beth-ES-Da-La.

Me: It doesn't matter how slow and loud you say it Mom. It's still Bethesda.

Mom: Bethesda-LA

Me: I got it. You're wrong.

And so on... I'm glad to be home, where everyone is sober, nobody hums and I am always right and don't have to feel guilty about it.

In order to get here we had to take a flight from Orlando. Any flight going anywhere from Orlando Florida is hereby referred to as The Screamin' Baby Express. Unfortunately no one is too short to ride this ride. It's filled to the brim with tired little monsters of all ages, shapes and sizes. They are cranky, dirty and disappointed little loud mouthed shits. The children suck too.

Seriously, who are you assholes that just let your kids scream and scream and scream on an airplane?

0.0 Miles from Crazy

MDH and I will be off visiting my folks this weekend. We visit every year on Memorial Day weekend, and usually squeeze in a couple of days away by ourselves at Disney World or something, but this year we decided to spend the entire time with my parents.

What the fuck were we thinking?

My parents are lovely people. Truly, they are. If you were to meet them you'd say my god, what lovely people! And you'd be right, they are wonderful and amazing and I am lucky to have been raised by two such as they, but after about 2 days they will annoy the living shit out of me.

We aren't even there yet and it has taken 4 days of negotiations via email and phone calls to make plans for MDH and I to go to the movies on Saturday afternoon. It has been decided that since my mother doesn't want to see the movie and my father thinks that the sound systems in modern movie theaters are too loud that MDH and I will go to the movies by ourselves. Thank you baby Jeebus.

Meanwhile since the movie theater is too far away to go by golf cart and they are paranoid about anyone driving their car, they have decided that it is no trouble at all for them to drive us to the movies and then pick us up when the movie is over. Like we're in middle school over here.

After 5 days trapped in The Villages with my folks don't be shocked if you see me and MDH on the news flying down the freeway a la OJ Simpson, back to Orlando in a stolen golf cart. That's just a joke. I'm not planning to stab anyone.

Wish me drunk, I mean luck.

The salad dressing really brings out the green in your eyes

I'm a big fan of the plain white dress shirt. Tucked, untucked, buttoned up or opened at the neck. You can wear them with anything. Any necklace, any scarf, jeans, skirts, dress pants.

I have a closet full of dry cleaned, lightly starched, crisp white dress shirts. They look so smart and pulled together. I love them, but I rarely wear them because inevitably whenever I wear one of my beautiful crisp white dress shirts, I'm guaranteed to slop some kind of crap all over myself.

It's very difficult to maintain a look that is smart and pulled together when the chest-ish area of your crisp white shirt is dotted with blobs of marinara sauce or what have you.

I want so badly to be that pulled together, elegant lady who can wear a crisp white dress shirt and remembers to touch up her lipstick throughout the day, but instead I am the doofus who walks around with a 5 inch zig-zagged ball point pen mark on her face, sweater fuzz in her hair and a post-it note stuck to her ass all day.

I really should have taken a clue from Tuesday's incident involving me carrying on about my business for the better part of an hour before I noticed that my pants were unzipped, and known enough not to wear a white shirt yesterday for my semi-important meeting. It was the kind of meeting where you actually get introduced to new people who will probably never see you again, but will communicate with you regularly via phone and email. The visual impression you make is the one they will keep forever.

The meeting was at 1:30 and I made it all the way to 12:45 without a hint of drop or crumb. In the morning I took the teeniest lady like sips of my coffee and at lunch time ate my salmon and spinach salad so slowly and deliberately I almost didn't recognize myself. I made it through the entire pre-meeting day and the shirt remained pristine.

It was more of a splashing that occurred when I threw the empty spinach salad plate into the trash, splattering my crisp white shirt with a yellowish, oily, fishy smelling melange.

I know from experience that trying to clean such a stain is futile and will only serve to frame the stain and help announce it more prominently. I may as well just draw big arrows on my shirt pointing to it. Not to mention the fact that my meeting was less than 20 minutes away and there was no way my shirt would have time to dry and I would have to walk to my meeting through the public hallways of the building wearing a wet white shirt that you could see right through.

No way man. The stain remained. I went to my meeting.

You'd think that I would know how to handle myself in such situations. Ignore it. Tell myself they probably won't even notice the stain on my shirt and move on. Act every bit the educated, professional and accomplished woman I know that I am.

You'd think that wouldn't you.

No.

I arrived at the meeting and when I introduced myself and reached out to shake hands with the person I was meeting I noticed her eyes dip directly to the very prominent stain on my chest. I pointed to the spot with my other hand and said with sarcastic pride,

"That's a new modern art broach, I wore it special for our meeting today. If you like it I know where I can get one for you too."

Thankfully she laughed.

Hours later I discovered giant globs of spinach stuck in my teeth as well.

I am a hillbilly.

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.

Communication Breakdown

Churlita's recent post about texting and how some people either love it or hate it, inspired me to muddle over some other communication problems I have, or rather, problems I have with communication.

Communication Pet Peeve #1
MDH seems to think that I have the ability to hear him when we are on opposite sides of the house. He is wrong. I cannot.

I can however vaguely make out that he is speaking in a loud tone and it sounds like a question and ends with what sounds like the words Honey Bunny. This is how I can tell the difference between his frequent random yelling at the television and when he is speaking to me from 1800 square feet away and between 5 walls. Either way, I ignore, yet quietly curse him.

Communication Pet Peeve #2
Although I am guilty of doing this one sometimes myself, I hate it when people try to talk to me while they are yawning. I cannot understand it. I don't tend to think it's funny, especially when it's done over the phone. Everything sounds like "Rawr, yarf eeee rarrrf." I credit my friend Amy for first bringing this to my attention as she used to complain about her ex-huband yawn talking all the time and she ended up passing her peeve along to me.

Communication Pet Peeve #3
When someone calls and I am on the phone with my mother and the call waiting kicks in I do not answer it as my mother thinks that it is rude to put her on hold while I answer another call.

Whatever. I do this for her, she is my mother.

If I'm on the phone with anyone else besides my mom I use it. What grinds my nerves is when I'm on the phone with my mom, purposely not answering the call waiting and the person either keeps letting it ring or keeps calling back, kicking in the call waiting over and over and over and over. It usually turns out to be one of my brother's in law who urgently needs to discuss some Boston related sports issue with my husband. They always deny doing it.

Communication Pet Peeve #4
Getting calls from people who have no idea that they have called you. You can hear them in the background ordering from the Burger King drive thru, talking to someone else (perhaps they are talking about you), or maybe you just hear the vague sounds of paper rustling, music or talk radio.

This person is completely oblivious to the fact that they have called you from inside their purse or pocket and this asshole certainly has no idea that you were in the middle of a serious BM and went running to the phone with your pants around your ankles because you were expecting a call about a job interview.

No? Did that just happen to me? Oh well.

Anyhoo... I imagine that they sat down on their cell phone and accidentally dialed my number with their ass. I am also guilty of this one, but not since I got a flip phone.

Communication Pet Peeve #5
Getting text messages from people I barely know. I used to have a coworker who could never seem to email or call me like a normal person. She was always with the texting and it was always to tell me some bullshit that could have waited. The fact that I don't really understand the texting shorthand and it makes me feel old and farty increases the annoying factor by like 1000%.

Update 05/07/2008 6:24am - realized pre-coffee that in addition to Churlita I should probably credit Catherinette Singleton's recent call waiting post as providing inspiration as well...

In Response to Your Google Search Query #10 - Quick and Dirty Lightening Round Up

Dear Person Who Found My Blog Via the Search Query "my pants" (peedpeeingpeewettingwet),

Sweetie, it's called a Kegal exercise. Look into it. Seriously. Depends. Get some.


Dear Person Who Found My Blog Via the Search Query "warped toenail normal",

That is fabulous news honey! I'm glad you were able to make a full recovery and now the ladies at the walk-ins welcome nail shop will only be able to make fun of you to your face in Vietnamese for that gargantuan mole with the hair growing out of it and your horrendous bad breath. Photo snagged from here.

Dear Person Who Found My Blog Via the Search Query "Scooby Doo Naked",

I'm pretty sure that Scooby Doo is already naked, unless you count the dog collar. What is wrong with you?


Dear Person Who Found My Blog Via the Search Query "Barbara Mandrell Naked",

What is wrong with you?? She was America's Sweetheart back in the day. Now, of course she is an old lady, although I've no doubt she's still American and sweet, at any age she's not likely to have any nudie photos floating around.

Now, if you were looking to see Irlene Mandrell naked I could totally understand because she was a big ole slutty whore.

Sometimes It Is Simply Easier Not to Ask Why

I was trying to think of a clever way to let you know that I've posted over at Burt Reynolds Mustache today and this is the best that I could come up with:

Now imagine the effort that I took to follow through with this endeavor.

1. The battery was dead in the camera so I had to charge it first.

2. I had to enlarge the mustache graphic and print it.

3. The printer was low on ink, so I had to replace the cartridge.

4. I stood in front of the shower curtain of our master bathroom where the light is best, donning a cut out paper mustache that I had scotch taped to my face.

5. Now please re-read number 4 to fully grasp the idiotic nature of my little project.

6. I had to hurry and do all of these things before my husband came inside from slaving away outside doing yard work and caught me in the act of any of the items listed above, thus discovering the true nature of my ridiculousness, causing him to leave me for someone more mature.

7. I had to destroy the evidence.

After all that trouble I had no choice but to put the damn photo up, and just in case you want to play along: