Auld Lang Sausage

Howdy! I don't have much time to spend on a post today as I'm busy packing and running errands, getting ready for our annual trip to Columbus to spend New Year's Eve with the usual suspects.

This year we're doing it in high style and half of us are staying in a swanky-ish hotel downtown where all of us are meeting for cocktails and having a nice dinner together followed by yet more cocktails consumed into the wee hours of the morning. Or if previous New Year's Eve history dictates we will probably all eat too much, get incredibly drunk and then crash and burn before 10:30pm at which point:

• Frenchie will already have passed out cold, but somehow still be sitting up.


• Steph will have exhausted the hotels entire inventory of stemware because apparently she needs a fresh glass each time a new kind of wine is poured.
  
  
• MDH will have snuck out for an after dinner Italian sausage and pepper sandwich snack from the street vendor outside the restaurant.


• He will hide the sandwich in his pocket and save for later consumption.*

That's how we roll.

Have a safe and happy weekend. Oh and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

*The sausage thing happened on one of our first New Year's Eves together, long, long ago. MDH bought the sandwich when we were all leaving a night club and nobody saw him. With the exception of Nature Boy, our designated driver, we were all totally polluted, stumbling, drunk. Hours later, after we had been safely deposited back home, MDH and I were drunkenly making out, still fully clothed and when we came up for air I looked over and noticed that all of a sudden he was wailing on this sausage and pepper. Even if I hadn't been so drunk I couldn't have imagined where in the hell it had come from so I asked, incredulous, and not just a little jealous because sausage and pepper sandwiches from dudes with street carts are pretty damn good drunk food, "Where did you get that?" to which he replied, matter of factly, "Eh whass in mah pah-ket."

It's Day Old & Bold Baby

Merry Whateveritisyoucelebrate!

Today MDH and I are celebrating not having to drive 2 and a half hours to spend Christmas day at my uncle Dan's house. We are celebrating having the banana pudding I made yesterday to take to my uncle's all to ourselves. We are celebrating the biscuits and gravy I'm going to make us for brunch, and the icy roads that made it all possible.

There is nothing like the glory of wiggling out of visiting elderly relatives with an excuse that is not lame.

The Pudding
The Solid Sheet of Ice That Is Our Driveway and Street

Best Wishes and Happy Holidays to You and Avoiding Yours!

The Happy Meme

The Vegetable Assassin tagged everyone for a meme and I normally might wiggle out and try ignore such directives, with the excuse that I didn't think they meant me, but lately I could use a meme listing 10 things that make me happy and being non-specifically tagged by my friend Veg is just the push I needed to get started.

I decided to do a photo meme of 10 things that make me happy. I took most of these pictures today.


1. My big green bamboo bowl filled with tangerines. This makes me happy every time I look at it for several reasons, not the least of which is that I happen to have a thing for big giant bowls and green ones in particular. I also love my big green bamboo bowl filled with tangerines because it was a very thoughtful gift from my mom. We were shopping in a store together and she must have noticed me eye-balling and dry humping this bowl. I didn't buy it, but I also didn't say anything to anyone about it either and thought I was being all low-key, so I was thrilled silly when she sent it to me for my birthday a few months later. I should dry hump things in stores more often.

Tangerines also make me happy. I love them and the ones in the bowl are also a present from my mom. She has them shipped to me each year from a citrus grove down the road from where she and my dad live in Florida. These tangerines are amazing, yummy and juicy, but they aren't very user friendly. They're very pithy and overloaded with seeds - so I slice them into quarters and eat them while leaning over the kitchen sink. The rinds make the garbage disposal smell good too.


2. A nice cuppa. I love tea. Hot or iced. It is difficult for me to remain in a bad mood if there is a cup of fragrant, lovely tea sitting before me. I always have tea in the house (loose leaf) and in the summer there is always a fresh pitcher of iced tea in the fridge. I make it every day. It's delicious and loaded with anti-oxidants and how often does that happen? That something you love is actually good for you?? Above in the photo is today's tea selection served in my $20 hardware store teapot. The tea is Scottish Breakfast and is dark black, malty in flavor and tastes great with a little cream (fat-free half and half) and sugar (Splenda). I find that the ritual of making the tea is very calming and you can't rush through making a decent cup of tea. If I'm in a hurry I grab a cup of coffee or have nothing at all. (I hope the chemicals in the Splenda don't cancel out the health benefits of the anti-oxidants)


3. Watching my $9 potted amaryllis from Target grow. It started off grotesque, appearing to be bald baby skull half buried in the soil of the shiny silver pot and has slowly begun to morph into a fully erect and proud phallic staff of weirdness. It's fascinating and it changes every day. I'm given to understand that eventually a big red flower will bloom. In the meantime I'm enjoying it from a distance, although I do sprinkle a little water on it from time to time and occasionally poke it with a stick.

4. Eating in restaurants and trying new foods. When I was growing up we didn't have a lot of money so we didn't eat out very often and when we did it was always the same places over and over again. My parents weren't and still aren't very adventurous eaters and there were tons of foods I never tried or had even heard of until later in my life. I never had Mexican or Chinese food until I was well into my 20's and the first time I had Indian food was about 6 years ago, well into my 30's. I don't care if a restaurant is fancy or expensive necessarily, but I love to experiment and try new things. For the most part I like everything and I'll eat just about anything except organs, eyeballs, ball-balls, etc.. A lady has to drawn the line somewhere. At least this lady does.

5. Wandering around grand old neighborhoods looking at grand old houses. My dream house is giant rambling Queen Anne on a teeny-weeny lot that has more bricks than grass. And big old trees. The house in the picture is one I took in a Louisville neighborhood that I wandered around in with MDH a few years ago.


6. Traveling anywhere on earth with MDH. Sometimes he gets nutty and plans things without me, and sometimes he let's me take care of everything, but mostly we plan all the big trips together. It's so much fun, the anticipation and build up, deciding where to stay and eat and what to do and then when it finally arrives and it's happening... well there's simply nothing else like it. Every time we fly together, we hold hands just as the plane starts taking off and when the plane leaves the ground we say to each other "Here we are!", as in we did all this planning and here we are, off on our adventure. It's what I had engraved on the inside of his wedding band. I waited all my life to meet someone like MDH who wanted to travel and experience the world and do it NOW rather than waiting. Traveling with MDH also entails some other things that make me happy like staying in nice hotels, eating in restaurants and wandering around grand old neighborhoods.


7. When things are surprisingly uncomplicated. It doesn't take much to set me off and make me furious, but it also doesn't take much to make me happy either. I had trouble finding a picture for this one - so here is picture I took when we were on Kauai last January.

• Being the first person in line at a check out.
• Getting an appointment for a haircut within the same week that I call.
• Going into a store and finding exactly what I was looking for and getting out quickly.
• In Michigan you don't have to physically go to the BMV to renew your driver's license - they send you a new one with the same old picture, get this, in the mail. It's awesome. Not having to go to the BMV makes me happy.

8. Sparkling Shiraz. It's my new favorite wine. I tried some a few months ago and now I'm totally hooked. It goes with everything.


9. My cat Turtle. I love his funny little furface. There are moments when I'd like to drop kick his hairy ass through our plate glass window, like when I bust him chewing electrical wires or drinking the water from the Christmas tree pan, but otherwise, he's pretty groovy. He doesn't jump up on the counters or pee anywhere other than where he's supposed to. Mostly he does all the things you'd want a pet cat to do - he plays with toys and looks all ferocious and cute at the same time and lays on my lap to be petted.

10. Clean sheets and towels. There is nothing quite like burying your face into a warm and fluffy freshly washed bath towel straight from the dryer or flopping onto a bed newly made up with warm soft sheets that still smell of fabric softener. It's also great to step out of the shower and onto a warm and freshly washed bath mat.

I expect I shouldn't really have to tag anyone for this meme since Veg was crystal clear that we were all to do it. In fact you've had plenty of time to complete this assignment and should be done with yours by now. Let's see it.

Angel Face

My kid sister loved the shit out of Christmas. You think you know people who love the holidays and get all nutty excited? Well you don't. They are probably half asleep and drooling compared to my sister and I miss her this time of year more than any other.

Because of having Down syndrome my sister never matured intellectually beyond the age of 3 or 4. So it was like living with a very little kid for 15 years. Most children grow up and stop believing in Santa Claus. They become sullen, sour and insolent teenagers and then move on to become bitter, jaded, cynical adults (or was that just me?) about everything but especially so around the holidays. But my sister didn't. She stayed a little kid on the inside and she believed in all of it.

*As a side note, in very tiny font that I'm putting at the top of this post rather than the bottom, before I dig into my sappy sister holiday post I would just like to say that although I have written posts about my little sister before I always skirted around terminology and today I really struggled up there trying to find the right words to use. My family and everyone we knew in the special needs community used to just say "mentally retarded", but I've been out of it for awhile and now am given to understand that it's not always considered politically correct, although I used to belong to an organization called ARC which stands for "Aid Retarded Citizens" - it's still called that - so I'm confused now. Anyhoo... I would just like to let anyone reading this know how much I despise the word "retard". It's never funny to me. I Hate it with a capital HATE. Even when you change the emphasis like in the movie The Hangover (which I enjoyed very much by the way ) and say "re-tard" it still sets my teeth on edge. I think that anyone that uses the term "retard" should be forced to spend the afternoon volunteering at a group home for mentally challenged adults (which you can do through an organization like ARC) with varying degrees of special needs. Get to know some of these fearless, joy-filled and loving people and use the word "retard" after that. I dare you. Frankly I think the world would be a better place altogether if everyone spent some time with people who are mentally challenged or have special needs - we all have a lot to learn from each other. Using the word "retard", no matter what the context, degrades people who are mentally retarded or whatever term you care to use. Thanks for listening. Carry on...

My sister believed in Peter Pan, Tinkerbell and pixie dust, the Easter Bunny, Batman, Superman, Isis and Wonderwoman. She believed in Mork from Ork, Scooby Doo and the Fonz. But she lived year round talking about and anticipating Christmas and Santa Claus. She believed that a bunch of reindeer flew all the way to our house and landed on our roof without ever pooping (when you grow up around animals you think about these things and you never hear about anyone getting pelted with dung falling from the sky and our dad never had to hose off the roof on Christmas morning) and that a jolly fat man in a red suit let himself in with a key left under the mat on the front porch (we didn't' have a fireplace until later). She believed it all. And not just in a quiet wishful way, but in a jumping up and down, shouting out loud to anyone who would listen kind of way.

It wasn't the kind of enthusiasm you see every day is what I'm saying.

Right before Thanksgiving one year there was a guy wearing a Santa suit and ringing a bell in front of a bucket outside of the K-Mart in our town, he wasn't even wearing a beard or anything, not even trying to look like Santa (other than the suit I guess) and my sister ran towards him, arms open and squealing with delight, looking almost like those teenage girls you see in old news footage grabbing their faces and screaming like lunatics over the Beatles. It was a little embarrassing but once we peeled her off of him he said it was the best thing that had happened to him all week and I don't think he meant it in a perverted way at all because the man had tears in his eyes and seemed pretty overwhelmed.

Nobody in my family ever made any effort to tamp down her excitement either. No, quite the contrary, we would build it all up. My mom let my sister mark off the calendar every day, counting down till Christmas starting on my birthday in July, so that by the time her birthday arrived on December 20th, she was nearly apoplectic and bursting into flames from all the hype. Not to say that it also wasn't an ongoing lesson to help her learn about counting and dates and seasons and such, but a mostly the lessons ended with, "and that means it's only this many days till Christmas!"

You might be able to tell by looking at the picture at the top of this post that my mom also let my sister be in charge of most of the tree trimming. That's our old mashed up fake tree that I mentioned in my previous post and I love how all of the ornaments are right in the middle. I would also like to point out the vomit-y blue and green shag carpeting that my mother actually had installed - on purpose - when we moved into that house.

We would get her so worked up that by the time Christmas Eve finally rolled around my sister was bloody freaking exhausted and getting her to go to sleep was never the problem you might have thought it would be.

After we went to bed my dad would eat all of the cookies she'd left out for Santa except for one that he would leave behind with just one bite taken out. My mom would make sure that some of her toys were left unwrapped and set up to look as if someone had been playing with them already, like a dollhouse all set up or one time a new record player was left turned on with a record spinning on it all night (needle off of course), so that it looked like Santa had just left before he got caught in the act of playing with her stuff.

Maybe lots of families do these kinds of things. I hope you'll feel free to tell me about some of the goofy stuff your family did or does in the comments. My parents used to do it for me too when I was little enough to still believe, but they got to continue to do it for a very long time afterwards and I think that must be pretty special. Eventually I got involved in it too. I was all quiet and cool at school (I believe I mentioned something earlier about sullen and sour), but at home I would do anything to get my sister started. Not that it took much more than asking her how many days till Santa comes? or singing carols at the top of my lungs to get her to start squealing.

Have I ever mentioned that we were not Christians? I'm not sure how relevant that is to my story here, but we weren't anything. Maybe you could say agnostic, but my mom never wanted to put a label on it. We ended up celebrating Christmas in a non-Christ kind of way. We never talked about Jesus, but we had a tree and presents appeared under it on Christmas morning. She put up mistletoe, served eggnog and baked cookies.

I think my mom really liked Christmas and after she left her church continued to celebrate it in ways that incorporated her own favorite things about the holiday without having to think about or explain the religious portion of it to me and maybe also to herself, since she stopped putting out the gorgeous hand painted porcelain nativity set that she had inherited from her grandmother when I got old enough to start trying to apply logic to the story and began asking the tough questions about Christmas. If Joseph isn't Jesus real daddy then was Mary married to someone else before Joseph and got a divorce like the Shapiros?

All of our holiday fervor was fueled by our love for my sister and for me it still is. I love Christmas. There I said it. Even though she's gone now and Christmas will never be the same without her, and surly as I've become, I've managed to hang onto a bit of that joy that was always in the air around her and hope that you and the people you love, whether you believe in Jesus, Santa or Mork from Ork, can feel it too.

Merry Christmas.

If you're interested, here are links to some of my other posts featuring my little sister (they aren't quite as sappy as this one):

Cat-like Gag Reflexes

I'm Sure Your Family Is Weird Too

Deep Thoughts

Scare Tactics for Teens

6th Annual Maybe It Doesn't Suck That Bad Award 2009

Since winter has creeped in, it seems that MDH and I spend most of our down time lazing around like a couple of exhausted walruses, he watching football and me playing video games, both of us overeating (it's so nice to do things as a couple). OK, it's pretty much like that year round except for him the sports change up seasonally.

But this weekend was different and our house was abuzz with activity like cleaning and stuff.

A few weeks ago I decided that I wanted a Christmas tree this year which involves some amount of movement and effort on my part with the preparation, cleaning and tree trimming and whatnot. It also involves movement and effort from MDH because he is the one who insists on a having a real tree so I force him to go with me to get it. Well, it started out against his will several years ago, but now I think he kinda likes it, although he may never fess up to the experience being anything other than a sharp shooting pain in his ass.

I think it's because he grew up with a bummer of a family and a white plastic kind of tree. Their tree was the kind that was a comically exaggerated pointy pine tree shape and permanently decorated with neon colored balls and flashing lights. The kind of tree that doesn't even pretend to be real and with each flash it shrieks, "I'm fake! I'm fake!" His brothers would drag the box down from the attic, pull it out of the box and simply plug it in. Boo-yah! It's Christmas!

I also prefer a real tree. They smell nice and we mostly had fake trees when I was growing up too but my mom bought the kind that attempted to look real. After a couple of years of use, and being repeatedly and hastily jammed back into the box after the holidays, fake trees start to look like they have hat head and no amount of "fluffing" can fix it. Also after awhile a branch or two seemed to have gone missing so you'd have to bunch it all up so that it looked more filled in or just arrange it so that the empty spot was facing the wall.

And by the way where the fuck could that branch possibly have gone? It made no sense. Obviously it didn't go wherever the ornament hooks ran off to because those wicked little things always seemed to turn up eventually although it was usually in the bottom of my bare foot the following July (the joys of 70's shag carpeting). As a grown up woman (with scars all over the bottom of her feet) I made an executive decision to never use ornament hooks and I tie all my ornaments with ribbon. And I always wear shoes in the house just in case.

Do they even sell ornament hooks anymore? Or did people come to their senses and send them to go live with the lawn darts and the electric space heaters in dangerous gadget land?

Anyhoo... MDH dreamed his whole life of a more traditional and rustic Burl Ives kind of Christmas and the cartoony jazz club tree just didn't represent. (You might have expected that I would say Currier & Ives, but in our generation Burl was the snowman narrator guy in that Rudolf Christmas special and you can't get more Christmas-y than that.)

When MDH is passionate about something he never goes halfway. Like I said, he is the one who insists on a real tree and then he insists that if we are going to have a real tree that we should have only the freshest tree possible so that it takes longer to dry out and is less likely to catch our house on fire and kill us all in our sleep. So we drive out to a tree farm and ride a tractor out to the middle of a field and MDH cuts down our tree with his own bare hands and a hacksaw he keeps in the trunk of his car for the off chance that once a year I may or may not decide that it's a Christmas tree year.

At least I hope that's what the hacksaw is for.

Whatevs... it seems to make him feel manly and puffed up to cut down our tree and we found a gorgeous one and it was only $35 so I splurged and got a wreath too and the whole event was so pleasant and easy it made me think of another reason that living here in the fucking tundra may not totally suck and that's kind of a big deal because so far I've only been able to come up with about one reason living here doesn't totally suck per year and we've lived here 6 years.

Drumroll (people dressed like marshmallows in down coats, micro fleece, and cargo pants are cheering, the crowd goes wild) ... The 2009 thing about living in western Michigan that doesn't totally suck is:

This place is lousy with Christmas tree farms so we never have to drive very far like when we lived in a city.

Previous years winners include, in no particular order:

• New shoes! Well, snow boots anyway.



• The air smells really fresh and clean.



• There is hardly any need for air conditioning in the summer.



• The squirrels are way prettier than back home.



• You can buy full strength booze anywhere.

By the way this is only our 2nd tree since we've had our cat Turtle and I forgot how much he loves to lounge around under there and drink the water from the tree stand. That's him up there with the devil eyes at the top of my post. It's so annoying because he makes this slurpy wet noise, he messes the tree skirt all up and his face and paws get all wet. Little weirdo. I suppose it could be worse as I seem to remember the cat we had when I was a little kid climbed and pissed all over our tree which is why my mom started buying the plastic ones. Christmas is so complicated.

I hope there aren't too many spelling and grammar errors because it's late and I'm justing going to hit publish and get my ass in bed.

It Makes An Ass of You and Me... Mainly Me

Why do they call it the wrong side of the bed? When I wake up in a foul mood it usually has more to do with lack of sleep and other people or creatures banging around (my husband), barking (the neighbors dog) or jumping on my head (our cat) and less to do with my exact location, so the phrase wrong side of the bed makes no sense at all. Now, that being said I bet you can tell how foul I woke up today because even the phrase wrong side of the bed makes my blood boil.

Cleaning up a full cup of coffee that the cat knocked all over the floor in the den didn't help to cheer me nor did going to the kitchen to make some lovely toast and finding that MDH had used the last of the margarine and put the empty container back in the fridge. Dry toast. Thanks buddy.

Not to say that they don't exist, but I personally have never known any women that do this. Put back empty food containers into the cupboard or refrigerator I mean. Now that I think about I have also never known any women who spit in public either. My father used to do it and now my husband does it - with the food containers I mean, keep up with me here. Why fellas? Why? There is a trash can right there.

Adding insult and injury to the person who primarily does most of the food shopping is the fact that I usually don't discover the empty container until moments after I have just gotten back from the supermarket where, had I only known we were out of Cheerios I would have gladly gotten a new box, but since the empty Cheerios box was sitting in the cupboard, silly me I mistook it for a Cheerios box that actually had some Cheerios in it and assumed that we didn't need any more.

I suppose instead of saying that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed you could say that someone pissed in my Cheerios, except that we don't have any. Nobody pissed in my strawberry jam, milk, orange juice, peanut butter or margarine either. They might as well have because we don't have any of those items either, but the empty containers are all somehow still in the fridge.

As a side note I'd like to add that if laziness is the key reason for this phenomena of not throwing out empty containers then why roll up the empty cereal bag inside the box as if to keep the invisible cereal fresh and furthermore, why bother to seal the box closed again? Freak.

I'd almost prefer that he simply make a loud grunting noise and then drop the empty containers onto the floor where right in the spot where he's standing so I could at least hear him make some kind of acknowledgement that the food is gone and then would see the container out in the open and make a note to buy some more of whatever it was.

My post has turned into a marriage/partner pet peeve rant and I thank you for listening. I'm sure somewhere out there my husband has his own secret blog where he writes mostly about politics but occasionally splits off with rants wondering why his wife leaves bras dangling from every doorknob in the house and somehow as if by magic she always has a backache when snow needs shoveling.

Balls

Late this summer my lovely husband MDH, who aside from leaving the occasional empty beer can seemingly to mock me unrinsed, reeking and sitting on the kitchen counter directly beside the recycle bin, normally shows the utmost respect and concern for my feelings and best interests, signed us up for a commitment to attend a corporate event.

Without. Asking. Me.

And not just any corporate event but a swanky, black tie optional charity event that took place in Detroit this past Saturday.

At the time that he informed me of the event and his deciding all on his own without asking me first if I (even fucking) wanted to attend it already seemed like a giant pain in the ass but since he never subjects me to such affairs and it was one of the few events in which spouses are invited I agreed to go without (much) fussing.

The event was months away but I began the process of finding the right dress and seeing to various other details such as reassessing my Spanx situation (had to go another size up), and finding the right shoes and jewelry. Once the dress was purchased and altered and undergarment machinery in order I put them all away in the closet and proceeded to forget all about it until the reality of the event seemed to spring up from out of nowhere and smack me in the face last week.

In my normal every day life I have a wardrobe comfort zone like everyone else. I have a standard uniform in which I feel fairly confident about my looks. For public viewing I always (always) fix my hair and wear make up along with supportive, figure flattering bras. I am conscienious of VPL and hyper aware of camel-toe and make sure to avoid them at all costs. I get quite a lot of my clothes tailored to ensure a good fit. Even jeans. I do all of these things just with my every day stuff and I feel pretty good most of the time, but put me in a fancy dress at a formal event and all that confidence goes directly down the shitter.

I hate being dressed up for formal events with the white fiery passion of a million suns. It makes me feel like I'm in drag. Something is always off, like either my hair is frizzy or my mascara smudged. Most likely it's some kind of stain or mark on my outfit, but I guarantee whatever it is, I won't notice it until after I have already arrived at the event and it's too late to do anything about it. The best example: On my wedding day I shut my dress in the door of my dad's truck and proceeded to drive for twenty minutes with the bottom part of my dress blowing all around on the freeway, arriving for the ceremony with a big rip and nasty grey highway dirt all over my gown.

These kinds of moments are survivable, of course. Certainly there are greater concerns in the world than whether or not I have too much upper arm flap, sat on a cream cheese and salmon crudite or the top of panty hose has started rolling down toward my crotch. But still, in the throes of those moments I want to run crying back to my sweat pants with a pan of brownies and the promise of never being seen in public again.

I'm sure you can imagine that after a few depressing , unemployment collecting, sweatpant-sy, barely combing my hair months had gone by the degree to which I sure as shit would have preferred to have MDH drive over both of my legs in the street out in front of our house and leave me there to rot, rather than attend this stupid fucking semi-formal white man's overbite dancing, rubber chicken dinner event had escalated to blubbering hysteric hyperventilating and juvenile crying jag proportions.

Suffice it to say - I did not want to go.

I pulled the already altered, too late to return dress out of the closet and shrieked, Sleeveless!!! What the hell was I thinking??! I then proceeded to mentally tear it all apart: too short, too bright, too low cut, too fat, too much gray, too pale, too wrinkly... you name it, I found cause to fly into a hissy fit over it. We're talking epic freak out.

Shockingly the calming moment I longed for came not when I glared witheringly at MDH while standing directly in front of the TV, modeling my completed outfit and he, having been forced to look away from football for split second, grunted that everything looked "fine".

No.

The calming moments came a few days later when he informed me of the proportion of the event, well over 700 people in attendance and I realized that in a crowd that size there were bound to be several women more hideous than me and when he showed me photos online from the previous year's event I began to feel downright sexy. Looking at the crowd of old drunken fools I knew it was all going to be OK.

By the time Saturday night rolled around and MDH and I strolled arm in arm out the door of our hotel room, heading to the ball room downstairs I actually did feel sexy. Hot rollered, face impeccable (not a blemish in sight), lipstick exactly the right color, jewelry in perfect proportion to neckline. Everything fell magically into place and MDH who for the past few months has been the poor soul mainly subjected to my dreary existence of sweatpants depression and withering glares lit up like a horny Christmas tree when I emerged from the bathroom, purring and aglow, all dolled up. He made all the proper advances.

We registered and had just lined up at the bar for the VIP cocktail hour moments after having our photo taken with a local celebrity (a baseball player?) when I noticed the hole about the size of a baby grand piano and subsequent runner in my stocking. When the fuck did that happen?

Free martinis went far to help me pretend like the hole and runner didn't exist until eventually I made my way to the ladies room where I ripped the stockings from my body and stuffed them into my tiny clutch purse (rather than throw them into the trash like any reasonably intelligent person would do - all the better I suppose to have yet another embarassing moment later in the evening in which I open my elegant clutch at the table to get a mint and the wadded up stockings burst out and onto the floor).

The free martinis didn't hurt either with helping me to mingle, socialize with total strangers and dance in the presence of a video camera. Yes, I said dance and video camera in the same sentence. People, I was drunkity drunk drunk.

Being the giver that I am, I can't but think of the forlorn, bedraggled woman whose husband signs her up for this crappy event (although the drinks were good and free) next year against her will (I guarantee you it fucking won't be me) and feels a surge of confidence when she sees my picture on the charity website - look at that drunken old fool.

As always, I'm here to help.

Here's What

I've done something that I have only done one other time (pretty sure) and have taken down my previous post. It feels wrong to take it down, but probably not as wrong as it might have felt to leave it up.

The last thing I want is for anyone to come to my blog and ever, ever, ever feel bad or weird. Not even close. You're supposed to come here and help me make fun of myself and other people that are usually strangers and hopefully leave with a smirk on your face.

To help put the smirk back on your face here is a very old picture of me all bundled up for winter and looking forlorn, much as I did this afternoon when I stepped outside to drive to an appointment and realized it was snowing. I wasn't as prepared today because my mommy lives in Florida and isn't around to make sure I get all bundled up. Maybe my being so cute will help us all move forward:

(I think mom put my boots on the wrong feet...)

Oh, and that hair dryer box is for one of those old fashioned kind that has like a shower cap thingy that you put over the rollers on your head and then when you turned it on it poofed up really big and you'd look kind of like a genie or like you had a big, lacy, pink afro.

I'm going to hit the Publish button now...

Congratulations! Your identity is now available to be stolen and abused.

I had a phone interview this morning. Don't get too excited. I'm not. In fact I hesitate to write about these things on my blog anymore, which is why I haven't been blogging much lately because applying for work and having phone interviews is all that seems to be happening lately and you all are always so nice to me and wish me good luck and I feel the love, I really do ... and then nothing happens and I just hate to put myself and you guys through it over and over again. So I just simply haven't felt like letting you in on my current struggle.

But today... Today it went well. It really did. I was pleased, the phone screener seemed pleased and informed me that she will be moving my resume forward and will recommend an in-person interview. Great. Goody for me. I really was thrilled. Then she sent me a follow up email with a link and request to complete an online application within 48 hours.

It was all sunshine and kisses, unicorns and sex-dreams until I realized that I would actually need the entire 48 hours to fill out the application.

It should not take a reasonably intelligent, fully caffeinated, fully eager and fully alert grown up human lady over an hour to fill out an online job application. But that is exactly the ordeal I have just been through. People, I needed to get up and walk around to loosen up my joints and get some blood circulating afterwards. What the hell man?

It should not be this hard.

Especially considering the fact I had already filled out an online application for this job that I thought was pretty thorough, like I mentioned, and sent in a resume and a cover letter. How fucking much do these people need to know about me before I can even have an interview set up?

Apparently a lot. Jesus Christ on a pony.

And if I were not so goddamn desperate to find gainful employment I probably would have given up about 20 minutes into the spectacle when I filled out a form requiring my date of birth. My date of birth? Including the year. Why the hell do they need this information when I haven't even had a goddamn interview yet?

I am tempted (angry enough) to show some initiative and go that extra mile and take a big shit, snap a photo and email it to them. How ya like me now? Now here's some serious personal information about me.

The other weird thing besides filling out a 300 page application and taking pictures of my own poo is that it's just a regular job. The same kind of IT job I have been applying for all along and I assure you this not an organization providing security for the Pope, pelvic exams for Queen Elizabeth or even clerical work for the city, state or US government. It's a fucking insurance company.

I'm just trying to get a job, not adopt a Chinese baby boy.

Ordinarily I might have told these people to get bent as I wouldn't normally provide this kind of information until after I have accepted or even been offered a position. But I need a job and this one seems like a goody, so I kept going. I not only gave these people permission to crawl straight up my ass, I also provided them with a map and flashlight. I gave them every scrap of information about me and then I gave them permission to get even more information - driving record, criminal background check, credit check and promised that if they hire me I would submit to drug tests, aptitude tests and I'm pretty sure a pap smear.

When I was finally finished I convinced myself that it wasn't so bad. I went to the kitchen refilled my coffee and had a slice of pie for a reward. Then about half an hour ago I checked my email and discovered yet another email from this company. This time an auto response to my online application that said "Congratulations!" in the subject line. As if to acknowledge their asinine method is purposefully ridiculous. I wanted to laugh, but it came out more as a hysterical and high pitched Ngah! Mainly because I had a mouth full of pie.

Anyhoo... maybe they set it up like that to weed out the riff-raff, but they do not know who they are dealing with - I'm like a fucking cockroach - you can't get rid of me that easily. You will interview me, I will be fabulous and you will be crazy not to hire me motherfuckers. Ridiculously complicated and confusing online applications? Bring it.