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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Friends Like This

Making friends is so easy when you're a little kid. Pretty much all you have to do is live near someone your age and boom - companionship. It's like, hey nice bike, let's play fort. Easy.

As a grown up proximity alone does not a friendship make. I mean, I'm friendly with most of our neighbors, but I certainly don't want to invite them over to play fort, let alone talk to them for more than 5 minutes. I'm fond of the neighborly smile and wave from afar.

Even when I am able to determine that I have a few things in common with someone, I have to build up to committing to hang out, meet for dinner or drinks or what have you, and even then it's sketchy.

Making friends as an adult is a crap shoot. Start to make friends with a new person and even when things seem to be going great and you're getting along the next thing you know they try to recruit you to sell Amway for them, invite you to their next Klan meeting or try to get you baptized.

It can be terrifying because not only does this loony have your number, now they think that you are friends. Then I have to be the dick in the situation and be all like "I'm sorry I can't come to the quilting bee/cockfight/candle party, but I'm just crazy busy for the rest of my life."

The scariest thing anyone ever said to me in an overly eager tone was "we should be friends!"

Back off freak. It doesn't work that way, and besides you don't just blurt out a sentence like that. Weirdo.

I realize that I am dazzling to look at and have been entertaining you with my captivating, dry wit at this cocktail party non-stop. Don't get me wrong you've been a lovely audience, but I cannot make a commitment to a friendship based upon this encounter. I need facts. I need a list of hobbies and interests. I need to know that you are not going to go home from this party and dress your pet ferret up like Snow White and then leaf through your collection of clown porn.

Not to say that I'm not weird or that my friends aren't all freaks. I am weird and my friends are all weird, but we're all the same kind of weird, just in different ways. A certain je ne sais quoi of weird. Whatever it is - it works.

Anyhoo.. at this point I feel I'm rambling on a bit so I'm going to wrap it up. I'm sure you have deduced from reading this blog I don't have many close friends. The few that I do have live far away. I was missing them all very much this long Labor Day weekend and was thinking about how hard it is to make friends when you're an old weirdo and how lucky I am to have such great old weirdo friends.

Gypsies, Tramps & Skeeves

Well there is nothing quite like combining your 42nd birthday and a family reunion all in the same weekend to leave you feeling a wee bit maudlin. We've been back from Columbus for just a week and I've been a bit down. Not that I didn't have fun. I did. And not that I wasn't happy to see (most of) my family. I was. Perhaps things were a little too good and I wasn't quite ready to leave my old stomping grounds.

Last Friday afternoon I went out to lunch with my mother (in town for the reunion as well), and my friends Amy and Becky. It was marvelous. We laughed and laughed. Until my mom created one of those bizarro moments where the entire world (or in this case the entire restaurant) stops spinning, mouths are silenced and all ears became focused on her when she told this whacked out and racially tinged story about Romani Gypsies that she tried to dignify by saying she'd read it in "the paper".

Awkward.

Fortunately we recovered the moment and the good times resumed as my friends and I collectively made a decision to smile, nod and ignore her crazy ass and quickly move on to less nutty topics.

After my mother left I tried to restore my friends faith in journalism by revealing that the only "paper" my mom reads is the Villages Daily Sun and all they ever report is who died or who has grand kids visiting. I reassured them that she didn't read that clap-trap Gypsy story in the Washington Post or the New York Times. Clearly she made it up.

It's scary to see your parents age. A sad point, driven (literally) home to me in the bullet points listed below in the order that the thoughts popped into my head, as I got in the passenger seat of my mother's rented mini-van and took a short drive across the parking lot of a large mall after luncheon when we all wanted to grab coffees at a nearby cafe:

• Damn. She has to drive? It's so close. Her legs must be very fucked up. I should ask her how fucked up her legs are ...


• Damn. She uses a cane at home? Why hasn't she ever mentioned this. Um... Why didn't she bring it with her?


• Vanity. Apparently my mom is more self conscious about being seen using a cane than she is about getting into a car and driving 50 feet.


• Um... why is she driving in circles? We just drove right by the cafe. There's a spot. Oh. There's a spot. Oh. There's one. Oh. What the fuck?


• Great. Now she's blind too. Apparently she only parks in spots where she can pull forward instead of having to back out.


• This is bad.

I'll just say this about my mom's driving - the only reason she hasn't mowed anyone down (that we know of) is because thankfully they saw her first and were able to get the hell out of the way.

As for the rest of my weekend - here is the highlight reel of my family reunion in the form of, you guessed it, more bullet points:

• Babies, babies, babies! My family sure can breed! I have two cousins who are my age WHO HAVE GRANDCHILDREN. I find this appalling when birth control is so cheap. I can't get excited that you are a grandparent. I just can't. Is that wrong?
  
  
• Speaking of family planning, I'm old enough now that no one is asking MDH and me when we are going to start a family and this made me a little sad. It used to piss me off.


• I raised a huge stink because there was no mustard. Who the hell was in charge of this BBQ shit pile? Call your event planner and get your money back no mustard. (It was my aunt Nan and I totally forgive her - but I made some noise) Hundreds of cheap-ass hot dogs and not one squirt of mustard in the whole goddamn place? I don't mind a cheap-ass hot dog, but I need to put some mustard on that shit to maintain my dignity.



• What the hell? My sister's youngest child is going to be a senior next year. Stop it all of you. No more growing up. I mean it.




• My entire extended family stayed at the Holiday Inn Express near the reunion venue and we basically took over the entire place. It was like that scene from Raising Arizona when all of those wild kids are trashing Hi & Ed's trailer. I lost count of all the people who walked into the pool area, fully decked out in swimsuits, crisp white hotel towel draped over one shoulder, rearing to go and then took one look at the drunk and noisy clan of rednecks who had high jacked the place and hauled ass right the fuck out of there.


• My aunt Libby, who is in her late 60's and seems like a perfectly reasonable person on the surface, came down to enjoy her complimentary breakfast in that room hotels always have right off of the lobby, within clear view of the reception desk, elevators and main walkway of the establishment, wearing nothing but her housecoat (a light blue cotton whisp of a garment with embroidered flowers, gingham patch pockets, and white metal snaps up the front) and slippers (light pink terry cloth slides). Clearly she has come unhinged as she seemed neither to notice nor care that nobody else was dressed in this fashion or that it might be inappropriate or uncomfortable for the other patrons (me) in the hotel to see her in such a state of undress.
  


• I got over it.
  


• I slurred drunkenly on and on about Libby's embarassing housecoat at dinner Sunday night with MDH and several of our friends.
  


• Apparently I wasn't over it, although I had forgotten all about my mom and the weird Gypsy thing until I talked to Amy on the phone last night.

The News Round Up

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Impolite and Evil

Yesterday after my cheap shoe and personal care item shopping spree I finally had a chance to catch up with my best friend Amy - it was heaven. What with her busy schedule wrestling 2nd graders to the ground and my back pain and job related depression we haven't had much of a chance or been in much of a mood for our weekly standard (and trust me - necessary) 2 hour long, cackling sea hag phone conversations. In fact it had been weeks.

We had a lot of catching up to do - mainly her to me, because most of my activity lately involves being horizontal and moaning and not in a good way. Amy had not only been on spring break with her entire family, including her evil mother, at their family beach house in Charleston last week, but also had ended her trip early because her daughter Lil' Baby Lion (LBL) had to be back in town in time to officially become a Catholic.

Yes. Amy's ex-husband Assface had decided several months ago, from out of seemingly nowhere, that suddenly it was extremely important to him that LBL become Catholic and start going to church with him at the ripe old age of 13. Amy was surprised by this revelation, as during her entire 15 year relationship with Assface he had never once been to church or shown any interest in it. She consented however after discussing it with LBL who said she didn't give a crap one way or the other as long it would get her crazy-ass father off of her back about it. Lovely. I'm sure that's just how Jesus would want it.

Anyhoo... last weekend LBL was baptised, confirmed, and took her first communion, or as MDH put it, dunked, fed and slapped.

That's all well and good, but the real dirt was that LBL had begged poor Amy to please not leave her alone with Assface's entire family, who had come all the way from Vermont to witness the occasion.

So at the request of her daughter Amy went.

Amy took great pains to make sure that she looked like a million bucks. Blown out hair, impeccable makeup, fantastic ass-hugging outfit, high heels. The works. (You should know that normally Amy, although she is very cute, dresses like she just got out of bed; too big jeans, t-shirts that she caught from out of a cannon at a sporting event, sneakers, etc.) She said that nobody in Assface's entire family would even look at her, let alone talk to her, but it was fine because it gave her the opportunity to get her eyes full and report back to me about how crazy and horribly behaved they all are.

Best of all (to me) was that one of my more serious ex-boyfriends was there with his ugly ass wife so I got to hear all about how ugly she is and how fat and disgusting my ex-boyfriend has gotten. Just knowing that this ex-boyfriend is a good friend of Assface should tell you that he is an economy sized douche bag who was particularly cruel to me.

My favorite highlight of the event, as reported by Amy was a conversation that she had with the priest, Father Funk (no joke). At the end of the evening as she was saying her farewells (to those that would speak to her) she asked Father Funk if he was going back to Assfaces's place for a small gathering to which everyone but she had been invited.

His answer was surreal, as though he was some foppish-femme character in a movie from 1937, "No. I'm just going to go home and have a nice hot toddy", he pipped. To which Amy used every ounce of strength left in her body not to reply "Oh, you've got a boyfriend?"

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.

Amy's Hernia

My best friend Amy is a delicate flower.

She was that girl in middle school, you know the one that was always fainting and had to breathe into paper bags, sit with her head between her knees and be excused from dissecting things in biology and watching films in health class. Amy gets light headed when exposed to all things involving blood, guts, pus, vomit and spiders.

Poop for some reason doesn't bother her, but all the rest, forget about it.

She can't take extreme changes in temperature either and gets heat stroke when it's hot and chilblains when it's cold. She's kind of like a Chihuahua. Being extremely fair skinned (her nickname in middle school was Maalox - because she was chalky - get it?) and weighing no more than a buck and half haven't done much to toughen her up.

I was never like that. I was of a heartier stock or have a stockier heart or whatever, and tended to be the robust, husky girl who escorted the fainting, pukey girl to the nurses office. Probably because I was the only one big enough to pick her up and carry her if she collapsed on the way (perhaps my nickname in middle school should have been Butch).

Amy and I didn't meet until we were in our early 20's, so we didn't know each other in middle school, but if we had, you get the picture.

Over the years I have carried her to the proverbial nurses office many times and killed a spider or two for her along the way. I've seen her through sinus scraping, placenta-previa, childbirth, numerous root canals and various other assorted revolting dental surgeries.

Mostly I'm just there for moral support, to keep her calm and try to fatten her up with Big Macs and Nerds. Of course girls that are delicate flowers seldom have much of an appetite during times of physical crises and the snacks were really for me.

Anyhoo... now we live really far away from each other and last week she had surgery and I'm not there when the girl is down for the count. She's got Ted now and he does a good job I suppose, but it's difficult knowing that I can't just pop over with McDonald's and sour candy and make it all better.

((WARNING - If you are a delicate flower, have a heart condition, any characteristics resembling a Chihuahua and are under the age of 18, DO NOT CLICK on the link in the paragraph below.))

I mentioned in an earlier post that Amy had a femoral hernia. She walked around like this for weeks, frightened out of her mind that she was growing a wiener, before finally going to the doctor.

She had a lot of other things going on at the time, namely that her ex-husband Assface's unemployment ran out and he took her to court for child support and now she has to pay him. Turns out that with shared custody the parent who makes the most money pays. His unemployment check was more than her salary as a teacher, by the way.

By the time she made it in to see the doctor she was feeling very world weary and downtrodden. When the doctor asked her what was going on she described her ailment, namely the large bulge that seemed to be sprouting from her groin-al area and proudly announced, "I think I'm finally growin' a pair."

Planes, Trains & VW's

Gracious me! It's been awhile since I've checked in with my blog. MDH and I have been traipsing all over North America for the last 3 weeks. A veritable whirlwind of romantic and exciting locales.

OK. So it wasn't exactly all over North America.

Or romantic.

Or exciting.

It was mostly locations within a short driving distance or train ride from our home, like Columbus and Toronto. But - there was lots of hotel sex (OK, we did it once) which counts as both whirlwind, because it was over pretty quick, and romantic, because we brushed our teeth first.

Also we did fly to Philly using up the very last drop of the frequent flier miles I accrued from 5 long years of life on the road. I thought something on my boarding pass looked amiss and soon realized that there was a big giant empty space where it used to say "Silver Elite".

That's right.

I'm no longer Elite and am now one of the teeming masses. It's nothing but coach class for me from here on out. Before you know it I'll be standing around looking clueless, joking with TSA agents about having bombs in my luggage and generally annoying the crap out of savvy business travelers at an airport near you. Watch out.

And OK, we weren't exactly gone the entire 3 weeks. We were just away on the weekends. But they were long weekends, like 4 day weekends and I worked every day that we weren't gone off somewhere.

Anyhoo... I'm home now and lucky you I'm going to post some of my vacation photos, starting with our trip to Philadelphia where we met up with my best friend Amy and her lovely husband Ted*.

Philadelphia is known for it's murals - here's a jazzy one (har-har).

And now up close.

Amy got trapped on the wrong side of the turn styles in the subway... it's a long story. Why doesn't she just squeeze her bony, size 2 ass thru or climb over, you may ask? Surprise! She has a hernia and is only weeks away from surgery. I told you it was a long story (I will tell you more about it in an upcoming post. Hurray! Hernia stories. I know you are thrilled. Try to contain yourself. Seriously. Pipe down.)

A groovy newel post at Independence Hall.

A statue of some guy. Fen Branklin or something.

Ted enjoys a steak sandwich.

Amy & Ted at the Phillies game.

*There are no photos of me from this trip posted here as there is not one in the entire bunch that I approve for public viewing. In fact in every photo taken of me on this trip for some reason I look like a goddamn dairy cow, albeit a dairy cow with very expensive blond highlights. I posted the picture at the top, taken the day before we left for Philadelphia, in which I look somewhat normal just to prove to myself that I don't really look like livestock.

Note to self: Less PBS, More Animal Planet

My best friend Amy is having some major doggie drama. We had a long talk about it last night. Having been married to Ted for less than a year it seems her newly blended family situation is in crisis mode.

Here is a list of all the critters currently living under her roof:

1. Her husband Ted

2. Her tween age daughter LBL

3. Ted's younger teen age son Sporto

4. Ted's older teen age son Emo

5. Ted's jumping, yapping 2 year old dog Chloe

6. Amy's jumping, yapping and curmudgeonly dog Rita, who is older than dirt

7. LBL's noisy, stinky guinea pig Sprinkles

8. Amy & LBL's cat Macy

9. Amy & LBL's cat Sebastian

10. Ted's 8 year old asshole Schnauzer named Max.

11. Let's not forget Amy, who is also noisy, stinky and yappy.

Max is causing monstrous amounts of trouble. He bites. He pees everywhere. Mainly the problem is He Bites.

I won't get into the details, but I'm sure you can imagine that their house is like an upside down zoo.

Anyhoo... after talking to Amy about her animal troubles and teen angst I talked to my friend Steph on the phone and set about recounting my entire conversation with Amy to her.

Gossip is such an ugly word. I prefer to think of it as a graphic and meaningful exchange of personal information about people other than myself.

Whatever you call it, when I was finished telling Steph all about the demon menace in Amy's household taking the earthy shape of a grouchy Schnauzer, Steph made the following insight:

"Sounds like they need to give Max the Caesar treatment."

I thought to myself, Well that seems kind of harsh.

Not understanding why Steph would immediately choose to resort to such violence and imagining poor old Max being stabbed repeatedly in the back by the entire family with a set of Chicago Cutlery steak knives.

Steph is a dog lover so I shook off my murderous canine mini drama and asked for some clarification.

Turns out Caesar is a reference to the canine behavior specialist who calls himself The Dog Whisperer. I've actually heard of this program, but had no idea that the guy's name is Caesar.

What a relief.

BTW - MDH and I have finalized plans to go on a long weekend, double date with Amy and Ted in June to Philadelphia.

I'm brimming over with excitement over this scheme.

Amy and I would never have attempted anything like this when she was married to Assface. I LOVE her husband Ted for many reasons, but not the least of which is that he gets along so great with MDH. It's like the perfect best friends scenerio when your choice of mate gets along with her choice of mate. Presto Pefecto.

Your Lucky Has Run Out

In honor of my best friend Amy's birthday I thought I would share a story about Amy's devotion to her dignity and her little dog Rita.

Rita is a 12 year old, 15 pound, black and white Rat Terrier with a little snub of a hot dog for a tail. She is hands down the cutest and most frustrating dog I have ever known.

She is yappy, obstinate, has the worst friggin' breath paired with the longest, slimiest tongue in the entire galaxy and wants nothing more than to lick endlessly inside your ears until she tastes your brain.

This is why when I am at Amy's house I never pick Rita up, lay down on the floor or allow my head to be anywhere near the level of that dog's reeking snout.

Even though Rita sheds enough to knit another dog, her breath smells like rotten eggs and her feet like Chili-Cheese Fritos, Amy loves this goddamn dog almost as much as she loves her own daughter LBL. Sometimes I wonder though, because Rita doesn't lie, ask for money, or whine about having to practice piano.

I helped Amy pick Rita out of the litter when she was a wee, bitty puppy, so in spite of all her smelly and irritating insubordination, I love Rita too. I however can say for sure that I love Amy's daughter more than Rita because along with many other wonderful qualities, at least LBL comes when you call her and nobody has to clean up her shit from the back yard.

Next to licking inside people's heads, all Rita wants in life is to sleep, sit or stand next to Amy - in exactly that order. Which is why she doesn't try to lick inside Amy's head. Ever. Rita needs desperately to be with Amy at all times (unless I'm there, and then she wants to sleep, sit or stand next to me) and knows that if she tries to taste Amy's brain that Amy will not hold her or let her sit next to her.

Rita has never had any training whatsoever (surprised?) and as I mentioned before, she is obstinate and she doesn't come when you call her. She will just stand there and look at you, lie down, or to prove herself to be even more of an asshole, turn around and walk away. She won't even come for Amy.

The old house that Amy lived when she got Rita had a beautiful fenced in back yard for the doggie to run around in. Since Rita only wanted to be inside with Amy, she just went out long enough to do her business, after which she would wait pathetically, with doe eyes and perked ears by the screen door to be let back in.

Rita hardly ever got outside of that fence without being leashed and when she did it was a huge ordeal to get her back in. When she was younger, she ran as fast as a little 4-legged rocket in increasingly large circles so that at some point she would come close enough to almost grab. When you reached out to snag her, she would get away while the circle got bigger and bigger until an arc of it included the road in front of the house. During it all, Rita would wear a big crazy, tongue flapping grin. The louder you screamed at her, the faster the pace and the bigger that infuriating grin.

One weekday morning, Amy ventured out to the supermarket 5 blocks from her house. She was sitting at a stop sign 3 blocks from home and about 1 block away from one of the busiest streets in Columbus when she looked over and saw Rita running around in someones front yard.

She immediately put the car in park and started walking slowly over, calling softly to Rita. The dog stopped what it was doing, looked at Amy for a moment, then it bowed down in a playful stance and took off running in a crazy circular pattern a wearing a wild, tongue flapping grin.

The closer Amy got, the faster and farther away the dog ran, until it was no longer on the part of the block that was residential. She had started running in the parking lot of a strip mall on the busy street. The circular pattern getting closer and closer to the fast moving traffic.

Amy was panicked and crying, wondering how the fuck Rita got out of the yard and blaming herself for leaving the gate open.

The shrilly screaming of Rita's name through sobs, over and over at the top of her lungs is what caught the attention of the store manager working in the tuxedo shop in the strip mall, who for some reason managed to catch the dog's attention and lure it into the store.

Amy ran to the tuxedo store, shaking and crying. Once inside she scooped Rita up in her arms and sobbed a thank you to the store manager.

She walked briskly back to the car, which was still idling at the stop sign and loaded up the dog and drove back home in silence while the dog energetically hopped all around the back seat.

Amy later told to me that she realized as soon as she walked into the tuxedo shop that the dog was not Rita, but after all the fussing and screaming she didn't know what else to do but take the dog.

It was a black and white male rat terrier, with similar markings to Rita's, whose tags revealed it's name to be Lucky.

Once home she put it in the back yard and called the owner's phone number on the tags, feeling quite ridiculous, but also like she had done the right thing. The owner came and picked up the dog a couple of hours later.

That dog was indeed lucky. Lucky that Amy didn't notice it had a penis and a different colored collar than Rita. The store manager was also quite lucky that Amy didn't dump the dog in the tuxedo shop because she was too proud to admit that the dog wasn't hers after crying and carrying on with the hysterical screaming fit in the parking lot.

BTW, Rita is still kickin', smellier than ever and now only goes out to do her business while supervised on a leash. She still wants to lick my brain.

and... PS - Happy Birthday to Frenchie too!

And Now a Story About Assface...

My best friend Amy had a day in court with her ex-husband Assface today. They have been divorced for over a year, and yet the court battles continue. Their court dates, as I'm sure is the case with many divorces, are costly, frustrating and laborious. She called me while she was driving to the courthouse. She seemed calm and collected and said she would call me and let me know how it all shook out.

I don't normally loathe people, but I loathe Assface more than any other person on this earth. He is a mean spirited little weasel who makes two people I love very much, Amy and their daughter LBL, miserable. It often seems he goes out of his way to do so.

I didn't always loathe Assface. In fact I used to like him, back in the salad days when they were dating and first married. He was kind of weird, but I didn't worry about that too much because Amy is weird, and really for that matter who isn't weird? Certainly I can't point too many of my own fingers at people for being weird. I'm typically a big fan of the weird, being a total freak myself.

Mainly I liked him because he seemed to think the world of her. He laughed at all her jokes and could never seem to take his eyes off of her. He was in love with her made her happy.

Isn't that all you need to know about your best friend's choice in a partner?

After they were married I began to notice all kinds of little things about him that added up to nutty and mean. Not a fabulous combination.

I was able to ignore the nutty meanness for awhile as I didn't really have that much interaction with him anyway, other than when he answered the phone when I called. I always made an effort to engage him in some bit of conversation before asking to speak to Amy. Eventually even having to talk to him for those brief moments when he answered the phone became awkward and for a time, during a phase he went through that Amy and I refer to as his "Hello Period", down right bizarre. The last thing on earth that I wanted was to dislike her husband, but it was becoming increasingly difficult.

During his "Hello Period", whenever Assface answered the phone he'd say, "Hello!", all bright and cheery like. I'm sure you're thinking "so what Lady?" Here's what:

Ring! Ring!

Assface (bright and cheery): Hello?

Me (bright and cheery): Hey Assface! How's it going?

Assface: Hello?

Me: Hello?

Assface: Hello?

Me: Hey? Can you hear me?

Assface: Hello!

At this point I realize that there is nothing wrong with the phone, he can hear me just fine and thinks he is making a funny.

Me (laughing): Very funny Assface. C'mon now, please? Is Amy there?

Assface: Hello?

Me (sort of fake chuckling): Seriously. Assface. Is she there? Is she busy? Can I talk to her?

Assface: Hello! Hello! Hel-lo! Hello?

Me (fuming on the inside, but still trying to sound sunny): Allrighty. Jokes over. Please let me talk to Amy.

Assface: Hello?

and so on...

It may have been funny if he'd done it once or twice, but this continued for weeks and the only way it stopped was if Amy happened to enter the room, hear his asinine "Hello?" bombardment and snatch the phone away from him.

I might have taken it personally too if Amy hadn't told me that he was doing it to everyone. His mother, her mother, the insurance guy, everyone. Nutjob. He thought it was HI-Larious. Amy, of course was mortified and began to bust her ass whenever the phone rang, in a race to answer it before he could.

It ended the day I responded to his "Hello?" bombardment with this:

Me: Listen to me you hollowed out little freak, either put Amy on the phone this instant and stop acting like a fucking brain damaged parrot or I will drive over to your house and stab you in the eye with my car keys! You're making it very difficult for me to continue to like you and you are making your wife miserable.

My relationship with Assface was on shaky ground ever since.

She called me later this evening, while I was in the middle of typing this post. She won. He owes big. Hurray. Go buy yourself a Big Mac, honey.

I'm Calling from a Pole Outside Your Window

Since becoming an adult I set boundaries with my family that have allowed me great freedom that not all of my friends are able to enjoy. I have the ability to say "No. I'm not coming." when invited to family gatherings.

You're probably jealous, I know.

It's no longer an issue as my parents and most of the rest of my family have scattered over the years to various parts around the US. Back in the day though, we all lived within a few hours drive from each other and most of us lived in the same city.

It began with a career in retail when I was in my early twenties and I had the best excuse ever that no parent of a 20 year old could argue with:

I have to work.

It's an especially effective excuse to use on the parents of young adults who are simply thrilled, and quite proud, to have you the hell out of the house, let alone working and supporting yourself. I became the go-to girl for taking over my co-worker's holiday shifts. No problem. You would like to spend the holidays with your family and I would not. Sure! I'll cover for you.

Over time the expectation of my absence or limited attendance at family gatherings was set.

Later, when I started working office jobs I began to plan my own events well in advance of any family gathering my parents were hosting (it was always at their house) and could say, "Oh shoot! I already made plans but I can stop by for awhile." Everyone wins.

I never quite understood why my attendance was so important anyway.

My extended family is huge. My father has 7 brothers and sisters and 10 step-siblings who all have large families of their own. So my parents house on holidays was always brimming over with aunts, uncles, cousins, 2nd cousins, boyfriends, girlfriends, fiances.

It was a noisy, alcohol driven mess and to me not much different than being in a crowded bar, surrounded by merry drunks, when you are sober, unsociable and don't know a soul (not that I knew what that was like back then, except for the unsociable part). Sure the greetings are terrific, I love the hugs and kisses, and I'm certain my family loves me as I do them, but after the exuberant hellos, I was also pretty sure that nobody noticed or gave a crap if I was there or not.

Invariably I would end up just following everyone around and clean up after them, like the dude with the giant shovel at a circus.

Once when I was a teenager with no work excuses I tried a little experiment. I did all of the greetings and huggy stuff that was expected and then took off to the basement with my walkman (remember cassette tapes?) and it took over two and a half hours before anyone noticed I was gone and came looking for me. It was my mother, asking me to take out the trash.

My little sister, wise beyond her disability and years, disliked the noisy family gatherings too and could often be found holed up in her room with her TV at top volume and the door shut tight in an effort to drown out all the noise and escape from the cigarette smoke. She got free a pass from it I guess because she had Down's Syndrome and a nervous condition. Lucky!

My dislike of family gatherings probably started the year that I sang on Christmas Eve in the children's choir of the Methodist church down the street. We weren't members of that church, or any other, but they let me sing there. I don't remember how old I was, but I had my first solo so it was important that I be there.

The same night my family was all gathering at my parents house. My mom came to see me sing, so my dad stayed at home to open the door and greet everyone and take over my mother's duties as hostess for a couple of hours. Well he did a hell of a job.

Every year my aunt Jess, who lived far away, would send a ton of presents for me and my little sister that came in the mail weeks before Christmas. They would sit there, beautifully wrapped, winking at us. We were allowed to open two of them on Christmas Eve. One of our own choosing and the other of Mother's choosing because it contained new pajamas to wear for the Christmas pictures the next morning. Mother was in cahoots with Jess and knew what was in every one of them and enjoyed teasing me about it to no end.

This particular year she gave me hints by telling me the initials of one present that was enormous and oddly shaped. Enormous and oddly shaped presents, especially when beautifully wrapped are the ones I think we all tend to want to open first and get the most excited about.

To my mother's delight, by the time Christmas Eve rolled around I was whipped into a frenzy and nearly frantic with anticipation.

She took me to my Christmas choir concert, leaving Dad alone in the house tending to all of the family guests. Namely, my cousins, whom despite the efforts and protestations of his visiting sisters, my aunts and the mothers of the unruly tots, he allowed to open our presents from aunt Jess. All of them.

My mother and sister and I returned home to find a living room full of joyous mayhem. Wrapping paper and ribbons in shreds falling like confetti, my cousin J lounging empirically on MY Red Bean Bag Chair (the BBC), my little cousin D playing with MY Cher doll and my cousin T holding a pair of "I Dream of Jeannie" pajamas up to her gawky frame as if about to try them on. All of them having a grand old time. It is a vision that (obviously) still haunts my dreams.

Of course my mother privately berated my father mercilessly and made him apologize to us. Apparently, the beautiful presents from aunt Jess were mesmerizing my cousins too, and naturally they wanted to open them. My dad also has a hard time saying no to his family. I had to be a good sport about it and not complain, but the next morning I was still sore (I guess I still am, eh?) and refused to open my presents from Santa. Of course I opened them eventually, begrudgingly.

Anyhoo... the point of this post - and the reason for the title of this post(from an old Jake Johannsen comedy bit): When my friends are suffering through holiday gatherings with their various families in various locations around the US, I am usually safely at home and available as a support line. I'm like a holiday family gathering crisis center. 1-800-LadyHelpMe.

One year my best friend Amy called me in the middle of hosting the family of her ex-husband Assface at her house for a July 4th extended gathering. She called me from her bedroom closet, as she was curled up on the floor, crying. Sobbing really. Her house guests were unruly and she wasn't allowed to say anything or put anything to rights because Assface refused to allow her to do so. He didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

After 3 days of soaking wet bathing suited adults and children sitting on her sofa, chocolate covered children wiping their mouths on white seat cushions, and backwoods hoo-haws not knowing how to or refusing to use the garbage disposal so that her dogs were constantly digging into the trash barrel and carting around chicken bones, poor Amy was at her wit's end. Or so she thought.

The final straw, resulting in her fetal positioned, tearful phone call to me from the bedroom closet, the only refuge she was able to find in her own home, was having gone into the one bathroom in their home and finding shit, as in human feces, smeared on the wall.

She has called me from any other number of family gatherings at her mother's house when she gets together with her own family as well. Not from incidents with feces, although I'm sure she's wanted to throw some, but more from a controlling (pre and eventually post) menopausal mother throwing inappropriate and hurtful barbs. The shit on the wall was really the climax of the family gathering incidents and will most likely, hopefully, never be topped. In the age of cell phones, she has been known to call me from her car or other various locations where she has managed to escape.

It has become the tradition between Amy and me, at the end of the last phone call we have before she leaves to spend a holiday gathering with her family, for me to say, "Call me from the closet if you need to!"

I am happy to help.

Above is a picture of me, in better days, when the presents were all mine and I was too little to get drunk or hold a broom. Somehow I still managed to look irritated.

Miss Lady Regrets

Saturday night MDH and I went to see the local Pops Symphony with a guest singer doing the songs of Ella Fitzgerald. It was very romantic. Also now I have all of those beautiful old standards swirling around through my head instead of the Menard's jingle for a change. Do you know that I refuse to ever shop there because of that stupid ass jingle. I'd rather kill myself than save big money at Menard's.

Anyhoo...

When we got home there was a message from my best friend Amy. I hadn't talked to her since before we went to Boston last Thursday and she sounded kinda down. The message said that she had some interesting information to share with me about her ex husband Assface, but that she may not be able to talk about it because it was her weekend with her daughter LBL, and she never spills about Assface in front of LBL (unlike Assface who says nasty shit about Amy to LBL all the time).

I called her and LBL was right there so there was no spilling, but we caught up on everything else and she'll probably call me tomorrow with the Assface report. Meanwhile I asked her if she'd had a chance to finally read my blog and was thrilled to find that she did! She read the Ass Fatties one that is really about her and her husband Ted and said she'd read a couple of others and really enjoyed them. I was thrilled.

Her opinion is really important to me, but she's way too busy most of the time to even sit down and watch a TV show, let alone read all my hot air.

Amy: You should write about the time that you set yourself on fire in McDonald's.

Me: That is uncanny! I did, a couple of posts ago.

Amy: Oh! Then you should write about the time that you tossed cat food into the air conditioner.

Me: Weird! I did! I just posted it today. Wait. What? I didn't toss it so much as I fell down. It was an accident.

Amy: Then you should write about the time that you threw the frozen turkey at Assface.

Me: Yeah, that might be funny...

Amy: or the time that you threw the frozen chicken in Kroger.

Me: What? I don't remember doing that... why would I do that?

Amy: or the time that your cigarette fell into the mailbox on James Road and you got all the mail back in a plastic bag a week later and the letter that said they were looking for the vandal that destroyed your mail.

Me: oh yeah, and then my boss went around telling everyone that I threw the cigarette into the mailbox as if I did it on purpose. It was an accident.

Amy: or the time that you dog sat for Assface and me and the dogs ate open the trash bag and your panty shields were all over the back yard when the insurance guy came over.

Me: It looked like really big confetti. I didn't think they would dig them out of the trash like that. That was an accident. Besides if the insurance guy had come to the front door like a normal person he wouldn't ever have seen them. What's wrong with people?

Amy: or the time that you were stuck behind a bus in traffic and honked your horn at it and then saw the lady in the wheelchair getting off the bus.

Me: Listen. It was taking a really long time and I had to pee.

Amy: or that one time that you...

This wasn't the exact conversation, but it's not too far removed.

She could have gone on like that all night.

She has so much good dirt on me.

Ass Fatties

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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