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the latest
waddle: good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03 elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01 building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19 ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09 my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04
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I APOLOGIZE IN ADVANCE I am going to get my ass kicked one of these days, because I just can't seem to stop my mouth. I was walking by a woman whose toddler was stooping to pick up a rock, and the woman said, "No no, we don't touch rocks" and I was like, "Right, we THROW rocks!" She gave me a dirty look and whoops, guess I said that out loud. And then! About a million times more amazing! I was waiting for the bus and this sort of redneck-looking guy pulled up to the red light in a beat-up old Jeep Cherokee, windows down and music blaring, and he very clearly leaned over his lap with a straw and did a line of something. Then he straightened up, noticed me looking at him, and yelled, "WOOOO! FRIDAY!" I yelled back, "WOOOO! ILLEGAL!" The light changed and he zoomed away, but he was checking me out in the rearview and all of a sudden I thought oh great, some meth-head is going to circle back with a shotgun and eliminate the witness but obviously he didn't. I am mad that I did not get his license plate number, because I would totally have been Jane Citizen and called the police. I do not mind too much if people take drugs on their own time, but while driving? You hit a bump and there goes your shit, all over the floormats. No good. Add in the fact that for two mornings in a row I sat at the bus stop in my extremely religious (Muslim and Jewish) neighborhood reading that Christopher Hitchens book with GOD IS NOT GREAT in huge letters on the cover. I do not think that my neighbors are stone-throwing types but it probably didn't make me any new friends either. Obligatory book-related comment: Although the Hitch could use a nice painful cock-punch and I do not think we would get along at all in person, he is a good writer and there were several parts in the book that had me (a fellow unbeliever) cackling gleefully. Gleeful cackling is always welcome. SURPRISE NUMBER ONE I do not think I wrote much about my ridiculous, disgusting cough, that started well before I left for vacation and has continued up until the present day, the cough that landed me in the ER getting a nebulizer treatment like a sad asthma child. I went to the doctor three times and each time it was like "eh, have some more medicine." The ER folks, on the other hand, took samples of my various fluids and sent them off to a lab. And that was the last I heard of it until last week, when I had URGENT voicemails on my cell phone from both my regular doctor and the BOARD OF HEALTH, who separately informed me that I have pertussis. Also known as whooping cough. What century is this again? In a way it's good, as it explains the bizarro-world retching cough and leaves me free to discontinue all the inhaled steroids in favor of antibiotics the size of jawbreakers. But it is a little disquieting to realize that I am officially a vector, that there is probably a public-health file on me somewhere, that vaccinations don't last forever, etc. It makes me wonder where I acquired this lovely little infection, and whether I can blame all the nonvaccinating hippies as I would dearly love to do. Logically I know that things are a little more complicated than that, but blaming hippies is just so much fun. SURPRISE NUMBER TWO We are completely remodeling the kitchen. If you have done this, you know how much it sucks. There is kitchen crap everywhere except in the kitchen, I wash dishes in the bathtub, we eat dinner in the backyard like hobos. Originally the plan was just cabinets + countertops, but there is a concept that project managers call "scope creep" and that I call "fuck-it syndrome." If we already spending $, why not $$? Or even $$$? So now there will be new appliances as well. Originally there was greenish slate tile on the kitchen floor. It has never been my favorite but whatever, a new floor was not part of the kitchen plans, fuck-it syndrome or no. When the kitchen guys came for "demolition" (oh how I love that word), one of them remarked, "Hey, you have really nice wood under here." Meaning under the tile. What? I had always assumed that only a true idiot would cover the nice original maple floors that we have in the rest of the house, and that either (a) there never was wood in the kitchen or (b) it was so damaged that the rehabbers had no choice but to cover it up with tile. We decided to rip up the floor, with the attendant risk that there would be a Big Horrible Stain or something that would prove the tile to be a good decision after all, and guess what? Near-perfect wood floors. Some shirtless Russians* came over to run sanders and spread varnish, which added time and money to the project and meant that Nora had to sleep in our bed for a few nights (her room is off the kitchen---I barely had time to grab Purple Dog before the varnishing started), but it is done and it looks amazing. Woo hoo! Unexpected wood! Heh heh, "unexpected wood." Here, carry this math book in front of you until it goes away. *I have no idea why they kept taking off their shirts. It is not that hot around here. Nora was especially annoyed by it: "Nipples are private! These people are strangers to us!" SURPRISE NUMBER THREE Unbeknownst to me, LT had a pen in his pocket that made it into the laundry and exploded. I hung up all the shirts and skirts and other big-deal items and they looked okay, so I figured the clothes had been spared and it was just the inside of the washer that was all ballpoint-inky. As usual, I gathered up all the underpants and shoved them in a drawer. (Who folds underpants? Not me.) Then a few days later I arrived at work and went to the bathroom, which is the first time I had done so in daylight owing to my very early commute, and noticed that I had huge black ink stains all over my underpants. Not so coincidentally, it was right about the expected time of My Womanhood, so immediately I thought oh god, I am leaking black oil like that X-Files episode, but then I figured it out and it was all good in the hood. Kind of inky in the hood, but good. I just pretended my girl-bits had been violated by an octopus for the rest of the workday. Office hentai! To whom do I complain? Some of the cephalopods around here could use a sexual harassment seminar! If I really did go to HR to file a grievance about tentacle rape, I wonder if I would be sent home to "rest"? It is worth a try. Later! ---mimi smartypants takes back the night!
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