Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

I Blame the Red Car

I tried to avoid the ClusterConstruction that is now Highway 94, and I took the back way to work Friday. I was tooling along happily (drugs!) listening to Carbon leaf (rock and roll) and I saw a motorcycle cop up ahead. Zoom! I whizzed past the officer. "He's out here looking for some teenagers to catch," I thought cheerfully, "So they can raise revenue for the Cluster. I just learned that for Series 7. Hey. He's following me now. He can't be following ME. What?  Flashing lights!? No way! I'm TOO OLD to be pulled over for speeding."

"Hello!" I chirped, "I must have been speeding!" He didn't look at me. I smiled at the thought of his face when he looked at me and my middle-aged self.

He looked right at me. "License and registration."

Handed that right over. I thought about calling him "Sir," then, "Why would I call this child sir? I could be his mother. Besides, he's going to laugh when he looks me up and sees my spotless reputation."

Still, he came back from looking me up and gave me (ME) a citation for going 55 in a 40 mph zone. "Ha!" I thought, "What's that going to cost? Three lattes?" And it struck me, as I cheerfully accepted my ticket, that this whole experience would have destroyed me before I turned forty. I remember apologizing tearfully to traffic cops for rolling stops, or going to traffic court and announcing my guilt. (Though Friend #3 says there's something you can do where you pay some strip mall people and your guilt is washed away, as if it never happened. She also claims there will be a big insurance hit if I don't. Really? I'm forty-six!)

His parting words were, "That's your speedometer. Use it."
 

 

I laughed a big belly laugh and thanked him, then I tooled off, even happier than before.

That Thing You Brigadoon

I believe I've mentioned this before: once when I was in high school, I got a little lost at the St. Louis Art Museum. I know there was an archway, and a hall by the elevator, and down half a flight of steps and suddenly I was in a room with a long lineup of antique chairs. The next weekend I went back, and the chair room was gone; guards had no idea what I was talking about. And it was never heard from again for the next ten years while they renovated the East Wing, then suddenly it was back in restored glory as the Decorative Arts rooms.

Well, it seems our new Brigadoon is the Director's Cut of That Thing You Do. Gary came bouncing into the room last night claiming to have stayed up late watching the movie and there were all new scenes. I watched it all today and, no,I said, you were asleep on the couch and dreamed all this DJ scene nonsense. As it turns out, last night was one of the showings of the "extended cut." I've always assumed the reason TTYD seems choppy is because I always miss the first half hour, but evidently not.

So the DVD is on its way, with the extended version and deleted scenes about homosexuality. And maybe some new CGI animation, could be.

Spunky is crushing your head!

A closeup.

Toedown throwdown

Jammies, top this!

Nuts

I just cleaned all the half eaten cans of nuts out of the pantry. Gary likes nuts.but this is nutty.

Happy World MS Day to Me!

Yesterday was the first ever World MS Day. Did anyone say, "Hey, Ellen, Happy World MS Day?" No. Here is how World MS Day turned out for me:

1) No one gave me anything, in fact I spent most of the day trying to figure out who stole all the money in my wallet. Turns out I handed it all over to Friend #3 who was nice enough to get me lunch from Hardee's / Carl's Jr.

2) I woke up with a fever and a backache. Oh, and MS; thank you for remembering it was World MS Day, tingly right foot.

3) The Most Thoughtful Award goes to Family Guy, which aired "The Tan Aquatic With Steve Zissou"

Meanwhile, in an attempt to teach Chris a lesson in life, Peter takes him to the location of his former high school bully, Randy, whom he intends to beat up for revenge, not caring that Randy now suffers from Multiple sclerosis believing it to be a monkey scrotum.

4) I was laughing at this routine and I wet myself a little bit. Not sure if that was MS related.

Insecurities

Not good with money. Not good with math.

Don't know nothin' 'bout securities, don't know much economy. 

But, see these big empty boxes? I'm supposed to absorb 70% of the volume of information that was in these boxes to pass what is essentially the stockbroker's version of the bar exam, the Series 7.

First of all, no one told me I'd have to do this. I heard about it from the former boss at Elliot when I gave him my resignation. "So, you'll be taking the Series 7, then, and getting your stockbroker's license?" my ex-boss asked with a bemused chuckle. (Or, rather, "sneered.")

I rolled my eyes and snickered, "Yeah, sure," and THEN found out on my first day of work that yeah! sure! they didn't tell you? Oh, wow! That's what you'll be doing sometime in the next two years. (To be fair, I rushed them through the usual interview process because I had a cruise to get on and get naked. Or maybe I wasn't listening.) Oh, they said, it's easy, it's just a bunch of formulas. Akin to saying, "It's easy, it's just in classical Arabic." "It's easy, you just have to flap your arms and fly." "It's easy, you just have to develop a new LOBE in your BRAIN."

Formulas, you say? I have found I am not where I should be with formulas. I just discovered that if you have two sets of numbers next to each other in parentheses you are supposed to know to multiply them?

Seriously, (800)(100) equals 80,000. DID YOU KNOW THIS? Why didn't you tell me? Why do you want to hurt me? Where is the times symbol? I'd take an X, or a *, or a dot. And, more important, WHEN did this happen? When the FUCK did they establish THIS rule? I was an English major back in the eighties, and the last math class I had was Remedial Algebra in High school except for the three days of textbook-cramming I took to pass Finite Math in college, and we had an asterisk, I know we did. This is some millennial bullshit. You dern kids and yer new-fangled ways.

You know what else changed? I just read that "[blah blah incomprehensible blah] is significantly easier now that stocks are calculated in pennies not in eighths ." Oh, yeah, and when the HELL did you change that rule, turdbunnies? Oh! 2001! OH! OH! Thank you for telling me! (And actually, thank God you changed that rule, because I would be flat-out doomed. I didn;t understand it when my Dad explained it when I was 12. It is probably what killed the securities neurons in my brain. Probably some lesion can be traced back to that very day:
Dad:"[incomprehensible reasoning related to Pieces of 8 and the South American stock exchange]"
My Brain:"[Zzzzt zzzt]" Brain shorts out.)

AND DID YOU KNOW They changed the start time for Saturday Night Live from 10:35 Central to 10:30 Central? Yeah? How did you find that out? Was there an announcement? It's not related to corporate finance but it's another example of the old folks being left out of the loop. You know what? It's probably broadcast in that frequency only young people can hear, except no, I just clicked that link and that is a really obnoxious noise. Don't click that.

I am reminded of when I had to turn to the juvenile section of our local library (where they kept the books about farting - no, no, seriously, it was the section for years 5-12) and checked out Our Friend the Sun so I could pass College Meteorology. So I could learn that the sun is closer in winter than in summer! (Are you shitting me? Did you know that? News to ME! When did THIS happen?)

However, I can tell you right now that if you are studying for Series 7, and you see an acronym, the O stands for Options. That's a little bit of knowledge I am secure enough to pass on. Because I don't keep secrets like the Stock Exchange and you dern kids do.

A Curious Memorial Day

This must be the first year I realized I had no one to memorialize on Memorial Day. I know Memorial Day is the day the pools open, and I remember asking my Dad the difference between Memorial Day and Veterans' Day (a bit of a life-or-death question). But when it comes to a connection to someone who died in a war, or died during service, there's no one.

While I know plenty of veterans, none were left behind. No relative, no in-law, no friend of a friend. Mom had four uncles, all who went to WWII, all came back. Ken was a bomber for the U.S. Army Air Corps. He came back, and so did Wilma's brothers. I don't know anything about Technical Father's military history, except that he didn't have one. Dad was at school under the GI Bill, he had a desk job that started on the last two weeks of the Korean War. He and all of his friends came back. And you'd think I'd know someone who had been in Vietnam, say, Gary, but he was 4-F (excused for medical reasons) because as he says, they didn't have Walgreen's in the jungle.

Of all relatives, friends of relatives, friends of the family, friends of the family of grandparents, all I came up with was a girl in sixth grade who had an MIA bracelet.

All I can think is that knowing me grants you immunity from death in battle. I'm sorry for those of you who have lost someone. I feel quite fortunate this Memorial Day with no one to remember.

Slice of Life

War And Peace is the longest "slice of life" I've ever read, but it truly does have everything. And the best chapter was the one about the fly. Prince somebody (Andrew?) has a fever and there is a painfully slow chapter on the journey a fly makes crawling up the wallpaper. By the end of it you feel like you have a fever too.

I am kind though, and I will not bring you into my physical misery. I won't describe in detail how I screwed up my back shoveling dirt and I am now flattened in an 80 degree humid room instead of being at the Cowboy Mouth concert downtown. I won't bring you along into my pain, even though there is a mutant bulldog-horsefly crashing across the ceiling from corner to corner as the husband is drumming to the Pretenders downstairs.

You are welcome. This is how to honor our service dead.

Burger Queen

I have a lump of burger in my belly. Why? Memorial Day at the in-laws.

The in-laws are wanna-be vegetarians. They will happily eat food with a face; they just don't want to see the face. The face or the wings or legs or any body part that may remind them the animal walked or flew. Or had veins and a circulatory system or a liver. Or blood.

The in-laws' fear of blood leads them to overcook everything.

This year my Mother in law bragged that she got her burgers so thick yet so well done by searing them on the stove, then baking them in the oven, and THEN grilling them. These burgers should be given to the starving Africans because they are not only filling, they are filling and slow to digest. Granted, it was perfectly well-done: an even burger-brown all the way through. So, really, it just wasn't cooked to my taste. Her family was very pleased, which is a tall order since she has to balance thick (Ken) with brown (Karen). But the issue for me isn't just the done-ness, it's the dryness.

She's a patter. People, don't pat. Don't pat when you shape it. Every pat takes some of the juiciness and transfers it to your hands. Don't pat when you grill it. I know you want to know if it's done. The juices are going to bubble up without you patting at it.

Granted, I didn't make the Memorial Burgers, but if I had I would take the lump of ground beef, dump it straight from the styrofoam onto some plastic wrap, and roll it into a semi-log with as few passes as possible. Then I'd unwrap it and slice it into discs. Then I'd carefully plop the discs on the grill and not touch them until It has enough structural integrity to flip over. After one flip (one!) I'd wait and take it off the grill and let it rest ten minutes. And if it wasn't done I'd toss it in the microwave and cook the rest longer.

You know what? I'm going to the store tomorrow and to get some ground beef and buns for burgers. It's going to be a new Memorial Day tradition. I'm not revising the S______ potato salad, though, that was perfection.

Phone Sex

The Caller ID showed the same firm who had called three times a day the last week. I picked up and gave an annoyed "Hello?"

Silence. But at least not a hangup.

I repeated, "Helllloooooooo."

The caller said, "Hello? Hello?"

"yeesssssssssssssssssssssss."

"Is this Mrs - Skuh ... skuh .... skuh - mid -it?"

I am not kidding, she pronounced the "Sch" as in our American "schedule," then "mid," and then, oh no! she was left with the "t" at the end so she had to buy a vowel. I SWEAR WHO COULD NOT PRONOUNCE S______? And this was an American teenager, too, evidently from the Valley or somewhere the Germans hadn't migrated because MY GOD it's only the second most popular name in Germany.

"Yes," I answered.

"May I speak to Mr. Skuh-mid-it?"

I rolled my eyes and passed the phone to Gary, who was right at my elbow as he always is these days.

You could tell the woman launched right into a script, and I wondered how long it would take Gary to hang up on her. Gary paused a moment and began masturbating. Well, miming, that is, not really masturbating. He went up and down at first, then a little swinging the imaginary penis around from the base, then waaaaayyy up and waaaaayyy down, then he slapped it a little. I don't know what he did after that, I was hiding my head in the corner of the couch to stifle my laughter. Eventually he hung up, but he said "Thank you" first, and you could tell he really meant it.

Putting it Out There

Wow, I almost made it through the whole season without seeing American Idol once. We made a point of watching the finale, though. I don't know the background of any of the performers, not even Big Pointy-Haired Guy or Little Pointy-Haired Guy. Neither's voice made me want to know more about them. However I read later one of them is gay. That made me think of Elton John.

In the early '70s, Elton John had one place in my neurons: he was the guy who came out. He said, on the record, that he was bisexual. A few years later he stepped on to all gay, all day. I loved that bit of information about his sexuality, especially since I was cripplingly shy at that time. How can a shy person not love someone who owns who he is enough to tell Rolling Stone?  

In the '80s I heard the effect of flashbulbs on his photosensitive epilepsy is what led to the giant sunglasses, but that wasn't as impressive as his casual honesty about his sexuality.

And of course, all talks of music and honesty and celebrity come around to BNL. BNL2.0 is breaking my heart. First of all the BNL blog is down "temporarily." Twitter is new, though, and they have been twittering several times a day about their new album.

"Hello from the studio! Tweaking things, and getting ready to record our first song. "Summertime" is the jam. Gigs were nuts."

"Wow. Got that one! On to "Hold On"... we gotta change some titles! Kev's turn to sing. 2 guys walk in to a bar... and ROCK!!!!"

"Day 2. Jim is punching in some bass on the chorus cause he's a little on top. Ty is fat in the pocket. Blood Red Moon. Locusts Buzzing."

"It's a 2 bed day! MPW is going to cut something together. Holdin it down for the BOOF BOOF BAFF BOOF BAFF"

"Studio Computer CRASH!!! Yikes. We're preparing for A Creeggan joint. "On the Lookout". Killer vibe, me on Bass! Mac... please come back"

I should be excited. And grateful. But I feel like I'm a business stakeholder getting my daily status report.

Ed: Yeah. We need to ROCK!!!! Did you get that memo?

Tyler: Yeah. I got the memo. And I understand the policy. And the problem is just that I forgot the one time. How many exclamation points is it again?

Jim: (distractedly) Guys, I'm trying to rock here.

Kevin: We need to talk about the TPS reports and the level to which they do or do not rock.

Granted, they also supply video evidence of the rocking. And I do love seeing how the sausage is made. As long as it isn't Ed's sausage, because I've seen it and the possibility of dying of internal injuries is a huge turn-off, thank you.

On the other hand, Steven counters with photos of his ass crack as he tries on his girlfriend's clothes. 

Status updates, ass crack, status updates, ass crack. Ass crack wins. Oh, and make your own crack joke here. At the end of last month Steven Page and the girls made it through six months of passing drug tests and were officially de-convicted of any crime, and the air was thick with the silence of the un-ringing of the bells.

Ass crack wins every time.

 

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

St. Louis: Famous for Booze, Blues, and Shoes

Booze
This weekend we went off to the one store in town that sells theFaythe-based Scrumpy cider: The Wine and Cheese Shop located in the old Famous and Barr building in Clayton.. Or, as Gary kept calling it, "Making a booze run for my wife." I got all of the Scrumpy, all nine bottles, and I ordered a case. I think what distresses Gary the most is that I drink it right from the bottle, and I appear as if I'm drinking Malt Liquor from a 40.

Blues
Well, if not blues, music. Next concert on the agenda is (link warning: music) Carbon Leaf at Blueberry Hill.

Shoes
Gary came into the room this morning wearing brown shoes, a blue striped shirt, Gary-green Dockers, and light beige socks.

"What's with the socks?" I asked.

"The socks are fine! They're some of my Best Socks! They don't have any holes! So what if they don't match my shoes!"

I paused then softly muttered sing-sing to myself, "blog post..."

Didn't deter him, though. he went to work with greaser socks. Such a little nerdlet.

Mailbox, etc.

How shall I explain the level of crisis that hit this home tonight? How else but with the Homeland Security Advisory System:

LOW: A few months ago, mid-April, we were at threat-level green. I will look back on that as April 14th thinking. Gary's mom's birthday is April 15, and she had asked for a mailbox. This gave Gary the opportunity to give a gift, which he loves, and research on the Internet, which he loves, and spend money wantonly, which he loves. This was to have been a birthday gift for his Mom, but Gary was so busy researching overpriced mailboxes he missed the deadline.

GUARDED: The next chance to give the mailbox was Mother's Day, and Gary had focused his research on the latest trend in mailboxes: the brick mailbox.  You can make your mailbox an impenetrable little Monument to Consumption. The S_______'s mailbox was recently dented in a car run-in, so Gary imagined bricks would be a good bet. After a month of research, Gary discovered, to his dismay, that brick mailboxes are designed to disintegrate when they come in contact with a car. (If you are curious, it's so the people in the cars don't die. "Oh, of course. For safety." We hadn't considered the drivers at all.)  This threw his whole pro/con weighted matrix off, so he missed the Mother's Day deadline. For Mother's Day, Wilma got an explanation of what type of mailbox she would not be getting and why. ("I just want a mailbox! A straight mailbox!")

ELEVATED:  In his hunt for The Most Expensive Mailbox in the World that Would Show The Depth of His Love for His Mother, Gary discovered there are black cast iron and aluminum mailboxes that are fairly sturdy. You can hardly move the displays of some of these. So Gary's thinking shifted, and this was the mailbox that was ultimately selected as the Mother of All Mailboxes. Of course, that image is stripped, not loaded. Gary wanted the newspaper box and the extra plate on top with the family name but his parents shot that down. ("We just want a mailbox!" As you might imagine, Wilma has a flair for drama. Picture an 80 year old woman pleading for her son just to buy her a mailbox, any mailbox, as long as it has a cute ball-shaped finial like the neighbors'.)

HIGH: Just before he "pulled the trigger" (I hate that phrase now), Gary made sure to ask his Mom what the address was. The address where, not incidentally, Gary grew up. "Mom, is it 5897 Fairview or 5987 Fairview?" "It's 5987. Here, let me write it down for you."

You know where this is going, don't you?

SEVERE: Of course the invoice just came and of course Gary had given 5897 Fairview, the wrong address. Of course. He explained to me he was sick of his anal nature and decided just to rely on his memory and 'wing it' when he gave the order on the phone. So now, a week later, the aluminum / bronze / titanium has been poured. Initially, Gary assumed these mailboxes are cast whole in a giant one-piece mold for greater structural integrity and he would be buying an entirely new mailbox, full price, and then have to sell the incorrect 5897 mailbox on eBay. Or else move to 5897 Whatever Street, Somewhere, USA. Happily, after I tried talking reason for an hour or so, we listened to our voice-mail and found that the address plaques are screwed on separately, so it would be cost about a sixth of what he was thinking it would be.

This made him quite elated. He likes to spend money, but he still loves it when he gets a bargain like that.

Clothing Revolution part the fourth

Room in my closet and room in my pants.

Clothing Revolution part three

Did you know there's this place called Dress Barn? I'd never been
there before! And given I will grow out of all THESE clothes in a year
they were a good value.

I laid out all the clothes so deceptively that I had to be honest with
the giant blue granny panties.

Clothing Revolution part two

Is anyone a 16W? If you have to ask what W stands for you are not a W.
These clothes are off to Good will Monday night unless you send me an
email at queenellenofm at gmail.com. Shoes are 8 .

Clothing Revolution part one

This closet was packed before the revolution started.

Elton John! Billy Joel!

Let me first respond to the questions people asked me in real life.

"How were your seats?" Seats were not bad.

 

(The steps up to the stage can be seen on the bottom left - white with black lines. There may or may not be two pianos on the stage at this point. Drums came up, went down, pianos came up,went down, and Billy's rotated.)

"Did they play together?" Together, then individually, then together.

"Was it sold out?" Oh, yes. And everybody sang the chorus of Piano Man in the final encore.

"Did you like it?" Well, duh. You kind of have to like it. However, the woman next to me talked through all of Elton John's performance. Then, in the middle of "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road," she turned to me and drunkenly said, "He needs to get this thing ROCKIN!" then staggered off to get beer.

Actually, I started to wonder why it didn't bother me that she talked through much of it, and I realized neither of use were there to hear the music, since it was carved into our neurons since Junior High. I looked at Gary and his air of satisfied self-content and decided we were there for the same reason we went to Shakespeare's house and Stonehenge. To have been there. So there was no way to not enjoy it.

That said ...

We came in about 10 minutes late, so I suppose Elton may have said hello to the crowd then, but it was honestly an hour later before he brought his head up.

 

Then he said, "Hello Saint Louis, I hope you are having a good time." Then he played more classic rock music. Billy Joel, on the other hand, came out and discussed the venue, and the seats, and his bald head, and the fact we were all Twittering. Delightful. I've been spoiled by BNL 1.0, which had frontmen who would come out and discuss their vasectomies (Steve) frozen sperm (Ed) fear of moths (Steve) and misadventures in planes (Ed). I'm not used to having a musician come out and "just" be an artist. Hmph.  And to be fair, in lieu of communicating with us Elton did point at us. Lots of pointing. A Hillary Clinton level of pointing. He pointed at every section at least once. 

Still, I'm not complaining. However, I did come down with a Swine-flu like fever the very next night. And, you know, they didn't play any of their new stuff.

On the way to the Elton John Billy Joel concert

I did honk and these people went wild.

 

Another Visitation

There was a booksale at TeddyJ today. I donated a sack of books Gary culled from our house. All of it crap: Tom Clancy, The DaVinci Code, John Grisham.

Later, Friend 3 and I were poking around the books, when a mutual friend, Steve, came by with The DaVinci Code in hand.

"Hey, I donated that book," I said, suddenly all proud of The DaVinci Code, as if it were an obscure piece of fiction I had donated. It might not have even been my copy.

Steve began thumbing through it. He stopped at the first page and said, "Someone wrote in this book."

"What's it say?" Friend 3 asked.

"'This book is an albatross around the neck of Margaret Davis.'"

"Mom!" I squealed, and grabbed the book back from Steve, who then insisted I pay for it.

I had forgotten we demanded Mom read The DaVinci Code. She read it under duress, and annotated it accordingly (annotations listed below).

She illustrated the frontispiece:

 

(I think that's Gary being crushed by the poor house. The uh ... Scaiydt poor house. Or perhaps it's me, what with the boobs and all. If I remember our crime was buying her her own copy instead of waiting for Hot Mom to return ours.)

This is Mom's comment on the last page:

 

And in between there are these annotations:

The Hate begins

Suspicion

Polio commentary(the blurry comment is "Kee-rist.")

Bored

Mary Magdalene

More polio commentary

Gratuitous sex scene

Mirror writing

Plot hole 

Overkill

Mom learns a new word

Alanis Morrissette

Mom learns another new word

It does get pretty lame near the end [SPOILER]

Are We Not Entertained?

So, there's a baseball player named Manny Ramirez. It seems he is the latest to have fallen to a steroid scandal. Or, technically, if you read the article, an anti-steroid-side-effect-drug scandal.

I remember when it became evident Mark McGwire had used steroids. The debate around town here in Saint Louis was, "Well, what would you have, big guys making home runs or skinny guys making singles?"

At the time it was fresh in my mind how much fun the home run race between Sosa and McGwire had been, and I thought, well, baseball is just entertainment. If they want to be more entertaining, let them. (I just wanted a level playing field. I wanted all the steroid users in one league and the straight players in another league. I was a purist about that. No big bad boys versus good skinny boys. A different stat book, different rules: like the WWF versus greco-roman wrestling.)

Clearly, I didn't think it out carefully. Now that some time has passed, I don't want baseball players risking their health to amuse me. I also:

Don't want rock stars to use cocaine to give me a good show.

Don't want poets of the Romance period to use opium so they can write Kubla Khan.

I could even do quite happily without Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

But back to sports performers. NHL Hockey allows fights. Isn't their excuse that fans come to see a fight? Admittedly, fights were once the best part of a Blues game, but that was when I was six and hadn't begun to lust over Gary Unger. What can I do? I could boycott hockey games and baseball games and football games and pro-wrestling. Done! Hey that was easy.

Now should I take Back to Black out of my CD player? I think not. Amy Winehouse isn't trashing her body so she can make me more entertained.

The Anti-Mother's Day Post

I keep my mouth shut about mothers most of the time, because I've never had the urge to be a mother. But, on this one day, I am full up with hearing about Great Moms. Let's talk for a minute about Crappy Moms. Just for a minute. I know, I know, I'm not a mom; I don't know how hard it is. Similarly, I'm not an heiress but I know Paris Hilton is pretty bad at it. I'm not a singer or a reality tv star or had a sex tape or wrote an autobiography or went to jail but I know Paris Hilton is bad at those things too.

So. Moms Behaving Badly:

Moms Who Expect Their Kids to Take Care of Them Emotionally.

This is an upside-down relationship. Moms take care of kids when they are sad or discouraged, not the other way around. The thing that gets me is that the Moms who feel the physically handicapped are not equipped to have kids usually are proud to tell you that their daughter is their best friend. Get. another. best. friend. Lorelei Gilmore, don't sit in bed and cry to your daughter about your love life. She loves you and will feel pressured to make you feel better. She'll get you ice cream. And then she'll crack under the pressure and fall to the ABC's - how is it Rory Gilmore never had an anorexia, bulimia or cutting storyline? Or serious control issues later in life?

Moms Who Make Their Kids Steal For Them.

I've seen this happen twice. The neighbor lady wanted the pot of geraniums on the porch of an unoccupied house and bragged to me she sent her 10 year old son to get them for her. I was speechless, and she took this as tacit approval, and went on and on ... until I said, "Aren't you worried you're teaching him to steal?" She replied, "Oh it isn't stealing. No one lives there." This reminded me of an incident in my youth. My Granceil was visiting Mom and coveted a concrete cherub in the garden of the unoccupied house next door. "Ellen, jump the fence and get that little statue for your granny." I shot Mom a horrified look. Mom said, "Stop being such a goody-two-shoes and go get that for your grandmother." So I did, of course. This might be why moms who send their kids off on thieving sprees bother me so much.

(An aside, there's a cemetery on Graham / Hanley Road in Florissant, where Gary and I grew up. Gary tells me that every time he cut through that cemetery after playing in the very polluted Coldwater Creek, he would pick up some flowers for his mommy. You know, off of a grave. His mommy got suspicious after Gary came home with the third bouquet of flowers. I imagine his Mom chastised him strongly. She might have beaten him about the head and shoulders with his final bouquet.)

Moms Who Praise Themselves for Loving Their Children.

I've heard several Moms (one of whom was admittedly an Octomom) claim a good mothering award for how much they love their children. I've heard a particularly bad mom say, "I might be a screw-up in everything else but I'm a good Mom. I really love my children." And again I say, doesn't that just make you a baseline-quality human being, not a heroic mom? I know a lot of crappy moms who do nothing but love their children, and a few good moms who are so great at their jobs they can discipline their kids, stick to consistent rules, and say "No" instead of "Ooooh wook at you widda face. I could never say no to dat idda bidda widda face."

OK. Rant over. Feel free to disagree. By this time I'm quite accustomed to saying, "I'm not a mom, so I don't know what I'm talking about."

Holy God

My legs and feet are killing me. And why?

I went a day without Crocs.

Must go to bed and nurse my bones.

Sniff. I'm Going to Cry

I love you guys.

Spunky and Scrumpy and Clogs

I. Spunky

Look at Spunky Labia, International Toe Porn Superstar.

 

What does Spunky's body language say to you? What is she feeling right now? Is she tense? Happy? Stressed?

 

No.

Spunky is angry.

Very very angry.

 

Spunky doesn't pretend to know why Ligit searches on Steven Page were so popular this past week or so.  She just knows that it had better stop. She knows Steven Page is popular, but who could be more popular than Spunky? She's still riding high on the word cloud in the sidebar, but toe porn fans can be fickle.

II. Scrumpy

 

I read about this on Faythe's blog, and people, it is heaven. Like apple juice that makes you drunk. (And good apple juice, not toddlerswill.) There's very little of that alcohol shudder after. It's as if they could make made milk-flavored alcohol next. You chug back some milk with your cookies and then after a few you can't drive.

III. Clogs

Lookit! I found the off-white shoes I wanted, as soon as I turned my back on Clarks and went to DSW. Oh, and interestingly, Zappos twittered me with four possible Clarks shoes. One was even in off-white and would have been dead-on, except it had some metal detailing. But it made me wonder, what would happen if I Twittered "Why can't I find a silver samovar when I need it?" Would Overstock.com step in and send me some links?

 

Yes, that does say LifeStride on the heel. Shutup. I am ... mature.

And since they were there, and at DSW, and therefore on sale (or so I have been led to believe ... by DSW ... hmmm)

  

and

 

Wait. Aren't these what Mrs. Roper always wore?

I Win! I Beat Facebook!

I had to click the thumbs down on Facebook about twenty times before I got the trifecta! And that's nine "Jobless?" and 36 dots in the combined ellipses instead of 27, what it should be.

 

Paper or Plastic

As Gary and I went through the grocery checkout, the bagboy asked, "Do you want this watermelon in a bag?"

Gary paused just for a split second, just long enough for me to wonder if he was deciding between a recyclable bag or plastic or ...

"No thanks," Gary said, "We'll just eat it in the car."

You Can Find Me Buried Under the Weeds

I find I become confused if I try to garden when it's over eighty degrees. Gary watches me carefully to be sure I don't develop what we call the White Ring of Death - my whole face gets bright red except for a minstrel ring of white around my lips.

This weekend would have been perfect for killing the creeping charlie, redistributing the woodchip pile, moving the sunflowers, weeding the front beds, nuking the foundation and fence, and planting phlox, but it was supposed to rain. It never DID rain, but I put off the spring cleanup anyway.

iRobot needs to make a gardening robot. Floomba. Or Garoomba. Oh wait - Bloomba.

Current buffalo situation at Lone Elk park

Elk!

Shopstipation: A First World Problem

Yesterday Gary said he had paid off the bill for the new Pink laptop, and that he only had one outstanding debt. I have no outstanding debts (and really, I am sorry, don't hate me) and I marched into his room and demanded I be allowed to pay off his one debt, the car balance. Monies were transferred, check was sent. Woohoo! Debt free.

I don't know if it'll last long, but I can tell you that debt free feels pretty much the same as "in debt." That might just be because I'm good at ignoring money worries.

Still, I celebrated by going shopping online. All I wanted were a pair of Clarks sandals with low heels, open toed in off-white in my very average size. Money was not an object. Well, come to find out, I still have money, and I have no objects. Couldn't find a thing I liked. How is this possible? If I were smothering in a mortgage and Visa bills, off-white Clark's sandals would be tap-dancing up to my front door and coyly affecting third ballet position when I answered.

And don't go on-line looking, sure you'll find shoes but they won't be the right shade of off-white. I think the issue is that this is a benchmark article of clothing. For most people that's the wedding dress, but since I made my wedding dress the only other benchmark clothing i've had is the pink linen skirt I bought at Talbot's right before Gary and I married. I thought it would be the last thing I'd ever buy without having the price questioned. It cost fifty dollars (which would be $200 in today's dollars) and it never really fit, and it was linen. I was just sick of shopping at Neimans and Saks and not finding anything that suited me, and I had to buy something expensive on principle. (I soon found out Gary would be more prone to say "You only spent 50 dollars on that? It must be a rag. Let me see it. Ugh! Piece of junk! You need this $1,990 skirt!")

So, after I gave up and accepted that I was shopstipated, Gary came in and said he forgot, he ripped his pants at work and bought a pair of Dockers that very day on the Macy's card, so technically we still are 36 dollars in debt. I am not complaining about money, but I can attest that unless I buy the Clark's shoe factory and design an open-toed, open-backed low heel off white leather sandal, money will not buy me happiness.