Things will be great when you SHUT UP

I'm so tired I could spit. I got woken up a few times last night and then when it happened again at 4, I couldn't fall back asleep. Ugh. It's a good thing I have this afternoon off, but I'm not even sure I'm going to get much done this morning since I keep mixing words up and forgetting where I am. And I'm doubly annoyed because I have that "Downtown" song in my head from that Visa commercial where the girl solves all her problems by plunking down her Visa card and buying a heinous fuschia dress, turquoise belt and hooker shoes. What kind of message is that?!? Stupid commercial.

You can't stop him; you can only hope to contain him

So Nikki and Paolo are another set of con artists, eh? If aliens are only monitoring humans by watching Lost, they're going to think we're a bunch of jackholes. But that was a pretty cool twist at the end. Being buried alive sounds most unpleasant. I'm pretty sure that if I ever wake up in a closed casket, the heart attack will put me right out, so it's really nothing to worry about.

My sister sent me an email with nephew #2's soccer schedule. He's three and he's already on a soccer team. I cannot wait to see this! My sister says he's actually pretty good--he can dribble and follow directions. Which is impressive. When I started playing soccer, I think I was about five and all I did was sit on the field and pull up grass. I played fullback and apparently my team was so good that nobody ever took a shot on our goal. Or they did score and I was too busy examining horticulture to notice. I really can't recall at this point.

Hold your tongue and say "apple"

I changed my shirt three times this morning, and I still don't like what I'm wearing. Dang it.

So J and I were having a discussion the other day about butts. Cigarette butts, that is. J detests people who throw cigarette butts on the ground as if they somehow don't qualify as litter. And I completely agree that it's annoying and stupid. But J's rage toward butt-throwers is the kind of boiling hatred usually reserved for things like Nazis, injustice and Pauly Shore. He gets really mad! He'll even yell at people on the street if he sees them toss a butt on the ground. He'll be like "Yeah, that's right, cigarette butts aren't litter! You suck!" It's pretty funny, actually. He's a one-man campaign against tobacco-related littering. Good for him. If he succeeds, the world will definitely be a cleaner place.

Rest in pieces

I don't know what I did to myself at the gym the other day, but it feels like my legs are separating from my torso in a most painful manner. It's like the ball and socket joints in both my hips are fused together. Me and my arthritic hip. I'm so old.

So I was sitting here telling a coworker about our desire to move sometime in the near future (so J and I can one day take walks at night and not have to duck for cover every time we hear a pop), and I was telling her how nice it would be to know the future. Like, in five years, will we be at the same jobs? Will we be making more or less money? Will we have kids? It would be nice to know these things now. But, then again, that would be a real buzz kill to know your own future. Cause I've always harbored this desire to live the life of an international spy, and it would be sad to know it never, ever happens. The death of a dream, as it were.

Old black Wubbiss

It's going to be so nice out today that I'm getting suspicious. The weatherman predicted that it's going to get up to 80 this afternoon! Sweet merciful crap. So now I have to wonder if this is simply good fortune or if it's global warming, the beginning of an alien invasion or a signal of oncoming tornadic activity. If it's one of the last three, I'm going to be very upset that I didn't take the time this morning to paint my toenails and put on sandals.

Anyone else see the news story on Today about the American convicted of murder in Nicaragua? Poor jerk. Nothing makes me appreciate the American judicial system more than seeing stories about people in overseas jails. From what movies have told me, I'm quite sure I never want to be thrown into a Turkish, Thai or Nicaraguan prison. They don't seem real concerned about cleanliness, from what I can tell. I mean, it's bad enough you've lost your freedom--do you have to endure dirt floors, too? Oh, the humanity.

Ever read Oedipus Rex?

I have to go to the optometrist's office today after work to pick up my new contacts. This ought to be a hoot. Generally, trips to the eye doctor's anymore are lessons in pure pain and suffering. Every time I leave that joint, I'm squinting, teary-eyed and it feels like my corneas are on fire. I can't wait! I told J that we're going out to dinner afterwards to motivate me to actually go, but it's hard to enjoy your meal when you're bleeding out your eye sockets, that's all I'm saying. I just hope my optometrist doesn't get all political on me again. Last time, he was talking about Al Gore's electricity bill. But, still, that was an improvement over the last time I was there and he treated me to a lesson on the history of Afghanistan. Do other people have doctors like this? Why do I always seem to get the ones who won't give me pain pills but enjoy ripping off my eyelids? How does that happen?

I have a big head and little arms

Well, I was awake at the beginning of Lost and I woke up for the very end, but the part in between is a total blank. Last thing I remember, Locke had sent Alex to get Sayid's bag, and the next thing I knew, they were leading Locke into a room where his "father" was. Did I hear that right that Locke's father threw him off an 8-story building? Dang. Talk about the tough love.

It is so awesome outside right now. It's in the 60's, sunny, it feels wonderful. Unfortunately, we have one of those storm systems that is likely to produce tornadoes heading our way. Although, considering I work in a concrete-block room in the middle of a basement, I probably don't have that much to worry about. In fact, there could be a tornado out there right now, and I'd have no idea. Freaky.

You'll never take me alive!

It was another night of SWAT teams, drug busts and general mayhem on our street last night. We got home from dinner, and I just happened to look out the front window to find a police car sitting in front of our house. Fortunately, they were walking away from our house and down to the house about four up from us. So I look in that direction, and there were two police surveillance vans, undercover police cars and a whole bunch of officers dressed in bullet-proof vests. Some of them even had on those undercover masks. We're not sure what the guy who lives down there was busted for, but the dude has about 8 chromed-out cars, so he was definitely up to no good. And the really funny thing is that the girl who used to live right next door to us was apparently living with this guy, his son and her baby, and she came out of the house with her hands up. Girl, you need to move. Far, far away. Anyway, that was pretty interesting. I'm hoping to find out more today. If they decide to sell off his cars to make his bail, I'm so going to grab the purple Cutlass.

Lady Maggot Fist

One of my favorite Simpsons ever was a rerun last night. It's the one where Bart almost becomes Catholic, and at the end, he makes a speech about how Protestants and Catholics aren't that different and why can't we all get along and Ned Flanders says "He's right. We need to band together to fight our real enemies: monogamous gays and stem cells!" Every single time I see that, I fall on the floor laughing. In fact, I'm laughing right now just thinking about it. Ahh, it's just too bad so few people can laugh at religion. As my friend at work said yesterday "I think God has a sense of humor. That's why poor people have twins." Ha!

I feel like posting another picture of our Meow-meow. And I would also like to mention we're going to Steak'n'Shake for dinner tonight. It's gonna be a good day.

Ever since I was a lower-case G

Well, the wedding on Saturday was really quite lovely. I am amazed they threw that together in just a week. They had the whole shebang with decorations, cake, food, coordinating color schemes, all of it. Our niece looked really beautiful, and it's always fun to see the whole of J's family together like that. I made quite an impression during the reception when I did my elevator dance. My father-in-law got a real kick out of that, so I also showed him the shopping cart, the lawn mower and the sprinkler. Then our almost-16-year-old nephew came up and started doing the Q-Tip dance. Awesome. And I tried to get the Montel Jordan dance going, but only my sister-in-law could do it, too. We'll have to work on that one.

I woke up at 4:45 again this morning. Ergh. It's just a good thing it's spring break here this week and my job expectations are somewhat lighter. Thank goodness. And thank goodness for the Wubbiss. This is him about to pounce on either a foot, a milk cap or an insect that only he can see:

Happy Birthday, J!

Heh heh. I'm so bad. J and I saw that Duke lost their first-round game in the NCAA tournament yesterday, and my reaction may or may not have been "Ha! Go cry in your Corvette, you preppy, prep school punks." You'd think I'd like Duke because it's such a good school, and I do love the architecture there, but there's something about Duke basketball that just makes me want to punch those guys in their smug, pasty faces. I can't really explain it except that I thought Christian Laetner was a punk way back in college. It's not rational, I know.

Well, this weekend ought to be full of merriment. J's birthday is today, so we're going out for dinner after work. And then tomorrow is our niece's wedding. Don't tell my inlaws, but I have no idea what her last name is going to be now. We're going to have to give them cash because I don't know to whom to make out the check. I'm taking my camera with me tomorrow because there will be alcohol at the reception, thus guaranteeing that somebody will look like a fool. And watching dressed-up people act like idiots is the best part of any wedding, in my humble opinion. Gotta capture that for posterity.

Nobody gets madder at the news than you

Chex is now making an apple cinnamon Chex mix with dried apples, walnuts and cranberries. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

It's been raining all night and all morning. And, unfortunately, we have a window in our bedroom that is situated so that whenever rain hits it, it sounds like corn popping really loudly. So that woke me up this morning and I couldn't fall back asleep. But at least it gave me some time to think about last night's Lost. I'm not really shocked that Jack and Claire are siblings, but I am surprised that Claire was such a goth! I'm curious to see when Jack and Claire figure this out though. Their dad was quite the hound dog. And I liked Rousseau's speech about her daughter. You know, for a crazy woman, she's actually quite rational most of the time.

Patent leather platform pumps *squeal*

Ergh, I have such a problem. I was sitting around the house last night, basking in the glow of my post-peanut-buster-parfait from Dairy Queen, and I got bored because nothing was on tv and I read all three of my magazines. So what do I do? I get on target.com and buy four pairs of shoes. I don't need four more pairs of shoes. Why do I do this? Now, I can console myself with the fact that they were all on sale and I got free shipping, so the whole enchilada only cost $28, but still. Ok, I vow right now that when I get these shoes in the mail, I will get rid of four pairs of shoes that I have at home to make up for it. I must balance out my closet karma.

Warning: the following contains a feminist diatribe

J and I got into a discussion this morning after watching the news story about the 17-year-old boy who had an affair with his married 29-year-old teacher. J was commenting that the boy's friends were probably thinking it was incredibly cool, slapping him on the back, etc... and I had to point out that, sure, to a teenager it may seem cool, but it's really not. I am always fascinated by how men deem female deviant sexual behavior as cool and "sexy." Strippers, call girls, those idiot women who live with Hugh Hefner, they're all thought to be attractive in a way. But I think their reality is far from that. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that women who engage in abnormal sexual practices probably have serious emotional issues that stem from their childhoods. And, yes, men may reap the benefits of this, but it annoys me that there's not more sensitivity to the fact that these women are obviously feeling bad about something in their lives and they're expressing it through behaviors that could seriously hurt them.

Bottom line: men are animals. I kid! I kid because I love.

What are you, six?

Our 19-year-old niece is getting married this Saturday (this is J's brother's daughter), and (because everything is really about me) it's making me try to imagine what I would have been like as a married 19-year-old. Seriously, it doesn't even compute...mostly because I didn't have a boyfriend at that age. But my overall memory of myself as a sophomore in college can be summed up in one word: unformed. I was very shy, I hadn't picked a major yet (in fact, I think that was the first year I took art history, thus charting the course for my future), and I hadn't yet discovered my love for sequins, corduroy and Indian food. So it's very hard for me to picture being in a place at that age where I would have been comfortable making such a permanent decision. But, as my Mom often reminds me, not everybody is like me. So our niece must feel settled in the person she is now and ready for this level of commitment. Me, I couldn't even get my own cat when I was 24 because I was scared of the responsibility.

You know, the more I think about this, it's a good thing not everybody is like me. I'm really kind of immature.

I rise and shine

J came up with a brilliant deduction today, thanks to the switch to daylight savings time. Since I've been waking up at 5 a.m. for weeks, months...basically so long now that I can't remember what 10 p.m. looks like, J figured out that my body never got off daylight savings time last year! It makes perfect sense! Apparently, I was in some sort of standard time denial, and my body was just being stubborn and biding its time. So, really, this leap forward hasn't been bad for me at all. Now I'll be waking up at 6 instead of 5. Score one for the Gipper!

It's their special, special time

I have a feeling that I probably won't watch that new show The Wedding Bells on Fox because, well, I'm just not that into weddings (I cringed the entire 10 minutes I could stand to watch Bridezillas on WE). But, I gotta tell you, I love in the promos for The Wedding Bells when that one bride with the cigarette says "Oh, shut up" all clenched-like. It cracks me up every time I see it.

I am so, so happy that it's Friday, it's sunny out and it's getting up to 55 today. Finally, we Ohioans can keep the down coats in the closet for a couple days. I'm also hoping that this warm spell will finally melt those piles of black, sooty ice that have been sitting in the parking lots for the past two weeks. I wonder what would come up if you put some of that junk in a petri dish and analyzed it. It's probably concentrated emphysema at this point.

Pantalones

In the car on the way to work this morning, J was humming that operatic piece that I think is from Carmen. And then he started singing "Wubby J." to the melody, which got this picture in my brain of the Wubby holding a rose in his mouth and doing the tango. That would rule.

Did your parents ever do this when you were a kid: you go to your mom to ask her permission for something and she says "Go ask your father" and then you go to your dad and when you ask him, he replies "What did your mother say?"? You know, back then I didn't understand that parenting technique, and I still don't understand it now. It's like they're trying to keep the kid honest because you know they'll find out if you lie and say it was ok with mom when she never said that. Parents are tricky. As I'm aging, I'm starting to realize that my parents probably knew it every time I lied or did something bad--they just didn't let me know that they knew. Very cagey. My suspicion as a kid that my parents actually worked for the CIA may have been correct.

Sunshine day, everybody's laughing, sunshine day

It's snowing again. What the heck? What the heck, indeed.

So it turns out our library pool didn't win the Megamillions lottery yesterday, dang it. And that's a shame because I could have come up with a lot of uses for my share of that jackpot. I always bargain with fate when we buy lottery tickets--I keep saying "If I win, I'll give half of it to charity, I promise." But fate knows when I'm feeding it a line, so I ought to just stop and admit I'd spend it all on candy and the resulting liposuction. I'm not fooling anybody.

Poindexter

The Today show had a story this morning about a group of people who are trying to go 21 days without complaining. Pffft. I'd be amazed if I could go 21 minutes without complaining, or, as I like to call it, "structuring analytical critiques."

I watched Heroes last night, and I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed by all the plots. As cool as that show can be, I'm getting far too confused with all the storylines anymore. Seriously, I think we need a good cataclysmic explosion to wipe out about half the cast so I can understand it again. Go fictional nuclear bombs! Yay team! Although, actually I may have been a little disoriented last night because I got my eyes dilated at the doctor's office. I'm going to try new contacts to see if they feel any better, but I'm still thinking about the laser eye surgery. The big hurdle now (aside from cost) is the fact that I'd have to take out my contacts for a month before the surgery. And considering my eyeglasses are super-thick, that's a pickle. It's not the appearance that bothers me--it's the fact that my prescription's so high that the glasses actually make the room spin when I turn my head. It would be like being drunk for a month...hey, this may not be so bad after all....

I gave you my Snack Pack!

I heard a statistic this morning that the average American eats three hamburgers a week. Three! Dang, that's a lotta cow. And I know that I'm probably averaging about 1.5 hamburgers a week, so mathematically that means there's somebody out there eating 4.5 hamburgers a week to make up for me. And I know there are lots of vegetarians out there, so that could mean that there are people eating hamburgers every day to make up for them. Wow. How do you not get tired of hamburgers if you eat them that often? I saw another news report that said Ruby Tuesdays is offering this colossal burger with 2,000 calories and 91 grams of fat. Can you imagine if somebody's having that every day? My arteries are clenching just thinking about it. And, believe me, I love hamburgers. I just like to think I'm not slowly committing suicide for them.

Ultimate Frying Champion

Yesterday was fun. We had a birthday party for J's nephew's wife and then we went up to visit some friends on the northwest side of town. And, let me tell you, there's quite a difference between the west side of town where we live and the northwest side. It's amazing what half a direction can make. Anyway, J was helping them with their computer, and then the guys were watching UFC on pay-per-view while the ladies played Clue. I finally mustered up the courage to watch a couple of the UFC fights, and that was something. See, I don't like boxing because I don't enjoy watching brain damage as it happens, and UFC was even more brutal. This one match was between a 6'4" 280 lb. beast and a 43-year-old, 6', 240 lb. dynamo. And the older guy actually won! By the end of the match, the beast's eye was swelling up and you could actually see it get bigger and bigger by the second. Yuck. I still can't believe people participate in this voluntarily. It seems like some sort of punishment to me.

Humunculus? Raw Dog?

Whoo, it's windy out there! Nothing like what's happening in Alabama and Georgia though. Wow, what a sad story that is. I think there were probably times where I wished a natural disaster would hit my high school, but I'm glad it never actually happened. And then I saw that a bus carrying some baseball players from Bluffton College here in Ohio crashed in Atlanta, too. This has been a rough news day for teenagers. Somebody might want to pre-emptively shut down the malls today just to be safe. Yikes.

On a happier subject, it's finally Friday and I'm still in a jocular mood from watching 30 Rock last night. Will this good mood last until tomorrow? Will I still be this jolly when I wake up at 4:45 again? We shall see, my friends. We shall see.

Yeah? Well, you're not getting it back!

A couple weeks ago, J and I got home and played the messages on our answering machine like we always do, and there was a kid on there using an Indian/Chinese/Arabic/Parisian accent who said "Hello. My name is Chong, and I want to tell you something: I need my cat back." And then he hung up. I can only assume this was a teenager playing a prank, but instead of annoying us, it's delighted us for days on end. We play it every once in a while and just crack up. And I feel guilty because it's sort of racial when you think about it, and I hate to laugh at racial jokes, but there's something about the way the kid says "I need my cat back" that's just so funny. It's sort of like the scene in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls when Ace is carrying the bat and runs into a tree branch...every single time I watch that, I totally lose it and cry from laughing so hard. And I can't explain why. My sense of humor is firmly stuck in 5th grade, apparently.