Year: 2013

What Would Lorca Do?

ME Overly simple thoughts , ,

You know those sweet little WWJD? bracelets and coffee mugs and crap that they sold back in the nineties, all with the express purpose of making you stop and ask yourself how Jesus would respond to the guy who just cut you off in traffic so you could act like our Lord and Savior about it? Yeah. Those never did work out for me, mostly because I’m pretty sure that Jesus would never follow the guy to his destination, slink down between vehicles so as not to be noticed, and then remove the pins from all the air nozzles on the guy’s tires so they couldn’t be reinflated.

I’m here today, however, reprising my Oscar-worthy role as a cautionary tale and inviting all of you to wear your WWLD bracelets. Basically, you take any situation that presents itself, ask yourself, “What Would Lorca Do?” then you do the polar opposite, preferably from the relative safety of another zip code.

Scenario #1: You’re invited to dinner with your spouse’s boss.

Normal Reaction – shower, get dressed, pick up a bottle of wine on the way to dinner to give to your hosts.

WWLD – pick up bottle of wine first, drink it while showering, forget why you took a shower since it isn’t Thursday, and go to bed.

Scenario #2: Your child comes in the house bleeding from doing something stupid in the driveway.

Normal Reaction – apply pressure with a clean cloth to stop the bleeding, checking it periodically to see if it might need professional care.

WWLD – bring the video you took with your phone with you to show at the doctor’s office, since you were standing there letting the kid do it.

Scenario #3: The car starts making a strange noise and warning lights come on.

Normal Reaction – pull over and refer to the owner’s manual, which you smartly keep in the glove compartment.

WWLD – take the foil-wrapped meatloaf that you were trying to cook on the engine block as you drove out from under the hood so your husband doesn’t find out you tried to cook a meatloaf in there again.

Scenario #4: You got busy helping your child with his homework, and burned dinner.

Normal Reaction – have a good laugh with the kids and ask them what kind of toppings they want on their pizza tonight.

WWLD – there are about eight different ways that this scenario would never happen to me, because a) my kids don’t ask for my help with homework, b) I rarely cook dinner, and c) I don’t care what kind of toppings they want on my pizza.

Scenario #5: Friends are unexpectedly dropping by after dinner, and you have no wine to offer them.

Normal Reaction – send your spouse to the store for whatever they’ve got, and pour it in a beautiful decanter so no one knows it came from the gas station.

WWLD – Bwahahahahahaha! Like I’d EVER run out of alcohol! (not that I’d share it if people came over…refer to scenario #4)

Yes, as 2014 draws near, you have the option to live this next year of your life like a normal person, or like someone trapped in the Twilight Zone episode that is life in my household. Choose wisely…one of those scenarios involves running out of booze.

I Give You a Bag of Mold and You Piss All Over It?

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

It’s a rare thing when I give you a gift, and it’s an even rarer thing when I accidentally give you a gift that is covered in poison. We’re not even going to discuss how rare it is when I give you a gift covered in poison that I had to smuggle across international borders. Backing up now…

I threw myself off a bicycle several years ago, and the end result is a neck that just refuses to cooperate anymore. That has made me the most high maintenance diva of pillowdom. I put Goldilocks to shame with my pickiness, but since they actually frown on you laying down in the bedding aisle and having a snooze with all of the pillows, I resort to buying one of each, testing them all out for a few weeks, then tossing the ones that fail to live up to my exacting neck standards.

When I finally found the Pillow of all Pillows, I (in my merlot-induced flash of epic greatness) decided that I should take the pillow with me when I went out of the country on business. HOW could I possibly be expected to sleep on the plane and to stay in a strange hotel room for a week without the downy goodness of my pillow of perfection? I washed it very carefully to make sure I wasn’t transporting any kind of contaminants in its fluffy interior, then I packed it in one of those suck bags that flattens your stuff for you, and off I went.

But then somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean I realized I had neglected to bring a suck device…if I opened this bag of the future and my pillow sprang back to life, I would have no way of getting it back home with me. Better to risk a week of pain to preserve a lifetime of great sleep in my own bed. I left my poor forgotten pillow in its suck bag in my suitcase and forged ahead like a veritable pioneer. I was the fucking Laura Ingalls Wilder of international pillow-less travel.

Then it molded. A lot. It looked like I had rolled it in peppercorns like a cheese log.

Yes, somehow the suck devices in my own home failed me, and so did the dryer, apparently. My pillow’s gooey middle somehow stayed wet, and the vacuum didn’t make it an actual vacuum in there. Go figure, I cannot recreate a science lab in my laundry room.

But somewhere towards the end of my trip, a very dear person whom I happened to invite to spend the night in my hotel room showed up. In the morning, out of sheer gratitude for the fact that she did not kill me, flay me, and wear my skin like a Halloween costume, I offered her the disgusting mold pillow on the grounds that it really was a very expensive pillow, and if she washed it in bleach and napalm, it would be good as new. She gratefully accepted (a little too gratefully, making me reconsider the skin costume fear for a second), if I would sign it.

Yes, she wanted me to autograph the space bag full of American mold. Southern mold, to be exact.

Either she’s a super fan, or she was getting me to incriminate myself by signing my name on the poisonous pillow so she could turn me over to the agriculture authorities and get me sent to a gulag somewhere. Of course I signed it…vanity wins out over self-preservation in my world every. damn. time.

But last week, she admitted something horrible to me. Not only has she never opened and napalmed my gift, she let her son pee on it while she wasn’t home, and in the cleanup process, she threw my pillow away, still in its suck bag. My very incriminating moldy pillow suck bag is at this very moment on its way to a landfill in Europe. Or to the authorities. I can’t actually predict these things.

In other news, Sarah Jakob is the best sport on the planet for keeping me company in my hotel room, smuggling my mold pillow out under her coat, and then storing the evidence of my crime in her house for the past two months. You’re a trooper, and thanks for not wearing my skin!

The Dumbest Divorce in the History of Stabbings

ME Overly simple thoughts , ,

Once again, for the record: I love my husband.

But we’ve now embarked on a journey which has taken us to a very important crossroads, one which can not only change the entire structure of our household, but that could actually have global implications.

I’m gonna kill him if he doesn’t stop telling people we never landed on the Moon.

Dude, it’s 2013. The days of old fogeys who swore up and down that the image of the Moon landing on their 1940s-era black and white television was too grainy to be believed are OVER. Even the conspiracy theorists have found bigger fish to fry, thanks to 9/11 and the Magic Bullet theory. We didn’t fake that shit in the New Mexico desert, it was real. It was so really real, in fact, that you’ve been to the Smithsonian (with me, at my insistence, I must add) and actually touched a moon rock and climbed in the little capsule thingy that made the trip.

Stop telling people you don’t believe it happened…you’re making us all look like douches.

If your goal was simply to embarrass our teenagers, I’m all for it. But just put on a tank top and some skinny jeans and drive them to the mall like a normal dad. Stop arguing with people in line at the hardware store or the bank about how you can see a boom mic in the imagery if you squint your eyes and look really close.

This would actually be divorce-worthy, but there’s no way I’m standing in front of a judge and letting your caffeine-fueled ranty testimony become part of the public record. And while I do not want you to actually be dead, I’m all for stabbing you in the legs until you agree to stop believing this crap and sharing it with others.

 

The IRS Said I’m Not Dead Yet

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

I know, I know, it’s been ages since I’ve posted anything. I’ve received several kindly emails checking on my health (actually, screw all of you…only three people thought to check on me, and one of those people was actually someone who got a new computer and somehow thought she’d unsubscribed to my blog since she hadn’t gotten any new posts lately), but I promise you, I’m healthy as a horse. Or at least healthy enough to keep working and paying taxes, according to several kindly reminders from my accountant (okay, screw him too, they weren’t kindly, they were kind of naggy).

I have an excellent excuse for not writing: I’ve been too lazy. You were warned, I did tell you that was only an excuse.

Actually, it’s kind of ironic that I put some much love, devotion, and alcohol into starting and writing this blog in the hopes of one day becoming a “real” writer, only to turn my back on it and abandon it the second I do actually become a published author. It’s like I got all celebrity on my blog, and stopped returning its phone calls. (Plus, publishers really, really hate to read a lot of new blog posts about stuff you found in your bathroom drain when they know you’re supposed to be working on the book they gave you a contract for…they send kindly little reminders, too, but theirs are even scarier than the ones from the IRS).

In the past two months since I really posted anything (and let’s face it, in the past two years since I posted anything worth reading), good things have happened, and so have monkey-ass-sucky things. Writing is good! Yea! Breaking two more molars is bad! Boo! Finding a new flavor of Chapstick is good! Yea! Wiping up the poo where my idiot dog ate it is bad! Boo!

Luckily, Thanksgiving is here, and I’ll get lots of great writing done while telling my in-laws I can’t possibly stay longer since I have a deadline to meet. This is an excuse I use every holiday, but I did tell them it was only an excuse, too.

It Doesn’t Matter What You Name Them, They’re Not Going to Answer You Anyway

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

My mom called me shortly before 5am one morning to talk to me about this blog. It’s okay, I was not only already awake and walking the dog, I was on my third Hershey bar of the day. Of course it was a good time to talk.

She had read an article about some baby daddy situation in Tennessee, and really thought I should blog about it. I was ready to politely decline since I don’t take requests and since I did go to college to do this (no I didn’t, I went to college to simultaneously get a degree in education and learn how to hollow out a gas station cigar and stuff it with weed to avoid having to roll my own joints), but the more she kept talking, the more I decided there might be something to this story.

I looked it up and sure enough, some dipshit in Tennessee wanted to name her third out-of-wedlock child “Messiah,” and the judge ruled hell no.

Let’s break down the awesome that’s involved in this story:

First, the reason the parents even appeared before the judge was because the baby daddy was mad that the mamma didn’t give the child his last name. He didn’t feel compelled to give the mamma a wedding ring, but by golly we’re gonna make sure the whole world knows whose kid this is. Trust me, statistically we’re gonna figure it out since he just condemned the baby to higher illiteracy rates, a better chance of a childhood living below the poverty level, and a future of aspiring to work for minimum wage as an adult. (NOTE: not condemning single parents here, but if you have to go to court over what your ex-girlfriend names your child, Ivy League isn’t looking too good for you.)

Second, this is mamma’s third baby. I can’t wait until they’re all adults sitting around the Christmas dinner table and one of them finally gets drunk enough to break a beer bottle and demand to know why his brother’s name is God and he got stuck with Micah. The other brother, Maison (whose name is French for “house”), will remain numbly silent since his name didn’t even get spelled right, let alone deified.

Third, she wanted the name Messiah because it “went with” his brothers’ names. No, honey, you know what would have gone nicely with his brothers’ names? The same last name.

Now, I realize I just got all political and judgmental, and I apologize. Let me get back to being alcoholically funny instead. This mother is not thinking this thing through. WHAT happens when you name your baby God? Apart from a lifetime spent changing water to wine and dying on a cross at the hands of some twisted Roman soldiers all because the drunken citizens at the feast blurted out the wrong name at the “release a prisoner day” ceremony?

That baby is never going to wipe his own ass.

He’s God. You said so. He’s going to suck your tits until he’s old enough to order his own Happy Meals. He’s going to make you change his diapers until he’s big enough to switch over to Depends. He’s never going to eat his vegetables or clean his room. Because you told him he’s God.

Luckily, he’s also going to get his ass handed to him on a daily basis by all the kids at school who are not willing to recognize his divine authority. That will take him down a peg, probably in a very confusing way, and turn him into a non-believer. Sadly, the judge picked the dumbest of all reasons for not letting mamma do this to her baby: “Labeling this child `Messiah’ places an undue burden on him that as a human being, he cannot fulfill.” If she had said, “I’m not letting you be this stupid to another human being,” she would have gotten away with it. Instead, the unconstitutionality of her ruling means we have another Messiah to deal with. I hope it turns out better for this one than the last guy, because this one doesn’t actually have the street cred to back it up.

I Hate You, But Not Enough to Really Bring It Up

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

There are two kinds of people I just don’t understand: atheists and people who don’t like sports.

Now, you probably just read that sentence and have gotten the completely wrong idea about me. I’m not a redneck or a Bible thumper. I happen to be a Christian, although I go way out of my way to make that fact NOT be your problem. I also happen to follow several sports teams (almost as religiously as I follow religion) and ALL of my teams are better than your teams…at everything. I mean, even at converting oxygen to carbon dioxide. Better at balancing their checkbooks, better at waiting in line at the DMV, and definitely better at their sports.

But here’s my confusion: I truly don’t understand people who get up in arms about me believing these things. I’m fine with other people on Earth not liking my religion or my sports, but I don’t understand why they are so violently opposed to me participating in any of the clambakes that go along with church or football.

I could be wrong on a few fundamental religious points since my ordination came off the internet and only lets me watch religious ceremonies and not actually conduct them, but aren’t ALL members of ALL religions sort of required to think their religion is better than other religions? My Jesus can beat up your Jesus, and all that stuff? And if atheists think I’m a whiny, stupid, sheep-like follower of a complete and total lie…why do they give a shit? I’m not shoving it in anyone’s face, so there’s really no need to trash talk like we’re two drunks standing in the parking lot of the Super Bowl, arguing over a bad call made by the ref six seasons ago.

In the interest of full disclosure, I do understand that both Christians and sports fans–football fans specifically–have a really bad history of not making their beliefs other people’s problems…that whole Spanish Inquisition and the crusades to the Holy Land do immediately come to mind, although I don’t really have any historical event to compare to the slaughter of millions of non-believers where football is concerned. But I keep coming across little comments and insults hurled at Christians and sports fanatics who are just sitting there, minding their own business, not telling a soul that their god and their team is better than anyone else’s.

I’m no saint. Of course I think you’re stupid and pathetic for not believing in the same things I do, but I don’t have to bring it up. My innate superiority because of my choice of football team is just a known fact. But people who hate football somehow think I’m less of a person for believing in the existence of football, and don’t get me started on what I’ve been called for believing in the existence of anything else.

We all need a better “live and let live” policy, and again, I do understand that religious fanatics taken as a whole probably need to be the first ones in line to receive etiquette lessons. You can mock my god and my beliefs all you want to, you can even call me a barbarian for my adoration of violent sports. just kindly do it over there somewhere so you don’t block my view of the replay…of touchdowns or of Jesus.

Butt Sweat Is a Very Special Kind of Sweat

ME Overly simple thoughts , ,

All around the country, horrible weather patterns are causing mayhem and general inconvenience. Except where I live. Here, the sun is still beating down on our unfortunate heads, sunburning us to the consistency of day-old bacon but without the yummy side effect of smelling awesome. In fact, we tend to have whole different smell situations cropping up on a regular basis: butt sweat.

There are different kinds of sweat. I have nothing to base that on except a Secret deodorant commercial I saw in the 80s, but no one has intentionally disproven that to me, so that’s what I’m gonna go with. The worst of the different kinds of sweat has got to be butt sweat.

Butt sweat happens when your rear end gets overheated. (What, you were expecting something profound?)

But the havoc that butt sweat causes goes beyond the damage wrought by other kinds of sweat because it makes our pants look like we’re incontinent. It chafes our little behinds because it usually occurs while sitting on a metal bleacher for sixteen hours straight. It seeps into the upholstery of our cars and sofas, forever ruining the resale value of either one. If only there was something we could do!

And then this happened…

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I swear I don’t get paid for endorsing products on this website, which is good since I don’t recall ever actually endorsing anything. Making fun of? Yes. Recommending? No. Unless you count the alcohol I keep talking about, which could be mistakenly taken as an endorsement (I’m not recommending alcohol to people, because then there would be less of it for me).

But this product is great because somewhere out there a conference room is filled with people discussing the new formula and how dry it keeps their butts. There’s an advertising department slaving away to create great commercials that won’t be banned in 36 countries. There’s a graphic arts department trying to fix the logo while the CEO screams, “No! I want his butt to be BIGGER! REDDER! More butt sweaty-looking!” and wishing they had all chosen different majors. There’s even a delivery man wearing an oversized floppy hat, dark sunglasses, and a fake mustache to avoid anyone recognizing him as he drives across the country in a truck with this giant monkey’s ass on it, even while all the other truckers at the truck stop point and laugh at him.

And all is right with the world.

Never Have Feet Tasted So Good

ME Food stuffs, Overly simple thoughts , ,

I have one of the most painful addictions on the planet: feet olives.

I understand that crystal meth isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be, but supposedly it makes you feel good for at least a little while, only to leave you writhing on the floor and scratching at your own face when it’s all over.

In the case of feet olives, I can’t even say they taste good while you’re eating them. There are lots of foods that are incredible during the meal, and then make you burp a deep-fryer for the rest of the evening, vowing that you’ll never eat that food again (until next week). But feet olives are nasty even while you’re eating them, but somehow we keep buying them and keeping gorging on them, straight out of the little tub. We make all kinds of awful faces and horrible gagging noises, only to stab our pokey little forks back down in the tub to fish out another one.

For those of you unschooled in the realm of feet olives, I do have to admit that it is not their actual taxonomical or gastronomical name. I just call them that. I’ve even got my husband calling them that, as in, “If you’re going to the store, pick up some feet olives.” We know what we mean. The really awful thing is I’m driving to the store dreading the purchase, like a crack whore who’s on her way to meet a really nasty john just so she can make enough money to score. I even go into the store looking around for help, silently screaming for someone to stage an intervention right there between the olive bar and the buffalo wings. But no one ever hears my cries.

I’m not even willing to go so far as to say, “I don’t have a problem, I can stop anytime I want to.” Nope. I can’t. And I even wish I would. They’re disgusting. They literally taste like I would have to guess that a fifteen-year-old boy’s unwashed pinkie toes taste like. The very thought of feet makes me queasy now, all because of these disgusting olives. And yet, there’s a half-eaten jar of the rancid things in my fridge even as I type this. They’re calling to me with their putrid vapors, staring back at me every time I go to pour my children a glass of milk.

Sadly, I called a rehab facility in the next major town (I don’t want anyone who might know me finding out that I needed professional help…and we don’t have a rehab center) and they were surprisingly uninterested in my problem. Crack? Yes. Meth? Yes. Even cigarettes…yes. Bleu cheese stuffed olives? No. Overeaters Anonymous was briefly willing to help until they learned that I can only down about four of them at any given time, but they told me to call them back when I build up to a full three pounds at one sitting.

C'mon, you know you want some. The first taste is free.
C’mon, you know you want some. The first taste is free.

I Got Totally Smashed Yesterday

ME Overly simple thoughts , , , ,

Sorry, you reprobate, this post isn’t going where you think it is. I ended up having a threesome with an 18-wheeler and a Chevy Tahoe yesterday. Turns out, Toyota Rav4s have superiority complexes. I did NOT win that fight.

But then, the best thing EVER to happen on the internet occurred. Someone who follows this blog and who shall remain nameless (she knows what kind of evil she is, I don’t have to spell it out) made the most profound statement on Facebook:

Facebook comeback

See what she did there? She decided that I hadn’t been beaten down enough and that I was still feeling pretty good about myself, so she had to bring up the innocent little joke I play on my husband from time to time, the one where I pretend to be the OnStar lady and I call him through his car’s Bluetooth then threaten his life.

Well played, internet. Well played.

This is my car. It didn't used to look this angry. It used to be kinda cute. Before the threeway that changed its very soul.
This is my car. It didn’t used to look this angry. It used to be kinda cute. Before the threeway that changed its very soul.

Happy Birthday, Dammit!

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

I had a birthday recently, and like most of my birthdays, it was a quiet affair once the voices in my head were all silenced with large amounts of Boone’s Farm. My husband was out of town and the tax deductions had school, so I mostly piddled around and worked. Then I decided I needed cake. There’s a really profound metaphor for my life in the fact that the grocery store only had half-cakes for sale.

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But I got into this Facebook argument with someone who wanted to bitch and whine about the fact that I bought myself a cake.

Exhibit A: there’s a metric crap-ton of receipts that prove that I buy myself cake all the time. I mean, like, she-needs-rehab proportions of how often I buy cake.

Exhibit B: it was my birthday and imma havin’ cake.

Exhibit C: it was tasty, even if half of it was already missing when I bought it.

Exhibit D: you’re not the boss of me, don’t tell me about cake!

Exhibit E: Cake! Everybody loves cake! Cakes have layers!

 

Really, this person’s problem was not with the existence of cake or the eating of cake, but with the purchasing of the cake for myself. She seemed to feel that it was someone else’s responsibility to buy me cake, although I did notice that not once during the entire exchange did she offer to do it herself. Apparently, by some definition of being a girl, I was supposed to sit by and wait for someone to buy me cake.

And wait.

And wait.

And be hungry while waiting. And go totally cakeless while I waited.

There are about ninety-three things wrong with her very anti-feminist “someone should buy you cake” concept. While I am in total agreement that there should be legions of people walking behind me holding cakes for me on any given day, I have to argue that in the absence of overthrowing a neighboring government and enslaving their citizens into my own private cake army, I have two choices: not have cake, or have cake.

Not having cake is so unacceptably jacked up an option as to almost make me throw my head back and laugh at her. Having cake is…well…completely logical and the option I went with.

This pretty much boils down to a very important concept of self-love (not that kind of self-love, we’ll talk about that next week). It’s 2013, I’m a grown-up, and I have both keys to a working automobile and a debit card linked to a bank account that actually has money in it thanks to the job I have. I can sit around being sad because it’s my birthday and no one brought over a cake, or I can act like an adult and get myself a cake.

I chose the second choice.

I’ll also have you know that I toyed with the idea of having an inflatable bounce house brought over and erected in my yard, but that was really only a fun passing thought because a) I’ve never had a bounce house for my birthday and b) because the look on my kids’ faces when I bogarted the bounce house and wouldn’t let them in would have been the best birthday present ever. I could just see them fighting to storm my bouncey castle and being horribly confused when my cake army poured boiling tar on them from the ramparts. I giggled over envisioning their pitiful cries as they begged to be allowed in my bounce house only to result in my shouting, “No! This is my bounce house! You will only get a bounce house when you have a college degree and a job to pay for the four-hour rental plus delivery fee!” (Besides being an epic parent fail, I also found out that bouncey castle rentals are $400, and I realized that was a shit load of self-bought cake, so I skipped it.)

People, we’ve got to stop whining about what’s wrong with our lives and do something for ourselves once in a while. Yes, I could have bitched at my husband when he made it home from his business trip at 11pm for not making sure cake magically appeared on my birthday, and yes, I could have moped around the house generally feeling sorry for myself and my lack of cakehood. Or I could get off my ass and buy a cake. Which choice made me happier, and which choice actually resulted in CAKE?

Now, the “Happy Birthday to Me!” icing I decorated it with was actually just a fun, superfluous add-on to make people in my home feel guilty for not having bought me a cake. I said I was a self-sufficient, confident woman…I never said I was a saint.