Author: ME

If Victoria Can Keep a Secret, So Can You

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

In our house, I’m the big dog when it comes to the kids. Daddy’s the softy, Mom’s the one who might poison you a little bit to teach you a lesson about back-talking your elders. So it’s really rare that I EVER use those fateful words, “Wait til your Daddy gets home.”

But yesterday was one of those days. And it was glorious.

My oldest child, all five feet tall of her, seriously wanted to know if she could have a certain kind of clothing that the “other kids” were wearing. I should have been suspicious right away, but I waited to see how this “other kids are wearing it” story played out. I let her keep talking as she described the clothing. Then I asked her where we would buy this clothing.

“At vieoshctonahrias shiejfcrehnnt.”

“See, I know what you did there. You mumbled, thinking I wouldn’t be able to hear you well enough to understand that you just said YOU WANTED ME TO BUY YOU CLOTHING FROM VICTORIA’S SECRET!”

She was stunned. The best part was my near-reaction which quickly evolved into nothingness.

“No, I’m not going to say anything. I’m going to let you ask Daddy and he can decide. But I get to be there when you ask him.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to watch.”

My husband did not disappoint. It took a full three minutes on the clock for his right eye to stop twitching. He eventually resorted to holding both eyelids open and staring at her as she continued to talk about how all of the other TWELVE-YEAR-OLDS got to wear Victoria’s Secret, how all of the other TWELVE-YEAR-OLDS’ parents bought their clothes for them there, etc. TWELVE-YEAR-OLDS etc.

He really never did get her to understand why he had an issue with it, so he also had to resort to one of the mainstays of parenting: “Because I said so.”

I, however, have a way with words.

“Sweetie, Victoria’s Secret is known for bras and panties.”

“So? I wasn’t asking for bras and panties, I wanted the sweat pants.”

“I know, but if you walk around in Victoria’s Secret sweatpants, people might think there are Victoria’s Secret bras and panties under your clothes.”

“So?”

“Do you want all of the TWELVE-YEAR-OLD boys at your school thinking about your bras and panties?”

“Aaaack!”

“I didn’t think so.”

For now, we’ve managed to steer her towards some more…age appropriate…clothing lines. Like Turtlenecks R Us.

Big Foot Saved Me from Killing People

ME Overly simple thoughts , , , , , ,

I have nothing to write about. It’s NaNo time, and all of my free brain cells are taken up with trying to rein myself in on the body count in this book. I have to weigh my options carefully and think to myself, “Does this person really NEED to die?” Sadly, the answer is usually, “Yes. Painfully.”

Having said that, whenever I need a break from killing not-so-innocent bystanders, I come back down to Earth with stupid television. My favorite stupid television right now is that show where the people go out into the woods in the middle of the night with night vision cameras strapped to them that look all Blair Witch Projecty and they hunt for Big Foot. There have been about four seasons of this show and they have never once found Big Foot, but yet, at the end of every episode they a) high five each other and congratulate each other on another successful reconnaissance mission and b) they show teaser clips from next week’s episode. I am horribly confused:

1. I cannot tell what differentiates a successful mission from an unsuccessful mission, other than no one fell over a log in the dark and needed stitches. It sure as hell doesn’t involve actually finding Big Foot.

2. I take serious issue with the fact that these “scientists” apparently were allowed to skip their English credits in college because they keep using the term “Big Foots” as the plural of Big Foot when it should obviously be “Big Feet.”

3. The logo on the show is very disturbing and I’m pretty sure it’s racist against Big Feet. It’s an artist’s rendering of a Big Foot screaming in rage. There has been zero evidence from any of the sightings that Big Foot has either beaten, raped, or killed anyone, but these people are furthering the stereotype that large hairy people who live in secluded sections of the wilderness must be violent. Goofy went camping all the time on the cartoons, and he was a veritable gentle giant.

4. You “researchers” (quotation marks means I think it’s doubtful you are actually researchers) are never going to find Big Foot because you’ve got the cameras turned around to record your own faces. It’s sixty minutes of you opening your eyes in surprise and hissing, “What was that?” and looking like you’re going to poop. Joke’s on you, butt munch, THAT was a mountain lion and you very well might be eaten.

Just once, God, PLEASE just once, let Big Foot come out, do a little Magic Mike strip tease dance, then beat the crap out of these people. Please. I promise to kill fewer people in my book if you can just let that happen on ONE episode. Amen.

UPDATE: I tried to find a great video of Big Foot dancing, but they were all stupid and obviously fake. One guy didn’t even try, it was just him dancing in front of a a tripod camera in a gorilla suit. I DID, however, find out that there’s a strip club devoted to Big Feet. Apparently, the fine folks at BigFootGentlemansClub.com got tired of Big Feet being exploited for money on TV and have decided to exploit them for a little bit of money on the pole.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I just clicked on the link and I’m sorry to say, I didn’t see any photos of Big Foot working the pole. They might be misleading us, just like the Big Foot researchers. And the website’s grammar is horrible…they have decided to make a compound word out of Big Foot. You were warned.

I Don’t Have a Really Good Excuse for Not Owning a Globe

ME Overly simple thoughts , , , , ,

I was watching TV the other day, and it’s a toss up as to whether it was Dancing with the Stars or Hoarders. I despise both of those shows, but they aren’t so bad that I will actually use calories to get up and get the remote if they come on. My husband was working on something silently at the kitchen counter.

HIM: Where do we keep our globe?

ME: Did you try the garage?

HIM: Why would it be in the garage?

ME: That’s where we keep really, really big stuff.

HIM: Globes aren’t big.

ME: Of course they are. They are the whole planet.

HIM: It’s not in there.

ME: Where else have you looked?

HIM: Nowhere. I just wanted you to tell me where it is so I don’t have to look for it.

ME: I know. And THAT is why I suggested you look in the garage. We don’t actually have a globe.

HIM: Are you sure?

ME: Let me think about it.

HIM: You’re being mean again, aren’t you?

ME: Yup.

HIM: Do we seriously not own a globe? That just blows my mind.

ME: THAT is what’s going to keep you awake tonight? Our lack of globe ownership?

HIM: We just seem like globe people.

ME: Well, sorry. We’re four-foot-by-six-foot-wall-map people. It’s been hanging in the hallway for eight years.

HIM: I can’t use a map. It doesn’t tell you how far apart the countries are.

ME: When did that happen?

HIM: What?

ME: When did the cartographers of the world get together and decide that maps should be completely pointless? OF COURSE they tell you how far apart the countries are! Use the little scale at the bottom.

HIM: That little line? It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just decorative.

ME: So, are the words, “One inch equals one hundred miles,” also decorative?

HIM: That’s real? An inch really is one hundred miles on this map?

ME: Remember how I’m so bad at math that I’m not even allowed to write in the checkbook? How is it that I knew this, and you didn’t?

HIM: Why would you expect me to know that stuff? I’ve never used a map.

ME: So, Magellan, how was the life growing up carrying a globe around on the front seat of the car?

It’s great when I finally get to pretend to be the smart one, so I kept that conversation going a lot longer than I should have, and way past the point of being funny.

UPDATE: I remember what I was watching on TV now. It was Storage Wars, which I only know because I kid you not, one of the auctioned storage units had a globe! It was like falling through a time portal, or something.

 

How to Avoid the Election

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

Don’t get pissy, I’m planning to vote. But I hate the elections. I hate hearing about it, talking about, being interrupted during my cartoons about it, thinking about it, reading about it, and pretty much anything else election-related. So here is a list of things I will be thinking about all day today (except for the three minutes it’s going to take me to vote):

1) There was apparently a Big Foot sighting over the weekend. Oddly, it turned out to be a bear in Big Foot drag. Who are we to judge this bear’s sexual role play fantasies? And yet, someone video taped the whole thing.

2) There is a coffee that costs about $50 a pound, and it’s made from beans that are pooped out by a monkey. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.

3) It just so happened that a dingo has now eaten an American baby, so they’re branching out somehow. I’m declaring this the Dingo Apocalypse.

4) A teenager in Washington state has been getting death threats because he punched an octopus.

5) There can be as many as 50,000 spiders in a single acre of grass, but that’s okay because tarantulas can survive for two years without eating.

6) In Alaska it is illegal to whisper in someone’s ear while they’re moose hunting.

7) We share 98.4% of our DNA with a chimp, but don’t get excited because we also share 70% of our DNA with a slug.

8) It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear. Mind blowing, I tell ya.

9) Ancient Egyptians used crocodile poo as a form of birth control. I will not share with you how they used it, or why I had to look that up.

10) Dr. Seuss invented the word “nerd,” but he was probably the least nerdy person ever born since his first career was writing military propaganda.

There you have it, ten things to ponder all day long. I hope it carries you all the way through the live minute-by-minute coverage of every vote cast.

I Never Got to Be a Slutty Nurse for Halloween

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

When I was a brand-new just-emerged-from-the-womb human, something horrible happened: my father went crazy. My father grew up in an all boys’ boarding school, then joined the military, then got married and fathered two sons. I threw a glorious wrench in his all-male upbringing and quite frankly, he wasn’t really sure what to do with me other than threaten anyone who came within five hundred yards.

I had a pretty sheltered childhood, obviously. There were no miniskirts, the no makeup ’til sixteen rule, and no 80s big hair, I’m sad to say. But I never really felt the pinch except at Halloween time.

From the beginning, I just kind of dressed like my brothers. I was a baby, what did I know? Eventually it became obvious to people in the community that I was actually a girl, so I got to masquerade as cute things like Holly Hobbie or Laura Ingalls or an Amish person. Eventually, though, I got tall enough to fight the Amish costumes, so my dad tried desperately to steer me towards anything that would create a full-body coverup costume.

He would work for weeks in his garage making me a robot costume that had working lights and beepy noises. One year I was a dragon, complete with hood and face mask, only the face mask breathed fire when my dad would hit the button on my wrist and flick a Zippo in front of the mouth part. No Mythbusters-style tactic was too over the top if it meant I would not be dressed as a slutty nurse that year.

The problem is, they don’t make costumes for slutty Holly Hobby or slutty Laura Ingalls or slutty Amish, although I bet I could make some money off an Amish dress with tear away Velcro tabs. I could market any of those outfits to strip clubs that are situated awfully close to farming communities.

Eventually I outgrew Halloween, and my dad breathed a sigh of relief. And as an adult I often dress up for trick-or-treating, but it’s usually a themed costume to match the kids; the sexiest costume I ever got to wear was when my daughter went as Hermione Granger and her sister went as the person Hermione turned into a frog…I got to be the crazy lady, Bellatrix. Nothing says sexy like teasing your hair and blacking out some of your teeth.

I haven’t really given any thought to a costume for this year, but for “slutty” to be the adjective in front of it I’m going to need to lose a few pounds, which is perfect: this year, slutty exercise fanatic, next year, the world.

Raising A Partner in Crime

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

The absolute best thing has happened to our family: my oldest child is finally old enough to help me defeat my husband. She spent her childhood learning at the feet of the master, and is finally ready to take her place at my side. Together we are a formidable team, united against the forces of evil. Or, for now, united against the forces of televised sports.

My husband, saint that he is six days of the week, becomes a total jerk when sports are on. Spare me your competing tales of your own husbands who yell when their favorite team loses. My husband doesn’t care who’s playing. He can randomly flip channels, find any two teams locked in combat on any kind of sport-related stage, and begin screaming over dropped passes or bad calls. We seriously endured two hours of a field hockey match between the University of California-Santa Monica Banana Slugs and the Delta State University Fighting Okra (I swear I”m not making this up), in which his blood pressure rose high enough to cause him to actually pass out briefly during one quarter of the game. It didn’t matter at all that my husband doesn’t know the rules of field hockey, he was still indignant to the point of rage over what he perceived was an intentional tripping and several high-stick calls that went unnoticed by the referee.

Let the revenge commence.

My oldest and I established court on the living room sofas with elaborate snack stuffs spread before us, wearing matching navy blue striped T-shirts. The TV was on for only a few minutes before we began screaming.

“Stir! Stir! What do you think you’re doing???”

“No way! He did not just take that other guy’s baster!”

“You call those even slices?!? Stop waving at the camera and watch what you’re doing!”

“Seriously? DRIED oregano? Is walking your butt outside and snipping some fresh oregano TOO MUCH TO ASK???”

“NOOOOOOOO! He didn’t hear the oven timer! Delay of flan penalty!”

Fortunately, I’ve raised my daughter well and she was able to keep this up with me for the entire two hours of Cupcake Wars. My husband walked through the living room far more often than necessary and I’m sure it was so he could shoot ugly looks at us. He did promise us that he wouldn’t watch any more sports for the rest of the weekend if we would stop watching FoodNetwork, so we were happy to oblige. We switched over to the infomercial channel and commentated on several hours’ worth of “act now and we’ll double your order” sales pitches.

It’s My Parents’ Fault

ME Overly simple thoughts , , , ,

Blaming Mom and Dad for my…quirkiness…is way too easy. Psychiatrists could pull in the shingle and close up shop on most of their cases if they would just look at their patients and tell them the truth: your parents are weird, they raised you weird, now deal with it.

I’m the product of what happens when a Southern girl who did actually spend a couple of years on the cotton farm meets up with a man whose own parents originally hailed from not one, but two European countries before settling in a major city up north. I’ve got generations of Old Country chromosomes swimming around in my nuclei, paired up with chromosomes that came from ancestors who might have mated with their relatives from the backwoods.

That also means I have a dad who talks like Tony Soprano and a mom who talks like Miss Scarlet. That’s why no one takes me seriously in a fight, because I keep threatening to “cut yo’ f***ing ass,” but I just can’t be mean to someone without finishing with “bless your little heart, bye now!”

Then there’s the name. We’ll skip the junior high years when my classmates discovered that Lorca rhymes with orca, no, the abuse started long before that. It was back when my second grade nun needed her ruler to help me remember that the third letter of my name wasn’t a W. After all, every time I got in trouble, I heard, “Law-kuh! Getcha tail in heyah!”

The formative years were tough growing up in a mixed marriage (meaning one parent eats squirrel and the other does not). I can’t discuss my parents’ arguments over football and the Civil War, mostly because the judge ordered us not to talk about it. Most major holidays were ruined, usually by the fighting between my parents over the appearance of a leg of deer with the hoof still attached on the Southern grandmother’s table and a slab of pickled tripe on the Yankee grandmother’s table.

You would think this would make a lasting impression on me and I would choose my husband carefully based on our compatible upbringings, but no, I threw caution to the wind and married the cute boy. This time around, though, we’re careful about how we behave in front of the kids. They eat the deer hubby’s father hunted that morning while I read a book on the back porch, and the girls and I shoot the hand guns—held sideways, of course, cuz that’s how you demonstrate your bad-assedness before going for the kill shot—while he’s out of town. Hopefully, there will be peace in the family and no one will need therapy when she’s older.

The Lazy Post

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

It’s been a heck of a week already, and it’s only Tuesday. And Tuesday is gonna act like a complete and total Monday. The 8:00am kind. So here is something funny to ponder while I get my ducks back in their damn line.

I bet if I had one of those bad boys, I’d be comfy all the time. And nobody would bother me. Do you seriously see yourself walking up to a woman wearing a sleeping bag in Walmart and telling her that she has too many items for the express checkout lane? I don’t think so. And nobody would jump in front of me and get in my face to ask me who I was voting for if I was wearing a sleeping bag with pants, because he would be kind of afraid that I would answer with his candidate’s name.

The only problem I have with this outfit is the lack of arms. If someone went to the trouble to put legs in it so you wouldn’t look like a douche HOPPING in a sleeping bag, why didn’t he also put arms in it? How am I going to lift a wine glass? More importantly, how am I going to defend myself from the hordes of people who realize I’m now defenseless because my arms are pinned inside the sleeping bag I’m wearing in the mall food court? Because you are kind of asking for a beat down just for wearing a sleeping bag, but then the inventor had to go and put a “I can’t hit you back” sign right in the middle of the whole thing. Way to think it through, asswipe.

Sometimes You Just Need a Ride

ME Overly simple thoughts , , , ,

This post isn’t funny. At all. Well, okay, it’s a tiny bit funny because I keep mentioning tampons, but I swear that tampons are the only funny part of this story. You can smile when I get to the tampon parts.
Here’s the thing: I know this really awesome lady, and no, her gorgeous red hair is not what makes her awesome. In fact, it has the opposite effect, because it makes me want to push her down because I’m jealous. Not the point.

Anyway, life pooped on this awesome red-haired lady. She got SUPER sick over the summer, and even though everybody keeps assuming it was from a tampon (now is the time to giggle), it wasn’t from bad personal hygiene (yeah right, like anybody with hair that gorgeous doesn’t spend HOURS on personal hygiene!). So she gets really sick from a non-tampon-related illness and ends up in a coma for a whole month of the summer, meaning she and the gorgeous hair didn’t lounge by the pool AT ALL. When she wakes up from the coma, she finds out that it was a good thing that she woke up when she did because they were practically holding the saw over her arms and legs, thinking that maybe if her body had less meat to deal with, she would recover faster. I personally think they should have started with her hair, but that might be the jealousy talking again.

So life has basically sucked for the redhead since this summer. She did end up losing a few body parts, but the hair more than makes up for it, and they were minor body parts. Well, okay, you kind of do need your thumb, but I think she got to keep most of it in the end.

Here’s where I come in. Besides laughing at her expense about her love of tampons and thumbs and secretly hating her for owning that hair, I found out the other day that she had a super-important doctor’s appointment, and no one to take her. Because she can’t drive. And the reason she can’t drive is her awesome hair gets in the way. I made that up. Okay, it was her tampon. I made that part up, too. You may giggle again.

Anyway, I found out she had no ride, so I Googled “limo service” in her home town, found one that didn’t look sleazy, and gave them a call. They took her info, nabbed my credit card number, and took her to her doctor’s appointment in STYLE. And I know for a fact she rocked that damn red hair of hers the whole way there.

PLEASE do not even for a second think of telling me how sweet that was or how nice I am for doing her a favor. First of all, I’m not nice, I want to shove her down because of her hair, remember? Second, I want you to do something WAAAAAAY better.

I want you to do that for someone else.

Do you know how much effort I spent on helping somebody whom life has pooped on lately? None, because I didn’t even need to get out of my chair to arrange it and it took five minutes of my life. Do you know how much that limo cost me when you compare it to her medical bills? Nothing. Do you know what I sacrificed to be able to afford that ride to get her to her appointment?

A new Keurig.

Yup. I was going to buy another coffee maker, this one to go in my office so I wouldn’t have to walk down the stairs to get more coffee while I write. Then I realized that the gorgeous red-haired lady would be thrilled shitless just to be able to walk down those stairs. And I felt really small inside for wanting another coffee maker.

I love all of the people who stop by my blog and tell me how great I am and how funny I am, but just this one time don’t tell me I did something great. Because I didn’t. I did something human. I did exactly what I should have done. Instead of saying something nice to me, please go pass it on to someone around you.

UPDATE: Check out the suh-weet ride provided by Valley Limo in Pennsylvania. It turns out that when I booked the trip and they charged my card, they charged me for the Town Car rate but sent the stretch bad boy, because “that lady needed something special.” Like her hair isn’t freakin’ special enough! But they really didn’t have to do that, and they did and they are rock stars for it, so if you ever need a limo in Pennsylvania or the tri-state area, please go with those guys.

I’m not sure that car is stylish enough for this lady’s hair. It’s not to be believed, people!

I’m Getting A Trapper Keeper Full of Men

ME Overly simple thoughts , , , , , , ,

I kept the TV off last night in case I would accidentally see a smidgeon of the debates, but I finally had to turn off my computer and go to bed because even Twitter and Facebook were bombarded with people making HILARIOUS comments on the debates, and I just can’t stand it when anyone is funnier than me on a public forum. But then the phrase “binder full of women” made its way out into the world and there was simply no turning back. I hope Romney will be known for all time as the Binder Man, just as George Bush the First has been immortalized with his Thousand Points of Light.

I’m not at all worried that Romney organizes his women in a giant binder. It’s probably just a Mormon thing, because you know how they are about genealogy. Plus, in this climate of obvious gender equality, it means I’m getting a Trapper Keeper full of men. No, Trapper Keeper is not a new euphemism for vagina.

In other news, you, my lovely international audience of poll voters, have spoken. The results are in. You believe strychnine is the worst flavor out there.

I was a little alarmed by the results of my last post’s polls. There were only five questions, people, couldn’t you take it seriously? Really? Strychnine is the flavor you want LEAST? Have you not suffered through pumpkin-flavored COFFEE?

I was actually pretty pleased to find out that most of you are treating your daily illnesses with voodoo. I’m all for faith-based initiatives, after all, and that’s just like a religious health clinic. We don’t need health insurance for all in this country, we just need more voodoo priestesses to wave dead chicken heads over our tumors.

We’re not going to talk about the fact that the debates prevent pregnancy, but in fairness to you, I can’t look at Obama, Romney, Biden, or Ryan and THEN think, “Yeah, I think I’ll go in there and put on somethin’ sexy!”

It was very interesting that MOST of you feel that your candidate is not going to win the White House next month. That’s good, especially since prior to last night’s debate Obama and Romney were considered nearly neck-and-neck. It just means that Washington has finally won, and Americans no longer have any hope.