Overly simple thoughts

And That, My Child, Is How We Use the WHOLE Deer

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,

Guess what happens when they can smell you from a mile away?

I live in Alabama and I am married to a man. In most cases, that simple little one-plus-one would equal three and a half months of the year ruined by the ruthless stalking of fluffy prey like a caveman on uppers. Yes, I am a deer hunting widow from October 15th through January 31st (it’s physically painful that I know these dates); this is in addition to being an SEC football widow from mid-August through the SEC Championship game in early December, followed by a National Championship game in January if God loves us enough.

I actually don’t mind the deer hunting whenever it actually results in a deer that we can eat. Aside from the several deer that my husband has missed and an equally significant number that he has shot and never could find (because it’s easy to get really, REALLY far away with an arrow sticking out of your side), I would be a whole lot more supportive of this habit if actual meat was the prize at the bottom of the box.

The time spent away from the family perched in a rickety aluminum tree stand for countless hours every weekend during the season isn’t what really hurts me, though. It’s the pee. Yes, I said it, there is a pee problem. Not mine, or my husband’s (well, technically it’s his problem).

In order to hunt deer you have to have a lot of pee, presumably the kind of pee that will attract other deer. Usually doe pee is involved, although if you’re lucky you can get your hands on doe-in-rut pee, the kind that will drive those bucks wild with lust and wanting. Where do you get such liquid gold?

At the pee store. Duh.

Yes, my husband BUYS pee. He PAYS for urine. With actual MONEY. Somewhere along the way I forgot to inform him that if there is anything in my life that I feel we have way too much of, it’s pee. My own pee notwithstanding, there are two children and a dog that have been happily bringing pee into my life for years, and I’ve only just in the last several years gotten all three of them to the point that they can take care of their pee on their own. Little bottles with labels like Doe-Eyed Gold and Buck Bomb have graced the shelves of our attic with the hunting equipment for far longer than I can think about without throwing up a little bit in my mouth.

I finally managed to cure my husband of his obsession with purchasing store-bought pee: like a good wife, I supported his hobbies and interests by usually getting him some hunting-related device for his birthday. This year, I bought him a little camouflaged canister about the size of a soda can that hangs from a tree and dispenses…pee. On a timer, even. You simply hang it in the woods near your tree stand, set it to go, and while you sit safely above ground (and away from all pee) this little contraption sprays doe pee all over the ground to draw the bucks to you. It’s like taking pee from a baby.

Only I bought the wrong one and this one wasn’t on a timer. It was motion activated. He walked near it and the mechanical Pee Fairy doused him from the top of his international orange hat to his Cabela’s all-weather snake guard boots. Happy birthday, dear.

We’ve Reached the Halfway Point! (In other words, you’re almost done.)

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,
I could make my yard look like this if I wasn't an idiot.

It’s October 16th. I’m halfway through the month and have written more blog posts in the last fifteen days than I usually do in three months. I can’t honestly say I’m BORED with the process, but I’m certainly ready for something shiny to come along and grab my attention. Like a Mercedes. Those are scrumptiously shiny, although I wouldn’t know since people who actually own those kinds of cars don’t like me to stand too close to them for fear that I’ll scratch them or drop the already sticker-shocked value.

I have a long history of reducing the property values anywhere I live, mostly because of my nasty habit of just not giving a damn. The grass gets mowed when I can no longer see the dog in it (and I’ve owned a German shepherd). I also purposely constructed these little rock walls around my property so I can just drop a live fern, plastic pot and all, inside the devious little rock wall and no one knows that I can’t landscape to save my own life (well, fern) because I can throw it away—pot and all—when I let it die from neglect.

So it’s a little bit amazing that this blog hasn’t died from neglect yet like the sad little yard ferns. Even more jaw-droppingly awesome, about forty people every day have nothing better to do than read this blog. I’m going to have to fully endorse smoking crystal meth to you people. I am seriously a little bit sad, albeit “give up my firstborn child” grateful, that you keep stopping by here.

In the meantime (meaning, “As this blog gets dumber and dumber as the month of October wears on,”) please keep in mind that this whole month of rambling stupidity is all in preparation for a very serious month of writing THE GREATEST NOVEL EVER WRITTEN BY A HUMAN BEING. That’s because L. Ron Hubbard’s books don’t count since he’s not a person, he’s a reincarnated alien or something. Thanks for watching!

UPDATED: Luscious, Flowing Eyelashes

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Every once in a while I want to kill someone. It’s not usually because my victim actually did something to me or wronged me in any “Cask of Amontillado” kind of way, but just because I live in a world where this warning label is necessary.

Really. This is an actual photo of the warning label on MY flat-iron. I really wish it was some doctored photo off a goofy website.

Yes, folks, this warning label is on the cord to our flat-iron. An In-Styler brand flat-iron, to be precise, and no, I don’t have to tell you why I own one. For those not in the know (or those of you who are hairless…God still loves you), an In-Styler is a device with a 400-degree metal barrel that spins against a flat-piece of metal, also at 400-degrees. The point is to smooth your hair. Or in the case of this warning label, your eyelashes. Now I want to drive my car straight through a crowded McDonald’s.

These girls are all victims of eyelash ironing burns. Why didn't someone warn them?!? How long must this go on?

UPDATED: I can’t lie to you. The girls in this photo did not burn their eyes with their flat-irons. In fact, I REALLY wish they had. This is a photo from a fetish site…there are seriously weirdos out there who get turned on by woman who are bandaged! In their defense, they don’t want their women to ACTUALLY be injured, they just want them to be bandaged like they’re injured. I SOOOOO wish I was making that up. It’s called Injured Idol. Google, I swear, then you will owe me a Coke ’cause I’m right and you don’t believe me. NOW can I kill somebody please?

The Idiot Box, Recycled

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While all of America has had the best time laughing at Netflix over the “We’re-a-disc-service-now-we’re-a-streaming-service-no-wait!-now-we’re-either-one-SURPRISE!-it-was-all-a-dream-we’re-kidding,” debacle, the movie service has had one unwavering devotee…my child.

Once the magic of having programming instantly appear on your TV screen happened (you know, like TV has done for years now), she literally spent about two weeks simply scrolling through the viewing options on the Netflix streaming pages. Sadly, there are a lot of shows on Netflix that no one wants to watch.

Unless you’re the only eleven-year-old girl in the Northern Hemisphere who isn’t allowed to watch Twilight yet. Then there are TONS of shows on Netflix that you can enjoy.

I suffered in silence while my daughter watched every episode of Monk ever made, including the school holidays where she would stage a MONKathon, complete with snacks and a chalk outline of a body on the living room carpet. I even tolerated old episodes of The Golden Girls with very little right-eye-twitching, mostly because Betty White is enjoying a pop-culture comeback and her Twitter user name is @BettyFckinWhite. What’s not to love?

But then my daughter discovered The Cosby Show. You know, that completely believable television show about a family living in New York where the mom is a lawyer and the dad is a doctor and they have five kids but miraculously not a single one of them ever snuck out with the car and got pulled over for DUI with three ounces of weed and an unregistered gun under the seat. The worst thing about that show was not the completely fake family with the laugh track and adorable jumping-the-shark add-on characters (uh, hello? Raven-Symone, anyone?). The worst part of the show was Bill Cosby’s sweaters.

We tried really hard to help her over this obsession by trying to convince her that the actress who played Rudy is actually a Greyhound bus driver now, or that Theo’s character became a cross dresser in episode 165. We started to tell her that the actress who played Denise ended up in drug rehab, but that actually happened so that joke is off limits.

Towards the end of this non-stop Huxtable spree, a new character came along. Some convoluted storyline involving a streetwise smart-mouthed cousin appeared in order to breathe new life into the show. Or as my daughter put it, to “reach a different demographic than the show had already been working with.” Weird, I don’t remember sending her to private school.

At last, tonight we reached the final episode. The family gathered in the living room (Cosby’s family, not mine…I couldn’t pay my husband to watch it and I was only there to make sure we saw it through to its end of days) and reminisced before Theo graduated from college. The trip down memory lane took two episodes. I tried to convince my daughter that the whole series ended with a tragic house fire with all the cast members present (except Denise, who was still in drug rehab), but she didn’t believe me.

Now that the series has ended—AGAIN, I hesitate to point out—she has found a new show to love. Storage Wars. Yes, a reality show about people who root through the discarded contents of other people’s abandoned mini-storage units. Where’s a sparkly vampire movie when you need one?

Guest post: National “Novel Idea” Writing Month

ME Overly simple thoughts

Guest post: National “Novel Idea” Writing Month.

I get to be really lazy today, because technically I did write this post. I wrote it and emailed it to someone named MB Mulhall, who posted it on her blog. Then she tweeted a link to her blog, where I found it on Twitter, clicked on it, and voila`! There were my words on the screen. Somewhere, a budding young astrophysicist is writing his doctoral thesis on how this whole circle just happened.

The upshot is, this is technically MY blog post, so I don’t have to write a different one to put on MY blog. I’m just stealing MINE back. However, I will warn you in advance: it’s not funny and I wasn’t allowed to use any swear words at all. Not even “crap.” Huh. Enjoy!

Feliz Navidad, Y’all

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Look! It's a United Colors of Beneton ad! For choir robes!

It’s been Christmas at our house since May. And no, we’re not those losers who keep their Christmas lights up until April; well, not ever since my husband threatened to ban any and all holiday decorating if I didn’t get the decorations put away in a timely manner. It is kind of my fault that the jack ‘o lantern sat on the porch until it rotted into a scrape-upable puddle sometime in mid-November, but that was years ago and I’ve changed my ways.

No, my daughter has a thing for Christmas carols, so the house, the car, her bedroom, all of it, are currently well-stocked with Christmas CDs in every musical device. Whenever her sister practices piano, our youngest tax-break will undoubtedly come into the room and demand a rousing rendition of “Jingle Bells.” It doesn’t matter that she’s wearing her swimsuit and is on the way to the pool.

Oddly enough, I did notice one thing about the ongoing HolidayPalooza today: a child who can barely speak full sentences in English due to profound autism can sing an amazingly accurate version of “Feliz Navidad.” And of “The Little Drummer Boy” a ‘la Faith Hill, complete with guttural country singer twang on each and every vowel. And the Latin parts of “Ave Maria.”

Years ago, while we were smack in the middle of the uber-lengthy process of having our daughter diagnosed with anything that we could possibly make sense of, my husband had an epiphany:

HIM: You know how our kid is pretty good-sized?

ME: Is that a fat joke?

HIM: No, it’s an age joke.

ME: Is there something funny I don’t know about?

HIM: Anyway, I was just wondering something. Don’t get mad.

ME: You know I’m going to get mad if you have to tell me not to before you even speak.

HIM: Really, I’m just curious about this. (dramatic pause) Is it even a little bit possible that she can’t talk because she doesn’t know English?

ME: (blank stare)

HIM: What if she actually speaks Portuguese, and we just don’t know how to speak her people’s language? (AUTHOR’S NOTE: I was really impressed that he could spell Portuguese, considering there’s an extra U in it, but then I remembered that he was talking out loud and he probably can’t actually spell it.)

ME: (more blank staring) (followed by a deep cleansing breath) Honey, remember when I gave birth to her and you couldn’t look because it was really gross?

HIM: (shudders) Uh-huh. (gagging noise at the memory)

ME: We weren’t in Portugal. We were in Alabama when that happened.

HIM: So?

ME: So that means she would talk like anybody else in Alabama. We’re not Portuguese, ergo, we don’t speak Portuguese.

HIM: (blank stare)

ME: Kids speak whatever language the people around them speak. (slowing the words down because he still looks confused) There’s no way she speaks Portuguese.

HIM: Well, if you’re not even willing to think outside the box, don’t blame me…

The real problem is, whenever Tax Break the Second straps into her car seat and belts out the words to “Dona Nobis Pacem,” my smug-toned argument doesn’t hold water anymore. Okay, Einstein, let’s see you speak Latin with her…

How Come I’m Not The Incredible Hulk?

ME Living life, Overly simple thoughts

A few weeks ago I finally caved in to the peer pressure from my screaming cervical vertebrae and went to the doctor. It didn’t go well. After the nurse caught me live-tweeting pictures of the blood spatter on the exam room garbage can, the doctor poked and prodded and announced that I have neck arthritis. I guess if you have to have arthritis anywhere, your neck is as good a place as any because even if you have to hold it really still you can kind of function.

The doctor wanted to let the nurse (the same one who frowned when I asked her to pose by the exam glove dispenser for my Tweet) give me cortisone shots in my neck but I had to respectfully decline. These people can’t seem to change a garbage can liner without spraying human blood everywhere. You’re not injecting my spinal cord.

So he sent me home with a steroid pack and I have to say I am really disappointed. I can’t open a jar any better than I could before I took those pills. My neck still hurts and I still can’t lift my car. I was gipped.

This is not a human. It's a balloon animal. Seriously, he can't clap his hands in front of him.

If I’m going to have to suffer the side effects, or rather, make my husband suffer from my having side effects, I should at least get to have radioactive spidey-powers. At the very least I’d like to see through walls so I can find my kids’ shoes in the morning. It would be nice to be able to have super-sniffing so I can find the source of that strange smell without having to move the refrigerator. After all, I’m not strong enough to do that by myself.

I am, however, using the excuse of being afflicted with ‘Roid Rage as an excuse for being bitchy at people. Whenever I snark at someone or jump in front of them in line at the grocery store, I just let them know that I’m on steroids and I could have roundhouse-kicked them instead. Just don’t let them know that I’m not even strong enough to work the can opener.

Don’t Fear the Blog, Fear the Blogger

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I know of a few random members of society who cashed in on their dubious relationships with famous people to make a buck or grab their fifteen seconds of fame. Kato Kalin wrote a picture book about his life mooching off the Simpson family, Paris Hilton has written a book (and a sequel, a sure sign of the Apocalypse) about inheriting an ass-load of money from her parents, and of course the most famous of them all, the daughter of the No Wire Hangers psycho made all the money her mom didn’t leave her in the will with her tell-all about the famous actress-slash-drunken child abuser.

But lately, more and more people in my life have been cautioning me not to write about them on my blog. That must mean that A) they must think I’m really influential and my hordes of minions hang on my every word, and B) that the people in my life think that they are, in fact, more interesting than they actually are.

It's so pretty...now try passing it in your urine.

Case in point, a month or so ago my mom and I had nearly hourly conversations in which she updated me on the status of my dad’s kidney stone. Apparently when you lodge a sharp pointy object in the nether regions of a vital organ, it hurts. There’s screaming involved, and from what I could gather through all of the barely-muffled profanity in the background of every phone call, the only way to get through a kidney stone saga is to invite angry drunk people over and let them just shout strings of obscenities all day. That had to be what was happening because there’s no way any parent of mine would ever use THOSE words. That dream was dashed when my father’s voice rang clearly through the phone: “I’d better not read about this on your f***ing blog!”

Scenario number two: my daughter, wonderful perfection that she is, should be used to me documenting every crucial aspect of her life by now. I’ve been doing it since she was born, following her every gurgle and burp with my camera in hand. So when we decided she could shave her legs for the first time this summer and she heard the beep and whir of my digital camera behind her in the bathroom, she didn’t even turn around. She simply stated, “Mom, please don’t post these pictures anywhere. Can this one thing PLEASE stay between us?”

I don’t see why people around me are adverse to having their every mundane activity posted on my blog. It made me laugh, so why wouldn’t the lives of others be enriched by their comings-and-goings? Granted, kidney stones and adolescent leg hair may not be as interesting to the sufferers, but I’m thrilled to near-speechlessness that it was them and not me who endured these tribulations. And now, so are five billion internet users.

I Don’t Go All The Way

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A scene from the best running movie EVER...Run Fat Boy Run

Several years ago I got a little fed up with being pretty fat. It was one of those lightning-through-the-sky epiphany moments where I literally got up out of the recliner and walked a mile. Unfortunately, it was midnight and very cold outside and several neighbors apparently called the authorities, but the upside was it became an exercise habit. The exercise led to losing a few pounds, which led to eating better, which led to losing more weight, which led to actually starting to compete in sports.

Before I knew what had happened, I found myself crossing the finish line of my first marathon. And then my first triathlon. And then winning my first marathon. And then qualifying for Boston. And then finishing an Ironman 70.3 and even competing in the USAT National Championships.

Somewhere along the way, probably tucked in between two back-to-back twenty mile training runs or following a one hundred mile bike ride, I had another lightning-through-the-sky epiphany: this is really stupid.

So this year when I started taking my writing more seriously (which is grown-up talk for I started doing it every day for hours at a time after getting home from my real job) and I no longer had time for my DAILY fifteen miles of running, all of that exercise fell by the wayside. I needed something to motivate myself to lace up the ol’ joggers. I signed up for a half marathon with a few friends.

I remember being vaguely aware throughout the race that I didn’t have that far to run, and at one point I looked up and saw a big sign with the 9-Mile marker on it and I was actually very, very sad. I’d thought I was coming up on Mile 7 and I realized I’d daydreamed through two whole miles and missed them. I was only going to get to run four more miles instead of six and I was a little bit crushed.

And the greatest thing happened: at thirteen miles, I got to quit running! I finished the half marathon at what is usually the HALF WAY point of my races! I didn’t have to do it all over again! What kind of sadistic moron kept THAT a secret all these years??? No one ever told me I could run thirteen miles and then go sit down! I had never been so happy to finish a race.

So I’m pretty sure that for right now my days of long distance running are over. I don’t have the time to train like I should and quite frankly, I just don’t give a shit. When I no longer have to use those wasted hours between midnight and four to accomplish stuff, maybe I’ll take it up again. For now, I’m just not the kind of girl who goes all the way.

“And the Oscar Is Revoked From…”

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Some of the worst cinematic experiences, aside from sitting in front of a row of teenagers who talk about Gossip Girl episodes during the entire movie, are when books are made into epic fail movies. I’m going to burn in hell for this statement, but I dare you to defy me:

I can’t stand the movie To Kill A Mockingbird.

There, I said it. But deep down in the part of your soul that you don’t talk about, you know I’m right. Gregory Peck—you know, the guy who won the freakin’ Oscar for his portrayal of Atticus Finch—acted like someone so old he was practically one tapioca pudding cup away from going in the home. The kids’ Hollwood-ized Southern accents were so thick the viewers needed subtitles. We’re not even going to talk about how overacted the courtroom scene was.

Even worse, crucial scenes in the book were left out. I know, I know. If they had included every great scene in the book, the movie would have lasted longer than it took the Titanic to actually sink (although in THAT movie, it didn’t sink fast enough to save us from more scenes with Jack and Rose).

The real problem for me, though, was that they just didn’t put enough effort into it. It was the sixties. It was all nostalgia-like in black and white to make it super dramatic and to make everybody look really, really poor. It was about racial tension in the South. OF COURSE IT WAS GOING TO WIN THE OSCAR! It was going to win the Oscar BEFORE THEY EVER MADE IT! It could have starred Soupy Sales in the role of Boo Radley and it was going to win! Ergo, it’s like they knew they didn’t even have to try.

So it’s high-time someone made a new version. We had to put up with a new Superman, why can’t we have a new Mockingbird? And I will stab someone in the eye socket if Spielberg or James Cameron or that fat guy who made Bowling for Columbine and protests everything gets to produce it. I think Penny Marshall would do an awesome job. One of those adorable Fanning sisters should be Scout (surely their parents have had another kid by now to capitalize on their brand marketing…see if the new one is busy).

I am Prozac-level gripped-in-fear that somebody would think George Clooney or Matthew McConaughy should play Atticus and then we’d be stuck with two hours of the older gentleman-lawyer walking around shirtless, probably even in the part where he’s reading the paper in front of the jail to protect Tom Robinson from the lynch mob. That would be the scene where Bruce Willis would fly in—probably also shirtless—and blow everyone to pieces with his flame thrower bazooka. Then they’d have the robots from Transformers (led by a now-lucid and verbal Boo Radley) stomp through the streets, scattering the racist farmers like so many cockroaches and destroying the courthouse to prevent the ultimate injustice from ever taking place.

Nevermind. I’ll just watch the original.