Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Wear blue at your own risk.

Mom and I went to Walmart yesterday. Mom had something to return, so she checked the product in with the greeter by the door. I crossed the entryway and got us two carts.

I stood with the carts, wearing my navy blue windbreaker.

A moment later, a woman approached, took one of the carts out of my hand and thanked me.

I watched her walk away with my cart, unsure of what just happened. I looked over to Mom.

She saw the whole thing, and was bent double with laughter.

"What the...?"

"She thought..."she gasped for breath. "She thought you were a greeter."

I was mortified. It's bad enough that I have a masters and am employed in a position where it says plainly in the job description "high school diploma required."

Later, in the soup aisle, I hear a voice behind me.

"Excuse me. Excuse me, miss? Do you work here?"

I turned around and snapped, "No, I don't work here. Other people are allowed to wear navy blue, you know."

He looked at me funny. He pointed to the woman in front of me, wearing the blue polo shirt with the Walmart label on the chest.

Whoops. Oh well. At least no one asked me where the can openers were.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

The Link and the Bean

My black cat came into the room, a white string hanging from her mouth. She looked proud.

"Ellie Bean, what's in your mouth?"

I tried to recall what I may have left laying around that was white and shreddable.

She rubbed against my legs. I reached down and picked her up around her middle. I flipped her over onto her back and cradled her like a baby. Her four paws kneaded at the air.

I put my hand to her little mouth and removed what was in her mouth.

The string was about six inches long, and quite coarse.

Wait a minute...

"Link, come here baby cat. Let mommie look at your face."

I set down Bean and hefted Link up to eye level. His pupils grew large as he stared at me.

The whiskers on the left side of his mouth fanned out in contentment. On the right side, they were content, except for one which bent to the ground like a broken antennae. Next to it was a little black hole.

Watson, I think we have a match.

Friday, September 25, 2009

Finding Foodister - stupid entry title for a stupid mishap

I can't eat gluten. Anything containing gluten makes me violently ill in that unique manner where my neighbors four houses down on either side can hear me. Thus, I've been forced to experiment with new recipes and cooking methods.

Normally I would find this fun. I used to experiment in the kitchen all the time, much to my father's chagrin. He hates anything odiferous - onions, garlic, puppy messes on the carpet, etc. I used to sneak onions into my recipes - "He likes them; he just doesn't know he likes them." And he'd spend the rest of the evening in the restroom paying for my experimenting. (Amazingly enough, he still speaks to me, and admits to being my father. Most of the time.)

Gluten-free experimenting is an expensive proposition. My grocery bill tripled once I had to eliminate gluten from my diet. I don't miss it much; it's hard to miss something that makes one dread each meal time.

But getting into cooler temperatures is going to prove tricky for my gluten-freeness. I subsist on stews, soups, cassaroles, etc. throughtout the cold winter months. I bake a large dish of macaroni and cream of chicken soup and eat it for the next week. Unfortunately, canned soups, cream of soups, and noodles all have gluten in them.

The noodles are easy to overcome - just buy rice or quinoa noodles (although cooking quinoa makes your kitchen smell like a barnyard for a few hours). But what to do about the soup base?

The many different flours available to the gluten-free person could, conceivably be sprinkled into gravies and soups as thickener, just as regular flour is used. However, potato starch, tapioca starch, and rice flour don't work real well. Either does soy flour. While healthy, soy flour has the texture of that powdered handsoap that used to be in the bathroom dispensers at my elementary school. Not that I ate that all that often. I might have, if it wasn't so...gritty.

Sitting at work the other day, I had a thought - beans! Like hummus! Grind up beans, and add a teensy bit of chicken broth, and that would be a great soup base!

I hurried home to bum a can of beans off of my neighbor.

"What kind of beans do you want?" she asked.
"What kind of beans do you have?"
She sighed. "What are you doing with the beans?"
"I'm mashing them up," I said. "I'm making soup."
"Soup."
"Yeah. I'm using it as a thickener. Flour doesn't work so well."
She nodded. "Good luck, my little inept cooker. Here's a can of garbanzos."

I stopped by my parents' to steal their blender. Which reminds me, I need to return it before they realize it's missing.

I opened the can of beans and drained it into the blender pitcher. The beans plinked to the bottom and settled around the blades. Oh, but you have no idea what you're in for, I told the beans.

I put the lid on (yay for me) and flicked the switch. Nothing.

Figures. My parents never use their blender. It's probably been broken for years. I started to pour out the beans so that I could mash them with a fork. Something dragged on the counter. The plug-in of the electrical cord.

Oh.

I replaced the pitcher into the base and plugged it in. I turned it on again, and it whirred to life.

The beans pureed beautifully.

"Excellent," I murmured. "Excellent."

I scooped the bean mush from the pitcher and put it into a saucepan. I added stewed vegetables and a little bit of broth. I stirred, watching the ingredients come together into happy, gastronomic harmony.

I divided the mixture into equal tupperwares and put them in the fridge for lunch.

The next morning, I pulled out the tupperware and loaded it into my lunchbox, along with a spoon. I refuse to eat off of the cutlery in the cafeteria. That's just asking for gonnorhea.

Come lunch time, I settled in with my masterpiece. I popped the lid from the tupperware.

"Hey, what do you have today?" my friend asked, looking over my shoulder. Before I could answer, she said:

"Oh. my. God. Is that vomit? Are you eating vomit?"

Yes. I spent several hours in the kitchen making vomit.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that healthcare workers look at everything with an eye toward bodily functions. I learned a long time ago to stop drinking apple juice from clear containers with the measurements printed on the side.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Enough is enough, James!

I just finished reading James Patterson's latest novel, "Alex Cross's Trial." One would think this book would have his Detective Alex Cross as the main character, right?

No.

James Patterson has come up with yet another way to circumvent actually writing a book, and instead market 400 pieces of bound paper.

He's been a shameless user of cowriters for many years now. I don't have a problem with that in and of itself, although I do think the mark of a true master is being able to play all positions in baseball. I don't think a designated hitter should be able to call themselves a ball player, just like how an idea man shouldn't call himself an author.

But I digress. The latest Patterson novel is not about any "trial" involving "Alex Cross." Instead, it is a period novel set in the early 1900s, ostensibly written by Alex Cross.

Oh come ON. If you and your wingman want to write a period novel, write a period novel! Don't use some cute tie-in with your previous works, hoping to dupe a mystery reader into buying your gimmicky book. If you want to throw crap out there, be honest about it. If Patterson took himself at all seriously as a writer, he would title his next book, "Crap", and let it sell on the merits of the writing and storytelling alone.

I'm just frustrated because I haven't heard from an agent yet, and I'm assuming that means my book is a "no" (to her, anyway). Patterson just signed a 3 year doeal with his publisher for 17 books. Yes, there is no typo there. Seventeen books. Over five books a year. Approximately one book every other month. He's crowding the marketplace, ensuring that start-up authors don't have any room in which to get their chance.

I have NO complaints with annual authors. Baldacci, Connelly, Nora Roberts...I buy their books faithfully (okay, you're right, I'm too cheap to do that. I rent them faithfully from the library). it's just that x-number of books get published in each genre per year, and I find it horrid that Patterson is okay with taking up such a majority of that "x" with his increasing mediocrity.

Monday, September 21, 2009

A field trip from mentality

The cops finally caught the mental patient who escaped from the Interstate Fair late last week.

What does one say to that?

I think the most galling of commentary on the situation came from the Department of Social and Health Services talking head - "I think Spokane could use this as an opportunity to better understand mental illness."

Come again?

Not one, but all 31 of the fairgoing mental patients had been declared criminally insane.

The mental hospital administration took 2 hours to report the missing criminal.

The inmate brought packaged meals and changes of clothing with him on the fair field trip in a backpack.

Yes, we should be using this as a opportunity to reflect on the injustices done to this man who brutally murdered an old woman.

The PR spin on behalf of the DSHS has been amazing. I'm sure area colleges will be teaching this in public relations classes for years to come. How do you justify the unjustifiable? Is there ever a point where a business/organization/individual can throw their hands up and say, "Okay, I messed up"?

This brings to mind a certain president and a certain ill-conceived war, made worse by years of attempts to justify the action.

I, for one, would have had a lot more respect for him had he said, "We made a mistake, now let's fix it."

Something tells me that, like last time, that ain't going to happen here.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

What's the purpose?

I have long wondered what, exactly, is the purpose of fingernails? Evolutionarily speaking, you've got to admit, they're an adaptation that has long outlived its purpose. We don't need our fingernails to catch the chickens that we purchase pre-cut and deboned, packaged in cellophane at the grocery store. The nails do help tearing through the cellophane, but something tells me that's not what Darwin would have in mind if asked to explain, "So, what about fingernails?"

They come in handy for personal grooming of one's nostrils. They satiate itches in hard to reach places. They could gouge out a would-be rapist's eyeballs if necessary.

But beyond that, they are a nuisance.

If I've got nails, I'll gnaw on them with a nervous, beaver-like determination to keep my fingertips clear of the obstructions. I'm a fast typer, and fingernails of any respectable length act as miniature echo chambers, causing my key strokes to reverberate around my cubicle. My coworkers to engage me in conversation just so I'll slow my pace and thus decrease the keboarding cacophany.

I find a direct correlation between my personal stress levels and the length of my fingernails. When something is going badly (usually my dating life) the pretty, pristine white tips are no where to be found. When I isolate myself and do nothing but work and write, things that make me happy, the nails are allowed to grow with reckless abandon. If I went to therapy, the doc wouldn't need to ask me how things were going - he'd just need to glance at my fingers. 'Hmmm. Fingernails bitten to the quick. Pizza sauce under the thumb nail. Chocolate under the pinky. Yep, this is going to take the whole 50 minutes.'

It's like candy. If it's not in my pantry, I won't eat it. I usually won't even know it's gone. Same with fingernails. If I didn't have them, I wouldn't chew on them disgustingly, and I doubt I'd miss them - except for when I'm about to get out of the car for another first-and-last date and notice in my rearview mirror that I've got some personal grooming that needs to be done. Eh, nothing the cap from a Bic couldn't do in a pinch.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

A tough audience

I woke up this morning and stumbled into the bathroom. I turned on the radio and got the shower running. Lincoln and Ellie Bean wound their way around my ankles, and Trumie burrowed in bed, burying and discovering his rubber dinosaur.

As I dug through my closet, my favorite song came on the radio. I couldn't help myself. I sang along.

My singing is not unlike the sound of baby calves being injured. My voice finds notes that were previously unknown to mankind. Come to think of it, I could have a career as a goat caller in the mountains of Croatia. There, goat calling talent is assessed on how discordant you can make your voice in comparison to your fellow goat callers.

I led up to the chorus and then really let loose.

My cats took off running from the room, slipping onto their haunches in their haste to exit my presence.

But it was my favorite song! I wasn't going to let some hecklers spoil the fun. I sidled up to Trumie on my bed and gazed into his eyes as I sang. I held onto him good and snug, just in case he...started to slip off the bed or something.

He looked at me, desperation creeping into his big, brown eyes. Please. You say you love me. Please.

I sighed and released him to find cover with the cats.

A spider ducked out from behind my door. I still had an audience! I didn't stop to consider that perhaps it was my singing that scared the spider out of hiding. I had an audience.

I finished the song with great gusto and thanked my audience for being so loyal. It's the fans that make it all worthwhile.

Then I stepped on him.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

A case for public nudity

I was doing some yardwork this weekend. (I can hear my father's heart skip a beat - yardwork? really?!) I trimmed back a weirdo leafy tree in my yard that was growing uncontrollably. It was set to overtake my concrete patio by the year 2011.

I ducked low under the branches and trimmed back at the base. I worked my way around the tree, feeling my back begin to stiffen. Something tickled my forehead underneath my baseball cap. I wiped at my face, trying to get the sweat to stop dripping.

I finished cutting, and stepped out from under the tree. Grabbing the garbage sack, I began loading it with the trimmings.

I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. It was really close. Like, on-my-face close. I swiped my hand at it.

A large earwig plopped to the concrete at my feet and ran off.

"Be cool, be cool..." I implored myself.

A high-pitched screech emanated from down into my toes. I tore the baseball cap from my head and flung it into the grass. I pulled at my shirt, and started to rip it off.

I spied my neighbor on the back deck across a small open field.

But they're might be bugs in my shirt! But I can't take my shirt off when there's people around!

I danced around the patio, shifting weight from one foot to the other like a kindergartner who really has to pee, pulling at my shirt so as to prevent contact with my skin.

A lightbulb went off. Take the shirt off and then run inside. Compromise!

I ran into the bathroom shirt-less and checked myself for earwigs, ticks, leeches, or termites.

Thankfully I was creepy-crawly free. But seriously, if you saw your neighbor rip their shirt off in a panic and run around the yard screaming, you'd assume they had a justifiable reason for doing so, right? Right?

Oh well. Less trick-or-treaters at the "crazy person's house" means more Halloween candy for me.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

A rough night for Hairy Truman

I love sleeping with my furry babies in bed with me. Even if it means I wake up with a crick in my neck from trying not to have Trumie's bottom in my face, or a sore wrist from where Ellie Beans curled up on my arm, or sleeping diagonally so as not to disturb Big Link at the foot of the bed - the company while I sleep is worth it.

Last night, Trumie didn't think sleeping with Mom in the Big Bed was so worth it.

About two a.m., I had a nightmare. A snake was slithering up my leg, about to bite me in the butt with its big, huge fangs dripping with venom. I slapped at it, because we all know the way to get rid of a snake with big huge dripping venomous fangs is to slap at it.

"ARF!"

I cracked my eyes open. I looked under my sheets, to see Hairy Truman and the snake/his tail cowering at my feet.

"Oh, come here, Mommie's sorry," I said to him. I took hold of him by his minature arm pits and brought him up next to me.

He wasn't ready to accept my apology.

He wiggled to the passenger-side of the bed and snuffled around, burrowing in my blankets. I fell back asleep.

An hour later, I awoke again, this time to Trumie's insistant whining.

"What's the matter, guy?" I said groggily. I threw my arm out to the side of the bed, patting around, trying to find the lump of quivering dogness.

I found him next to my pillow, where there is another pillow and some extra pillowcases and shams that I was too lazy to put away last laundry day.

Trumie had found the opening of the sham and weasled his way inside, creating his very own sleeping bag. Unfortunately, when he woke up, he couldn't figure out how to get out again. Still half asleep, I tried to help him out. He had somehow folded the edges of the sham into each other, completely enclosing him into the pillowcase. I finally took two edges and gave it a firm shake.

Trumie came rolling out onto my bedspread, eyes wide, as if he had just seen the face of Lucifer and would never pee on my rug again.

"Come on, I'll read you a story to help us get back to sleep." I flicked on my bedside lamp and opened the book. He snuggled alongside me.

"The fisherman cast his line into the water for the fourth time, and he wondered if anything was biting today. He felt a brush against his leg. He looked into the water. A dead body floated by, its stomach bloated with decomposing gases. The skin sagged, the body having been dumped in the lake days before..."

Saturday, September 12, 2009

American Ellen

The announcement this week of Ellen DeGeneres taking over Paula Abdoul's judge's seat on American Idol was met with mixed reactions.

There was nothing mixed about my reaction.

"This is awesome! What a smart, shrewd move on the producer's part! I can't wait for the show to start this year! She's going to be great, just great."

I love Ellen. Everyone loves Ellen. She's funny, she's smart, she's not a schlub, she doesn't play a character in her comedy - she's just funny.

She's replacing Paula's warm heart on the panel. I am thankful the producers aren't leaving that spot empty: with just Simon, Randy, and Kara judging, I feared we would hear about a rash of contestant suicides. She'll have more to add than just the "nice" factor - I think Ellen will actually make sense in her critiques. At times, Paula wasn't unlike a person with Alzheimer's, grasping for words, picking many, none of them connecting to make a coherant thought.

I cannot overlook the biggest potential that Ellen brings to the table: increased acceptance of homosexuality. Ellen is a beautiful woman who is married to Portia DeRossi, a woman that could stop traffic. And she probably does, despite it being fairly well known that she's a lesbian. They are so...nonchalant about their relationship, a nonchalance that I think puts the skittish American public at ease.

No one likes "different", but none more so than Americans. We love the show "CSI," so we make a hit out of "CSI: Miami" and "CSI: New York." We love hamburgers, so we have a Wendy's, Burger King, McDonalds, and Carl's on every corner. If you're a roll of sushi, your best chances of being taken to are in the progressive Los Angeles or New York City.

Ellen does not make a federal case out of the fact that she is in love with a woman. She just is. She's a hamburger. She dresses just like the majority of Americans do, even wearing jeans and sneakers on her talk show. To be blunt, she doesn't Adam Lambert herself all over the place, a sushi roll if there ever was one.

Let me be clear: I am saying NOTHING against Adam Lambert, his guy-liner, his leather, his hair, or his sexuality. On "American Idol," he was one of the most generous and good-natured contestants I've seen. But I do understand that for a lot of people, he can be off-putting in the flamboyant and overt way he dresses and presents himself. Unfortunately, I think people look to put their finger on what, exactly, makes them uncomfortable about him. And for many people, that answer will be his sexuality, when in reality it is probably just his clothing (although the tabloid pictures of him making out porno-style with a guy, both smearing lipstick over each other, didn't help matters).

Homosexuality has somehow become synonymous with in-your-face counter-culture and anarchy. By definition, homosexuality is counter-culture: unfortunately, it is counter to what the majority of American culture accepts or believes in.

This is where the difficult debate comes in. With equal rights and marriage propositions on many states' ballots, gay people nationwide are looking to make their partnerships legal, a part of the culture.

Yes, I am saying some degree of assimilation into the majority culture is necessary for gay rights to really take hold, just like how some degree of assimilation on the part of each state is necessary to maintain our country as the United States.

Having Ellen on "American Idol" has just exploded her visibility. Seeing this average, fun, good soul will be great for Americans. Perhaps she will be generous enough to teach us to see the person instead of the sexuality. If we're smart enough to learn from her, I predict gay marriage will be legal nationwide within the next 2 seasons of "American Idol."

Friday, September 11, 2009

Fear the Tyrannosaurus Wiki Rex

At work this morning, we were debating the purpose of the Tyrannosaurus Rex's forearms.

"They're for holding their food!"
"No, they don't need to hold their food. They just chomp it down."
"Their food is probably dead already - they were scavengers, not predators."
"What? They were totally predators! Didn't you see 'Jurassic Park'?"

I was going to end the debate once and for all. I googled "What is the purpose of..." and again, before I could finish my query, Google tried to help me out by autopopulating. "What is the purpose of male nipples." No, that is not what I'm looking for (although it would be an interesting fun fact).

"What is the purpose of Tyrannosaurus Rex's forearms?"

The first site was a wikipedia entry. I have a healthy skepticism of the veracity of Wikipedia, as it is Communistic. The idea behind the content on the user-generated encyclopedia site is that as a collective, we are smarter than individuals. For example, being a Beatles-freak, I could write an entry on anything Beatles-related, and Sir Paul himself could access the entry and edit facts I might have gotten wrong (not that that would happen - I'm just saying. I used to look forward to the days when the local 7-11 had a Beatles question on their trivia board. We know what that meant - free Slurpy for Katie!)

School teachers are conflicted about whether or not to allow students to use Wikipedia as a resource in their research papers. Yes, the majority of the content is true and almost academic in nature. But if just anyone can post and edit postings, what's to stop someone from putting blatantly false information in there?

"Here it is, guys," I called out to my coworkers. I read them the article. "The T-rex has short, but strong forearms. They are used mainly to grasp the T-Rex's partner while copulating." I turned around in my chair, proud of my discovery.

Amid guffaws, one of my coworkers asked, "Where did you get that? Wikipedia?"

Thursday, September 10, 2009

I'm a murderer.

Last evening, I snuffed out approximately 2,143 lives.

I was mowing my lawn, concentrating on overlapping my mower's path enough to not leave strips of tall grass in between. I don't want to overlap too much, as that's just unneccessary work and time with the motor going. Time is gas, and gas is money! But I kind of completely missed overlapping last time, and my poor yard looked like a high school running track. I couldn't even look into my backyard - I was blinded by memories of being passed by the most overweight person in my grade, me huffing and puffing to catch up.

Out of nowhere, I heard a dull buzz. I looked to the grass directly in front of my mower, and saw a swarm of mosquitoes begin to levitate from the ground, each mosquito the size of a fifty-cent piece.

I did what any self-respecting girl would do. I ran.

Unfortunately, the mower was still running, and the grab bar was still in my hands. I mowed directly over the swarm, catching them in the whirl of the blades. I pictured the blades taking apart the poor souls, the mosquito families bidding a desperate goodbye to each other, the blades dripping with their blood.

I stopped the mower and had a moment of silence. We're all God's creatures. Every single living thing on this planet is a servant - we coexist to help each other succeed in this world. Who the heck do I think I am, causing death for my own perceived needs?

Wait a sec...mosquito blood? That's probably my blood. Or my dog's blood. I scratched at my neck. Shrugging, I pulled my mower's cord and let Darwin take over.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

When does "happy" count?

I was driving home from work today, listening to Charles Dickens's "Martin Chuzzlewit" on CD. (Hey, I've got a half-hour long commute each direction.)

It's a fun listen, except true to British fashion, they have to do things the right way. Instead of having some guy with an over-developed accent reading the book, which would have been well and good, it's got several actors playing the parts, complete with sound effects. I keep looking out my windshield, trying to see the oncoming horse and carriage.

Two characters were arguing in only the way English can argue. I'll try to paraphrase it.
"You're the most good-natured person I know. You'd be great at running the Blue Lagoon pub."
"I can't run the Blue Lagoon pub. It would be so easy to be happy there."
"Pardon?"
"No, I need to be a grave digger, or perhaps a jailer, in order for it to count that I'm happy."

The concept gave me pause. Does happiness ever not count? Take Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. They have everything - beautiful homes, children, all the money in the world, philanthropic causes that mean a lot to them. They're ostensibly happy. But does that count? What do they want for? Of course they're happy! Isn't the very definition of unhappy "wanting for something"?

Can we just be happy, regardless of where we are, what we're doing, who we're with, who we are?

I think we can be happy, and I think there is a bonafide reason why we usually aren't: we are a nation of addicts. What causes happiness on one day is not enough the next. Feeling the dewy grass between your bare toes turns into needing to feel the wind through your hair while you ride your bicycle (illegally helmet-less), which turns into needing a car for your 16th birthday, which turns into needing a job, then needing the best college, then needing a job better than the ones your parents worked their whole lives at...where does it end?

In the grass. Only this time we're not feeling it between our toes - we're lying underneath.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

An ode to my printer

Today I say goodbye to an old friend;
But alas, all good things come to an end.
My printer, he was frail,
And Staples had a good sale,
So I joined the Laserjet trend.


I dislike change.
If I had my way, we'd still write on stone tablets from our home on the grange.
But time marches on,
And my printer ink was AGAIN gone,
It was time to do the thing humane.


My printer didn't know any tricks,
But he stayed with me when my thinking was thick.
He's thankful to be in a place of rest,
Where he no longer has to make sense of my writing mess,
Because, after all, this ode was really a limerick.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Bachelorette grossness reaches a new low

This is very anti-feminism of me, and I may need to turn in my female membership card after this posting, but I must speak the truth - In the privacy of their own homes, single females are every bit as disgusting as single males.

I'm a cheapskate. I come by this genetically. I was talking with my grandmother this afternoon (under duress, I might add). Starting tomorrow, she is paying for some companionship come in a couple of times a week. This is not a euphemism for a male prostitute. The person is going to drive her places, read to her, listen to her stories, pretend like they don't want to kill her, etc. I would have been fine for the job until that last part. Anyway, Grandma is paying $20 an hour for this service, which happens to be through the company I work for. I think it's a great deal. Grandma was ticked that I never told her about the 44-cent surcharge per mile.

Thus, given my cheapness, if a dish doesn't look too dirty, I'll use it for dinner, and maybe the next morning's breakfast. Saves on the water bill and on the dishwashing liquid bill. Not like Washington's phosphate-free dishwashing soap cleans a plate better than water and my hand does.

I have to remind myself to not walk around my house in my underwear when the blinds are open. Hey, it's an easy thing to do! You live in your parents' basement long enough, you forget that there's a such a thing as "windows looking directly into your neighbor's windows."

If a girl farts in her living room and there's no one but her pets to hear it, did she really shamelessly expell herself of bodily gas?

I eat in bed. Crumbs don't bother me. Half the time, I can't tell if it's crumbs I'm sleeping on or stray cat litter that rode between my kitties' toes from the catbox to my sheets. If I'm missing one of my seven forks, I check my bed. Mom wasn't surprised that there was a fork in my bed - she was surprised that it took me two weeks to realize it was there.

Today, though, I reached a new level of disgustingness. I took a bath. (That's not the gross part.) As I'm drying myself off, I look out the bathroom door and across the hall into the scrapbooking room. My dog likes to use that room as his peepee room. It really did need a good mopping. I looked back to the bathtub, still full of gently-used water. I threw on my clothes and got my mop out of the garage.

Ten minutes later, I had cleaned my floor, saved on my water bill, and after seeing all the floor debris stuck to the ring of my tub, I decided I will never bathe again.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Um, duh?

There's an article on MSN.com lifestyle today that is titled, "When is it okay to blog about your dates?"

Um, always...Especially when the date went particularly badly. Blogging is how people with no friends rehash and try to make sense of emotionally scarring experiences.

The article cited several concerns, such as defamation, inaccurate portrayals of events, and scaring people away with the propsect that they are dating a blogger.

First, defamation. It's only defamation if you're saying something unkind that is provably not true. If some people I knew in high school blogged about how this girl Katie used to flip off cheerleaders in the hallways behind their backs, I couldn't get upset about them defaming my character - it's ugly, but it's the truth. Plus, the burden of proof resides on the one being defamed, not the defamer. I'm working on my memoir, and no, I'm not defaming a lot of people in it, but there are two or three people I don't have a whole lot of good things to say about. As long as I change defining physical characteristics - making them tall instead of short, black hair instead of blonde, well-endowed instead of...well, you get the idea - I've done my part. I didn't name them by name or physical description, and I depicted the event true to my rememberance of it.

Which brings me to the second point - accuracy. No one can remember an event or situation perfectly, unless it occured on the set of "More to Love" and they were being followed around by video cameras. Even then, the overall story arc is subject to editing. As long as you're not making things up, that you truly perceived an event to happen the way you say it did, there's really no case against you.

Do you drive people away by the mere fact that you have a blog? I say no. Chances are, most of the people in your life aren't interesting enough to write about in the first place, thereby ensuring their own protection from the blogosphere. On dates, I can think of many, many things more important to talk about than how you spend your free time on the internet. "Oh, you're into porn? I have a blog!" I'd much rather know if there is a felony conviction for anything in my date's past, or how many children they've sired out of wedlock, or their status of gainful employment. I strongly believe it is my apparently unattainable requirements of men that keeps me single, not my blog.

Finally comes the one unassailable fact of blogging about dates: If they show up in your blog, they did something very deserving. I don't blog about the men I've just not had a connection with. But the men who ask me on our first phone call if I'm bad in bed, or if I'm into being spanked...welcome to your fifteen minutes of fame.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Death by proximity

Grandma is getting old. Scratch that - Grandma was born old. But she's getting even older, to the point where her continued status of "living" defies medical explanation. The normal person's aorta is 3-4 cm in diameter. Grandma's is point-six. I rest my case.

Mom and Doug (dad) are going away on a month-long RV trip on Labor Day. I'm really excited for them. They always have a great time, despite the understandable nerves over a monthlong uprooting.

This year, I'm a bit nervous that they're leaving. Given Grandma's medical state, plus observable decline in the past month, chances are more than negligible that she'll kick it while they're gone.

Oddly enough, that possibility is not what's bothering me about them leaving. My parents are getting older, too. With them gone a whole month and Grandma with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, I'm being forced to glimpse reality:

Someday, I will have to live without my parents.

They're my emotional support, my peanut gallery, my cheering section.

I don't have many friends - none my age, for sure. And I don't have a boyfriend. If driving men away was an Olympic sport, you're looking at the Michael Phelps of Singledom.

I'm really not that lonely. I've got too many hobbies to count, and I am truly happy. But we all need a person. I'm not positive that my being alone later in life will be a problem, just like I'm not positive that I'll actually still be alone and able to park in the middle of my garage.

I guess it's just one of those things. You know it's there, you can't do a thing about it, but its true impact on your life depends on how you perceive it.

I'm baaaack...

I'm sure I have no followers anymore after having taken such a long hiatus from posting. I have really great excuses though, so buckle your seatbelt, here they come:

1) The Portland Willamette Writer's Conference was the first week of August, and I took most of July to fine-tune my books and to obsess about the conference. When I'm in obsess mode, there's little room for anything else.

2) I got some great feedback on my books, and I got a request to see a full manuscript of my spy-thriller novel! How awesome. So I was taking my time with submitting the manuscript so that I could incorporate the great ideas and direction I got from my manuscript reader. I got home from Portland, thinking, "Hey, no big deal! He just suggested I fix this...and that...and that..." and one hundred pages of changes later...

3)...I had surprise neck surgery. I had this lump in my neck that was growing like the mushrooms in my front lawn. When I started having trouble swallowing, I gave in and went to the doctor. People might think that former cancer patients probably go to the doctor a lot - and that may be. But for me, I need to be bleeding out of an unusual orifice, eye, nostril, etc. before I'll make an appointment with my doctor. He's a great guy, don't get me wrong. He expressed jealousy of me once that I have the time to read things like "Anna Karenina." I wanted to bring him a Cliff Notes copy of it at my next appointment, but wasn't sure if he would think it was funny or not.

That being, I'm back, and I hope you enjoy my postings : )

Katie