COMING SOON...

Coming soon to a computer screen near you; the narcissistic ramblings of a woman with too much time on her hands and too many cats in her yard!  I'm coming back after a long hiatus of holidays, birthdays, food, more birthdays, and more holidays with yet, more food.  I will be signing up for Blogher, and I hope you remember who I am long enough to give me a passing glance when I come up with bad titles for my posts! Until tomorrow!

Foxtrot to Nirvana

Happy New Year (several days late)! I hope everyone had a glorious holiday and made a bunch of resolutions that will go unmet and give you something to feel hopelessly guilty about in March. I spent the New Year and a couple of the following days getting hammered with friends and playing Rock Band wherein I sang every type of song ever written by man and possibly singing some songs written by stoned gorillas.

I might have discovered the meaning of slizzard, as I discussed in Getting Slizzard in my G6 sometime back. I had retained a steady level of inebriation and after all of my friends had been in and out of the house to smoke several times, I decided smoking sounded like a good idea. I have not smoked in two or three years and I have refused to do so ever since because the only way I could stop was with the Chantix pill. That little pill gave me three months of the most terrifying nightmares I have ever had in my life. As a result, I do not smoke simply so I don't have to take that awful little pill anymore. But as I said, at this point, my brain decided smoking was the way to go. I grabbed a cigarette from a package that was lying around in the kitchen and wended my way outside to the carport.

I lit up that little cigarette, inhaled and then promptly forgot I was holding it, as I began to hear music from inside the house. I have no idea what this music was, but for some reason I decided ballroom dancing was in order. So, in my pajamas and coat and motorcycle boots with an unused cigarette smoldering away between my fingers, I began to foxtrot. I counted the numbers aloud as I made the steps and I haphazardly made my way all over the driveway dancing to the music that had now firmly implanted itself in my head. Sometimes I would insert a flailing ballet move in there just to shake things up a bit, so if I felt in my innermost heart that a graceful leap through the air was in order, I would do my best to imitate grace and would fling myself across the driveway. At one point I decided an artistic twirl was just the thing needed to make my dance really stand out so I made a clunkety pirouette right into a basketball goal post. This was not my intention, but I decided to roll with it.

Suddenly I went from dancing queen to NBA tryouts by playing HORSE against the basketball goal. The fact that I had no ball was not a deterrent to me as I undoubtedly couldn't have held on to it anyway. For anyone who doesn't know, HORSE is when two opponents play at making baskets. If one person gets the ball through the net, the opposing person has to stand in the same position and try to make the same shot. If they fail, they get an H, the next fail earns them an O, then an R, and so on until someone has fully spelled HORSE and lost the game. I had no opponent and I had no ball, which meant I made every single shot, so my basketball game was fairly short, but I walked away with a single-handed, unchallenged, championship victory. I always knew I was meant to be great.

By this point my friends began to notice I was not in the house and sent someone to find me. My hands were very red and it took me quite some time to realize this was because I had danced and played ball-less ball in a winter wind advisory where the temperature had dropped somewhere around zero and the wind was blowing hard enough to re-arrange mobile homes. I was probably cold, but I can't honestly recall. I have no idea where that poor cigarette ended up or when I lost it. I never smoked it, but I feel that it still had more fun with me than all the other cigarettes had with all the other people that night.

As for ringing in the New Year, my hosts poured us a Rose' champagne and we clinked glasses as the clock struck twelve. The couples all kissed, and then I realized that my Dan had not come, and I needed him here at this point so I could kiss him. Well, I had to kiss someone, so I looked at the new friend standing next to me, who happens to be gay man, and told him we were the only two not kissing anybody. He agreed and so I kissed him for the new year. I have no idea what sort of confusion happens when you ring in the new year by kissing a gay man that you have only met that night, but it ought to be interesting.

In the end, we all danced and laughed and ate and drank and had a wonderful time. Most of us were kid-free as we are helping to keep the national divorce rate high and our children were at their other parent's house for the new year. We were all old enough to know better, but absolutely too young to care, and that knowledge was very freeing. Also, a friend of mine came up with the best business idea ever. She said she was going to open a gym called Resolutions; it would be a fitness gym for two weeks and for the rest of the year it would be a pub. I'll drink to that!

Skills of the Samuri

I scare far too easily and I have recently found out I also have the worst survival skills on the planet. Ostriches bury their head in the sand and laugh at me. I wish I were making this up.

I was getting dressed and fresh after my shower on Saturday, because it was time for my bi-annual shower and I stood in the bathroom brushing my teeth. I have one of those little $8.00 drugstore battery operated toothbrushes because I think they really do get my teeth cleaner than an ordinary one and also because I can't imagine myself ever spending $200 on the really, super nice ones. So, I'm counting to sixty, three times, in my head and my little brush is just spinning and vibrating away and I'm drifting in and out of Unicorn Meadow and I stroll over to the doorway of the bathroom. Suddenly a wild human appears! It isn't one of my humans and without realizing it is just my son's friend, I freak out. In response to the scare I received I jabbed my toothbrush down my throat. That's right! I got scared, jabbed an electronic toothbrush into my tonsils and nearly fell into the bathtub. What the hell kind of reaction is that? “No, don't bother killing me Mr. Burglar, I've got that under control; you just go take some stuff”.

While I'm trying to unwrap my uvula from around my spinning toothbrush, my son, I assume is trying to convince his friend that I have just returned from a spiritual retreat and that's how we were taught to greet each other in a show of faith. (Uvula is not a dirty word, I looked it up, hoping it would be). I have no idea what his friend thought of me, as he went to my son's room, and I promptly left for Rockband night, bronchitis and her filthy lungs be damned. (After all, what's a 104 degree fever when you get to pretend you're Amy Lee all night!)
As further testament to my coping skills in a frightening situation, here is another true story that happened Friday night. My husband or partner or boyfriend, whatever he is, and I were laying in bed and I had turned my Kindle Fire onto IheartRadio. (I should get paid for these plugs). Anyway, I had put a request for stations like Usher and it played the song I got the ticket for in Sonically Screwed, so yes, the DJ had me falling in love again. It played some people I'd never heard of and one song about “I do it for the bitches and the drinks”, which I thought was poor motivation, so I disliked the song and skipped to the next. Anyway, after a while, my Kindle decided it was tired of that type of music, and I had to agree, so while it was buffering I backed out and pulled up my spot in David Copperfield. I had been reading for quite some time, all snuggled up next to Dan and suddenly my Kindle goes (quote) “AH”. I looked at it and looked at Dan and went “AH?” Then my Kindle went up a few octaves and yelled “AAAHHHH!” I promptly dropped the demon possessed Kindle on the bed and screamed back at it “AAAAHHHHH!”. Then a beat started. It turns out there is a song called – get ready – AH, by some guy. I frantically pushed random images on the screen until I found the Iheart button and lo and behold the stupid thing had quit buffering and was now playing a song that was screaming at me. I just assumed that when you backed out of the radio part, it went away. It never occurred to me that the radio would keep playing while you did other stuff on the tablet. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we all know what assuming does to “u and I”. It makes an ass out of us. I promise you I felt like a total ass yelling at my Kindle and dropping it to fend for itself while I climbed over Dan and tried to escape out of the window, but I hate it when my machines start talking to me when I don't tell them to. I did figure out how to turn the radio off for realsies, while Dan laughed at me over nothing that I could find to be remotely funny. If I'd had a nearby toothbrush, I'm sure I would have shoved it down my throat in response to the terror I felt.

For those of you awaiting the zombie apocalypse, I do not recommend asking me to be your second, or even your janitor. I have stocked up on toothbrushes in case of a true emergency and if you ever find me lying on the ground with a thick toothbrush sticking out of my mouth, vibrating peacefully, you should run like hell. Similarly, if I look at you and dash off for no apparent reason, especially if I escape out of a window, know that I have just left you to fend for yourself against the un-dead. I might shout before I do this, but I can't guarantee that I will. If I shove a toothbrush down my throat and then escape out of a window, you need to evacuate the building with all available guns and ammunition. Don't worry about me, I'll strangle to death and slow the zombies down for you.

Living in the Bronchs

If you are the kind of person who is in the habit of having arch enemies, then may I suggest you find a way to give them bronchitis? Of course, when you do this, you want to be careful to avoid getting it yourself. In fact, if you like, you can bring your arch enemy to me and I will cough on them free of charge if you follow this blog. I can guarantee results as I have been sick since the 5^th of December with the nastiest case of bronchitis on the planet. Seriously, no one has ever been this sick, and no one ever will be.

I think this actually started a few years ago. As a way to celebrate the Christmas holidays, every year, my body gets bronchitis. Last year was particularly bad. So bad in fact, that it didn't clear up until the beginning of summer; and to this day if I walk in the cold or walk up my terribly long, steep driveway, I still get the taste of blood in my mouth. I noticed this a few times throughout this last year, but paid no attention to it beyond, “huh”. On the other hand, if I break a nail, I am distraught and worry that I might not have taken my vitamins lately. Seriously.

December 5^th rolled around, like it does, and I woke up feeling a little ill. By the end of the night I was burning up with a fever and when I would cough I'd get a bloody taste in my mouth. If I had sat down on December 4^th and planned out how I wanted the next day to go, none of what happened would have been on that list. I spent the next few days alternating between having a fever and chills to sweating through every pore in my body and defining my space in the bed; the dry part being Dan's and the soggy part being mine. I had no idea eyelids could sweat, but mine did.

The coughing is particularly harsh. If you snorted gas fumes and then swallowed a lit match, that would still not hurt as bad as this cough – mostly because the fuel would be in your lungs and the match, which would have gone out, would be in your stomach, but I digress. I started seeing tiny flecks of blood and while I am aware that they are simply caused by throat irritation, I began having this dramatic fantasy a' la Moulin Rouge, where I am slowly wasting away from a vague disease and an intense, melancholy man with good hair falls desperately in love with me, but realizes it only too late as I am already near death's doorstep and nothing more can be done for me. I even have him pictured at the funeral, alone, behind a distant oak tree, tears pouring from his red eyes. He says a private goodbye to me and drives away foreswearing love and forever changed by my gentle ways. Ha! How's that for a death scene?

As it is, I am not going to have a death scene fit for daytime TV, nor am I getting much better. Right now I am simply sitting in a stagnant state of coughing so hard that I occasionally lose control of my bladder, mid-cough and have to go clean up, and running out of breath walking down the hall to the bathroom to clean up. When I showered a day ago, it hurt so bad and I couldn't breathe for so long that when I got out I stood in the bathroom, shivering in a towel and cried for a minute until I realized that crying was not going to get me any warmer, so I decided to get dressed instead. I may just forgo showering all together until summer when this clears up. My family should love that! Dan has brought home nourishment in the form of pizza, take out Chinese food, burgers, fries and almost anything that can be handed to a person in a car from a window. This is good, at least I know they are all eating something, and I haven't got the strength to really care what it is. I may buy them a package of gummy bears so they will have some fruits and vegetables, but that's as much as I can do at this point.

So, in conclusion, bronchitis is a dirty whore, and if you would like to infect someone special in your life, feel free to follow my blog and then drive them to my house. I would make house calls, but I'm almost certain I am not allowed to drive with this much medicine in my system.

The SQUEE award!

Today, my blog is going to be a little different from the norm because, guess what? I got nominated for the Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award! 

I have the honor of being nominated by Laurel Regan @ Alphabet Salad, http://www.alphabetsalad.com/ and I'm excited about this! Thank you Laurel, I've never been nominated for anything before, unless you count being the person nominated to clean up after the party and to go get more beer. This is definitely better! So without further ado, I am going to fill out my questions. I will probably ado later on in the post.

The Rules

• Provide a link to and thank the blogger who nominated you for this award.
• Answer ten questions.
• Nominate 10-12 blogs that you find a joy to read.
• Provide links to these nominated blogs and kindly let the recipients know they have been nominated.
• Include the award logo within your blog post.
  

Q&A

1. Your favourite colour: Spring green
2. Your favourite animal: kittens to cuddle with, owls to decorate with!
3. Your favourite non-alcoholic drink: Diet Coke (It probably makes up 2/3 of my bloodstream)
4. Facebook or Twitter? Facebook (I don't even know how to get on my Twitter account)
5. Your favourite pattern: The swirls in fudge ripple ice-cream
6. Do you prefer getting or giving presents? Giving! (I shop all year long, I always find stuff for people and say “ooh *insert name* would love this. I have a lot of friends that I call Insert Name.)
7. Your favourite number: 42
8. Your favourite day of the week: Saturday (the kids are here, or I can go play with my friends, and we still have a day to recover!)
9. Your favourite flower: Iris (I have some light purple ones surrounding my house that I swear SMELL purple. They are lovely.)
10. What is your passion? Travel! (I don't want to stay somewhere, I want to see it all!)
    

My Nominations

1. Yum Eating
2. Alphabet Salad
3. A Pleasant House - Elegant Decay in New Orleans
4. Albania or Bust
5. ::My Closet Catalogue::
6. Ngwenwi Claudette Creative Outlet
7. Red Pen Mama
8. Splat-ospheric
9. Breezes at Dawn
10. Homemaking With Style

Please take a few minutes and visit each of these bloggers. Who knows – you might make a new friend!
And once again, thank you.

This is so cool! I didn't even know some of this stuff about me! I love everybody! Have a great day!

I'm on in 3,2,1...

So, the satellite internet guy was supposed to come out today. His truck is broken and I am stuck in my little mountain corner with no way to contact the cyber world. This is my teeny tiny post made on my absurdly small phone keypad, typed out one button at a time, so this will be fairly short and won't be proofread until 3 seconds after I hit send. Until Friday I am alone with my thoughts. If you could helicopter in some Chinese food, that would be great! In the meantime, check out my bestie's blog at kandicoatedthoughts.blogspot.com and read the hilarious Upworthy story of a woman fighting back the media with a song. Watch the video, trust me! This woman made my day!

Sonically Screwed

I got a ticket. A big fat speeding ticket, and I blame it all on the sonic screwdriver. Last night was the magical night of Dr. Who in 3D on the big screen. (The doctor informed us all that he thought we should all have been watching it in 12D by this point, but sadly, we have not advanced that far.) I opted not to see it – in select theaters – on the 23^rd as getting to one of those few theaters would have required boarding a plane, or possibly a TARDIS, neither of which was handy. I did drive two hours last night though, to Bristol, VA with my son and his girlfriend to a giant movie complex where we paid fifteen dollars for popcorn and almost four dollars for Twizzlers.

We drove Robin's car, which appropriately has a WHOVIAN license plate. We got in and turned up the radio to just under window-breaking level so that Robin and his friend could sit in the backseat and feel the giant speaker that lives in the trunk vibrate and BOOM BABABOOM BA BOOM BOOM against their bodies. I can assure you, they didn't need to restrict themselves to the backseat to feel the vibrations of that speaker, I think they could have been anywhere within fifty feet of that car and had the same experience. But we plugged in his downloads of rap, dub-step, club music, and Tenacious D and headed out to see the great Doctor. Just a note: if you ever have the chance to listen to Tenacious D, Jack Black's parody heavy metal band, my recommendation is you set yourself on fire instead.

Somewhere along interstate 81 we ascended a steep hill causing me to really have to push the gas pedal as this car has no cruise control. Also, I would like to add, I was wearing new boots (which are really, fabulously cute!) and I wasn't aware how heavy my foot would be in these new, cute boots. Then we began to go downhill and I had Usher in the speakers forcing me to seat-dance because “the DJ was making us fall in love again” and all these forces combined so that when I got to the bottom of the hill, I basically blew the doors off of the state trooper's car that was parked in the middle of the interstate waiting on some moron like me to come sailing through there at a gillion miles an hour. He immediately flipped on those dreaded blue flashy lights and I slowed down enough to be able to see the shoulder of the road and pulled over. Several minutes later, he caught up with me and pulled in behind me. He walked up and I only slightly rolled down the window because, to my satisfaction, it was freezing cold outside in preparation for the upcoming ice storm. He asked for my license and whatever those papers are they ask for (I can't remember, I've only ever had two other tickets in my life). I had to ask Robin where they were and dug around for a while until I found them. I didn't bother to hurry as I was hoping to freeze Super Trooper into a fish-stick so I could make a clean getaway. I finally found what he needed and slipped them through the slit in the window. He then informed me the reason he pulled me over was that I was doing 86 in a 70 mile per hour speed zone and anything over 80 was considered reckless driving. Did I have any reason for going so fast? I scrunched up my face and pooched out my cheeks, which I have noticed is a face I make when I'm thinking really hard, and I tried desperately to think of some reason that I could have legitimately been driving nearly 90 miles per hour. Dead grandmother? No, she's already dead, I wouldn't need to get to her in any particular hurry. I quickly realized I had lost too much weight to fake being in labor and both of the kids looked entriely too healthy to say I was taking them to the hospital. I thought about the truth for just a split second “I was bonding with my son over Dr. Who and we are just really happy about it?” No. Then I remembered while we were at Burger King earlier I had taken Robin's sonic screwdriver, pointed it at the steering wheel and buzzed it for a good five seconds. I told Robin if his screwdriver had been any good whatsoever, it would enhance the car and we would be there already. That damn sonic screwdriver did it! I blew all the air out of my cheeks, looked up at the officer and said “No, I didn't really have a reason for speeding at all”. After all, I wasn't about to let him confiscate my sonic screwdriver.

He spent what seemed like the next hundred years, writing my ticket and checking out who knows what about me in his little car. Robin's friend was slightly upset in the backseat and whispered that she could see his gun right there in her face (it's a short car). She said she started to panic when she saw the blue lights and I asked – just to make sure – if she was hiding any cocaine I needed to know about or anything. She assured me she wasn't and I was able to calm her down. At one point Robin asked if he could get out of the car and go knock on the guy's window and ask him to hurry up because we had stuff to do. I advised him against this and told him he'd probably get shot. This seemed to quench his desire to jump out of the car and confront a man with a loaded gun, which I thought was a testament to my stellar parenting skills.

Finally, Mr. Policeman came back to the car carrying a flashlight which he shined directly into my eyeballs ensuring I wouldn't be able to see clearly enough to drive over thirty miles per hour for the next several days and had me sign that nasty little paper that says I got caught and he sent us on our way. He told me how to accelerate in the shoulder and pull onto the interstate, but I didn't hear him and he had to repeat himself, which he did with robot-like accuracy, including his goodbye salutation. I had never been pulled over on an interstate before, so I legitimately didn't know how I was supposed to go from zero to seventy in a matter of seconds before being plowed over by a semi. We still got to the theater in plenty of time to find the perfect seats for the 50^th anniversary of Dr. Who and all in all, it was a wonderful night! Also, I have until February 5^th to ignore the ticket and save up the money to pay what I am sure will be a terrific fine. And please feel free to send donations!