bad blogger, me

Oh well. Life is so weird sometimes. And it can prevent one from blogging away to one's heart's content.

It's a strange and new dynamic to work remotely. And just when I think I've gotten a feel for it, I go back to DC next week. I have two doctor's appointments for my elbow, two weeks apart, so it just made sense to go back, not for the agreed-upon one week, but for 2.5 weeks.

At least I get to stay in town for The Man Who Lives in the House's birthday this Sunday. He'll be the ripe-old age of 32.

Speaking of which, what the fuck should I get him for his birthday? He is so fucking difficult to shop for. He wants a lamp. Some clamp-on magnifying lamp for the "someday" when he actually gets his office set up as a workshop. Said lamp costs $30 at Office Depot. Woo hoo. I am going all out for him this year.

Once I got him an Atari 2600, mint in box, with 50 games. Which, by the way, he's about to sell. Anyone want it? I don't have the box anymore, unfortunately; it got wrecked when we moved from our puny apartment to our house.

Now that I'm soliciting gift ideas, Saturday is my friend's 27th birthday party. She's having an 80s Skate-or-Die party. Everyone must dress in 80s clothes (of any type) or be gagged with a spoon. Should I attempt to roller skate now that my elbow is getting better?

I think so, too.

I don't know what to get her, and I need to bring a cake, 80s-themed. Thoughts? The Man and I looked for Smurfs figures but alas, found none.

Last night saw us going to Mango Salsa's place (she doesn't have a blog yet, but we're working on her!) for a Puerto Rican dinner party with Trixie and WaWa. The Man and I brought flan and key lime pie. I made caramel sauce for the flan which made a giant mess in the kitchen for The Man to clean up. He does all of the dishes around here. The food was great, the company better, and The Man was actually social, sort of! We meet WaWa and Mango Salsa and her husband and daughter tonight for $1 sushi night while Trixie is in DC.

Heide sent me a wonderful package of pixy sticks, bath fizzies, and a cucumber eye mask. You rock, Heide! I'll take pictures when blah blah blah. No, seriously, pictures will be coming. Sometime.

the alligators are staring at me.

Now that I'm working from home, I have all of my 125+ snowglobes right at my desk again.

The two alligator snowglobes are creeping me out. One from New Orleans and one from Mississippi. I imagine they fight it out at night, next to the frog from Florida and the dolphin from the Bahamas.

Perhaps the witch from Salem, MA, or the cop from Fargo stop them at night. Dog knows, it isn't the World Trade Center, which is knocked on its side, or the useless hula girls from Hawaii.

While I'm swamped at work and hoping for an up-and-running iBook again so I can post pictures, I want to dedicate this story to Vitriola, the metal-loving freak who is living with a man addicted to Hall and Oates.

Back to work, if I can battle the alligators.

as soon as i get home i call heathrow, want a standby fare to borneo

Alright, already! I am swamped with life and I haven't had time to post, and I am without my iBook and so on and so forth.

An update on a very few things:

1. My elbow is healing quite well. Today at physical therapy we discovered I have already regained some of my natural hyperextension (not just straight, I am now more than straight. I still cannot knit.

2. The relationship with The Man Who Lives in the House is going...well, I guess. We have our ups and downs.

3. It's very strange to not live with Trixie after so long.

4. Last night, Trixie and I met Hockey Mom for dinner. Don't all you guys (or, as we say in the South, all y'all) wish you had been there?

Pictures, etc. to come when the iBook is up and running again.

PS - the "my brother is dead to me now!" quote actually came from The Brak Show, but Allena, it does sound very Raymond-esque. Sopranos, Patti? I can't say. I haven't really watched either of those shows much, so if either of you can show me that it was in an episode of your guess, you win.

Great Big Slacker

Well, it seems that ItGirl is back home for a bit, but is still in need of someone to blog for her.

And I guess until she deletes my access in a fit of sensibility, that someone will be me.

*cackle*

Today's post is a public service announcement.

1. Beige is boring.
2. This cotton is complete and utter ass.
3. I knit too tightly.
4. Debbie Bliss has never seen a real live baby.

I love her designs, and this little sweater I'm making is going to be very nice. It is bang-on gauge, and she actually hasn't lied about the finished size, I just don't think that most 6-month old babies have 24" chests, do they?

I'm just askin'.

promises, and the keeping thereof

I am a great big slacker, and would like at this point to apologize to Rebecca for not writing for days. And days.

No matter that I've been working 800 hours a day, am trying to clear off my desk before the next person starts doing that job, and maybe trying to get some quality "pulling the heads off Barbies" time with my daughter, lest I be shunned (and if you think you've ever seen shunnin', you should be shunned by my daughter. It takes it to a whole new level).

Should I trot out any of these tawdry excuses to Rebecca, her response would be "take your kid to the office and run all of the paperwork through the shredder while your daughter sits at your desk and pulls the heads off the Barbies and then come home and write my blog, you lazy bitch. I mean, it's not like they can fire you, is it?"

Any excuse-making would be futile.

I know this because she and I are, apparently, the same person. From the minute we started talking this became abundantly clear. I've never heard of twins separated at birth and who are also ten years apart in age and of different nationalities but hey, anything can happen (and, in this household, often does). We're so alike that a close friend of hers, having read my blog, actually thought it was her posting under another name.

(This is, clearly, an offensive suggestion as my writing is far better than hers, but I digress.)

There are a number of differences, naturally. She is a fine example of how a woman can have a good career; I seem to have chosen the "dreadful warning" option rather than the inspirational route. We both enjoy a good beverage, but she's more of a martinis and single-malt kinda gal, whereas I am the "beer out of a can" type. (That's an aluminum can, I hasten to add, not a confession that I do most of my drinking in the lavatory.) She has a better sense of fashion; however, although I often dress in clothes that the Salvation Army would be embarrassed to hand out to the homeless (I actually don't even know what I look like most days), I have a sense of balance.

I think in the long run this will stand me in better stead.

We will not discuss the hot-tub incident in which I ended up with 12 stitches in my ass, k?

To conclude, apparently I am the low-rent version of our dear ItGirl, and nobody should be even slightly surprised at my slackery, and should get off my case.

I think I'm going to start mailing her religious tracts in the morning.

"my brother is dead to me now!"

No, Vitriola, I don't think someone can be dead to you just because you have forgotten about their existence (as is the case with you and my stepcousin Stefanie). Someone is dead to you if you actively declare them to be dead to you.

Since I owe so many bounties, what's one more?

One to whomever can guess the source of today's title.

Hint: it's a TV show.

(I'm out before someone figures out I'm blogging at work now.)

miss mary mack, mack, mack

This post is kindly being posted by Rabbitch on my behalf.

I have a cousin named Mary Mack.

She's a stunningly beautiful and in some ways childlike creature who
could pass as an Irish queen.

She's the little sister I never had.

When I was 8 and Mary was 5, I taught her the song "Miss Mary Mack":

Miss Mary Mack, Mack Mack
All dressed in black, black, black
With silver buttons, buttons, buttons
All down her back, back, back.
She asked her mother, mother, mother
For fifty cents, cents, cents
To see the elephants, elephants, elephants
Jump over the fence, fence, fence.
They jumped so high, high, high
They reached the sky, sky, sky
They didn't get back, back, back
'Till the Fourth of July, July, July...

She was a bright, inquisitive child, and I didn't see her much when we
grew up, because we lived so far apart.

Last night, on Mother's Day, Mary passed away.

My family is still in shock.

Miss Mary Mack, I hope you find the elephants jumping as high as the
sky, whereever you may be. The world is a lonelier place without you,
but we were enriched for having had known you.

I'll miss you in my life.

itgirl

monkey bidness

Well, while some people have been off enjoying themselves, fondling wool, seducing sheep, and more than likely hanging with cool knitbloggers, the REST of us have been working hard, finishing even more fucking dishcloths even though we said we were all done but then sold some more on Friday, not getting pancakes OR getting laid for Mother's Day (although that statistic would have been changed if the babysitter had just been twenty minutes later) and generally keeping the world running.

In between bouts of cosmetic cleansing and stuff, those of us who were too responsible (or broke) to run off to Maryland may have in fact been engaging in a little monkey business.

Rebecca and I both hate monkeys. In fact they freak us right the fuck out. Why she sent me this link, I'll never know. Why I've entered every name I've ever heard of I'll also never know.

Maybe because I didn't get to fondle sheep this weekend.

But I'm not bitter.

i'm ok. you? well, not so much.

I received a package from Hockey Mom (thank you!). Included in it was a postcard bearing the timely advice: "The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you."

I think I've pretty well got my bases covered as long as I stay buddies with our ItGirl. Today I get an email at work and, instead of begging for my intimate favours, as do most of her missives, she informs me that she thinks she's broken her ankle again, or at least sprained it.

Sitting. At. Her. Desk.

Now this chick is either the most unfortunate person on the face of the earth (don't be buying any lottery tickets, baby, they'll likely spontaneously combust) or she's got some form of Munchausen Syndrome. I think, barring any sort of substantiating evidence, that I am going to believe that she's faking it completely.

Please dog, let it be true. I want to go visit her and I'm getting too scared to be in the same city ...

put on a pawn show

Oh Jesus, here I am again, slaving over a hot computer while some selfish bitch (whose name I won't mention but her initials are Rebecca) makes plans to go off to Maryland Sheep and Wool Orgy or whatever they're calling that thingie I don't get to go to.

Although I'm not bitter.

So today, I'm driving along and I'm listening to the radio, and all of a sudden Sheryl Crow is singing:

"I’ve been long, a long way from here
Put on a poncho, played for mosquitos,
And drank ’til I was thirsty again"

And I suddenly realized that she was singing "put on a poncho". Put. On. A. Fucking. Poncho.

I've been trying to figure out what a "pawn show" was for years now. The original release was in 1996. I'm sort of thinking that at some point in the last nine years I should have figured that out, rather than spending all of my time imagining some sort of perverse Punch and Judy Show, with unclaimed pawn items instead of puppets.

Fortunately it would appear that I'm not the only idiot in the village. Go meet the rest of 'em Kiss This Guy dot com.

Mine's nowhere near the worst.

i hate it when that happens

Seems like I have to do all of the work around here.

(This, of course, entitles me to gratuitous linkage to my own blog.)

So I'm at work today when I receive an email from Herself saying, basically "Scratch my itch, bitch." I of course politely asked what the fuck she was talking about as, although it does happen to be my week for girls, she's just a little far away for this to have any sort of happy ending.

Seems she's already fucked and didn't need me to perform that little task at all. Fucked as fucked can be. Broken arm (due to some sort of unspeakable bacchanalia occurring at Trixie's good-bye party (she alleges she was not yet drunk enough to have hurt herself this badly.) I have no idea how she moved house with a broken arm, no car, and temporary custody of a whining dog and cat longing for their people.

She provided, of course, no evidence of this injury. I, however, have ample proof of my injury, garnered some time around 1am this morning, while running down the hallway of my house screaming "go to bed, go to bed, go to bed RIGHT THIS INSTANT" at my daughter and then smashing my foot at full speed into the large oak-bordered mirror that is leaning against my wall.




I'm not sure if this will affect my ability to produce dishcloths however I'm pretty sure it was right uppity of Rebecca to call upon me to fill in for her while in this condition.

Just because she has a broken arm. Oh yes, and a broken computer.

I think we all know exactly who the selfish bitch is around here, don't we?